Yes! I have heard my compatriots cry out like that during Mau Than in Hue, 1968; The people cried out, "Republican soldiers, save the people!" when running from the battle in An Loc, 1972... People cried for help to Republican soldiers when evacuating from the Central Highlands to Tuy Hoa, Binh Dinh, Nha Trang, March 1975. And after 1975, on the Eastern Sea, on the way to cross the border to get out of the country, all the Vietnamese people (regardless of North/South) became a kind of untouchables, exiled throughout Southeast Asia's refugee camps, in Hong Kong, facing pirates and Khmer Rouge soldiers. And now in the Eastern Sea, facing "unrecognized ships". The Vietnamese people were despised and damned because of one simple thing: The Vietnamese people no longer had soldiers to protect them - the Army of the Republic of Vietnam had been shattered together with the Vietnamese Hope. I always firmly believe in The Just Cause of the Southern Soldiers despite the defeat on April 30, 1975. The disaster from the dark destiny for the entire Vietnamese Nation was not because the ARVN Soldiers were not good fighters.
Returning to the issue I once wrote about in "Dua Lung Noi Chet", what has "Death" (real, always encountered and suffered directly) taught me? So if we have to fall into the situation of "Dua Lung Noi Chet", each person must find a way to save himself, no one can show that to anyone else. On September 7, 1981, when the second period of confinement began, entering the maximum security cell two meters long, three meters high, and one meter wide, life could only be found through the 30x20 cm rectangular vent with an iron mesh above. The temperature in the room was 40 degrees in the summer, and the cell was dimly cold in the winter because the prison was located in the limestone mountains of Thanh Hoa Province. If flies or mosquitoes flew in, they'd land hard because the pressure in the room was too high! The prisoner sat motionless on a mat, his ankles clamped to a U-shaped iron shackle. He defecated and urinated into a bamboo tube; two cups of hard corn, (the kind used to feed animals), and two cups of cold water a day! Sitting in the dark, gradually losing all senses and thoughts in the years 1982, 83, 84... The head sometimes seemed to be in smoke, or boiling in the fire due to sadness and anxiety... How could one survive?! How could every second pass? Yes, every second, not every minute, or every hour! But gradually it passed like the words called POETRY written on the tip of my fingers.. "Truly I cannot survive. One hour even, let alone a year... Not one year but ten. Endless suffering and pain... But people can Live because there is Heaven!" Yes, there is Man because there is Heaven!
February, 2018,
50 years after the Mau Than Hue Event (1968-2018)
Revised August 8, 2023
