JOURNEY AMONG HEROES

And then the war was over. It was time to sort out the wreckage and start the process of reconstruction in a poor, devastated country. Vietnam was, and had been a third world country. How would a mother cope, having lost perhaps an only child, a husband, parents, grand children, siblings? They handled it in some interesting ways. A mother who had no family of her own left might be lent a family who would move in with her and love her as if she were their own. Probably equally importantly, they would allow her the opportunity to care for them as if they were her own. This new family might be related, such as Ma Gom’s granddaughter from Saigon, the young family Ma Huong was looking after in Hue, or the couple living with Ma It in Ha Tay Province. It might be from a friendly family in the village, or strangers in need of a grandmother and some tender loving care. There was no shortage of people in need. A mother who had lost an only son may also have had a daughter who had married and moved away to live with her husband’s family. If the husband’s family had other children, family arrangements could be reshuffled so that the daughter and her family could live with mother. Tradition was occasionally over-ridden in the cause of humanity. There were many Vietnamese survivors of the war who had psychiatric problems. Some of this was due either to after-effects of B-52 bombings that had driven some insane and left others with a variety of problems, or due to the terrifying napalm attacks. Displaced, confused survivors wandered about for years, seeking their homes and families. The ferocity of the B-52 raids caused massive physical and psychological damage. Truong Nhu Tang survived several such attacks as the Americans sought to destroy his secret base on the Cambodian border. He describes that experience : From a kilometre away, the sonic roar of the B-52 explosions tore eardrums, leaving many of the jungle dwellers permanently deaf. From a kilometre, the shock waves knocked their victims senseless. Any hit within a half kilometre would collapse the walls of an unreinforced bunker, burying the people cowering inside. Seen up close, the bomb craters were gigantic – thirty feet across and nearly as deep. He describes his first experiences of attacks: The first few times I experienced a B-52 attack it seemed, as I strained to press myself into the bunker floor, that I had been caught in the Apocalypse. The terror was complete. One lost control of bodily functions as the mind screamed incomprehensible orders to get out. On one occasion a Soviet delegation was visiting our ministry when a particularly short-notice warning came through. When it was over, no one had been hurt, but the entire delegation had sustained considerable damage to its dignity – uncontrollable trembling and wet pants the all-too-obvious outward signs of inner convulsions. The visitors could have spared themselves their feeling of embarrassment; each of their hosts was a veteran of the same symptoms. Sometimes these damaged wanderers became part of a type of adoption process. A mother who had lost her family may have come across a younger man or woman wandering about and each would decide that the other was either a missing family member, or a new member to be welcomed into the fold. Mother now had a son or daughter, and vice versa. Each party would have someone to care for. It mattered not if one party, or both parties, had a few problems. Huong introduced me to her uncle, Tran Minh Be. He is her uncle, not by birth, but because her grandfather, Do Nhu Ty said so. Grandfather Ty was in his 50s, single, and a veteran soldier at an army rest camp in North Vietnam in 1955. There he met Be, a young soldier from Hue in Central Vietnam who had been sent north to help with the war effort, as had been the husbands of Ma Ha and Ma Sam. The younger man had lost touch with his family and had no idea as to when the war might end or when he might see his family again. They were expecting a long war and Ty felt sorry for him, so the bachelor adopted the younger man, who now had a father in the north with whom he could at least keep in touch. When Ty later married, his wife accepted the situation and bore him several children. Uncle Be remains the first son, with all the privileges, duties and responsibilities that go with it; he now has rather a lot of family and an extra home city, something that bemuses him slightly but bothers him not at all. He is a head of one family now and a member of another. In 2003 I was fortunate to spend an hour with Phan Thanh Hao, co-author with Karen Gottschang Turner of Even the Women Must Fight, at her home in Hanoi. That book had made a great impression on me on a flight from Australia before I commenced my journey. Hao confirmed what Huong had told me, and related a family experience to me. During the war, a relative died in action but his remains were never found. This troubled the family, who wanted closure, something to bring home to venerate, so they visited the area where he died. The weather was poor so they decided in advance that if sunlight penetrated the area, they would accept that spot as his final resting place. Some sunlight duly appeared and a little soil was taken home so that rituals could be observed. Hao still has mixed feelings about whether what they did was right or not but they all feel better. It was a matter of doing the best you can under the circumstances.