'The Sorrow of War' - Bao Ninh

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An aside to the holidaying: I bought a book while I was in Hoi An, which I have just finished reading, heavily photocopied and with some of the pages stuck together, called 'The Sorrow of War' by Bao Ninh (winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Award). Bao Ninh was born in Hanoi in 1952 and during the Vietnam War served with the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade. Of the 500 who went to war with the Brigade in 1969, he was 1 of only 10 to survive!

The novel is a harrowing story of a young, North Vietnamese man, Kien's experiences of war, love, loss and betrayal. It starts after the war has ended, during his role as part of the MIA (Missing In Action) body collection team. What a gruesome but necessary part of war that you don't really think about. Throughout the book, both here where he imagines hearing the souls of the dead he is collecting, and later on, there are so many triggers for Kien's memories, bringing back to him the horrific and barbaric things he had to witness and do.

So many of Kien's friends and comrades young lives were cruelly cut short, often in agonising, terrifying deaths. Here he remembers playing cards with his comrades just before they set off into battle:

"They had bastardised the regimental marching song and made it a humorous card-players' song: 'We'll just all be jokers, in the pack, Just go harder, in attack. Dealing's fun, so hurry back, Enjoy the game, avoid the flack.' But one by one the card players at their fateful table were taken away. The cards were last used when the platoon was down to just four soldiers. Cu, Thanh, Van and Kien."

The madness that such horrors brought to the young men, both during the war and afterwards when fighting had finished, is impossible to appreciate and understand. Kien had got to breaking point and seemed to be 'waiting for death, calmly recognising that it would be ugly and inelegant'. Remembering one battle, he describes:

"When the Southern ARVN had faced his own Northern NVA troops, both sides had quickly scattered, rushing to take cover behind tree trunks and then firing blindly. But Kien had calmly walked forward. The enemy had fired continuously from behind a tree ahead of him, but Kien hadn't even bothered to duck. He walked on lazily, seemingly oblivious to the fire. One southern soldier behind a tree fired hastily, and the full magazine of thirty rounds from his AK exploded loudly around Kien, but he had walked on unscratched. Kien had not returned fire even when just a few steps from his prey, as though he wanted to give his enemy a chance to survive, to give him more time to change magazines, or time to take sure aim and kill him. But in the face of Kien's audacity and cool the man had lost courage; trembling, he dropped his machine-gun. 'Shit!' Kien spat out in disgust, then pulled the trigger from close range, snapping the ARVN soldier away from the tree, then shredding him. 'Ma...aaaa!' the dying man screamed. 'Aaaa...'. Kien shuddered and jumped closer as bullets poured from all sides towards him. He hadn't cared, standing firm and firing down into the man's hot, agonised body in its death throes. Blood gushed out onto Kien's trousers. Walking on, leaving blood-red footprints in the grass, he slowly aproached two other commandos hiding and shooting at him, his machine-gun tucked carelessly under his arm, his shirt open. He was unconcerned and coldly indifferent, showing no fear, no anger. Just lethargy and depression. The enemy backed away and dispersed in retreat."

After reading this I can see that maybe my own disbelief at the US soldiers being able to gun down women and children in the My Lai Massacre is just too logical a reaction. Soldiers taking part in a war with such extreme horrors, witnessing and taking part in such barbaric acts must be suffused with a kind of madness that makes them kill without thought, their souls so depressed by the shear intensity and constancy of the brutality and gore around them that they no longer behave as human beings capable of compassion, rationality and empathy but instead function automatically as killing machines, not even noticing who they kill or even why. How inutterably sad that as human beings we can't all live peaceably without the few creating wars fuelled by the need for power, greed, patriotism, religious fervour or just plain selfishness.

Through Kien's experiences it seems that the effects of what he went through and saw created a life-long barrage of post traumatic stress episodes, memories triggered without warning by the slightest and most inconsequential thing. A life taken away from him, no life to live at all. The words of Kien's step-father, his kind and sage advise given to Kien before he went off to war, I found extremely moving and so very sad knowing how Kien and so many like him would live out their lives because of the war:

"Kien noticed that his eyes were blurred and his scraggy and frail old hands trembled. He looked over to Kien and said gently, 'So, you're off to the war. Not that I can prevent you. I'm old, you are young. I couldn't stop you if I wanted to. I just want you to understand me when I say that a human being's duty on this earth is to live, not to kill,' he said. 'Taste all manner of life. Try everything. Be curious and inquire for yourself. Don't turn your back on life'. Kien was surprised at the integrity of his stepfather's words and he listened intently. 'I want you to guard against all those who demand that you die just to prove something. It is not that I advise you to respect your life more than anything else, but for you not to die uselessly for the needs of others for you still have many years ahead of you. Many years of joy and happiness to experience. Who else buy you can experience your life?"

There are also some beautifully phrased passages in the book, about love, loss and the transitory nature of our lives:

"When icy winds outside blew fiercely and rain pelted heavily against his dark windows, he would just sit there, still, not wishing to move. Sad, foolish pity washed over him. He had tried desperately to forget Phuong, but she was unforgettable. He longed for her still. Nothing lasted forever in this world, he knew that. Even love and sorrow inside an aging man would finally dissipate under the realisation that his suffering, his tortured thoughts, were small and meaningless in the overall scheme of things. Like wispy smoke spiralling into the sky, glimpsed for a moment, then gone."

Kien became to realise that wars were enjoyed only by the few; power-hungry, greed merchants, who didn't actually get their hands messy:

"Kien listened, thinking it wan't true that young Vietnamese loved war. Not true at all. If war came they would fight, and fight courageously. But that didn't mean they loved fighting. No. The ones who loved war were not the young men, but the others like the politicians, middle-aged men with fat bellies and short legs. Not the ordinary people. The recent years of war had brought enough suffering and pain to last them a thousand years."

As for the glorious victory stories, these were more realistically described by Kien's experience on getting blind drunk after hearing the news of the end of the war:

"Everyone drank heavily and they all seemed to be drunk, half laughing, half crying. Some were yelling like madmen. Peace had rushed in brutally, leaving them dazed and staggering in its wake. They were more amazed than happy with the peace. The end of fighting was like the deflation of an entire landscape, with fields, mountains and rivers collapsing in on themselves. In later years, when he heard stories of V-Day or watched the scenes of the Fall of Saigon on film, with cheering, flags, flowers, triumphant soldiers and joyful people, his heart would ache with sadness and envy. He and his mates had not felt that soaring, brilliant happiness he saw on film."

The whole feeling of the book and the horrific loss of young lives was summed up beautifully towards the end of the book:

"To win, martyrs had sacrificed their lives in order that others might survive. Not a new phenomenon, true. But for those still living to know that the kindest, most worthy people have all fallen away, or even been tortured, humiliated before being killed or buried and wiped away by the machinery of war, then this beautiful landscape of calm and peace is an appalling paradox. Justice may have won, but cruelty, death and inhuman violence had also won. Just look and think: it is the truth. Losses can be made good, damage can be repaired and wounds will heal in time. But the psychololgical scars of the war will remain forever."

The Sorrows of War indeed!

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