In this morning’s sweep Thu Huong’s mother and son were wounded. Thu Huong is the nurse in the hamlet where I live these days. Just last night we talked until late at night, the first time I heard the mother of a wounded child speak about her sorrow and feelings of guilt. The child, very healthy and cute like a European youngster, was this morning hit by two pieces of mortar round which went through his chest to his heart, so I don’t know if he will live or not. War is like that, not caring about children or old people. The blood thirsty Americans are the most terrible!!
August 29, 1969. This mother is very young. Looking at her face with its white skin, and her body so slim, no one would know that she had a big three year old son. I don’t know her that well. I had lived near her son Thien. I don’t know why but tonight she told me her story of a mother and her only son. Thien is 18 years old now. His father went to war and the young mother just stayed home and took care of her son. Because she loved him she spoiled him: for every day he went to school he wanted his mother to repay him. He liked to eat cake and if any dinner was without fish he didn’t want to eat it or go to school, so making his mother run after him begging him to return and eat some rice so he wouldn’t be hungry. At 15 years old he wanted to join the Army. His mother wouldn’t allow it but he did what he wanted to anyway. He lied that he was 16 and left to follow the comrades. His mother let him go thinking that he would be back in a week, this child who all day wanted to eat, who never did any thing since he was born, how could he stay in the Army? But she was wrong. It was a hardship but the honorable life in the Army made him follow it. He withstood hardships and difficulties which he had never before imagined, and was a grown man and a Party member by the time he turned 17. I don’t know why he never wrote his mother for 3 years, perhaps he never understood how much his mother missed him. Those 3 years far away from her son were also 3 terrible years for the country. The enemy swept and destroyed. The last place her family lived, an artillery trench, was destroyed by a mine, and she led her old mother to find a place to live during the rainy season, spending all the cold rainy days living in the corner of someone else’s veranda. She could only worry about where her son was and if he had anything to wear. With a little money she bought yarn to knit him a sweater, and then waited for him to return but after the winter he hadn’t come back. She feared that the sweater would be too tight so the next season sold it and knitted him another. Day and night she asked for news of her son: “Do you know Thien at the First Work Camp?” Everyone who met her thought that she was crazy and pitied her: “Oh my God, the Army is so crowded, the area of Liberation is so large… and you ask this way to find out where he is?” Until one day she found that he was in Unit 48, and she ran to the comrade cadre to ask for help to let her see him. Understanding this mother’s heart the leader promised to take her to where Thien was… but after all that time of working hard to find her son, she sickened and could not rise for half a month. When she had recovered her son’s unit had left to go on an operation, so she again was worried and missed him. Then one day she met a person during harvest that was in the same unit as Thien. She was happier than if she had found money, and she hurried to ask the commander about him. He hesitated and then told her that the month before Thien had asked 3 times for permission to visit her, but had not been allowed to, so had left the unit and no one knew where he had gone to. Hearing this she went crazy: how much she had hoped to see him and now he was gone. Losing her mind she fought with the cadre: “You are not worthy of being a countryman or a leader because your unit is not loyal. You don’t understand anything at all. My son has left me and you would not let him return for 3 years. He missed me, where is he? If he has been lost on the way to find me then I will spread propaganda so that no other mother will allow their sons to join the Liberation (Army) anymore!” She left her job and went to Saigon, not knowing why she went, only that if she stayed home she would die.
But Thien had not really deserted: he had transferred to another, more specialized unit. Once he had brought rice and passed his home, but his mother wasn’t there so he continued on his way.
In Saigon she heard that her son had returned so she bought a ticket to return to Quang Ngai and there she met him, held him to her heart touching his hair and every scar on him. Her son Thien, a weak and fat boy before, now a thin dark skinned Army Cadre with a strong body. He was already a Party member, a smart reconnaissance-cadre after many hardships. Tears fell drop by drop on the green shirt with shoulders torn form the many burdens he carried.
