Kekehehahele SIIITITIIIISIIIIIIILIOIIIISIIIOLIGS IIS IS:

The little Wooden Shoe *

By THUY THU

Among those participating in the November 1960 coup d’état
against Ngo Dinh Diem was Second Lieutenant Thai Tran Trong
Nghia, alias Thuy Thu, formerly editor of the monthly Luot Song
(Skimming the Waves), organ of the South Vietnam puppet naval
forces. He has written a number of stories denouncing the crimes
perpetrated by the Americans and their agents. The following
story is from his collection “A thousand and one stories.”

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NI

I was born in North Vietnam. I have known
South Vietnam only since 1954 when I let my-
self be herded aboard a ship and taken to the
South, hardly giving the matter a thought. Then
I served on a ship sailing on the Mekong river
for two years. I-found the South a land brim-
ming over with life. The fruits—the mangoes,
avocados . . . as fleshy and full of juice, the

_ people are loveable. The way they live and the

way. they look at life is linked in my mind with
the blue immensity of their sky so full of sun
and wind, and the vast expanse of their fields
and orchards. And the river . . O the river!

But now I am thinking of my own life...

It seemed that I was standing outside the hut,
logking at the night sky dotted with twinkling
stars. Before me, the river rolled, its strong cur-
rent breaking into waves. I thought, “How
pleasant it would be to lie on board a ship and
let oneself be carried downstream, if our coun-
try knew peace!” On the other side of the river,
the groves stretched as far as the horizon. On
this side, a miserable little hamlet lay at the tip
of an islet overgrown with thickets.

The old owner of the hut gave a little dry
cough. His grandson whined from his bed. The
yellow light of the paraffin lamp coming through
the chink of the door made a streak on the un-
even ground. I thought of the way the old man
and the child had looked at me, and this made
me feel uneasy. Before joining my present unit,
I had been warned of the situation. The guerillas
were very active and the population could not
be trusted, perhaps the old man having sent his
children to the town, remained to keep watch
over his hut; perhaps the child had wanted to
stay with his grandpa. Or perhaps his father, the
old man’s son, had been killed in a raid by gov-
ernment troops or had joined the guerillas. -My
thoughts wandered over various hypotheses
about the child’s father. He had joined the gueril-
las probably because he had someone to avenge,
or an ideal to pursue. At least, he did not want
his child to grow up in an atmosphere of press-
ganging and forced labor and heavy taxation, he
did not want his father to die at the hands of
U.S.-Diem troops. They killed a man as one
would a fly or a mosquito, my friends had told
me. At least he would have the river to himself.
I had known the river for only two years and

I loved it. What about this man whom it had-

lulled to sleep when a child, who had grown up
se its bank and whose first love it had witness-
' t
Yes, he had plenty of reasons to take to the
bush with a spear or a knife. As for me, my
own life had been rotting away. With the return

of peace in 1954, I should have been able to cast _

aside my soldier’s equipment and joyfully engage

in national reconstruction. Nearly seven years -

had elapsed and I was still there, cursed with
military packs and ordnance maps. When I was
a young student, I had been surrounded by “gov-
ernment” spies. Now every time I returned home
on leave, I had to listen to my parents lament-
ing about slack business and heavy taxes. Of the

=

3, 1969 — Page 6.

five or six good friends I had, some had been
arrested, others sent to “re-education” centres.
When I took a stroll in the streets, I could not
stand the gaudy shirts I saw and the guffaws,
the O.K.s and the vulgar manners of their wear-
ers. All these things had become stuck to my
life and had slowly ruined it the way sea mol-
lusks stick to the hull. of a ship and gnaw at it.
The military khaki color stuck to my life. But
why did I allow it to stick? For a salary? In that
case I would be no more than a mercenary! We
had been told that we were fighting commun-
ism and defending freedom. What did I know
about communism? I had never seen commun-
ists engaged in torturing people, but here I did
see “government” troops kill, plunder and rape.
On which side was freedom? On which side was

_ justice? Most certainly not on mine. Why should

Dap, my neighbor, have burnt himself to death
if freedom, justice, and fraternity had been real-
ities in which he lived. Everything they had
told us was a lie. What about me? One of these
days, I would have to scrape the mollusks off
the hull of my life. It was truly rotting away.

e

At dawn I found myself standing beside a co-
conut-palm. A platoon was taking up position
nearby. The other two platoons were carrying
out searches in the village. In front of me was
a shell crater and beyond it a tumbledown hut.
Machine-gun bullets had bored deep holes into
the coconut trunks. The landscape around was
that of a wilderness with no trace of any human
being besides myself and the soldiers.

A moment later, Trach, the company com-
oh See came, his legs and thighs caked with
mud.

“Why not stay here?” he said. “The other two
platoons are searching the village. We'll stay in
this hamlet.” Then: “I had to wade across se-
veral canals on account of those devils.”

Looking in the direction of his finger, I saw
a score of people of both sexes, young and old,
and even two children about 11 or 12. Their
faces were wan with fears. Patches of dry mud
showed white on their clothes of black cotton.
One of them, an old man, was wearing what had
been white cotton, but was now a dirty brown
owing to the muddy water of the canals.

I followed the company commander towards
the hut. When I went past the shell crater, a
strange feeling crept upon me. The shell had
fallen on the yard before the hut. Before reach-
ing the latter I saw,a few rags scattered about
the ground. Inside, the only pieces of furniture
were two miserable bamboo beds. Hung on the

_ wattle wall was an old fishing net dyed with

some kind of bark, the color of mud, water, and
sweat. The altar had fallen down and a broken
incense bowl was lying at the foot of a pillar.
What remained of a dirty, ragged mosquito net
hung from a horizontal pole.

The signalman put his apparatus in a corner -

of the hut. Other soldiers started putting things
in order. I walked about, trying to picture to
myself what the people had been like who had
lived in this hut before the raids started. The hut
was divided into three rooms by wattle parti-
tions. One of the rooms was probably devoted
to the processing of their catches of fish. They
probably owned a sampan, earthern jars for fish
sauce, clothes of black cotton fabric, their fa-
mily was probably composed of a father, a mo-
ther; aes

I caught sight of a small wooden sandal at the
foot of a partition and bent down to pick it. up.
It had belonged to a little girl. The strap was
made of white plastic and the wood was very
light. The sandal was so small, not bigger than
the palm of my hand, and was painted a nice
shade of pink,—“shrimp” or “aubergine” pink
they call it, I think; I am not much of a con-
noisseur in that matter. There were multi-color-
ed flowers painted on it. I had often seen sandals
of this kind sold in country market-places. I
tried to picture to myself what the little girl
had been like. She was probably five or six
years old, with rosy heels and jet-black hair,
and a gaily-colored print jacket. The sandal was
almost new. She’d probably reserved the pair
to wear on the occasions of the Tet festival.
Then the crash of shelling had come. Trees fell.

* Oe sean hs ht sss 0 Houses were ablaze..uThe trogps.. follawed.. Jny,,0..5.°. sr MEAs RET ath: Sk ale aie Aee POM 6.
SUOMETIIIOLIISIOIDIDIDOIITOLI SS IDID EDD OTS IIMS:

Lye CRAM Es N

Burst of gunfire, people died. Terrified, she creP ait

under the bamboo bed, hugging her mother. Ane

(

then... then. . . Oh, I hoped with all my heartne
that no harm had come to you, little child oind

the South! What made you leave this sandaz

behind? Those cruel soldiers would have sparet”

neither you nor your mother, had they have Jaidve

:

hands on you two. You were so frightened by¥a:
the sounds of their guns that you could not keePly

your new sandals in your hands but let one o})

them fall. The sounds of gunfire took away th@at
eager light of your eyes in which the beauty ‘

of the leaves was mirrored, and killed all hopesvh

in your heart. Among those soldiers was my

self, little sister! Woe is me! AN
e

I went to the patch of ground behind thé
a long time, were nevertheless overflowing with,
water. The sun coming through the foliage mad@
strange patterns on the ground, which looked
like a piece of printed fabric. The people cap
tured yesterday were sitting on the ground, tied
together in a line, beside themselves with feat
There were seventeen of them. I asked a soldie!
in the Commando section standing guard ove!
the prisoners:

“Where is the lieutenant?”

“Yonder, Sir.” He pointed his finger to a hut
half-hidden among the trees of an orchard i

_ the distance.

“What is he doing?”’.
“J don’t know, Sir.”
“Seeking information, probably . . .

I went to the hut, jumping across chann@
after channel. The two soldiers guarding
stepped aside and saluted. Obscene curses camt
from inside the hut. It was the company com?
mander’s voice. I stepped in. 4

“What is it?’ He looked up. Anger was on hl?
face. 7
An old woman, who had been among thos!
captured yesterday, was lying unconscious 0”
the ground, bound hand and foot, her wet hal
sticking to the ground. Water from a big cal
nearby had spilt all around. In a corner of the
hut, a young woman was sitting, her feet tie
to a big stone, her arms pinioned behind h@
back, her knees coming up to her face. 3

“J just want to ask you if there is anythiny
yet to report to the Battalion.” ES

“Nothing yet. But wait just a minute. Thi
hag is on my black list.. My informer reporte —
to me that she had been giving shelter to revol¥”
tionary cadres. And yet she denies everything
She’s stubborn as a mule.” Then he called oul
“Sau!” _

“Yes, Sir.” A burly soldier ran in. He was OF
of the torturers. 4
“Pick her up by the feet and bring her tO”
the company commander ordered. {

Sau seized the old woman by her ankles
lifted. her with her head hanging down. Wi

>

‘house. Coconut-lined ditches, left undredged fol