For the last twenty years, since the day we resettled in Norway, a Scandinavian country known for long, icy winters but also for beautiful summers and romantic autumns, I have got the habit of wandering in the forests, not only on weekends, but also when I feel depressed. I go there not out of curiosity to discover burning hot love stories as found in “Norwegian Wood”, a well-known novel by a Japanese writer, but to listen to sobs and wails from trees, leaves, and rocks in the woods. The sobs have the power to seduce me, rush me, even while causing me pains and miseries my whole life.
I was born in Huế but grew up in Nha Trang after my whole family accompanied my father to his new post. I believe I was pretty at the time. As early as in my sixth grade, there were some naïve lovesick boys that rode their bikes following me after school. When I was in the tenth grade, there were a few cadets from the Naval or Air Force Academy waiting for me in front of school. It was fate that I only fell for one. He was a close friend of my eldest brother’s who had been in the same class with my brother during their years at Võ Tánh High School. We got married in April 1968, a happy ending to a lovely first love story that was not very romantic and rather uneventful. My husband was an ARVN ranger. He came back for the wedding still wearing muddy boots. The wedding reception took place at a restaurant near the beach, not too far from the City Hall, where the ruins of Mậu Thân Battle were still visible.
After the wedding, my in-laws let me go with my husband to his post for a month. Then I returned to stay at my in-laws’, for my husband was constantly on the move, joining battles here and there, and it was not safe for me to be by myself. Only when his battalion returned for brief R&Rs did he send me a telegram to join him.
After three years we had our first child. A beautiful boy. My husband’s heavy involvement in the Plateaus prompted him to name our son Cao Nguyên, Lê Cao Nguyên. He came home on leave to visit when the child was a full month. Cao Nguyên looked just like his father. He had big eyes, a high nose, and most specially, his ear lobes had a little hole on each just like his father’s.
Just a week after my husband left home at the end of his leave, he was seriously wounded in the middle of a fierce battle while they were rendering rescue to the Pleime Base. I came to see him with our son. The base took care of us and arranged for transportation for us to go see him at the hospital every day. My husband walked with difficulty at his release and was sent to an assignment at the Joint Forces Headquarters in the base camp. We stayed with him at Biển Hồ since. My mother-in-law was very kind. She frequently came to visit us and hired a maid to help me. At the end of 1973, during one of the shellings by the VC into the family camp, some women and children were wounded, including our son Cao Nguyên. Fortunately, the shell caused a large wound along his arm, but did not cut into the bones. After that event, we moved out and rented a house outside the base. The following year, when Cao Nguyên was two years old, I gave birth to our second child. This time it was a girl. She looked like me, and was named Thùy Dương as she reminded us of the beach town Nha Trang, where we grew up and fell in love.
A few years living in Pleiku, the little town that “one is done walking through in a few minutes”, had familiarized us to red dust on sunny days and thick mud on rainy days. Pleiku was truly a town for soldiers. Wives of soldiers were just waiting for their husbands to return from battles, or to take care of them if they were wounded and hospitalized. To them, “life was beautiful thanks to him being here”. Unfortunately, many of them became widows.
In mid-March 1975, exactly a week after Ban Me Thuột fell, one morning my husband returned from the Joint Forces base and told us and our maid to pack up, leaving everything but strictly necessary essentials such as foods and formula for the kids, and to accompany him to the base.
As we arrived at the gate, I was surprised to see everybody already seated on the trucks. We left the base. The town of Pleiku was at a loss watching those who were so attached them all of a sudden leaving without even saying goodbye. The sky in the middle of spring was all dark. Pleiku’s farewell to us was a hard rain pouring down on us when the convoy set out. The convoy stopped at the Mỹ Thạch Fork. In front were thick lines of vehicles and people, civilians and military personnel, all military branches and colors, all sorts of vehicles, including motorbikes. I overheard exchanges from my husband and his friends that a unit of rangers was ordered to follow in the back to prevent the enemy from attacking the evacuees. That was the most dangerous mission in a retreat.
After more than a day wandering on Provincial Route 7, we arrived at the town of Hậu Bổn at night fall. We hardly had time to eat dinner when shellings and gunshots were everywhere. Vehicles and people piled on to of each other during the panic. The enemies surrounded us. The rangers fought back valiantly, but the enemies outnumbered us. During this disaster, we were dealt with an unfortunate event: a jet fighter dropped bombs on us by mistake. The convoy hurriedly left Hậu Bổn and moved to Phú Túc, then came under enemy attack again from all directions. Many vehicles caught fire and numerous people were killed or injured. The whole convoy was stuck. We received order to abandon all vehicles and retreated to Củng Sơn on foot. My husband was fighting and also leading us and some soldiers and their families. I held on to Cao Nguyen and our maid was carrying Thùy Dương. We walked silently in the forest. Gun shots were heard around us, fire rockets piercing through the dark night. When we were all exhausted, we reached a small river. My husband helped us settle under a big tree, then assigned watch duties. I fell into a deep sleep out of exhaustion. It was dawn when I woke up. We continued the journey. I could no longer carry Cao Nguyên, so my husband used a nylon hammock to attach our son to his back, covering him with his bullet proof jacket. As soon as we got out of the woods, I was surprised to see many other people walking in the same direction, many of them covered with blood from their wounds. I guessed they were also families of the troops on the run for survival. They practically carried nothing with them, and their faces betrayed utter panic. My husband talked with his friends and they decided to break off from the crowd and look for a different path, so as not be discovered by the enemy. We had hardly left the big group for a few minutes when gunshots rained on us. Cries mixed with gun shots in all directions sounded like an earth quake. A few from our group were killed. At this point, each one was on his own. My family and families of a few other friends ran into the woods in front of us, where no guns were heard. My husband’s entire experience during the war was now focused on protecting his wife and kids. The enemies were everywhere. Some of our units were broken. Fellow soldiers were killed or injured. A few undoubtedly were captured. I just could not imagine that the brave rangers who were valiant fighters all over the country were now collapsing in such shameful manners. My husband almost burst into tears when he received order from the general commander of the division, “Just walk on them and move!” In their entire military career, soldiers would never expect to receive such a painful order!
After about an hour of crossing the forest, we suddenly ran across a group of about two dozen soldiers from my husband’s former battalion. No sooner did we recognize each other than gun shots were fired at us again. The enemies were in front of us. Taking his command position, my husband, with our son on his back, directed his troops in the fight. A quick battle took place, and the enemies were destroyed. Nightfall came fast in the forest. Darkness was so threatening. I visualized the specter of the Reaper. We stopped at a small hill. I felt so sorry for the loyal troops. They could have taken advantage of darkness to advance, for it was their strength, but they listened to my husband and stayed with us for the sake of wives and children of some members and for the wounded. After directing his people on night watch, my husband came back to make arrangements for us. Even though I was dead tired, I was unable to sleep that night. My husband held me and leaned against the trunk of a tree. He held me tight, and every now and then kissed me on the lips, on the hair. At that moment no one would be in a romantic mood, but perhaps he was feeling sorry for a woman who chose a husband who was a soldier. I did not know those were the last kisses from him. Early in the morning, as soon as we reached the foot of the hill, we crossed fires with the enemies again. That was also the last time I witnessed the gallantry of the brave rangers. They divided themselves into small groups, advanced into the enemies, shouting, “Rangers! Kill!”. Their voices resounded throughout the forest. The numerous gun shots told me that the enemies were a large number. A sergeant who was wounded in the arm the day before was appointed to lead the women and children out of the fighting zone. He was also helping out another wounded soldier. My husband and I lost each other at that moment. I also lost touch of Cao Nguyên, carried on his father’s back even during fighting. I did not know if his father’s bullet proof vest was sufficient to cover his little body. Such image I had only seen depicted in old Chinese war stories.
We trudged on for a few more hours and reached a small trail, then we heard gunshots again. The sergeant that led the way recognized each raft of gunshots and told us all to lie flat on the ground. After the gun shots stopped, our group left the trail and ran toward the woods on the right, judged by the sergeant to be more safe. At the outskirts of the woods, I was in shock to see dead bodies of ARVN rangers alongside those of the enemy, drowned in blood. I later learned that our soldiers, surrounded by enemies, committed suicide, dragging the enemies along to their death. After we advanced a few more hundred meters in the woods on the right, we were stopped by a large group of VCs. The sergeant was stripped of his ammunitions. We all were pushed toward the small creek. There I met some ARVN officers and soldiers arrested by the VC, many of them were handcuffed behind the back, sitting along the bank of the creek, under the VC’s gunpoint. I searched, but did not see my husband. I was full of worries. Since that time, gunshots finally ceased, all that was heard was shouts from the victors with a thick accent that was very hard to understand. We all were led to a gathering point, a schoolhouse in Củng Sơn (Sơn Hòa).
In such extreme misery, I lucked out in something. That was my kind-hearted and loyal maid. She not only carried and cared for my daughter Thùy Dương but also took care of me. She wandered somewhere and was able to get half a bowl of rice for me, but I was unable to eat despite two days of hunger and thirst. I looked at my two-year-old daughter and thought of my son, not knowing if he was still alive. For the first time during the ordeal, I burst out sobbing.
Finally I retuned to Nha Trang after it just had fallen into the hands of the enemy. When my mother saw me, she hugged me and cried incessantly. I did not have the courage to bring the bad news to my in-laws. I asked my father to deliver the news to them that Thùy Dương and I just returned, and that Cao Nguyên and my husband were missing. My in-laws’ family came to see me, and took Thùy Dương home to care for her. My mother-in-law was not herself for days after receiving the news. After a week of convalescence, thanks to my mother’s care, I asked for permission to return to Phú Bổn to look for my husband and my son Cao Nguyên. Both of my families were worried. However, at my entreaties, they sent my husband’s youngest brother to take me on his Honda motorbike going North on Provincial Route 7.
Even though I had prepared myself for losses and deaths, I was horrified with what I witnessed: piles of burnt vehicles, human bodies scattered here and there, hastily built graves on the side of the road. A strong stench of death permeated the air. A scarf soaked with rubbing alcohol Nhị Thiên Đường helped us traverse the 100-kilometer long road. At Cheo Reo, we asked a local person, and learned that a numbered of captured ARVN officers were still kept in Thuần Mẫn. We went there and presented permission paper issued by the new Military Administration Committee to enter the camp. After the VC on duty told me that my husband’s name was not among the captured, I asked to meet any officer of my husband’s unit. Fortunately, I was allowed to meet the officer who was adjunct to my husband at the battalion. He told me that he saw my husband and his troops fighting at the foot of the Hill Tu Na. He told me that my husband was injured but tried to bring our son Cao Nguyên to a certain place. I brightened with hope. That same day I hired five montagnards to walk with me on the trail along the river that I remembered. We came back to the small hill and spread out from there. During the whole week we only found a few bodies and some unknown gravesites, but no sign of my husband. I returned in despair, not only for me, but for his family as well.
My in-laws set up the altar for my husband and Cao Nguyên, their first grandson. March 19 became the death anniversary for both father and son.
Every year, on that day, Thùy Dương and I returned to Phú Bổn, to the foot of the hill, to the trunk of the tree at the crest of the hill, where, on our last night together, my husband held me tight. I burnt incense for him and for our son Cao Nguyên. I carved their names on the tree trunk. And each time without fail, as I shed tears in their remembrance, I vaguely heard sobs from the tree along the winds howling in the forest, and echoes from other trees and from dead tree trunks felled by ammunitions, all blending together to form a bitter wailing.
I carried such tears with me to as far as the Scandinavian country where we settled down after an escape by sea that ended with a rescue by a Norwegian ship. In May 1985, my in-laws co-funded a clandestine escape from Lương Sơn and built a boat for the voyage. My daughter Thùy Dương, myself, and my younger brother were secured a seat. I was also able to arrange for my maid to accompany us (she returned to her village in Diên Khánh after our ordeal in 1975), but she declined. I quietly gathered my husband’s savings and mine to give her as gifts before we departed.
Twenty years later, after Thùy Dương got married, I wanted to take the two of them to Vietnam to visit their grandparents (my parents) and to come visit the location where we last spent time with my husband and Cao Nguyên, as a gesture for her to remember her father and brother. We arrived in springtime, a day before the death anniversary of my husband and my son.
Provincial Route 7 was improved and asphalted, and renamed National Route 25. We rented an eight-seat van. In addition to Thùy Dương, her husband, and myself, there were also my youngest brother and my maid from the old days and her husband. We arrived in Cheo Reo, newly named A Yun Pa, part of Gia Lai Province. All traces of the war had been erased. People tried to paint over this mountain town to show the presence of Modernization. Gaudy color houses, high rises bearing awkward appearances, “improved” stilt houses made into first class residences for high rank VIPs, stood awkwardly among poverty in the area classified as “city town”. My heart sank at the sight of the Hàm Rồng Mountain from afar, partly shrouded in clouds. I spent so much time there visiting my husband, blending in with young soldiers who were willing to die for their country. Also there I had the honor of witnessing my husband and his comrades being pinned medals by the general commander of the Tactical Region while the military march was played. All had become a tale of the past.
After checking in at our inn, washing up and eating dinner, we asked for directions to get to Yang Mun and Drang Lai towers. I heard from the locals that the Cham gods and goddesses at those temples were sacred. I prayed and shook the vessel of sticks. I was very surprised to see that my number had four lines from Nguyễn Du’s Kiều:
The leaves falling from the forest Keep searching for the rest Across waters and among clouds But there were no whereabouts Flowers have wilted Fragrance evaporated Hope for reunion in this life has faded So keep faith for the next.
I was mixed between doubts and beliefs. I heard that superstitions were widespread nowadays and had become a big business. Could the Cham gods know Kiều? Despite my doubts, I saw that the verses fit my situation, and I was stricken with sadness. Back at our inn, the owner told us that there would be a market gathering the next day, a sort of festivity with large crowds and where one could buy local goods and poultry at good prices. I wanted to buy a few chickens to offer my husband’s spirit. He loved boiled chicken meat when he was around. The lady also told us that most of the people in this area were montagnards from Djarai, Bahnar, Hroi, and M’dhui ethnicities. Some of them lived in remote villages, approximately ten to twenty kilometers from the town.
After tossing and turning the whole night, struggling with nightmares, just as I fell asleep I heard voices calling each other. I did not understand the languages. The market started very early.
We ate breakfast hurriedly and headed to the market, not too far from the inn. I was entrenched in an unfamiliar feeling, for this was the first time I attended such an ethnic market. Thùy Dương and her husband just directed nonstop inquiries at me. While I was trying to explain the origin of the montagnards, we arrived at a chicken stand. Small chickens were kept in a bamboo cage. I sat down and selected the two fattest ones and asked the vendor to get them out of the cage. He was a montagnard with dark skin who spoke Vietnamese with difficulty. When he rolled up his sleeve to grab the chickens, I was startled to see a scar on his left arm. The scar had the shape of a tiger’s head, the symbol of the ARVN Rangers that my husband always wore on his sleeve. I went pale and grasped the man’s arm and looked at his face. It was the same big eyes, high nose, but the sun burnt face and brownish hair, the color of Pleiku’s soil, showed no handsome traits of my Cao Nguyên. The montagnard seemed embarrassed and looked down. Then I remembered that on each of Cao Nguyên’s ear lobes he had a little hole like his father’s. I came close to look at his ear. I found holes on the two ears! Unable to hold myself, I embraced the man and burst out sobbing. The chicken vendor pushed me away and spoke a long string of his language. Thùy Dương and her husband were looking at me at a loss, not knowing what the matter was. Thinking of my former maid who could help confirm this discovery, I asked Thùy Dương to go fetch her from the orchid stand nearby. I pulled her to a distance, whispering:
– Please look closely at this montagnard. Does he look like anyone you know?
After staring at him, my maid also turned pale, and instead of answering me, she whispered to herself:
– Nguyên? Could it be little Nguyen?
Then she looked at him in the face and asked:
– Are you Nguyên? Lê Cao Nguyên?
The montagnard shook his head:
– I am Tsor Tlang.
I bought his whole lot of merchandise that day and gave him some money. After counting, he returned more than half to me and said:
– You pay me too much!
I was so nervous. I asked my maid and her husband to stay with the man, then rushed back to the inn to see the keeper. I briefly told her what happened. She was the person with connections in this area and she also had a kind heart. She picked up the phone and called the local police. In three short minutes, two policemen came over on their motorbike, nodding to greet her. The innkeeper did not say a word but dragged the two men over to the market, explaining on the way. One of the two policemen talked in his language to the chicken vendor. I did not understand what was going on, but the vendor argued back. In the end, the two policemen dragged him with them, while he was fighting along the way. We followed them to the inn.
With the help of the innkeeper, I asked the policemen to interpret for me in my conversation with the chicken vendor and try to learn his background. I pushed $200 to the hand of the innkeeper.
– Do you have parents? What are their names?
– I do. My father is Ksor H’lum, my mother is H’Nu.
– Do you have siblings?
– No.
– Do you remember your date of birth?
– No.
The policeman looked at me and said they could look up his date of birth later.
– Do you remember where you lived at the age of three or four?
– Not really. I must have lived with my parents.
– Do you know why you had a scar on your left arm?
(The policeman asked him to roll up his sleeve, exposing the scar.)
– Not really. Must be a wound from a tree branch, somehow.
I sighed in disappointment. Then a thought crossed my mind. I asked:
– Where are your parents?
– Ban Ma Dek Village.
(The policeman looked at me and told me that the place was ten kilometers away.)
– Do you live with your parents?
– No, next door. I live with my wife and two children.
– You are already married with children? I blurted out in disappointment.
I asked the two policemen to accompany us and the chicken vendor to the Village of Ban Ma Dedk. After exchanging a few words with the innkeeper, they agreed. However, they told us to get motorbike rides, because the trip would go through a forest that a car could not travel through. The innkeeper engaged seven motorbikes for us.
The parents of the chicken vendor were rather old. They lived away from encounters with city residents in a remote village and did not speak Vietnamese. We talked with the help of the policemen as interpreters. The wife and children of the vendor also came over and flocked around us out of curiosity.
The old couple insisted that Ksor Tlang was their own child. However, seeing my tears and hearing my entreaties and with the inquiry from the policemen, they eventually told the true story:
– That year, a long time ago, several days of fierce fighting took place around us. We had to hide behind a big rock in front of the house to avoid shellings. Then one evening, a soldier in camouflage uniform who was seriously wounded crawled to our house and collapsed to his death. He had a young child bundled up on his back. That was Ksor Tlang.
– Where was the soldier buried? I asked.
The old man pointed to a clump of trees in front:
– I buried him under the tree, then put up a fence around to prevent wild animals from digging up his body.
We followed the two policemen who helped the old man walk to the woods.
I sobbed incessantly at the sight of a low mound for a grave, fenced in by a few small branches. Thùy Dương and her husband knelt down beside me, sobbing as well. I looked up for Ksor Tlang, my Cao Nguyên, the only son of my husband and me. He stood motionless, holding tight to his two children, both naked and suntanned. I ran over to hug the two kids, but they both stared at me, un-understanding, acting foreign to me.
I cried a lot and begged for a long time, and finally the old couple let Tsor Tlang go to the inn with me. The innkeeper hired an interpreter for us. Throughout the whole night Thùy Dương and the maid and her husband explained, recounted the story, and persuaded Tsor and his family to accompany us to Nha Trang to meet his grandparents, and then I’d try to file for paperwork to have them join me in Norway. I promised if the old couple wanted, I would buy a house for them to live in Nha Trang to be close to Tsor Tlang. However, both Tsor Tlang and the parents declined, saying they could not leave the village. The forest would forever be their home. They could not live away from it just like fish cannot live out of water.
The trip was planned for three days, but we were there over two weeks. I had planned to ask for permission to move my husband’s bones and rebury them in the family cemetery in Nha Trang, but I changed my mind in the end. He should stay there, close to his son and the grandchildren, even though they had become montagnards and probably knew nothing about him. And perhaps he also wanted to stay near his comrades who had been with him in life and in death, whose spirits were probably around with him. I hired people to rebuild the gravesite. On the gravestone there was no picture of him, but one of the two of us together with Cao Nguyên and Thùy Dương taken on Cao Nguyên’s 4th birthday, just about a month before my husband’s death. This picture I always carried with me.
I should not persuade Cao Nguyên and his family to leave the mountains and the forests that had nurtured them. Perhaps the name Cao Nguyên that my husband gave him had become part of his life. What pained me the most was that I could not do much for my own son, besides asking the innkeeper to help build new houses for his family and his parents, and also buy some new clothes for him, his wife, and the kids. After much begging and many a shattered tear from me, he finally accepted $200 from me, the same amount I paid the two policemen.
On our last day before departure, we spent the day with Cao Nguyên and his family in the new house. In the evening, I asked him, his wife, and the kids to change into new clothes and go burn scent at my husband’s grave. He knelt down beside me, whispering something, and when he looked up, his eyes were red with tears. That whole night I wept by myself. I thought a mother’s love was always sacred, but perhaps God punished me. I gave birth to Cao Nguyên, but was unable to protect my child and lost him in the woods when he was only four.
I left Cheo Reo and returned via Song Ba Bridge on Provincial Route 7 of years ago, heartbroken. It was mid spring, but the sky was dark. The trees on both sides of the mountainous landscape, drowned in my own tears, transformed into skeletons chasing each other. I heard thousands of wailings blended in the wind. I could not tell if they were cries from humans or from trees.
