The Eaves of Heaven (13 page)

1945–1946

19. T
HE
D
EMOCRATIC
R
EPUBLIC OF
V
IETNAM

In the closing months of World War II, Vietnam saw its first significant opportunity for independence in eight decades. The French, beleaguered in Europe, had not returned, and the ruling Japanese faced defeat on several fronts. In March of
1945,
the Japanese foresaw the end of their empire and abruptly disarmed the entire French governing force in Vietnam. They dismantled the Vichy French colonial administration and imprisoned French troops and civilians, and then coerced Emperor Bao Dai to declare Vietnam’s independence from France and its membership in Japan’s “Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere.”

The country quickly plunged into a period of lawlessness and turmoil. The Vietnamese Nationalists, the Communists, and several other religious and political factions vied for power. Throughout the country, these parties engaged in attacks, ambushes, and assassinations against one another. Widespread unrest, riots, demonstrations, and sabotage disrupted the country. Governmental services fell into disarray. The Japanese army continued to commandeer transportation channels for military purposes, depriving the famine-stricken North of the rice surplus in the South. More than a million starved to death; millions more suffered from hunger and disease.

On August
6, 1945,
the U.S. annihilated Hiroshima with an atomic bomb. Nagasaki suffered the same fate on August
9.
On August
14,
Japan surrendered. Ho Chi Minh immediately gathered more than sixty delegates from numerous ethnic minorities and political groups to form the People’s National Congress. Despite earlier conflicts, on August
16,
they formed the National Liberation Committee of Viet Nam and selected Ho as the president. This was the provisional government of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam. Ho declared a general insurrection to establish control before the French returned from Europe.

Mobs swelled the streets of Hanoi as demonstrations shook the city for three days. On August
19,
the Viet Minh took over Hanoi without a fight. The historic string of events came to be known as the August Revolution.

On September
2,
half a million people, impassioned with patriotism, swarmed into Hanoi’s Ba Dinh Square to witness the provisional government of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam formally assume office. General Vo Nguyen Giap thanked the U.S. for its help and acknowledged America as a friend of Vietnam. Flanked by American military officers from the Office of Strategic Services, Ho Chi Minh read the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness…”

IN
accordance with the Allied agreements in Potsdam, the Chinese army moved into Vietnam to disarm the Japanese in the North and to serve as a temporary occupying force. General Luu Han led a rabble of
200,000
Chinese troops, many barefoot, with wives and children in tow. Underpaid, undernourished, and undisciplined, they came without provisions and plundered villages in their path, dragging a caravan of stolen goods, produce, and livestock all the way into Hanoi. Once inside the city, they seized the luxuries that once belonged to the Japanese and the French. Soldiers ransacked warehouses, mansions, and public buildings, carrying off furniture, chandeliers, and clothes, and robbed merchants at the open markets in broad daylight. The officers behaved no better, forcing themselves into local business deals, confiscating property, and legalizing their theft by paying with worthless Chinese currency. The Chinese occupation lasted six months.

The responsibility for disarming the Japanese in the South belonged to the British, who, like the French, also had vested interests in colonialism. After news of Ho Chi Minh’s declaration of independence reached Saigon, British General Gracey quickly released and armed French troops who had been, until then, confined to their barracks by the Japanese for six months. A day later, French soldiers seized control of Saigon City Hall. French soldiers and French civilians went on a rampage, breaking into shops and homes, indiscriminately beating Vietnamese men, women, and children. The last week in September of
1945,
Saigon was wrought with hysteria and mayhem between the French and the Vietnamese. Hundreds were killed. In mid-October, French reinforcements arrived, and General LeClerc reasserted colonial rule by force. Saigon was reestablished as a French city, but the vast Mekong Delta became a battlefield.

While the U.S. was hesitant to get involved in Indochina and did not favor colonialism, the Americans yielded to pressure from the British and the French and stepped back to allow their Allies to maneuver in Vietnam. The Americans did not protest when the British gave the French their American equipment and transported French troops back to Vietnam. This action pushed the founders of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam further toward the Soviet Bloc. Many Vietnamese saw this American complacency as the seed for the thirty years of war.

From late
1945
to mid-
1946,
the French, Ho Chi Minh, various Vietnamese Nationalist factions, religious groups, and the Chinese occupational forces continued to maneuver against one another through both political and military means. In an attempt to make his provisional power permanent, Ho Chi Minh hastily held general elections on January
6, 1946,
against vehement protests from the Nationalists. Although a National Assembly was formed, the infighting continued unabated. While the Vietnamese bickered bitterly among themselves, the Chinese, who until then claimed to be an ally of Vietnam, switched loyalty and struck a profitable bargain with the French. In March
1946,
the Chinese traded the control of the North to the French for huge economic and political concessions. Well-armed French troops shipped in from Saigon replaced the Chinese occupation force. In the same month, the British left the South to the French. Once again, Vietnam fell neatly into the hands of the French.

After its defeats in World War II, France was eager to reassert colonial control and regain some of its former prestige. Having briefly tasted freedom, the Vietnamese refused to relinquish their Democratic Republic without a struggle, and yet they were unable to unify under a single banner. The French formed an alliance with the Viet Minh to eradicate the other factions. In June
1946,
with French assistance, General Giap began a bloody campaign to crush all opposition groups, one by one. In July, Giap’s troops attacked the Nationalists’ headquarters in Hanoi while the French blocked the surrounding streets to prevent Nationalists’ escape or reinforcement. The Viet Minh killed and arrested more than a hundred Nationalists. In a single stroke, the Viet Minh eliminated nearly every key Nationalist leader and pushed the remnants of the Nationalist forces into the mountain forests.

At the time, many Vietnamese, Nationalists included, did not know this was the work of Ho Chi Minh’s organization and continued to support him. Those who did regarded the collaboration of the French and Viet Minh as an unholy alliance. Later, some would portray the event as a hunt with the masters encircling their prey and then unleashing the hounds to do the dirty work. Others would cite it as the most successful example of the French colonial divide-and-conquer tactic. For the Nationalist sympathizers, it was an unforgivable betrayal between brothers.

With the other opposition groups decimated, the alliance of convenience ended. For months, the two forces controlled the country in an uneasy coexistence. Tension escalated through the fall of
1946.
A misunderstanding in Hai Phong resulted in the Viet Minh militiamen slaughtering twenty-three French soldiers. North of Hanoi, six French troops were killed days later. On November
23,1946,
French commanders decided to teach the natives a lesson and butchered more than six thousand Vietnamese men, women, and children in a single day. The French bathed the streets of Hai Phong in Vietnamese blood.

On the night of December
19,
the Viet Minh militia retaliated by destroying the power station in Hanoi and attacking French installations. Fighting quickly spread throughout the country. The war began, and all the Vietnamese factions set aside their political differences to join the Resistance headed by Ho Chi Minh’s government.

THE SOUTH
DECEMBER
26, 1963

20. T
HE
T
RAP

B
y 9:30 P.M., Viet, Nhan, and I had finished touring the hamlet’s defenses. We returned to the community center, excited by the preparation for battle. I was feeling rather positive. My show of confidence for the men lifted my own spirit as well, but as I stepped inside the common house, moans of the injured sobered me instantly.

Nurse Nhi reported that the two seriously wounded men had taken turns for the worse. Nurse Nhung and Thoi had cooked and sent food to the whole team guarding the perimeter. Our meal was set in the classroom.

Viet, Nhan, and I stood around the teacher’s desk with the three women. They had cooked a meal of brown rice, green onion omelets, and watery tomato soup flavored with dried shrimp. It was all that was available in the hamlet. None of us had eaten since lunch, and we dug into the food without decorum. I was so hungry I thought it was the best dinner I’d ever had in all the times I spent with my RD teams. I doubted what people said about fear spoiling one’s appetite. I had a great meal, even though I was definitely afraid.

After dinner, Viet, Nhan, and I went out to sit on the porch steps with our tea. I wondered aloud why the VC hadn’t attacked yet.

“Maybe they left already,” Nhan ventured as he rolled a cigarette.

Viet grinned and shook his head. “They’re out there. This is their Regional Force; they don’t hit and run like the local guerrillas.”

“Yes, but their Regionals are professionals. Why would they give us time to get dug in and rested?” Nhan said.

Viet deadpanned, “I guess they have to eat too.”

Nhan and I chuckled at the image of our attackers having dinner around a campfire. Somehow it struck me as tragic.

A chilly breeze made the stars seem icy. The moonlight gave shadow to everything but revealed nothing. It was strange not to hear a single dog bark all evening. The silence was unnerving, infectious.

I thought of my wife at home alone with our child. Whatever surprises she’d prepared were long cold now. I marveled at this young woman who hadn’t asked me for a single thing in the years we’d been together. She saved everything, spent only for our bare necessities, and wanted nothing for herself. She never complained or showed her displeasure with our poverty in any of the many ways a woman could. I wished I could have worked harder for her somehow. I felt sorry I did not earn more money to make her life easier.

Lieutenant Lan came over the radio and reported the good news that we would have artillery support. Viet and Nhan dashed off to update the men while I worked out the details with Lan. Since our outdated radio didn’t have the army’s frequency, all requests and instructions had to be relayed through Lan at headquarters, who would radio the coordinates to the artillery batteries out near the runway.

I put the radio down and realized Nurse Nhung had been standing patiently beside me with a teapot. She filled my cup, sat down on the step, and hugged her knees. The litheness of her movements was strikingly childlike. She was quite attractive, twenty-three, and already a widow with a four-year-old daughter. Her husband had been drafted and killed in battle two years before.

“Lieutenant,” she said in a tiny voice. “Do you think we will be able to get out of this?”

“Yes, if we don’t panic.”

She bit her lips and then sighed. “I am not afraid of dying, but I’m very scared of getting seriously hurt. I don’t want to suffer like the guys in there. What will we do if they overrun us?”

Our last resort was the river. “Do you know how to swim?”

“Swim? No.”

“Can you hide with someone in the hamlet?”

“I know several families, nice people. I helped them many times.”

“You should go and hide with them. Take Nhi and Thoi, too, if they want to go with you.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. I will.” She fell silent for a moment. “Does Aunt-at-Home know about this attack?” Nhung asked, using the polite term to refer to a superior’s wife.

“I asked Lieutenant Lan to tell her I am spending the night in the countryside with my team.”

“That’s good. It’s not necessary to make her worry.”

“Are your parents worried about you working in the countryside like this?”

“They understand this is the only way someone without an education like me can support a whole family. What can you do with one pair of hands and four mouths to feed?” Nhung shrugged.

“What about Nhi and Thoi?”

“Similar circumstances have a way of bringing people to similar ends, don’t they?” She smiled. She still had the small-town girl smile.

Carbine shots startled us. They came from the east side of the hamlet.

Viet and Nhan returned and reported that the men shot at some movement near the creek. There was no return fire and nothing was spotted after that.

“If they don’t attack us during the first hour after midnight, they may not attack at all,” Nhan said.

“We will be home free, eh?” Viet sneered. “Let’s go inside and get some rest. It’s going to be a long night.”

Not wanting to be the only man in uniform, I changed into Nhan’s extra set of black pajamas. Utterly exhausted, I lay down on the cold dirt floor in back of the classroom. It felt wonderful to be stretched out on my back with my rucksack for a pillow. I immediately dozed off and would have slept well the whole night.

It couldn’t have been more than an hour when the ear-piercing rattle of an AK-47 jerked me awake. Viet and Nhan were already bolting out the door. Disoriented, I jumped up, grabbed my rifle, and followed them without thinking. Viet ran off toward the creek-side where he had twelve men posted. Nhan veered toward the paddy-side to join his four cadres. I had four men at the front gate and four at the back side guarding the river. Artillery! A dozen yards down the road, I wheeled around back to the common house for the radio.

“Tiger-one, Tiger-one. This is Tiger-six, over!”

“Tiger-six, this is Tiger-one, over,” Lan replied.

“Tiger-one, we are under attack on the creek-side, over.”

“How far from the fence?”

“First, shell at thirty yards, then move out up to fifty, over.” I headed out, taking the radio with me.

“Roger.”

“Do it now! Over and out.”

I ran down the main road. There was no fighting at the main gate. I cut diagonally to the creek-side, weaving between the houses, not daring to run along the perimeter. I found Viet and his men holding the enemy at the far bank across the slow-moving creek. The shooting was heavy. The enemies’ AK-47s popped in ferocious bursts, mangling the fence of woven branches.

I shouted into Viet’s ear that artillery was coming. Grinning, he gave me a thumbs up. Then the fence completely splintered around our heads. I patted him on the shoulder and crawled out. I slipped between the houses, going clockwise around the hamlet, shouting our password as I ran. The river was quiet, as we had expected. Without stopping to talk to the men there, I pushed on toward the sounds of fighting at Nhan’s side.

The west side of the hamlet was flanked by open paddies. I joined Nhan in his trench. They had repelled the first probing charge. The VC were gathering behind a shallow dike sixty yards from the fence. What looked like a breeze moving through the rice field was actually dozens of troops crawling in the paddy mud. They had camouflaged themselves with rice stalks. Even with the half-moon, it was nearly impossible to see them unless they moved or fired at us.

Suddenly Nhan started firing. “Here they come again!”

I radioed Lan. “Tiger-one. This is Tiger-six. Come in, over!”

“Tiger-six, artillery support is coming soon. What’s your situation?”

“Shell the east side immediately. We’re under attack here too. What is taking them so long?”

“Artillery is coming soon for the west side.”

“Listen, they’ve got two guns. Have one shell the creek-side, and the other shell the paddy-side. We’re going to be overrun in a couple of minutes! Get on it! Over and out.”

It was crazy that it took them so long to fire the damn cannons when they had the coordinates and hours to prepare. I turned to Nhan and shouted, “Hold them! I’ll bring more men to reinforce your position.”

Leaving my rifle with Nhan, I drew my pistol and held the radio in my other hand. I sprinted so fast the dirt road looked like a velvety moonlit blur, as smooth as leather, elongating hypnotically. It felt as though I was flying, but I couldn’t seem to go fast enough. In the back of my mind, I was half expecting one of the villagers, a VC infiltrator, to step out of the shadow and put a bullet through me.

I took two men from the riverbank and another pair from the front gate. When we got to Nhan’s side, they were nearly overwhelmed. I deployed the four men along the wall.

Phht. Phht. Phht.
Bullets punched through the bamboo walls and zinged past me. In several spots, the VC came within ten yards of the wall. My men hit them with nearly every shot. I dove back into Nhan’s trench.

Nhan smiled his weird smile and said, “We’re in real trouble now.”

I peered through the fence and shuddered. Sixty yards away, the dike swarmed with shadows. They moved toward us like a dark ripple.

“Kill! Kill! Kill!
Aaaaaa!
” they screamed. Their voices merged and climbed to a crescendo, the crazy words overlapping into one continuous chilling note.

The urge to flee was overwhelming. I had never shot or killed anyone. I sighted an attacker coming directly at me, but I couldn’t squeeze the trigger. He trudged awkwardly in the thick paddy. It was like watching someone moving across quicksand. He fired his AK-47. The instant the fence in front of me exploded, my finger closed down on the trigger.
Bang!
The figure slumped into the paddy like a melting shadow.

“Kill!…Kill!…Kill!…Kill!” They surged forward without respite.

Nhan turned to me and asked casually, “How many men do you think they have?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a hundred and fifty—at least a full company. Probably more in reserve.”

One of our men cried and slid down in a heap at the bottom of the trench. Bullets drummed the length of the wall. I fired without debate or remorse. The heavy AK-47 fire kept us low against the mound. I found myself ducking and inching along the fence for cover. Attackers swarmed forward, screaming, “Kill! Kill!” Their covering fire was so fierce, we couldn’t aim with any accuracy. Their charge was severely hampered by the mud, but we still couldn’t drop them quickly enough. Their machine guns ripped holes in the fence almost large enough for a man to crawl through.

Just as I was about to order the retreat, I heard the gut-clenching sound of incoming artillery:
eeeeeeEEEEUU—BOOM! eeeeeeEEEEUU—BOOM!

The bombardment was falling on the other side of the hamlet. I ran over to Viet’s perimeter. The shells were striking too far away. I radioed Lan and adjusted the coordinates. Within minutes, shells fell right on top of the enemy. I ran back to the other side just as the first shell came down precisely between our lines and theirs.

The men cheered. Between the explosions and the gunfire, the wounded wailed.

Although I knew the shells would fall outside the fence, I couldn’t help but cringe at the whine of every incoming shell. It was like a judgment bugle from above, utterly demoralizing. The detonation was a comforting conclusion: If you heard the boom, you were still alive.

The attackers wavered. Some crouched down into the water; others moved warily as though they could sneak past the bombardment. Feet shackled by mud, they stumbled forward bravely, firing their AK-47s, the muzzle-flashes like fireworks. We picked them off steadily. It was the hour of attrition, our ammunition ticking away with the seconds. I had no idea how long they would last.

The battle raged on, shells screeching down like falling stars, bloodied men sinking into the paddy to nourish the rice grains that would feed children and peasants—both Communists and Nationalists.

We heard Viet’s whistle: The enemy had breached our defense. Within seconds we found ourselves being shot at from the flank. I signaled Nhan to retreat. The order quickly traveled along the defense. We scurried from the shadow of one house to the next, exchanging fire with the attackers. Fighting broke out all over the hamlet. It was impossible to know who was shooting at whom. We pulled back to the seven huts surrounding the common house. In the confusion, two more cadres were injured and one was killed.

Viet, Nhan, and I met in the common house to assess our situation. We had twenty-four men left, including ourselves and the three wounded who were still capable of fighting, and were down to roughly twenty rounds apiece. I radioed Lan to cancel the artillery bombardment and report that we had pulled back to our secondary defense position and were in desperate need of reinforcement. Lan relayed that Trieu said he would send troops at dawn. Viet, Nhan, and I looked at each other. Dawn was a death sentence.

I wanted to thank them for using their experience and courage to get us this far, but I couldn’t say a word. We shook hands and wished each other good luck before heading back to our separate huts.