Who knows? Maybe a lot of people know but no-one knows clearly. As for me, I also don’t know how many more miserable situations there are in this terrible Resistance. This book cannot list them all but perhaps they shouldn’t all be written down. In all my letters I have never told anyone I love about these hardships. Why tell them and make them worry? Thuan has already experienced the death of those close to him, so much sadness happening to him, leaving his face full of wrinkles…making him older than his years: but anytime he writes he always worries about me and tells me to be careful, saying “I am very well”. I learn from his spirit. Something presses heavy on my heart: what is it? It’s worry about the clinic. The situation with the enemy is tense and if they come here how can I leave the wounded soldiers? If they bomb then there is no choice but to wait in the trenches for luck or misfortune. The thoughts and hopes of the people I love come to comfort me… all those things press on my heart and fill my mind like the waves on flood waters.
Yesterday after the bombing everyone carried the things to leave. Dat looked at me and half-kidding, half-serious asked me: “Who knows about this? If peace comes they must pity all who have been in these circumstances”. I felt a pain in my heart; I don’t do this for pity: everyone knows my hopes. I answered him: “I don’t need their pity; my only hope is that peace comes so I can go home to my mother… that’s all”.
Indeed I don’t think about the happiness of my youth and never hope that I can enjoy a burning romantic love. At this time I only think of family love, hoping only that, except for the times of my duties to the Party, I can be with my family.
June 16, 1970. I read Bon’s diary. He is a young student from Phu Xuyen in Ha Tay. I was thrilled: his thinking is like mine, we are all living in anxious times. The clinic is destroyed and the enemy continuously threatens us terribly with all kinds of aircraft. Hearing their noise makes my head pulse like a tightly drawn music string. There is no other choice: I have to remain here with the wounded soldiers. It’s very funny that the political cadre for the clinic refused to stay with me in this situation. That is it: fire tests gold, hardship tests strength. I have to withstand these conditions, what else can I do?
These days I miss the North very much: looking at the sky cold and fresh I think of the afternoons with a friend on bicycles going through the garden trees, with all the beautiful fancy flowers like groups of butterflies settling on the ground, the fragrant roses… I recall also the willow trees in the garden and the summer flowers I picked to put in the house. Oh, the North far away… when will I return there again?
June 17, 1970. Today the planes didn’t circle around, the air is very quiet. Sometimes an HU1A comes close to the hill so surely the enemy is close. Only 3 girls remain here with 5 wounded soldiers who cannot be moved. If the enemy comes maybe all we can do is to run away. Can we do that? Everyone has made that decision already, but can I do that? Nien, a young soldier still a boy said in a very truthful way: “Sisters, stay calm and flee if the enemy comes, we will stay and fight until the death”.
Nien is 19. He worked in the district security unit. He is very handsome with high nose, full face, and big eyes under thick eye brows. All the time he was in pain he watched me with eyes full of tears. He was wounded on duty, an arterial wound which hemorrhaged blood. I had just finished the operation and bandaged the wound 3 or 4 days before when the dispensary was bombed. His leg was broken by wood in the trench pressing on it exactly where he had been wounded.
I had taken care of him for 12 days when his leg started bleeding again. If it stays like that it will be very hard to keep his leg well. Today the danger is past, but if the enemy comes again he will die. Will he die? My heart aches: I don’t know what to say and how to protect these wounded soldiers for whom we are working so hard with so much difficulty these days.
June 18, 1970. The afternoon sun went down and its light was very weak behind the far-away chain of mountains. All the jets have stopped their roar. The calm of the afternoon in the forest makes me afraid, with no birds singing, no sound of talking… only the sound of the running river and the radio playing. I don’t listen for the song’s title only knowing that the music is very soft and smooth like a green and soft rice field on a foggy afternoon. I suddenly forget everything; forget all the heavy pressures which weigh on me all day.
