A strange, whistling sound came to them from above, then other sounds, like the howling of engines high in the air. ‘Planes! Bombers!’ someone shouted and the mob in the car began scrambling in the dark.
Jet planes had found the train. High above, in the very early morning, they were circling, then diving.
Kien was slow to react. He was still dazed by the activity as he heard orders being shouted: ‘Stop the train. Alert, alert!’
As the train was slowing, terror reigned. The compartment door was jerked open with a crash and men in panic began jumping from the braking but still moving car, hitting the tracks and sleepers with sickening thuds. Kien was standing up close to the door trying to get his bearings when the first direct attack came. ‘Kien! Kien!’ he heard a girl call. It must have been Phuong, but it came from a different corner of the car, and he couldn’t see anyone in the dark. The planes dived again, strafing with increasing accuracy as flares lit the scene.
Blinded, he turned inward and saw in the blinding light the incredible sight of Phuong, lying prone on the floor, fighting a big man on top of her. She was struggling desperately, her hair flowing, her clothes being ripped from her, her mouth covered by a massive, brutal hand as he settled over her in a rhythm.
A blast hit Kien and he was flung from the car onto the rail embankment and he rolled roughly, striking metal with such force that he fainted. When he came to his chest was burning, blood had begun seeping into his mouth, bringing a salty taste, and he felt sick. He looked at the train, with cars broken but basically intact, and heard a whistle. With some urgency the engine began puffing away and the cars one by one clanged as the slack was taken up and began moving slowly on.
Kien jumped up and opened a compartment door. But Phuong was not there. Nor was she in the next, or the next. In panic, he jumped onto the steps of an escort locomotive, fearing he would otherwise be left behind. Two mechanics, wearing overalls smeared with oil, looked over at him with sympathy. Their faces were smeared with coal-dust and oil, their eyes shone chalk-white through these strange masks. One of them picked up a shovel and began stoking the furnace. The older man, the engineer, pulled on a cord and a screaming hoot was emitted. Kien sat there hardly taking any of this in. He began to fall sideways, into a faint. The young stoker supported him, wiping blood from Kien’s chin with the inside of his glove. Kien looked at the blood on the glove disbelievingly.
‘Cheer up, son,’ the old engineer told him. ‘This is kid stuff. The first whistle in the war. Nothing to it.’
As the fog lifted Kien seemed also to regain his faculties. He suddenly remembered what he thought he had seen in the compartment, and what could still be happening there. He was to remember that as his first war wound, not the blood from his injuries now staining the glove.
It was from that moment, when Phuong was violently taken from him, that the bloodshed truly began and his life entered into bloody suffering and failure. And he would understand true sacrifice; friends who would die to save others.
On the morning of 30 April, in the dying moments of fighting, when his scout units were attacking the Lang Cha Ca building in Saigon, Kien had hesitated for a moment in his run. And that second’s hesitation was paid for with the life of the only other scout still alive in his unit. They were to have entered Saigon together.
Kien had hesitated when, from the vault-like window of the ground floor of the building, he heard machine-gun fire. They had shelled the building so intensely it seemed unlikely any gunner was left alive. But there it was, machine-gun fire from inside.
Kien slowed in his advance, crouching, listening. Tu, behind him, did not slow up. Kien crouched and moved cautiously but Tu raced past him and straight into the machine-gun fire. Tu’s back burst open and blood showered into Kien’s face.
Back came the memories of Oanh, dying on the third floor of the Banh Me Thuot police station, when the policewoman – a girl really – had feigned death then shot Oanh, sacrificing her own life in doing so.
And when Cu had laid covering fire to hold off an enemy regiment while Kien’s scouts escaped after a failed raid on the ARVN Airbornes near the Phuong Hoang pass, Big Thinh, Tam and of course Cu, who had given his life in order for them to get away, were lost.
Kien and the only two others left from his scout platoon were fleeing from the southern forces who were pursuing them relentlessly in the Khanh Duong area. They were trying to reach the foot of the pass to catch up with their own units.
It was broad daylight, which made movement more dangerous.
Exhausted, they broke for a rest on the lower edge of a bamboo thicket. Tam tore a sleeve from his shirt to dress Thinh’s head wound. Kien, leaning against the bank of a ditch, rested his head between his knees. He had unslung his AK and placed it beside him. Behind them to the east the southern forces were now using artillery, setting their sights with ranging shots at the northern forces to the west, who were returning the artillery fire, also using trial shells to calibrate their sights. They were at each end of the Khanh Duong valley with the three surviving scouts in no-man’s-land between them. The whole area was alive with small-arms fire and the increasing thunder of artillery shells as each side bracketed their targets.
Tam was tending Thinh’s head wound. Kien, sitting close by, was upset at having to leave Cu behind. They would not have escaped without him giving his life for them. ‘Just the three of us left from the entire platoon,’ Kien moaned.
‘You can worry about that later, Kien,’ said Tam, dressing the wound. ‘Thank your lucky stars there’s three of us still alive. It was bloody close.’
Without warning a black shadow passed over them, passing through the bamboo tops and landing with a whump! right in front of them.
A paratrooper had landed above their hideout; he stood over them on the top of a small bank looking down at the startled trio and covering them with his AR15 rifle. Their own three AKs were still on the ground near them, but they were now useless.
The paratrooper was a tall young man with flowing hair. His red beret was tucked under his epaulettes. The rest of his uniform was spotted with dark red splotches of earth indicating he had been very active in this battle. Kien stiffened as the paratrooper put his finger on the trigger, expecting bullets to burst his chest cage open, rip his face and send explosions of his blood around the jungle floor as he had so often seen it happen to others.
‘Don’t shoot, sir,’ said Tam quickly. ‘I surrender. We surrender.’
The southerner laughed. Gesturing with his free hand he gave orders. ‘Get up, quick! Sons of bitches, the three of you.’
They rose, in fear of imminent death. Tam, in front of Kien, started to clamber up the small embankment as he’d been ordered. Suddenly, he lunged and grabbed one of the paratrooper’s legs, pulling him sharply. He started shooting but the shots went harmlessly into the air. Tam and the paratrooper tumbled back down into the ditch and Thinh shouted to Kien, ‘Run, quick, run!’
Kien was torn between going to Tam’s aid and following Thinh. More paratroopers were landing and others were now crashing through the thicket close to them. They took the only course and began running along the ditch away from Tam and the first paratrooper. The new arrivals starting shooting at them, too, and the bullets sprayed around Kien’s head and behind him as he ran zig-zagging.
‘Oh!’ cried Thinh.
That was all he heard. Just a small cry as Thinh lifted into the air and buckled and died.
Kien continued through the bamboo cover. The paratroopers were throwing everything at him including bazooka fire, but they were wide of the mark.
Kien ran until he fell from exhaustion. As he crawled on towards his lines his emotions were storming; excruciating pain at having left and lost his mates, ecstatic elation at having survived death once more.