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daspaceasians
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1 day ago
Long live the Republic of Vietnam!
I remember reading a book called "Sorrow of War" written by a PAVN vet that fought from start to end in the Vietnam War. The whole book is about characters that represent him and his buddies slowly realizing that everything they're fighting for is a lie and that the "glorious battles" are little more than meatgrinders where they get thrown head first into overwhelming American firepower. The author, Bao Ninh, is one of the dozen or so survivors of an 800 man battalion that got encircled and destroyed. That event is told in his book and there's a scene where his buddies and him are taking cover from an artillery barrage. At that moment, one of his buddies just stands and walks into the open as his friends shout at him to get back in cover. He just says goodbye before disappearing from their sight.
Later on, when the Americans are gone and they're fighting ARVN troops, there's a scene where they meet this pair of South Vietnamese farmers in territory they took from the RVN. The elderly farmers are very nice, have a good farm and treat them well, giving them food, homemade coffee that's made from a specific type that the farmers grow and shelter. One of the characters (who's better educated) realizes with horror that once the war is over, the communist regime will destroy everything these nice farmers have in the name of collectivization. Another one that was a farmboy wonders how these farmers can live so well while his family of farmers in North Vietnam can't.
The whole book is a depressing read as it deals with the horrors of war, loss of innocence and afterwar PTSD. The only reason why the book was able to be published in Vietnam was because so many PAVN vets were defending it, saying they related to the characters in the book. A lot of them have PTSD but can't talk about it openly as it would contradict the notion of a heroic and glorious war. The book is published with a completely different title in Vietnam and it's called the "Triumph of Love".
It's also written in a very peculiar fashion. The scenes are flashbacks jumping back and forth in the main character's memories without any warning.
There's also Duong Thu Huong who served during the war as an actress and singer entertaining the North's troops. She was in a musical unit that was close to the front to entertain soldiers through shows and had orders to sing louder than the enemy's bombs. There's a possibility that she fought battles as well. She believed that she was fighting the evil American imperialists but as she fought, all she saw were other Vietnamese fighting back. The Americans were only ever in the skies where she couldn't harm them.
As the war continued and the PAVN pushed further south, she realized slowly that her and the PAVN weren't welcome in South Vietnam. This was no liberation as she saw that the RVN's citizens lived better than the North and had more freedom. The cities weren't impoverished ruins but fairly modern cities where people plenty of consumer goods.
After the war, she would start writing books and other media that criticized the communist regime in Vietnam. She would get arrested on bogus charges on leaking state secrets because she dared publish criticism. Luckily, she would get away and spent the 90's writing texts in favor of democracy. Her writing is published outside of Vietnam because of the censorship there and she left the country in 2009 to live in France, given her advanced age.
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