Crossing the River
The air washing over us feels as though we’re riding right into the mouth of a huge blast furnace. We’re somewhere between Buôn Ma Thuột and Kon Tum, traveling north on Highway 14. Forty-five years ago, this part of Việt Nam was being torn to pieces by war. I wasn’t here in 1969; my part of the war took place in Quảng Ngãi province, 250 kilometers to the northeast, over the Trường Sơn Mountains. It will take another day and a half to get there.
Lynn is riding with our guide, Owen, on his much-repaired Harley. It isn’t a real Harley, but a company in China made a pretty good imitation; visually, anyway. I’m riding with Hau, a South Vietnamese Army veteran. His motorcycle makes no pretense of being anything other than Chinese.
There’s a lot of road work under way on this part of Highway 14, but like many things in Việt Nam, it’s difficult to tell whether it’s being improved or demolished. The road is rough and dusty, and the few work crews in evidence seem to be engaged in moving piles of dirt or broken rock from one place to another.
Hau’s motorcycle is pretty rough, too. When we have a near miss (or a near hit) with a pot hole, or the highway makes an unexpected transition from asphalt to gravel, the back of the bike slams down, metal on metal. Actually, butt on metal on metal.
We pull over at a small shop, hoping to find bottles of cold water. We may be in luck: They have a refrigerated case, which is a rarity here in Middle-of-Nowhere, Việt Nam. Much like the road crews, though, there is no one around. Owen walks toward the back of the shop, calling loudly in his passable Vietnamese, while Hau goes into the shop next door, and + tries to walk off her soreness.
That’s when I find it, lying amid the gravel and trash; forgotten, perhaps, or lost. It’s about 2 cm in diameter, and made of ivory-colored resin. On one side, inscribed within a circle, is a Chinese character. I know what this is – a piece from a popular strategy game called Cờ Tướng – but I have no idea what the character means. I pick it up, dust it off on my pants, and show it to Hau.
“It means Soldier,” he says.
Owen, overhearing, says, “It’s a Knight, like in chess.”
“No, no,” Hau says. “Soldier. Same as Pawn.”
I look at it for a moment, then put it in my pocket, thinking, Soldier sounds better than Pawn.
帥
(General)
The first time I arrived in Việt Nam, it was the middle of a hot, damp October night in Sài Gòn. I was a 22-year-old, inexperienced infantryman and, like thousands of others, I’d never been this far from home.
I saw a lot and did a lot during that year of my life. I occasionally tried to kill people. It’s easier to see the reason looking back, but I think I sensed it even then. I wasn’t trying to kill Việt Cộng or North Vietnamese soldiers in order to stop communism from spreading throughout South-East Asia. That was already happening by 1969 anyway. I was trying to kill them for the simple reason that they were trying to kill me.
Without an over-riding ideological or patriotic reason to travel 10,000 miles to kill foreigners and lay waste to their country, war becomes a personal affair; an exercise in trying to keep you and your friends alive until it’s time to go home. Most of us knew that we were just marking time, avoiding death, until the American government could figure out how to gracefully extricate itself from Việt Nam; as if there’s a graceful way to get out of a war.
仕
(Advisor)
There are seven different pieces used in Cờ Tướng: General, Advisor, Elephant, Horse, Chariot, Cannon, and Soldier. Each side has two of each piece, except the General and the Soldier, of which there are one and five, respectively. The game is played on a board divided into a grid nine lines wide (called files) and ten lines long (called ranks). Pieces start at designated points – the intersections of lines – and they move from point to point during the game. Between the fifth and sixth ranks is the River, an open strip separating the opposing armies. Soldiers can cross the river, but they can’t go back.
相
(Elephant)
The area my infantry battalion operated in was divided into a grid that was composed of sixteen lines from west to east and eleven from north to south. The grid was laid over the countryside with mathematical disregard for rice paddies and mountains and rivers. The points we moved between were map coordinates: places where we slept or ate, a village we were supposed to search, or an ambush or a booby trap we didn’t know about until it was too late. Some of the intersections were the end point of a man’s life, from which a medevac helicopter carried him away, to begin his silent journey home.
傌
(Horse)
Centered on the board, between the first and third, and eighth and tenth ranks, are square zones marked by diagonal lines connecting the opposite corners. These are the Palaces or Fortresses. The Generals and the Advisors start in their respective Palaces and are not allowed to leave them. A player wins Cờ Tướng by capturing the other person’s General.
俥
(Chariot)
Chu Lai was the headquarters base of the Americal Division, of which my unit was a component. The base was more fortress than palace, although the Generals and their advisors did have a lot of cushy amenities that made their part of Chu Lai a little more like California than Việt Nam. I don’t know if the war would’ve ended sooner if the North Vietnamese or Việt Cộng had captured our Division’s Commanding General. Perhaps if they’d gotten their hands on Gen. William Westmoreland, the military commander in Việt Nam, or better yet, Robert McNamara, that would’ve done it.
I would’ve preferred the General. At least McNamara expressed regrets and doubts about his part in the war before he died. Westmoreland, on the other hand, went to his grave defending the war and the decisions he made there. His certitude did nothing to bring back the thousands who went to their graves not believing in the war at all, but who were compelled to fight it nevertheless.
That all happened a long time ago now; chronologically, if not emotionally. Years pass, bodies age, survivors die, but the memories remain. They continue to burn, like a distant sun, slowly eating away at itself, until it finally burns out.
Someday, there will be no one left who will remember. Perhaps then the pain and the sadness will be gone, but I doubt it. There will always be the losses and devastations of new wars, in new places, which will be fought by young men and young women who believe what their government tells them and who, like many thousands before them, will respond with their innocent patriotism, and their blood.
炮
(Cannon)
The rules governing movement vary. Generals move one point orthogonally and Advisors one point diagonally. Elephants move two points diagonally, but they cannot cross the River.
The Horse moves one point orthogonally, then one point diagonally, while Chariots and Cannons can move any distance orthogonally, but they can’t jump intervening pieces. Soldiers are the only piece that can’t retreat. They move one point at a time; always forward, never back.
Opposing pieces are captured by landing on them. There’s no provision for burning a point, or spraying it with Agent Orange, or emptying the load of a B-52 on it. Perhaps a more modern version of the game could find a way to include those options.
兵
(Soldier)
This is my third return trip to Việt Nam. I keep coming back because I’m trying to sort out the original experience. Each time, I find another little piece that fills in a blank. Not in my memories – those are quite clear – but in my heart, or perhaps my spirit; if there’s any difference between the two.
You can’t see burning villages, or bodies bloating in the sun from violent death, or children burnt by napalm, and not have something die inside. You can’t miss death by inches or seconds, and not lose a piece of yourself that you didn’t know you had when you were 22 years old. You can’t lose friends, men who will never see home again, never taste a lover’s kiss, never again see the sun rise over a new day, and not wonder why they died in Việt Nam, and for what higher purpose were they killed.
The loss and the wondering neither diminish nor soften with time. They’re like an empty vessel that nothing seems capable of filling. So you return to those places where your friends died, where you almost died, where you saw and did things both exhilarating and tragic; looking looking looking, not sure for what, not sure if the emptiness can ever be filled, if the sadness and regret and anger can ever be plowed under, washed away, or purified in some ritualistic manner that, if not release you, will at least provide you with a little peace, or perhaps acceptance, in the years you have left to live with the memories.