THE OTHER SIDE : A Vietnam War Memoir

For the first 12 years of my life, I was a peasant girl in Ky La, now called Xa Hoa Qui, a small village near Da Nang in Central Vietnam. My name was Phung Thi Le Ly, but I was called Bay Ly because I was the sixth-born--bay means six.

My father taught me to love God, my family, our traditions and the people we could not see: our ancestors. He taught me that to sacrifice oneself for freedom was a very high honor. From my love of my ancestors and my native soil, he said, I must never retreat.

From my mother, I learned humility and the strength of virtue. I learned that it was o disgrace to work like an animal on our farm, provided I did not complain. “Would you be less than our ox,” she asked, “who works to feed us without grumbling?” She also taught me that there was no love beyond faithful love and that ,in my love for my future husband, my ancestors and my native soil, I must always remain steadfast.

for the next three years of my life, I loved, labored and fought steadfastly for the Viet Cong against American and South Vietnamese soldiers.

I WAS 13 THE FIRST time I saw a Viet Cong fighter up close. It was 1963, and I was in our kitchen. It was just about dark and I happened to gaze out the window at the house next door, which belonged to Manh, my teacher. While I watched, a half-dozen strangers scampered into the house and shouted, “Nobody move!” Manh’s house was often used by villagers for gambling, and at first I thought it was Republican soldiers on a gambling raid. Then Manh was led out, at gunpoint, with his hands atop his head.

I could hear his familiar voice: “But--I don’t know what you’re talking about!” and “Why? Who told you that?” As I leaned out the window to get a better view, I saw one of the strangers standing just outside. He wore black garments, like everyone else, and a conical sun hat, even though it was already dark. His sandals were made from old tires, and his weapon had a queer, curved ammunition clip that jutted down from the stock like a banana. He was so close to me that I was afraid to run away or even duck for fear that he would see or hear me.

Suddenly, one of the strangers barked an order in an odd, clipped accent (I found out later that this was how everyone talked in the North), and two of his comrades prodded Manh to the edge of the road. I could hear him begging for his life when two rifle shots cut him short. Then the strangers ran a Viet Cong flag up the pole that stood outside our schoolhouse. “Anyone who touches that flag will get the same thing as that traitor!” their leader shouted.

The guard by my window glanced over and gave me a wink. He knew I had been there all the time, and he knew I had learned the lesson he had come to teach. He followed his troop into the night.

“Manh was Catholic,” my father said later. “And a follower of President Diem. He talked too much about how Buddhists were ruining the country.”

“But we’re Buddhists, Father! He never said bad things about us!”

“No,” my father explained, “but what he said endangered others--and some of those people lost their lives. I am sorry for Manh and his wife and children. But Manh’s own careless words got him into trouble. We’ll give him a decent burial, but you remember what you’ve seen--especially when you think about talking to the soldiers.”

The next day, Republicans brought steel girders and cement and barbed wire to Ky La. They cut down the Viet Cong flag and told the farmers to build defenses around the village. Ditches from the French occupation, now overgrown with weeds, were made deeper, and bamboo trees were cut down to make spikes and watchtowers. As soon as the sun went down, the Republicans set up ambushes around the village and waited for the dogs to bark--a sure sign of intruders.

But nothing happened. After awhile, the Republican troops pulled out and left us in the hands of the Popular Force, the Dan De --local villagers who had been given small arms and a little training in how to use them. Because the war seemed to leave with the soldiers, the PF officials declared peace, and we villagers, despite Ky La’s new necklace of stakes and barbed wire, tried very hard to believe them.

A few nights later, the Viet Cong cadre and many of the villagers piled onto a huge bonfire everything the Republicans had given us to defend the village. “On this night,” the cadre leader told us, “Ky La was saved.” He gestured to the black-uniformed troops around the fire. “We are the soldiers of liberation! We are here to fight for our land and our country. Help us stop the foreign aggression, and you will have peace. Help us win, and you will keep your property and everything else you love. Ky La is our village now--and yours. We have given it back to you.”

Another soldier ran yet another Viet Cong flag up the pole. And as the troop left, the leader turned and told us:”Down the road you will find two traitors. I trust they are the last we will see in Ky La. We must leave now, but you will see us again.”

A few minutes later, we heard gunshots on the road to Da Nang. My father helped bring back the bodies. One was Manh’s younger brother--a victim because of his family connections. The other was a village busybody who had become known as a government informer. Now the informer had been informed against, and I felt that he, like Manh, had gotten what he deserved. It was my first taste of vengeance, and it was sweeter than I expected. It made even a little farm girl feel like someone important.

EVERYTHING I knew about the war I learned from the North Vietnamese cadre leaders at midnight meetings near the swamps outside Ky La. I assumed what I heard was true because it matched the beliefs we villagers already had.

We learned that Vietnam was con rong chau tien --a sovereign nation that had been held in thrall by Western imperialists for more than a century. It was a lesson that came on the heels of the French war (which began in 1946 and lasted on and off until 1954, when Vietnam was divided, North and South).

The cadre leaders said the partition of our country was nothing more than a ploy by the defeated French and their Western allies, mainly the United States, to preserve what influence they could in our country. “Why should outsiders divide the land and tell some people to go north and others south? If Vietnam were truly for the Vietnamese, wouldn’t we choose for ourselves what kind of government our people wanted?”

Those who favored America quickly occupied the seats of power formerly held by the French, but the North stayed pretty much on its own. The leader in the South, President Ngo Dinh Diem, America’s ally, was Catholic like the French and idealized by many who said he was a great patriot. The leader in the North was Ho Chi Minh, whom we were encouraged to call Bac Ho, Uncle Ho--the way we would refer to a trusted family friend. We knew nothing of his past beyond stories of his compassion and desire for an independent Vietnam. The choice of which leader best represented the hopes of our ancestors was, for us, a foregone conclusion.

The Viet Cong cadre leaders organized the village. The able-bodied men who were excused from duty with the guerrilla militia were ordered to dig tunnels that would allow the Viet Cong to pass in and out of the village without being seen. Families were told to build bunkers and to have coffins ready for Viet Cong casualties after a fight.

Children were to watch for informers and to run messages between the villagers and Viet Cong in the field. We also prepared booby traps and decoys. On the paths used most frequently by the Republicans, the Viet Cong hid cartridge traps (bullets held over a nail that discharged when stepped on) and tripwire-grenade traps of every type. Although we knew how deadly these devices could be, we children helped the Viet Cong put them in place. To us, war was still a game, and our “enemy,” we were assured, deserved everything bad that happened to him.

Cadre leaders taught us revolutionary songs and told us how to act when Americans and their “Republican lap dogs” were around.

“What will you do when the enemy sleeps in your house?” a leader asked.

“Steal his weapons!” we answered. “Steal his medicine! Steal his food!”

“And what will you do with what you steal?”

“Give it to you!” We laughed and applauded our answers. Whenever we turned something in to the Viet Cong--such as a mess kit or pocketknife--we were given handmade medals and our names were entered on the Blackboard of Honor. Because my family’s house was on a rise of ground and the Republican soldiers felt safe there to the point of carelessness, my name rose quickly on the list.

It was nearly dawn when I got home from the first meeting. My parents, still awake, asked what I had been doing. I told them proudly that I was now part of the “political cadre,” although I had no idea what that meant. I said we were to keep an eye on our neighbors and make sure the liberation leaders knew if anyone spoke to the hated Republicans. I told my mother to rejoice: Her son, my brother, Bon Nghe, who had gone to Hanoi in 1954 when the country was divided, would return to be a leader in the South, just as the leaders of our own cadre had been trained in Hanoi.

My father wore an expression I had never seen before. He said nothing. It was as if he had seen, in my shining, excited, determined little face, the first casualty of our new war.

THE PULL AND tug of the war around Ky La soon settled into a kind of routine: Viet Cong attack, government counterattack, period of calm, then Viet Cong retribution and another round of fighting. Because the Viet Cong were always low on ammunition, they seldom attacked unless they were sure of victory. Because they had so much of everything, the Republicans seldom counted their shots and called most attacks a victory. In between, Republican and American soldiers were everywhere, trying hard to “pacify” our village. They distributed food and took wounded civilians to GI hospitals.

As time went by, many Ky La children my age were “drafted” as Viet Cong fighters. But because I was my parents’ last child at home, and because my father had worked so diligently to build bunkers and tunnels for the Viet Cong, and because my older brother had gone to Hanoi, I was allowed to stay. I was inducted into the secret self-defense force; my assignment was to watch a stretch of jungle between Ky La and the neighboring village.

On a February morning in 1964, my shift started at sunrise. It was unusually chilly and a heavy mist hung in the valleys on three sides of the village, causing the world to collapse at my feet. As the sun rose, the ground opened around me--10 meters, 20, finally a hundred and more. Looming out of the mist was a mass of soldiers--Republicans, hundreds of them.

I panicked. The troops were almost in the village. I forced myself to walk toward the road and the soldiers. Every few paces, I bent to pick a sweet potato or berries and put them in the bucket we sentries carried to mask our activities. Surely, I hoped, the soldiers must think there is no more loyal Republican than this farm girl.

When I was past the troops, I dropped my bucket and peeled off two of the three shirts I always wore. The top shirt--the one I wore all day if nothing happened--was brown. Any Viet Cong seeing it would know conditions were clear in my sector. The second shirt was white, which I showed if anything suspicious had happened. The bottom shirt, the one I wore now, was black and symbolized a major threat.

I recognized a Viet Cong scout coming down the road. She stopped when she saw that I was not at my station. Slowly, she looked around until she spotted me, then scuttled back down the road. I had given my signal in time.

When the Republicans found no Viet Cong, they suspected that someone had warned the enemy and rounded up young village women who fit my description. I was arrested and put on a truck bound for Don Thi Tran district prison. It was an unpleasantly familiar ride. I had been there once before, picked up during a demonstration outside of Ky La.

That time, a young Vietnamese soldier had made me squat on the floor of an interrogation room. He asked simple questions: “What were you doing so far from your home in the middle of the night?” I answered like a terrified child, remembering my mother’s advice: If you’re too smart or too dumb, you’ll die. Play stupid, eh? That shouldn’t be too hard for a silly girl who lets herself get caught. I told the soldiers I had sneaked away from home to follow what seemed like a feast-day parade.

A blow had stopped my story and almost knocked me out. The questions, my answer and the beatings alternated, until I went limp. The next day, I was questioned again, but by a different soldier and with no beatings. For two more nights, they asked fewer and fewer questions and beat me longer. In the mornings, the kindly soldier showed horror at my wounds and asked about village life, hoping to discover through my grateful, casual conversations what the beatings did not reveal. On the third morning, I was led toward a shaft of daylight where I found my mother and my sister Ba’s husband, a policeman from Da Nang, who had negotiated my release.

Now, as the truck bumped toward the prison, I hoped that my old tormentors would not be on duty and that Ba’s husband could be summoned before the interrogation began. My wishes came true. I was in and out of Don Thi Tran in one night. Outside the prison, my brother-in-law yelled at me: “I’m finished risking my job for you and your family!”

It took me an hour to walk home. When I got there, the village was buzzing. “You’re a hero, Bay Ly,” my mother said. “The Viet Cong are calling a meeting tonight in your honor.”

That night, the woman scout testified that I had risked my life by walking through the enemy column to give my signal. The cadre leader proclaimed that his band of fighters would probably have been wiped out if the Republican attack had succeeded. “To honor you, Miss Le Ly,” he said, “we will teach all the children in the village to sing the Sister Ly song in your honor.”

The original Sister Ly was a Viet Cong fighter who was famous for killing many enemies. It was Viet Cong practice to dedicate songs to a hero’s namesake when that person distinguished herself--but it had never happened in Ky La.

The cadre leader led the singing, and the villagers clapped and cheered. My mother beamed proudly and, although my father smiled, too, I could see he was worried. He knew such attention often brought more danger than it was worth.

Within days, Republican Rangers--special forces--returned to our area. For weeks, they bombarded the region, including Ky La, and after one particularly intense bombing, I was rousted from a trench with my friend Thien. As soon as we climbed out, I knew we were in trouble. “Didn’t we arrest you a few weeks ago? You’re the girl with the filthy VC songbook!” the soldier said, shining a flashlight in my face.

“No, not me,” I protested.

He shined the light at Thien. “Then maybe it was you--”

“No, not her either!” I interrupted. “She’s from Bai Gian. She’s only been in the village a little while!”

“Bai Gian!” the soldier spat. “That hole is full of VC!” He called to his corporal. “Two more Charlie for My Thi.”

A pair of Rangers put us on the ground, frisked us and tied our hands, but cold terror had already rendered us helpless. My Thi torture camp--the maximum-security POW prison near China Beach outside Da Nang--was run by the army, not the district police. Even the toughest Viet Cong couldn’t talk about it without wincing.

In the morning, in my cell, I was awakened by screams. I got off my plywood-board bed and crouched on the cement floor, covering my head to block the sound. The cell door banged open, and two guards pulled me into the corridor. They bounced me against the walls and punched me with their fists, shouting threats and accusations as we went. Inside the interrogation room, on a table, were scissors, razor blades, surgical knives and a hand-cranked generator hooked to wires.

The interrogator ordered me to put my hands on the table. The guards strapped down my wrists and the interrogator clipped a wire to each thumb, turned the crank a few times and flicked the switch. A jolt of electricity knocked my legs out from under me, and the entire room went white. A second later, I was hanging from the straps, clambering to stand. My lips were tingly, and my fingers twitched in the harness.

“Tell me quickly,” the interrogator said, “why were you and the other girl hiding in the trench?”

“To escape the explosions--”

“Liar!” The interrogator slammed the table. “There was a battle going on. You are phu nu can bo --VC cadre girl. You were carrying supplies. Where is the ammunition hidden?”

“I don’t know anything about ammunition!”

His hand hovered near the crank, but he picked up a short-bladed knife.

“Do you know what this is for?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Good.” He put down the knife. “Release her.”

To my amazement, the guards unbuckled the straps.

“Go back to your cell,” the interrogator said. “Think about what these things could do to your body. Perhaps I’ll cut some skin off your ass for some sandals, or maybe throw a few of your fingers to the guard dogs. When you’re called again, Miss Viet Cong hero, come prepared to tell me everything you know.”

The next morning, I was taken with two other girls and tied to a post. Then a guard brushed something sticky on our feet. When I looked down, I saw that the ground was covered with anthills and the small black ants whose bites sting worse than bees. Within minutes, the girls beside me were screaming and struggling against the rope. For some reason, I stood still. The ants want the honey, not me, I thought, as if it all made sense. I will stand here and let them have it. The more the other girls struggled, the more the ants attacked them. The longer I stood still, the higher I could feel the ants climb on my body but the fewer times I was bitten.

Several hours later, the guard came back with a bucket of water. He fished around in it and brought out a glistening water snake about half the length of his arm. He dropped it into my shirt and did the same to the other girls. I knew the snakes weren’t poisonous, but their bite was painful and their slithering was, in its own way, worse than the ants. It was all I could take. I screamed at the snake, then at the guard, then at the sky. I screamed until the noon blue turned black and my voice was reduced to a squeak.

After sundown, the guards untied us and threw water all over us to retrieve the snakes. I was again taken to the interrogator’s room where the previous day’s encounter was repeated. “Where do the Viet Cong hide?” he asked. “I don’t know,” I answered. And on and on. In the end, he threw up his hands and had me taken to my cell.

When the door slammed shut, I found myself in darkness with a hollow heart, sick stomach and itchy legs. I tried to make sense of what was happening. I truly believed that this interrogator was at last convinced that I had nothing to hide, but his realization was no guarantee of release.

The next morning, however, I was taken neither to the interrogation room nor to the torture post but to the front gate. I was escorted through fences and barbed wire and told to go home.

Dumbfounded, I stood and watched the soldiers return to the compound. Then I ran for the road to Da Nang and my sister Ba’s.

My mother was waiting for me.

“How did you know I’d be here?” I asked. “Nobody gets out of My Thi in three days.”

“It cost me half your dowry,” she said. “Wash up. I’ll take you home before anything else can happen.”

As it turned out, there was no more dangerous place for me to be.

THE NEXT TIME the Viet Cong held a rally, the messenger didn’t come to our house. They couldn’t believe that anyone got out of My Thi so quickly, even with a bribe. Because the Viet Cong (and because of them, the villagers) no longer trusted us, we no longer got warnings about Republican raids or Viet Cong reprisals. To make matters worse, our estrangement from the villagers made us more trustworthy in Republican eyes, and our house was often spared while other homes were ransacked. Even my father’s attempts to protect me increased our danger. He was certain I would not survive another arrest (Thien still hadn’t come back from My Thi) and forbade me to go to the fields. He did all my work, even those chores I did for the Viet Cong--delivering rations and making up first aid kits. My absence, however, only convinced them that I was cooperating with the Republicans.

One evening, two callers appeared at our door. It was Loi and Mau*, two Viet Cong fighters who had been my sentry supervisors. “Miss Ly,” Loi, the older one, said formally. “ Moi chi di hop. You must come to a meeting.”

My first reaction was gratitude. I was being accepted back by my comrades!--or at least I was being given a chance to tell my side of the story.

We walked through the darkened street, Loi in front and Mau in the rear, as guards would escort a criminal, not a hero. Finally, it dawned on me. I am going to my trial. The people’s court followed only one script and had only one ending--usually a bullet in the head. Somehow, the cold efficiency of My Thi seemed more just than this. At least the government kept you alive to give you pain, and where there’s life, I had learned, there was hope.

We were headed for a thatched cottage where educational meetings were held. Inside, about 20 people were seated in a circle. One of the cadre leaders, a strident woman named Tram, was in the middle of a speech. Loi stopped me at the door, and I felt Mau grab my hands and tie them behind my back.

“So, I ask you, what should we do with a woman who betrays our revolution? What should be done with a woman who spies for the enemy and betrays her comrades in the field?”

“Execute her! Kill her!” voices piped back. “Teach her a lesson all traitors will learn from!”

Then it struck me that Tram never once mentioned my name. And I had not been thrust into the center of the room--the usual place for the condemned. Did the people at Tram’s meeting know it was me she was denouncing? Had I been summoned merely as a warning? Or had Tram and Loi and Mau simply decided to take the people’s justice into their own hands?

“There, do you hear that, Miss Ly?” Loi whispered in my ear. “The sentence is death.”

Then I was hustled away, down a narrow path toward the swamp. This, too, was unusual. Executions were always done in front of a crowd. Who would profit from the lesson if my body simply disappeared? We splashed across swampy ground and plowed through brush to a clearing, where there was a hole--a grave--with two shovels stuck into the loamy soil. All I could think of was my mother and father. Maybe they’re on their way to save me right now! Loi pulled me sharply, and I fell to my knees beside the grave.

I heard the bolt slide up and down in his rifle, chambering a round. I swayed on my knees, trying to think of something to say--anything--that would keep me alive. I also wondered about my ma ruoc hon --the ancestral ghost who would escort me to hell. Would she be beautiful, like the Christian death angels I had seen in Catholic picture books? Or would she be harsh and painted, like the Buddhas that guarded the sanctuaries at Marble Mountain? I concentrated on my breath. As long as I could feel it, I’d know that I was alive. I took in a deep, quivering lungful of air and--

Loi’s heavy sandal kicked me onto my side. “What’s this?” Loi asked sarcastically. “Our hero, Miss Ly, is afraid to die?” His rifle barrel bit into my temple like a drill.

My heart shouted silently into the night, Why don’t you do it--bastard! What are you waiting for? I prepared for the shattering explosion that would return my spirit to the well of souls.

Suddenly, the pressure of the gun barrel went away, and Loi turned around. I heard him whispering with Mau, then his shadow fell over me again.

“Hey, hero! Do you want to live?”

My eyes flickered open. Then I prayed that I would find the right words.

“I won’t ever talk to the enemy,” I said. “I have been shamed enough in the village.”

“You hear that, Mau?” Loi turned, and I heard Mau laugh. Loi jerked me to my feet like a puppet. He removed his peasant’s hat and tossed it to the sand. His rifle was gone, but a knife gleamed in his hand. Leaves rustled at the edge of the clearing, and I noticed Mau had disappeared. What’s happening?

Loi knocked me flat again. When I opened my eyes, his face--inches away, grotesque and distorted--blotted out the stars. His rough hands tore down my pants. His weight went away, and he stood astride me in the moonlight, frantically unbuttoning his pants.

I wriggled like a crab toward the grave, but Loi’s legs held me and I couldn’t move. His hand covered my mouth, then went to my neck to stop me from sliding. I went limp and prayed that, when it was over, Loi would kill me. What choice would he have? In Viet Cong eyes, he was now as much a criminal as I was. I prayed that my father would find my grave. Certainly, my lingering, shrieking spirit would guide him to it, and I would get the funeral I deserved. But not this.

Loi’s hand relaxed, and breath flowed back in my body. He pulled away, staggered to his feet and raised his pants. Mau was next to me. He untied my hands and gently turned me over. “Le Ly,” he whispered, as if afraid to be overheard, “listen to me. If you live, do you promise to never tell anybody about what happened?”

I pulled up my pants and stared into the younger man’s face. “I didn’t deserve this, Mau,” I said bitterly. I saw Loi across the clearing, urinating into the bushes. Loi called over his shoulder, “She’s going to tell her family, isn’t she?”

“No,” Mau shouted. “She’s too ashamed. Aren’t you, Le Ly?”

I didn’t say anything. Loi came back and picked up his rifle. “We could have killed you, but we didn’t,” he said. “Consider yourself lucky. If you ever say anything about this, we’ll wipe out your whole family. Do you understand?”

I nodded sullenly.

They decided to take me to my cousin’s house, which lay across the river, for the night. Loi knocked on the door, and my cousin Thum answered it with a baby in her arms. They spoke a moment. Thum’s eyes got big, and Loi and Mau turned and went into the jungle. “Remember,” Loi said over his shoulder, “we’ll come for her in the morning.”

Thum took me inside and poured water for me to wash. I didn’t tell her what had happened--I was too ashamed and I assumed that Loi had lied about it anyway. I wrapped myself in a blanket and lay on the bed. Just as I was about to go to sleep, someone knocked on the door. I heard a male voice. Mau came into the room and said, “Miss Ly, you must come with me.”

Like a zombie, I got up and trudged after him. When we were just beyond sight of Thum’s house, he whirled and pushed me down on the ground. I screamed and covered my face; he sat on my stomach and aimed his rifle at my head.

“I’m sorry, Miss Ly,” he said. “but this is something I have to do.”

I swallowed hard and closed my eyes. I tilted my head up to give him a better shot. I didn’t want him to miss or just wound me. I wanted it all to be over--to have peace. But Mau didn’t fire. Instead, rough male hands again tore down my pants. I opened my eyes to see Mau struggling feverishly with his belt, the rifle crooked absently in his arm. It would have been easy to disarm him and shoot him--but what then? Would hunting down Loi and killing him, too, restore my virginity? Would accusing two Viet Cong who wronged me make the cadre think I had wronged the Viet Cong any less?

Drugged by hate and fear and confusion, I just lay back and let Mau do what he had to do. When he was done, he got up, buttoned his pants and offered me his hand. Dizzily, I put on my pants and got up without his help. He walked me back to Thum’s house, then ran when she opened the door.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Nothing.” I said. I didn’t even care enough to give her a decent lie.

I went back to bed, and Thum put out the lamp. While I began the endless wait for sleep, I tried to plan what to do in the morning. Either Loi or Mau would come, or they would not. Either I would be raped again, or I would not. I might be arrested again by the Viet Cong, or perhaps by the Republicans--but what did it matter? The bullets of one would just save bullets for the other. Both sides in this endless, stupid war had finally found the perfect enemy. A terrified peasant girl who would endlessly and stupidly consent to be their victim--as all of Vietnam’s peasants had consented to be victims, from creation to the end of time.

From now on, I promised myself, I would flow only with the strongest current and drift with the steadiest wind--and not resist. To resist, you have to believe in something.

* The names of these Viet Cong fighters have been changed.