The Man Who Stained His Soul

If everything had gone as we’d planned, I would have nothing now to write about the battle against Che post that year.

Painstakingly accurate plans had been drawn up under the close guidance of the Command Staff. New intelligence about shifts in the enemy’s effective strength and weaponry was received every day. The diagram of Che post’s defenses was drawn and redrawn so many times it reached a point of absolute perfection. Each enemy fire point was scouted over and over and marked by a different symbol on the diagram. Victory couldn’t be more certain.

But war isn’t a game in which only one side fires and the other eats bullets. The enemy major in charge of Che post was an experienced soldier. Ignoring the deliberate provocations of our recons-by-fire, he kept the two heavy machine guns he had concealed in the command bunker silent. It wasn’t until our company burst through the barbed wire and advanced to the center of the compound in an arrow-shape formation that those guns opened up, catching us in a cross-fire.

Our attack was stopped dead. The company was pinned down, with everyone’s belly glued to the earth and no one daring to lift his head. It was a miracle we could keep our heads and limbs intact without breathing dirt.

This tactic hadn’t been anticipated in the combat plan, and now the commanders couldn’t react. Usually, once the company engaged, the Party cell would confer urgently, exchange ideas and make timely decisions. But this time, Luat, the company commander, was stuck with our front unit, the commissar was in the rear of the formation, and the deputy commissar was helping to get the wounded dragged out of the barbed wire and bandaged up. Pulling out his revolver, the commissar fired up into the air and sprang forward, yelling: “Comrades, advance . . . .”

His order was cut short by a bullet.

Luat crawled down the column to me and jerked his chin at the fire point: “Take out the left side and leave the right to me.”

We divided the front unit into two V-shaped lines. Half of the men crept after Luat, the other half after me. Only Vinh lay prostrate in his place.

I crawled back to him.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Vinh’s voice was strained. “How can we advance--the bullets are pouring in like rain.”

“Would you rather lie here waiting for death?”

“Death’s waiting up there also.”

With the bullets zeroing in on us, this wasn’t the time or place to try to turn a coward into a brave soldier. “Give me your cartridge belt and grenades,” I yelled at him.

“Then I’ll be killed in the enemy’s counterattack.”

My blood was boiling. I yanked his submachine gun from his hands. “I have to advance. Hang onto the company flag.”

I crawled low under the fire keeping my eyes on the muzzle flashes. Suddenly the fire pecking at us from the bunker’s loophole ceased. The enemy gunners must have been changing the belt. I sprang up and rushed the bunker. Someone threw a grenade at me. I snatched it up and tossed it back into the loophole. Then I thrust the barrel of my rifle through the opening and sprayed in a full magazine, sweeping the area inside.

Shouts of joy sounded from all around. Fourth Company had penetrated the base. But what followed was our hardest battle. We struggled to take one fortified position after another and it was nearly morning before we managed to blow up their headquarters.

Afterward, the battalion commander ran up to us. “Hurry and scrounge up what supplies and equipment you can,” he said. “It’s nearly day--you’ll start shitting when the enemy’s long-range artillery begins firing.”

I turned around to see Vinh standing nearby. His left trouser leg was sticking like glue to his thigh. I tore out the bandage I had tucked into my belt.

Luat seized my hand. “Don’t bother. He just pissed himself,” he said nodding at Vinh’s saturated trouser. “Pissed on his own soul.”

We withdrew to Noi hamlet four kilometers from Che post. Air raid shelters had been dug there by the local militia. Those units that had been held in reserve during the attack were now sent out to guard the perimeter of the hamlet, and huge saucepans full of chicken gruel were prepared for us in each house. But after our night of shooting, crawling and rolling through the mud we could only take a few mouthfuls. It was better to sleep than to eat. As soon as we lay down on our straw mats, we didn’t know if heaven was up or earth was down.

Suddenly I was awakened by someone pulling me to my feet. Still in a daze, my eyes half-sealed, I dimly heard Luat order me to get the unit dressed in full uniform and equipment. “Get everybody over to the battalion headquarters--they have a new job for you.”

“Yes, commander.”

When we arrived at headquarters, the battalion commander told me that a foreign comrade had come to shoot a documentary film. Since the battle was over, it would be necessary to reconstruct the fighting for him. The first shot would be the raising of the company flag over the roof of Che post.

I stood dumbfounded for a moment. “Commander, after the fighting we policed the battlefield and returned here at once. We didn’t have time to raise a flag.”

“Then you’ll have to raise one now.”

“Sir, we don’t have a flag.”

“What do you mean--what about the Victory flag the regimental commander handed to you before you left? Didn’t he give it to your unit commander, in front of all your men?”

“I passed it to Vinh when the C.O. ordered us to advance. After I took out the heavy machine gun, the rest of the company charged forward. Vinh came along with them, but he forgot to bring the flag.”

“Why didn’t you look for it?”

“I did, but I couldn’t find it. When I went back to that place, all I saw were three mortar craters.”

The battalion commander turned to the press liaison officer and told him to get Third Company’s Victory flag instead.

The foreign comrade was waiting for us at regimental headquarters. Smiling, he shook our hands. “Glory to Vietnam; of thou I’m proud,” he said.

We tightened our lips to keep from bursting into laughter.

The “reconstruction” of the flag-raising didn’t go as easily as we thought it would. The machine gun company set up four observation posts to watch for air raids. An infantry company deployed inside Che post, ready to take on any enemy parachutists who might try to pounce upon us. And our unit, directed by the foreign comrade, had the task of reenacting the devastation of the command bunker. Unfortunately, when the explosive charges were blown, a piece of concrete from the bunker hurled itself at my knee, knocking me to the ground. I immediately tried to rise, but I couldn’t stay on my feet. A medic helped me off the site and stopped my bleeding with a bandage. But I was unable to act in the next scene.

Luat asked the interpreter if the director would like to choose another soldier to raise the flag. The foreign comrade nodded and strolled along our ranks, gazing at us one by one. He turned and coming down the line once again, then stopped in front of Vinh and pointed at his chest. “All right. This soldier will be the flag bearer.”

Before we began reenacting again, the battalion commander reiterated once again how important making the film was, how it would be seen all over the world. Any idea the director had was to be obeyed as strictly as an order on the battlefield.

Luat raised his hand, as if to object, but dropped it back down. After that, he didn’t seem to act out his role with any enthusiasm.

The sappers exploded eight “square cakes” (satchel charges) around the post, allowing the cameraman to shoot the scene through a haze of smoke and fire.

Then came the raising-of-the-flag scene. Under the foreign comrade’s direction, Luat waved his revolver and sprang forward, followed by Vinh raising his flagpole high, and then the rest of the unit. Stop, the director called. Then--action! Vinh scrambled up to the roof of the headquarters and struck the enemy’s flagpole with the sole of his foot, sending the flag to the ground. With his legs firmly spread, he stood and waved the Victory flag. The rest of the unit flanked him on both sides. They raised their submachine guns and shouted joyfully.

But the scene had to be reshot three times, as we seemed somewhat sluggish. Taking Che post had been a difficult task, the director explained through the interpreter. Could we please then try a little harder to demonstrate to the whole world how high the morale was in our army?

Finally the filming was over. Staggering with fatigue, we stumbled back to Noi hamlet. Before packing up his equipment, the foreign comrade shook our hands.

“Glory to Vietnam. Of thou I’m proud.”

Soon after we were back in battle and had no time to think about that scene. We were happy enough after a fight to simply find that our friends had come through intact. Then the war ended and after a while we turned in our rifles and came home and each of us tried to find ways to make a living. We forgot all about the flag raising at Che post.

One day, not long after the war, I was getting my hair cut and reading a newspaper to pass the time. A large headline flashed up at me. The documentary film, “The Path of Blood and Fire,” had just premiered. The words: “Of thou I’m proud” came unbidden into my mind. Under the headline was a photograph of Vinh, spreading his legs on the roof of the headquarters’ bunker, waving the Victory flag. He was flanked on both sides by my friends, raising their submachine guns, shouting joyfully.

I knew it was merely a reenactment of the battle. But still my heart beat swiftly in my chest as I read the caption: “A still from ‘The Path of Blood and Fire’: ‘Raising the flag at Che post.’ ”

I felt it wasn’t worth talking about. Like most veterans, my life was taken up with a day-to-day struggle just to make ends meet. None of us displayed our citations on the wall or pinned our medals on our chests. It was better to spend our energy keeping our plates full. At any rate, the movies were always full of such tricks and gimmicks. When the pigshed in my village cooperative had been filmed, the crew had gathered the biggest pigs from each family and stuck them all together, rubbing crushed garlic on their mouths to keep them from biting each other. And when they’d wanted to shoot our model fish pond, they’d brought baskets full of huge fish and loaded them into the boats so it looked as if the fish had been drawn into the boats with nets.

The victory over Che post had not only been the proudest moment of our battalion, but of the entire division. The division commander had even had the photo of the flag raising enlarged to the size of a double bedsheet and displayed on the center wall of the division museum. The veterans of the engagement knew very well that it was only a reenacted scene. But raw recruits gazed admiringly at Vinh waving the Victory flag and thought the photo had been taken on the spot, under enemy fire.

That still from the film was, admittedly, very beautiful: a People’s Army soldier standing dignified and undaunted on top of the enemy’s headquarters. One artist used the photograph as a model for a drawing put on a stamp to be distributed on Army Day. It was also featured in calendars, though after the veterans saw that they began to mutter among themselves. Finally, on Division Day, they approached the commissar. He shrugged and said that it was up to the artists to decide what particular images and symbols should be used--it wasn’t possible to capture the entire division in one photograph.

*

Twenty years passed.

One day a director named T. Stevenson came to Vietnam to shoot a film called “Blood and Flowers.” After visiting several studios to view films made during the war, he asked the Minister of Culture to arrange interviews with those people who were in the sequences he wished to buy.

The ministry telephoned the army’s political department, which in turn rang up the division. By this time, the old commanders had retired and their replacements believed it had been Vinh who’d advanced through enemy fire to plant the flag on the Che post. The division commander ordered his political officers to locate Vinh and bring him to headquarters in order to meet Stevenson.

The original “Blood and Fire” was screened again, all over the country.

And everything Vinh told Stevenson fit the reenactment filmed by the foreign comrade, as if it had all really occurred. He managed to forget that at the time he had been glued to the earth, so filled with fear that he’d pissed on his own soul.

Luat came to see me. “Vinh must have thought we’d all died,” he said.

I tried to console him. “What earthly good can the truth of the matter do for us soldiers now?”

“If something that we saw with our own eyes can be distorted this way, then what can happen to other events that happened fifty or a hundred years ago? I’ve written a letter to the Central Committee confirming that there was no flag raising at Che post. Will you sign it?”

“All right--I’ll sign.”

“Good. Add your rank, please, and the code word for our unit.”

I wrote it all down. Months later, I found out that Luat’s wife had had to sell their only pig in order to finance Luat’s trips to visit his former comrades-in-arms and get their signatures. He made scores of copies of his letter and sent them all to the appropriate agencies.

The whole division was thrown into an uproar. But no one dared take down the huge photograph hanging in the Division Museum. And no one dared throw away the millions of stamps and thousands of calendars that had been printed.

The division commander arranged a private meeting with us. He asked us not to put everyone into a quandary. The attack against Che post had been the largest battle in the history of the division; it was the pride of the entire unit. Although he couldn’t take down the photograph right at the moment, he assured us he would eventually find a substitute.

But I was certain one would never be found, not in a hundred years.

One day, Luat’s son rushed to my house.

“Uncle, there’s something wrong with my father’s stomach. He asked to see you before he went onto the operating table.”

I cycled over to the hospital.

Luat signaled to me to approach his bed. He grasped my hand firmly.

“You’re a writer. You should never write a half-truth or turn a lie into truth. You have to write what you saw; there was no flag raising at Che post. Write it immediately and read it to me.”

“Don’t speak so ominously. A lie can’t be corrected in a day. But don’t worry, of course I’ll write about it.”

The operation was successful. Luat survived. The photo of Vinh waving the flag still hangs in the Division Museum. And recently, Vinh was invited by Stevenson to visit the director’s country and talk about the flag raising as a way of promoting “Blood and Flowers.” He was lucky, that guy. If he’d been so mortified and humiliated when I’d asked him to give me his cartridge belt and grenades that he’d gotten up and charged the loophole and blocked it with his body, he wouldn’t have been alive now to brag to foreigners.

Abroad, how can people know that Vinh pissed on his own soul and his trousers were only a prop?