Bloody Memories

Her name was H’Sung Boun Dhung, we were in love, in the middle of a war. It wasn’t planned, it just happened. She was the baby sister of Y’Ang Boun Dhung, my Tuong Huu brother. I was twenty and she seventeen.
     Vietnam in 1968 was coming apart. We were putting the best face we could on a bad situation, but in our hearts we knew the end was coming. The f*****g politicians in DC were fighting the war by then, and I guess, to be honest about it, always had been. We were only pawns on the board. We were winning the battles even with one hand tied behind us. They were losing the war.
     I’d been working with the Civilian Irregular Defense Groups (CIDG, pronounced sid-gee) ‘Yards’ for about six months and ‘The World’ was already back in a different dimension which wasn’t real anymore. My War Brothers were all that kept my world together, and my Rhade family. Ang’s family had become my own.
     Dad and Mom had been killed in some Ecuadorian jungle doing their god’s missionary work when I was fourteen, while I was stuck in a boarding school. I’d been shipped off to an uncle on Dad’s side in Oklahoma, to finish growing up. Uncle Earl’s brand of religion made my folks seem positively liberal. My problems with God went way back. At sixteen and already big for my age, I ran away to make it on my own.
     Hitching rides, I headed west for California and ended up working the fields of the Imperial Valley to eat. That first fall I got a ride with a Mexican family going north for the apple harvest. Earned some more money and ate all the apples I could. With the picking done, I just kept going west, until I ended up with Grandma Westfall, a logger’s widow, outside of Forks, Washington. There I found my first real home, and fell in love with the northwest. She was no relation, but became the only grandmother I’d ever have. On my eighteenth birthday, I walked into the U. S. Army recruiting office in Port Angeles, signed on the dotted line, and never looked back. Twenty-eight months later I was in ’Nam, a Second Lieutenant and Executive Officer of my first A-Team. Two months after that I was notified of Grandma Westfall’s death.
     Sung seemed to be always there when I returned from a mission or patrol. She became a constant I could depend on. She had a smile, a soft voice, ready laugh and eyes I didn’t want to keep out of. Ang’s family wasn’t blind. We who lived, fought and died with the Montagnard had no secrets, from each other or them. They were the most open, honest and truthful people I’d ever met, and remain so.
     In the midst of the blood of war, laughter and joy became part of my life. These poor people, who’d endured the most terrible losses to family and property, seemed to always find humor in living. They loved it when we’d join in, especially if they could play a joke or make fun. Of course, “falling for it” made it even better. The women and kids were the best, because they weren’t exposed to us as commanders. We learned quick to keep our War Faces turned away from them.
     It started so simple and innocent. I asked Ang one day if Sung was married.
     “O-oh Y’Ktang ah. Ih khap?” No, you like? He replied, grinning and clapping his hands. “O, kao khap ko nu.” Of course I like her. I think I answered. A week later his mother asked me the same question.
     “Ih khap ko H’Sung?” You like H’Sung Boun Dhung?
     “Khap sonak.” Very much, I told her. I was still learning the Rhade ways, and had no idea what was going on. Besides I did like her. Very much!
     “Jak.” Good. She’d said. And that was the end of it.
 Looking back, Sung became very attentive and we spent much more time together. About a month passed and I was again approached by her mother.
     “H’Sung khap ko ih moh.” H’Sung likes you.
     “Go jak edi sonan.” That is a good thing. I replied politely in my newly-acquired Rhade.
     “Kao dao ih jing mnuih jak.” I think you are a good man.
     “Thank you.” I was getting a bit puzzled by this exchange.
     “Khua Po-Mto truh hrue kam edei.” The priest comes next week. Now I was totally confused, but didn’t want to let on.
     “Go jak edi.” That is good. I answered, again very politely.
     “O, jak edi.” She said, and after a few moments got up and left, leaving me lost.
     The next evening Ang took me from his longhouse and led me to another where the village shaman was waiting. When I asked him what was up, he told me to be serious because Yang was watching. I knew that was the name of their god. The shaman did a ceremony, and we each reverently sipped Topai with two reed straws from a huge jug of the potent rice wine. Ang very solemnly gave me another arm ring, shaking my hand and welcoming me to his family. Still puzzled but happy to please my friend, I went with the flow.
     Soon we were joined by Ang’s uncle for several drinks from three small brass bowls. Next came Ang’s brothers, and the village chief, and more bowls of wine. Then other men from the village arrived. These were men of importance to the clan, fighters I knew, each sharing more bowls of the powerful spirits, and shaking hands with me afterwards. The mood began to lighten and soon there was much laughter, and all were sipping more Topai. It was great. So without being aware of it, I had my bachelor party.
     The priest married us in May, ‘69. The shaman sacrificed a water buffalo and two pigs donated by Ang and his brothers. After we’d both received his blessings, the whole village feasted with much laughter, music and dancing. A few of my teammates had local wives. No big deal was made of it. Except for the war, and being wounded twice, the next twenty-two months of my life were the best I’ve ever had. Sung was a wonderful wife and bore me a daughter, H’Vuo Boun Dhung, almost ten months to the day after we married.
     By then, I was fighting for the Montagnards as much as fighting with them. Already into my second tour, word came down that the entire CIDG program was to undergo ‘Vietnamization.’ All the Montagnard striker units were to be converted to Border Ranger units run by the Vietnamese Special Forces. Soon my job would end and I’d be sent stateside.
     By ‘71, starting my third tour, I was making plans to get as much of my Rhade family out as I could. Then on a very cold monsoon day in March, my world came apart. A unit of Vietnamese Special Forces, the LLBD, hit our village while most of the men were out on patrol. It was a slaughter with many killed, including Sung and my daughter, Vuo.
     Ang kept me sane. His wife, and only three of his eight kids had escaped into the jungle. His mother had died trying to defend her youngest child and granddaughter: my wife and our daughter. Sung was eight months pregnant with our second child. It took us days to find all the survivors and get them safely to another village. My soul went into the grave with my wife and children.
     Our CIA intelligence contact at the time was a Clyde Tvete, and he couldn’t or wouldn’t give me any answers. It was a “local” problem. Trotted out the old “need-to-know” bullshit. A real cold fish with watery gray eyes to match.
     I was pulled from the field and restricted to the 5th Special Forces Group’s base camp at Nha Trang. There I got the cold shoulder from all the brass because I’d gone “native” from having been In Country too long. The only explanation for the destruction of my family’s village I ever got was that it had been part of the then infant resistance movement, called FULRO, which was fighting against the South Vietnamese government in a bid for autonomy for all the Montagnard people in the Central Highlands. There’d been centuries of bad blood between them, and the lowland Vietnamese regarded the ‘Yards’ as “moi”—savages.
     Using my own CIA contacts and with the help of a couple of my true War Brothers, Tello being one of them, arrangements were made for Ang’s immediate family to get out overland through Cambodia to Thailand. A guy in MACV Headquarters got me papers for them. I was in the States when I got word they’d made it. I sponsored them all into Seattle under my real name.
     Bad memories are a terrible thing to grow old with. Time does not heal all wounds. My rage had not grown dim. Each year I sent a donation to the Montagnard Foundation, the MFI, a liberation movement in exile; it monitors the human rights abuses by the communist Vietnamese. It was the only buffer left to the friends we abandoned in Vietnam after fleeing that hell ourselves. Damn all politicians.

 

My nightmare. Night. Fire. Burning long houses. Bodies. Roasting flesh. Screams that didn’t even stop with death. Whimpers of pain that continued in life. The never-ending agony of loss and grief so deep there was no bottom. Gentle touches never to be felt again. Cries of fulfillment and soft murmurs of love extinguished. A cold consciousness left to wander with only half a soul that communed with ghosts and dealt out nothing but death.

So much raced through my mind’s eye in a flash. Renewed pain, hatred and blood flooding out of a broken heart. The emptiness left behind was almost beyond bearing.

Author's Note

This ended up in HONOR DUE.