The one that got away
Sympathy comes from knowing
Dear friends,
The mother carried two buckets, joined by a wooden yoke, on a walk of 10 km. Flocking behind were her children. They started the journey, out of their isolated commune to the town center, way before the breaking dawn.
Her eldest son was conscripted into the army. He was being gathered, along with his fellow servicemen, on the town hall courtyard.
The boy was taller and bigger for his age. The uniform was already short on him.
“Hurry up. Eat.”
The mother told him the moment they met. She unpacked the buckets, showing him a big bowl of steamed rice and a pot of braised fish, both wrapped in layers of cloths to keep them hot even until they got to the courtyard by noon.
The new soldier gobbled up the food while his mother and siblings sat in silence around him.
It was a spring day in 1979. The legion was set to march north in the afternoon.
In the northern border of Vietnam, some 600,000 Chinese troops already launched a bloody attack and claimed thousands of Vietnamese lives.
At the time, peace had been set up in Vietnam for almost 4 years. Traumatizing days of being bombed, evacuated, separated and killed had started fading bit by bit. People had gradually built new lives, out of ruined villages and contaminated lands the American left behind, when the phantom of war once again came back.
“The scene was just mournful,” my father said, recalling the day he sent his elder classmate off to the battlefield nearly 5 decades ago.
The war had his friend’s face which made it more cruel. Who knew whether they would meet again or fate would let him die somewhere near the Sino-Vietnamese border.
Mournful was me on the second day into the lunar new year. News had spreaded the small town that mine actions in Quảng Trị were suspended following US foreign aid freeze.
Among some 1,000 local staff who are impacted, several are my friends, acquaintances and even characters in a story I reported in the previous career.
165 years is the time it takes to remove all bombs and mines flooded onto Quảng Trị. These mine operators, day in day out, ran detectors on bare plots of land, marked unexploded bombs and destroyed them.
It was set to make the province impact free from landmines by 2025 – a more realistic goal. Whether it is achievable remains unknown.
In May 2016, a 45-year-old team lead of Project RENEW – one of three US-funded mine actions NGOs in Quảng Trị – was killed in action, marking the first casualty in the organization’s 15 years of operation.
The later investigation suspected the death was caused by a delay-action bomb which was activated without the team knowing.
A week later, then-US President Barack Obama embarked on his historic trip to Vietnam.
On the remarks he addressed to the people of Vietnam, he said:
“We've shown how peace can be better than war. We've shown that progress and human dignity is best advanced by cooperation and not conflict. That’s what Vietnam and America can show the world.”
Till next time,
T.
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If you have found some light-heartedness from Tony of LC Sign, here is the review of his product