1595260218 text pdf, p.12
1595260218-text.pdf, page 12
The officer gaped at him for a moment, and then burst out laughing.
“Good story. I’m sure you will impress all your friends when you tell them that. So, you don’t know why they stopped at your family?”
Dewu shrugged. “No, not really. I did notice that their sergeant glanced at his watch, and looked worried. He then turned around and they all left.”
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The officer tilted his head and, narrowing his eyes, asked, “Why did the one with the bag stop with you and go get his sergeant to talk to you?”
“My northern accent. It seemed to spook them.”
The officer nodded, and then questioned Dewu as to why he and his family were traveling to Saigon. Dewu frankly explained his family’s fear of the Viet Cong closing in on Hue, and the wish for a more secure location. He mentioned his family’s reaction to the drugstore near his own business being blown up.
The officer seemed satisfied, wished him the best, and went on to other passengers, who were growing impatient.
While that was going on, Dewu explained to Jia Li what he had done. She asked, “How much did that fake ID cost you?”
“Two gold taels.” About seventy American dollars.
“Well,” she said, a happy grin on her face, “they were worth more than their weight in gold.”
“Yes. And you know, Zeng Jintao, who made those for me, could have counterfeited an American passport in three hours, he said.”
“You are not thinking of—”
“No, sweetheart, I never intend to leave Vietnam. It is my country.”
Soon, a security officer shouted to the passengers that they could leave the bus for a half-hour while the blood from the dead men was cleaned up. Someone shouted, “The Viet Cong called them wicked tyrants. Who were they?”
“Just low-level government officials,” the officer shouted back.
Another passenger responded loudly, “Just as you are.”
The officer made no reply.
As they departed, Shihao cried in a voice shrill with panic, “I have to go—right away!”
“Crap or pee?” Dewu asked.
“Crap.”
“Oh, shit,” Dewu swore. “I have to help. You know what you can’t lose, right?”
Shihao looked even more panicked.
The bus depot was nothing more than a long shed containing a waiting room and a bathroom at one end, its door ajar. Dewu could not understand why nobody was using it, until he and Shihao rushed into it and saw why. The toilet was a hole in the floor, with a small, rusty sink with one dripping faucet on one wall. There was no tissue or toilet paper. People must be using the side of the shed or the nearby jungle, he thought. Leaves were as good as toilet paper. That was probably what his wife was doing now, since she had disappeared.
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Looking at Shihao, Dewu knew they didn’t have time to do the same. Dewu tried to close the door, but it was stuck ajar. Shielding his son with his body, he told him, “Go on the floor. Quick.”
The boy took down his shorts and underwear and, red-faced, he did so. Dewu watched carefully, and when he saw the plastic tube fall within a wet brown clump, he reached beneath his squatting son and extracted it. He took it to the sink and washed it and his fingers under the faucet.
By that time his son had finished. “Shove it all in the hole,” Dewu ordered, “and then wash your hands. I’ll get something we can use to clean the floor.” He’d seen a garbage can near the bathroom. Dewu pulled a section of newspaper from the can and took it back to the bathroom. He wet it, and gave part of it to Shihao to wipe himself with while he used the rest to wipe the floor.
Then he gave the plastic tube of money to Shihao, made sure he could not be seen from the outer room, and told him, “Back it goes.”
After he’d inserted it, Dewu asked him, “Feel better now?”
“No,” his son mumbled, pulling up his underwear and shorts.
Chapter 17
John Banks
fter his lecture to his introductory class, several students had come up to John with questions. He had tried to answer them all, which Aonly made him late for this class. His students were already in their seats, waiting, when he strode quickly into the classroom, put his briefcase down on the desk in front, and took out his lecture outline.
He had been restless again last night, but he had taken another nap in his office, conquering the tiredness he’d felt all morning. At least for now. Everyone was quiet. He finally stepped to the lectern to face the class, glancing at Miss Phim, who sat leaning forward, hands clasped on her writing chair. For some reason, she now seemed much older to him than the rest of the students, and he felt a familiarity with her that he couldn’t possibly have. He scratched his head, frowned momentarily, and then turned to the class. “Good afternoon, students. Ah, how come you’re all here early?”
“You’re late,” two shouted at him.
“Late?”
Another shouted, “Late. You’re late.”
He stroked his chin and replied, “I don’t hate anyone. Well, maybe mass murderers.”
That met smiles and some laughter. About a third of the students yelled out, “You are late.”
“Oh, I’m great. Thank you. With that encouragement, let me start the lecture.”
There was more laughter and a bustling among the students as they got their notebooks, pens or pencils, or laptops ready. Some recorded his whole lecture on DVDs or tapes.
“Any questions before I begin?” One hand went up. “Yes, Mr.
Edenfield.”
“My grandfather was in the Vietnam War. I told him about your lecture and he says that there was not much killing in the North before the war. He says the South was worse.”
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“As I mentioned last time, there was propaganda from all sides, and beliefs about the North that followed along ideological lines. So, who do we believe? I tend to believe someone like Clement, who has done exhaustive research on all sides of the question. I also tend to believe what comes out of extensive interviews with refugees. And I tend to believe what the communists say themselves for internal consumption or communist ears only, if it goes against their foreign propaganda. All this leads me to say that your grandfather is most likely mistaken. I will hand out a bibliography on Vietnam at the end of the final lecture on this country’s wars and democide. You already have the references that Clement gives in his text. I suggest you ask your grandfather, with the respect due a veteran of that awful war, how he knows what he claims.”
John looked around the classroom. “Any more questions?” There were none.
“Okay, onward.” He moved away from the lectern and made a sweeping motion with his hand to encompass the class, the first of a hundred gestures to come during the lecture. “You should remember that the communists under Ho Chi Minh were engaged in democidal mass campaigns before, during, and after the War of Independence.
You should also remember that the Geneva Agreements that ended the war also split Vietnam into an independent North and South.
“Now, this is much misunderstood. Historically, there had never been one Vietnam. There were in fact three regions, kingdoms, or states. One was Tonkin, composed largely of what later became North Vietnam after the defeat of the French. Its capitol was Hanoi. The second was Annam, or central Vietnam, with Hue the capital and its major seaport at Da-nang. The third was Cochin China, the south of Vietnam, with its capital at Saigon, or what the communists now call Ho Chi Minh City. This region was once part of the Khmer—Cambodian—
Empire.
“When the French colonized Indochina, they made Tonkin and Annam semi-independent French protectorates, with native rulers. They made Cochin China, however, a French colony. Thus, Vietnam had already been split before the French took over Vietnam, and they continued this split. After World War Two and France’s reassertion of authority over Vietnam, and in opposition to Ho Chi Minh’s demands that all Vietnam be unified, the French made Cochin China an independent republic. Trying to end the War of Independence that absorbed more French soldiers and material that France, still recovering from World War Two, could ill afford, France tried to reach an agreement with the three regions that would unify them into an independent gov-
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ernment within the French Union. Tonkin—North Vietnam—rejected it, but the Annamite emperor Bao Dai and Cochin China accepted the proposal. France thereby proclaimed Bao Dai emperor of all Vietnam in 1949.
“As I mentioned in a previous lecture, in 1954 the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu in North Vietnam, which led to the Geneva Conference, and the formalization of the split between North and South Vietnam. I also mentioned that the Geneva Agreements resulting from the conference also called for Vietnam-wide elections in two years to unify Vietnam, but they were never held. Each side blamed the other.
“Anyway, the communists under Ho Chi Minh now ruled the North by international agreement. And the political situation in the South was chaotic. Bao Dai’s government was bedeviled by warlords and autonomous sects. Its Premier Ngo Dinh Diem achieved several military victories against these divisive forces, and in April 1955 he then turned on Bao Dai himself. Through an extralegal assembly meeting, Diem had a new government declared, with himself as head. In October he held a sham referendum to endorse this bloodless coup d’etat; in one area he got ninety-eight percent of the vote.
“With this coup and corrupt referendum, Vietnam now had an authoritarian government over the South, created by Diem. It was no less opposed than Ho Chi Minh’s totalitarian communist government over the North.”
A hand.
She’s a cutie. “Yes, Miss Smyth.”
“What is the difference between these governments?”
“A totalitarian government rules everything. There is no freedom of speech, religion, or association. It controls or owns all business. Its commands are the only laws. An authoritarian government is a dictatorship that monopolizes political power, but may allow freedom of religion, nonpolitical speech, and nonpolitical association. It may leave businesses largely alone as long as they stay out of politics. Okay?”
When she nodded, he went on. “Events in the South were not what Ho Chi Minh had expected. The Bao Dai regime was supposed to disin-tegrate, but with the help of Diem, it appeared to be growing stronger, to be replaced through Diem’s coup with what seemed to be an even more effective and dedicated anticommunist government. Perhaps some nudging would help. So, as early as 1955, North Vietnam ordered those communist forces—Viet Minh—remaining in the South to carry out a low-level guerrilla war against the new regime. The North intended to expand their area of control and thwart Diem’s attempt to rid
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South Vietnam’s countryside of communist Vietnamese, whom he called Viet Cong. At the time, nothing more appeared necessary, since Ho Chi Minh still thought the regime unlikely to survive.
“Once he had successfully extended and consolidated communist power in the North, he more seriously focused on the South. In late 1956, the North’s communist politburo reevaluated the likelihood of Diem’s collapse. It decided that more revolutionary techniques would have to be applied to bring him down and temporarily replace his regime with a congenial and transitional pro-unification government. There still remained violent discontent in the South. Those sects and regions striving to keep their autonomy still rebelled against government control. Diem’s own version of land reform alienated masses of peasants, who saw it only as a way for the rich to get richer. And attempts to win the support of mountain people only embittered them when Diem had them deported en masse for, as he said, their own protection.
“But this discontent was disunited and lacking in direction. So the North moved to provide antigovernment rebels, dissidents, and guerrillas who had once fought against the French with organization and leadership, and particularly with the aim of overthrowing the so-called reactionary Diem. Thousands of former Viet Minh still remained inac-tive in the South, and had only to dig up their weapons.
“During the following months, terrorism and related assassinations significantly increased in the South. Mainly under the North’s direction, anticommunist officials and civilians, or those who created trouble for the communists, were assassinated or abducted. Often these victims were simply the best officials, or civilians who were extraordinary in some way, and thus too good an example to the people. The communists preferred corrupt and incompetent officials; those who were dishonest and criminal created disaffection and an environment for communist proselytizing.”
John stepped to the lectern to refer to his outline. “In 1957 alone, over seven hundred low-level officials were murdered this way, and around 3,750 were murdered in the following three years.” He took his outline with him when he stepped away from the lectern.
“Beginning in 1958, the North also secretly returned to South Vietnam those military and political cadre who had been sent to the North after the Geneva Agreements. But the guerrilla war against the South was still at a relatively low level, and Diem appeared to be growing stronger. With U.S. advisors and military aid, Diem’s army would soon be a well-trained and equipped force of over 135,000
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men. For the U.S., this was a matter of containment—and underline that. Containment was the dominant American foreign policy throughout the Cold War.
“Clearly, the North now had to undertake a full-scale armed struggle to, in its words, smash the Saigon regime. This decision was made during the communists’ Fifteenth Conference of the Central Committee meeting in Hanoi in January 1959. They soon issued the appropriate policies, underlined by Ho Chi Minh’s appeal in May to liberate South Vietnam.
“The North then prepared for infiltration by its regular troops, and their supply. It moved to establish bases on the Cambodian border at Tay Ninh, northwest of Saigon, and east of Ratanakiri province, in the South’s Central Highlands. And it built the first leg of the so-called Ho Chi Minh Trail through Eastern Laos and Cambodia and thence at several points into South Vietnam. Using the trail and its subsequent extensions and modifications, the communists built up their forces in the South. In 1960, the North’s killer squads increased the rate at which they were assassinating officials and village heads, killing nearly three thousand over the two years ending in 1961. By this time, the North had also infiltrated ten thousand regular soldiers and a substantial number of the forty thousand guerrillas then operating against the Diem regime.”
John stopped for a moment to give the students a mental break. This was a lot to digest and he wanted to make sure they understood it.
“Questions?”
None, so he continued. “From July 1959 to June 1960, the North carried out the Concerted Uprising Campaign, with the goal of expanding direct communist control over southern territory. They planned to do this by breaking up what they called the machinery of oppression, that is, by disorganizing Diem’s strategic hamlet program, which aimed at separating villagers from communist agents, and assassinating South Vietnam’s real authorities outside the cities—the hamlet and village officials. In this way, the communists hoped to gradually spread their control over the countryside and eventually lay siege to the cities.
“The start of North Vietnam’s war against the South, and therefore the Vietnam War, might therefore be set at 1959, or even 1958. I date it, however, as beginning in January 1960, when General Vo Nguyen Giap, head of North Vietnam’s army, unambiguously involved the North in war against the South.”
“To quote Giap, the ‘North has become a large rear echelon of our army,’” John read from his outline. “‘The North is the revolutionary
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base for the whole country.’” He looked up. “By ‘whole country’ he meant North and South Vietnam.
“The following September, the Communist Party’s Third Congress meeting in Hanoi decided to create a broadly defined political front, a façade for its war against the South. Several months later, the Saigon media reported the formation of the National Liberation Front.
“The tempo and scale of war and terror from then on increased materially; by 1964, thirty to forty-five main-force battalions of North Vietnam troops, composed of thirty-five thousand guerrillas and eighty thousand irregulars, had gained control over most of the South.
“One source claims that in 1964, the Viet Cong taxed the population in forty-one out of the South’s forty-four provinces and prevented government access to eighty percent of its territory. The National Liberation Front claimed it controlled eight million of the South’s thirteen million people, and three-fourths of the country.
“With all these losses and its troops by then dispirited, it seemed only a matter of time before Saigon succumbed to the communists. Nor did extraordinary U.S. military aid and twenty-three thousand advisors, as they were called, prove enough to even stabilize government defenses. The collapse of the South that the North had been predicting since 1954 seemed imminent.
“But wait. The U.S. rode to the rescue. Temporarily. That’s the next lecture.” He looked around. “Questions?”
Several hands rose.
“Yes, Mr. Williams.”
“I’m confused.”
“Oh, sorry, I have you on my class list as Williams.” That well-worn humor earned a few chuckles. “Forgive me, Mr. Williams. Go on.”
“I’m taking a class in Asian history, and the professor says that the Viet Cong were independent freedom fighters fighting a guerrilla war against capitalist repression in the South.”
John knew who the student was talking about: a tenured Marxist in the history department. Since John was a new professor without tenure, he knew he should be very careful in his answer. But screw it, he thought. It’s the fucking Marxists who have done most of the killing.
