This book is specifically for Lou Aronica, who asked the right questions.
It is also for my fellow Vietnam veterans, living and dead, male and female, military, civilian, and pacifist, American, South Vietnamese, North Vietnamese, Australian, Dutch, Laotian, Cambodian, Montagnard, Korean, and Chinese. And for our children, in hopes of arming them with hard questions to ask leaders selling cheap glory.
Contents
Glossary
Prologue
PART ONE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
PART TWO
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
PART THREE
23
Why I Don’t Tell It Like It Is, Exactly
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Glossary
Spellings are phonetic and meanings are approximate, not literal, translations. Many terms are not actually Vietnamese but pidgin. My apologies to any Vietnamese speakers for inaccuracies. I wish I had had your assistance when compiling this.
Ba: Vietnamese term for a married woman.
Bac si: Vietnamese term for a doctor.
Beaucoup: French for “much” or “many,” used in pidgin Vietnamese-English.
Bic: Vietnamese term for “understand.” (Bicced is author’s Americanizing of past tense.)
Cam ong: Vietnamese term for “thank you.”
Cat ca dao: Vietnamese term meaning “cut off head.”
Chung wi: Vietnamese term for a lieutenant.
Co: Vietnamese term for an unmarried woman or girl.
Com bic?: Vietnamese term for “Come again?” or “I don’t understand.”
Dao: Vietnamese term for “head.”
Dau: Vietnamese term for “pain.”
Dau quadi: Vietnamese term for “much pain.” (Dau quadied is author’s Americanizing of past tense.)
DEROS date (military jargon): The day a person can leave an assignment; in Vietnam, when one leaves country.
Didi or didi mau: Vietnamese or pidgin used often by GIs and Vietnamese; approximate meaning “Go” or “Go quickly.”
Dinky dao: Vietnamese or pidgin for “crazy.”
Dung lai: Vietnamese term for “Stop.”
Em di: Vietnamese term for “Shut up.”
La dai: Vietnamese term for “Come here.” (La daied is author’s Americanizing of past tense.)
Mao: Vietnamese term for a cat.
Mao bey: Vietnamese term for a tiger.
MOS: Military Occupational Specialty.
Sin loi: Vietnamese term for apology.
Tete or titi: Pidgin for French word petit.
TPR: Temperature, pulse, and respiration.
Triage: As used in medical emergency situations, this term refers to the process of sorting victims of a mass casualty situation or disaster into categories, i.e., those who can be treated and released, those who can be saved by quick intervention, and those who will need more extensive help if they are to recover. The last category are those so seriously injured they will probably die without immediate, extensive care and may die anyway. In triage situations, patients are treated in the order listed, the worst injuries requiring the most care left until last so the greatest number of people can be treated.
Prologue
The nightmares have lost some of their power by now. I can haul myself out of one almost at will, knowing that the sweat-soaked sheet under me is not wet jungle floor, that the pressure against my back is not the barrel of an enemy rifle or a terribly wounded Vietnamese but my sleeping cat. When someone in a suit or a uniform frowns at me, it doesn’t always make me feel as if the skin over my spinal column were being chewed away by pointed teeth. Sometimes I can just shrug, and recognize the authority in question as an uptight asshole with no legitimate power over me—none that counts, that is, nothing life-threatening.
Still, most of the time, I retain the feeling that it’s the nightmares that are real and my life here and now that is a dream, the same dream I dreamed in the hospital, in the jungle, in the Vietcong tunnels. I’m always afraid that someday I’ll be dragged out of this dream, back to Nam, to a war that goes on and on for real in the same way it replays itself in my memory.
“That is what stops your power, Mao,” Nguyen Bhu tells me. “You cannot provide a clear path for the amulet’s power until your own mind is clear. When you turn your face from your fear, that fear bloats with the power you give it. Look it in the eye, and it will diminish into something that is part of your life, part of your memory, something that belongs to you rather than controls you.”
Nguyen Bhu sweeps the floor at his cousin’s grocery store. Charlie says he’s a former Cao Dai priest, a mystic like old Xe, and the wisest man to escape from Vietnam. He is sixty and looks ninety, has lost three fingers from his right hand, has more sense and is far