CHAPTER 7

ROUTE 1, TRANG BANG

GETTING OUT

24 APRIL 1975

The napalm bombs that burned me had been dropped just after I had completed the third grade, and my ensuing hospital visit swallowed every last bit of what should have been my fourth-grade year. Upon my return home, all of the children in my village were preparing for the coming school year, when my peers would be entering the fifth grade. I was woefully unprepared to join them, even as I determined in my heart to do so. I sought out Number 2, our family’s resident schoolteacher, and pled my case. “If you will help tutor me,” I said to Hai, “then I know I can keep up. Please, do not allow them to put me into the fourth grade. I wish to stay with my class.”

It told me everything I needed to know about my sister’s confidence in me that she barely deliberated at all. “I will help you, My,” she said. “Of course! Let us begin working even now.” The fall of 1973, all of 1974, the winter and early spring of 1975—that twenty-month period sits in my recollection still today as my “catch-up season,” a time when my sole focus was regaining at least some of what had been lost. I doubled up on my school assignments. I listened carefully, imploring my brain to work harder, as Hai explained the basics of algebra. I pushed past my pain as best I could, intent on completing my work. And in the end, my focused effort paid off. I completed both the fourth and fifth grades in one school year, a shock to everyone, including me.

In the same way that I tried to regain ground at school, Ma and Dad worked diligently at home. Ma still had her shop to run, but anytime she had a spare hour, she joined Dad in his attempt to rebuild our home. While I had been in the hospital, I learned that the war had returned to our village a full four times. My parents would get one part of our home reconstructed, only to suffer even graver losses the next time destruction rained down. By the time I was back home, things in our immediate vicinity had settled down, but a dark cloud still loomed: Will there be a fifth time? Will Trang Bang become a hot zone again?

The answer to both, unfortunately, was yes.

Nearly three years after I sustained my burns, my family and I were pushed permanently from our home by the war. The bombs that erupted around us were different this time around. “Mortar bombs,” they were called, so named for the mortar projectiles fired from the device’s barrel. These bombs did not fall straight down from a plane in the sky, as napalm bombs had, but rather were propelled upward from a tripod on the ground, hitting their target only after making a high, tight arc in the air.

At the beginning of 1975, two years after the United States had pulled out of our war and one year into my country’s government-sanctioned ceasefire with our enemy, South Vietnamese and communist forces stirred up their hatred toward each other once more, and for Viet Cong fighters, anyway, the weapon of choice was the mortar bomb. There was a distinctive dual-pitched whistle when a mortar shell exploded, most likely caused by the metal fragments flying through the air. Even now, whenever I hear a sound that resembles that tone, a reflexive shiver runs up my spine.

I remember being on a bus not too many years ago, innocently crossing town in the course of my normal daily routine, when I found myself emotionally sideswiped. A military man boarded, and the combination of his army-issued fatigues and the whistle of the bus’s air brakes as the driver resumed his route threw me into such a state of panic that I had to turn my back to the man and force myself to breathe. The man, of course, meant me no harm. But that singular sight, that terrible sound . . . the memories came rushing back.

Back in my village of Trang Bang in April 1975, I did not know what lay ahead for me. I knew only that both inside myself and outside, in my world, I was struggling. So deeply was I struggling, and yet there was no time to wallow in despair, as my family’s very lives were on the line. Those mortar bomb whistles were sounding with such frequency in and around our village that it might as well have been one long, sustained cry, and sensing the very worst, my ma ushered us kids out of our home again.

Here I was, twelve years old; just a girl, still, not even a teen. But oh, how much life I had seen already—how much pain and how much fear. “Run, children! Run!” Ma pleaded, even as mortars erupted overhead. We headed back to our temple, which had been spared during the napalm attack that began mere feet from its front door, this time to the main sanctuary. If ever we needed some god to smile on us, we needed divine intervention now. Our world was being detonated from the inside out. We just knew we were goners this time.

From the safety of the temple’s inner sanctum, I stared with wide eyes at the world outside. Finding a window tucked at the very back of the ornate room, I silently raised the decorative covering to find mortar shrapnel flying through the air. I knew that is what I would see when I peeked, for I had heard that whistle’s shriek. But to see the devastation left behind in its wake? Jolting, so very terrifying to watch.

“It was a big one,” I whispered to my brother, who had joined me at the lookout spot.

After spending the night at our temple, Ma decided that we needed to go farther, that we were not at all safe in this spot. And so we ran to a smaller temple on the other side of the village. Our temple was considered a “father temple,” and our destination was called a “mother temple,” but this pair of parents was not at all closely wedded; by foot, it would take us a half-hour to get from one to the other.

We ran along unpaved paths that were canopied by full-grown trees, which meant that as soon as we built up speed, we became targets for helicopters overhead. Those aircrafts were being piloted by South Vietnamese soldiers who never would have purposefully harmed their own, but because the forest was dense and our feet were swiftly moving, they took us for Viet Cong. And what they did when they spotted these South Vietnamese dissidents was fire, and fire, and fire. Bullets whizzed past our ankles, which only caused us to forge ahead with greater determination and speed.

I would later learn about the rules of war, about avoiding what is ridiculously called “friendly fire,” as though any “fire” can be friendly, as though there is ever something cheerful to be seen in war. But the rule is this: Whenever active battle is occurring around you, never—I mean never—run. Instead, plant your feet as the planes or helicopters make their way past your position, craning your head skyward and holding still. Then they will know you are harmless, that you are mere citizens fighting for life.

Still, I am here to tell you: When bombs are being fired from the ground on which you stand and opposing troops are contesting those bombs with bullets shot from the air, there is no way whatsoever to counteract your natural impulses to run, run, run with everything you have got. Stay still? Look skyward? Remain calm, as though all is okay? Forget about it! It is impossible. To stay alive, you must at least try to run.

Eventually, we did make it to the mother temple, my ma, my siblings, and me. My dad was in town once again that day, resuming his usual wartime routine. When we arrived at that secondary shelter, scores of neighbors had already beat us there. My grandmother was there already also, as were two of my aunts with their children in tow. So many of us had descended on that place and exhausted its resources that by day two, we were desperate for food. Two CaoDai temples in as many days, a chorus of pleading prayers for divine help, and yet not one of the myriad gods we revered seemed to be able to get us out of this mess.

Midafternoon on the second day of our stay at the mother temple, one of my ma’s cousins named Lieu pulled up in the truck that he used for his forestry business and announced that he and his family were bound for Tay Ninh, the capital city of our entire province, which was also named Tay Ninh. His words were clipped and his tone urgent as he asked if any of us wanted to make the fifty-kilometer journey with them. It was understood that we would have to pay him a fee for the transportation, and I watched closely as my dad, who had been reunited with us earlier that morning, exchanged quick words and rapid-fire nods with my ma, landing on a decision in a matter of seconds. Yes. Yes, our family will go.

Lieu turned out to be a very good driver, which was a great benefit to the thirty of us who had climbed aboard, given the skill required to navigate the rutted roads, avoid direct hits from gunfire overhead, and swerve out of the way of the shrapnel that was exploding all around. I have seen video games that pale by comparison to the wild ride my family experienced that day.

As a young child, I was too distracted by idyllic circumstances to fear war. But now? I was older now. I knew well to be afraid. And yet how good and right it felt to leave Trang Bang, the hot seat of these latest battles. In Tay Ninh, we would find replenished resources. In Tay Ninh, we would find the Holy See, our religion’s grandest, greatest temple. In Tay Ninh, we would find help and hope and the fresh start we deeply desired. If only we could make it to Tay Ninh, life could begin again.