Bao Ninh - The Sorrow of War

‘Like a smoke?’ she asked.

‘Yes. But where’d you get them?’ he said, smiling.

‘I found a Salem packet. Had one left.’

She took the crushed packet from her top pocket and lit up, taking a few puffs to get it started, then handed it to Kien.

‘The Americans are close, then,’ he said, looking at the packet.

‘Not always. We get hold of Salems, too. But we should’ve brought the AK,’ she said.

‘Yes. But I thought they’d need it if the Americans come across them. The wounded can’t run so they have to fight. We’re nearly out of ammunition, anyway. We have to avoid them, that’s all. That’s the only way we’re going to get the wounded safely across.’

She nodded agreement, making a hand signal for a puff on the cigarette. Kien placed it between her lips.

‘I don’t usually smoke. But I want to share one with you. I don’t know why I’m so nervous,’ she said.

‘How long have you been down here?’

‘I came down south in 1966, two years ago, but I was in the Central Highlands most of the time so I don’t know this area at all. This is the worst time I’ve had. It’s really bad, isn’t it? I mean, the fighting’s going to go on for a long time, don’t you think?’

‘I’m beginning to think the real fighting’s just started. It’s like this everywhere now,’ he replied.

A helicopter was heard. Then rifle fire.

‘Don’t forget the way,’ she whispered urgently.

‘But we both know it now,’ he said.

‘Yes, but you’ll shoot me if I make another mistake,’

‘Forget it, Hoa,’ he said. ‘I was angry with you then.’

‘No, I mean it. The jungle is alien to me. I’m from the coast, in Hai Hau. Until we saw the head-shaped rock I was totally lost.’

Kien looked at her more closely. ‘How old are you?’

‘Nearly twenty. I joined when I was eighteen,’ she said. ‘But I’m still not used to it.’

‘No one gets used to it,’ he said, grinding the cigarette into the ground. ‘Wait for me here. I’ll go back and bring the others. You need the rest. We’ve still got a long way to go.’

‘No, I won’t. I’m the liaison guide, that’s my duty,’ she said. But she seemed nervous, and Kien studied her, until she looked up again.

‘I’m afraid to be alone,’ she admitted. ‘I want to be with you, Kien.’

Kien moved to her and placed an arm around her shoulders in comfort. Gratefully, she leaned towards him, and they sat like that for some minutes, moving only when a spotter plane flew overhead, following the course of the river. Kien stood up slowly, and helped Hoa to her feet. She looked so young. He’d been about to shoot a teenage girl because she’d lost her way in unfamiliar jungle.

By the time they had reached the foot of the Ngoc Bo Ray mountain again the sun was setting behind the peaks; it was late afternoon and despite the eerie silence they were both hurrying. There was an uneasy tension in the air, broken by the rustle of dry grass, and the crunch of twigs breaking. A cobra slid across the trail in front of them, fleeing from some other movement.

They froze in their tracks, expectantly. They had just passed the turning point of the head-shaped rock and could smell the marshlands of Crocodile Lake.

There was more movement in the jungle near them. Birds, disturbed by some movement, flew out ahead of them, up and into the heat of the day before turning back into the cool to land on higher branches. As they began to move slowly forward Kien suddenly stopped, grabbing Hoa and pulling her down. An American patrol had emerged a few paces away from them, cutting a narrow path as they went. In another moment they would have stepped in front of them.

What Kien had seen first was not a man, but a tracker dog as a big as a calf, an Alsatian.

The dog was pulling at a strong leather leash which was held by a black soldier wearing a bullet-proof vest and steel helmet. Another black followed him, this one bare-chested except for a massive cartridge belt slung diagonally across his body. Following him a white American, also well muscled and naked from the waist up. Then a fourth… and there were others, fanned out behind the fourth. It was difficult to tell just how many, but they were quick and light-footed in the jungle and they moved relentlessly, like cunning wolves on a trail, in total silence.

The dog stopped by a shrub where Kien was hiding and began sniffing. The dog-handler had flicked something onto the sight of his gun. Kien, shivering in fear a few feet away, looked at it. It was a piece of white bandage. He moved his hand down to his grenade, expecting the worst. He realised the Americans were following their earlier trail with the wounded to Crocodile Lake. What he didn’t realise was that Hoa had silently slipped away from where he was crouched.

The American patrol were still moving along, following the eager tracker dog, following their trail of the day before. They were signalling and murmuring among themselves as they picked up the trail. We must have been obvious, thought Kien. Stretchers dragged by men, themselves probably wounded and exhausted, who were hardly likely to pay attention to bushcraft by covering their tracks.

‘Our wounded are at their mercy!’ He swore. A feeling of disgrace and helplessness was rising within him when suddenly, a pistol shot rang out.

It was a small, brief report, but it shook the otherwise silent jungle and reverberated in the still afternoon air. A dog yelped in pain. He saw the American soldiers react instantaneously, dropping to the jungle floor and rolling as they fell. The lead dog-handler let free the leash on the wounded dog and rolled into protective cover.

Then a second shot sounded, finding its mark on the same dog which yelped again and flew into a rage, and began charging for the source of its pain. Kien, now behind the patrol, was astonished to see little Hoa step from behind a clay ant-hill. She was a magnificent portrait of courage; she stood against the setting sun, her lovely slim body erect, arm outstretched firing at the dog, and the dog only. The final rays of the setting sun silhouetted her against the Crocodile Lakelands, tingeing her skin copper colour, giving it the appearance of a bronze statue. Her long hair swirled around her shoulders and below her shorts Kien saw that her legs were newly scratched and bleeding. The dog, which had never baulked at going for her, was finally dropped in his tracks by her last two shots.

Hoa dropped her arm, then lifted it in a throwing action, hurling the pistol towards the Americans.

The soldiers held their fire, but the point men ran towards her. Others, including one who almost trod on Kien’s hand, followed. Kien looked over to Hoa again and saw her sprint away, away from the trail the patrol was following. Although she ran quickly the soldiers were athletes and they caught her after only thirty metres, and held her, cheering as they did.

Now left behind and relatively safe, Kien crawled to a safer position and tried to see what had happened to Hoa. He could have thrown his grenade and scattered them, which was what he wanted to do as it became obvious what they were doing with her.

Without losing their control, or lifting their voices, they set about stripping Hoa and, the dog-handler first, roughly fucking her. Some of them stayed back, but the way they had all come to a standstill, and with others waiting their turn, it appeared they would end their patrol with the rape.

Kien, with a single hand-grenade to fight with, was almost totally powerless. Hoa had saved fifteen sick and wounded from certain death by first shooting the dog then diverting them from the trail which would have led directly to the sick and wounded troops, almost powerless to defend themselves against such a well-armed, fit patrol force.