The Shadow of Arms

by Hwang Sok-Yong

  He turned his head and, with his chin, pointed vaguely. Outside, the bombing seemed to have ceased and it was relatively quiet.

  “Sir, shall I bring the meal in here?” An orderly said from the door of the bunker.

  The company commander replied, “No, we’ll have it outside. Would you care to eat, sir?”

  “Is it rations?” Pham Quyen asked.

  “No, sir. I believe it’ll be something special.”

  The company commander put on his helmet and they walked outside. Down the levee in the field, a fire had been built with broken ration crates and iron pots were hanging over it on a makeshift rack. The soldiers were filing past by squads to get rice and other food. There were some kitchen utensils, apparently taken from private houses in the nearby village. In the shade under some palm trees, a mat had been spread out and a table set for the officers. There was boiled chicken, pickled vegetables with nuoc mam, salad, and even a local wine sealed in earthenware urns. The wine must have been dug up from somewhere, for there was still damp clay stuck on the bottom of the urns.

  “Field operations are tough, but then they sometimes have their own charm, like this,” the battalion commander said to Major Pham.

  “There’s a wizard in each company who manages to conjure up some precious provisions,” the company commander remarked. “They say it takes a special nose to sniff out the wine and liquor.”

  After the meal they sat there and drank a green tea the orderly had brewed over the fire. A message came in over the wireless. The company commander took the communication himself.

  “We’ve got a problem, sir,” he said to the battalion commander. “During the search of the village they found a lot of civilians in the air raid shelter.”

  “Can’t they be transported?”

  “No, sir. We have neither the manpower nor the time. At this rate, it’ll be dark by the time the sweep through the village is over. But we can’t just leave them where they are.”

  “Any precedent for this?” Pham Quyen asked.

  The company commander hesitated. “If there are reserve forces or another detachment available, they can lead them over for transport, sir.”

  “I’ll leave it to your discretion,” Pham Quyen said to the battalion commander.

  “Shall I order a platoon to come back in from the Tungdik area, sir?”

  All three men knew that that made no sense. The company was now in the middle of a village that had just been demolished. Pham Quyen came up with a phrase that fit the situation perfectly.

  “Respond that evacuation will not be necessary.”

  The company commander picked up the transceiver and repeated: “This is HQ, no need to evacuate. This is HQ, no need to evacuate.”

  On the other end a voice said, “I read you, out.” The wireless then was cut off. The three men sat in silence for a while.

  “Let’s head back to Ha Thanh.”

  Pham Quyen was the first to rise. The two majors got back in their Jeeps and drove off to the east along the river. They entered the town and then stopped on the street on the way to the district office.

  “I’m going on to An Hoa. I’ll see General Van Toan and return here by evening.”

  “Have a pleasant trip, sir,” the battalion commander said, and then added, “I understand that the order you gave earlier was inevitable.”

  Major Pham had turned to leave, but he stopped and glared back at the battalion commander. “What is that supposed to mean?” he asked. The battalion commander seemed to be passing judgment.

  “The ultimate responsibility for this operation lies with the corps and division commanders,” Pham Quyen spat at him. “Full credit for the victory will go to the field commander—you.”

  Day three of the operation. The command post at Bien Jiang had been attacked by the enemy and the fighting in the Tungdik area was over. On the An Hoa side, a search-and-destroy force had been sent out to deal with the two riverside villages between Tabik and Quang Lung, and had succeeded in taking one village. In Quang Lung, another platoon was standing by for mobilization and was to move into the ravines with another platoon coming up from Lien Hiep. The main combat company at Ha Thanh was going to cut over southeast to the Tung Duk region, while the company from An Hoa was set to sweep down from Bien Daio to the southwest, veering to the right of Hill 3383, and then wait there at the northeast corner of the maze of ravines to link up with the search-and-destroy platoons converging from Quang Lung and Lien Hiep.

  The entire morning, 155 mm artillery from the support division had been carpeting the ravine area with shells. On the initial day of operations, the bombardment had aimed only to intimidate, but now the shelling was saturation-style, with explosions spaced only thirty feet apart. The shells were mainly high explosives, white phosphorus, and jellied gas. The goal of the bombardment was to demolish the jagged surface topography of the ravines and to collapse the natural caves beneath. No matter how well the NLF and North Vietnamese hideouts had been concealed, they would be unable to withstand this attack. As General Van Toan had said, an artillery barrage of this intensity would permanently change the topography of the area.

  Once the bombardment was over, the helicopter gunships went aloft for their turn. Not even a lizard would be left alive in the ravines. Pham Quyen got aboard one of the gunships with the battalion commander, who was headed to one of the advance bases at the site of one of the demolished villages at the mouth of the ravines to the west of Lien Hiep bridge.

  As they approached from the sky, what was left of the village came into sight. Black smoke was streaming up from the ravines, and the red earth upturned in the bomb craters on the traumatized hills looked like the meat inside of mangos. The piles of loose earth would wash down the valleys with the monsoon rains, filling the upper stretches of the Thu Bon River with silt, and gradually over the rainy season they would be deposited downstream in the Jiang Hoa fields, causing unavoidable flooding.

  The helicopter was descending cautiously and would hover just above the ground at the entrance to the village so the men could climb down. A group of soldiers was visible on the ground, and had set of a smoke flare in an empty space to guide the helicopter pilot. As Major Pham and the battalion commander climbed down, the pilot said, “Use the supply chopper for your return, sir.”

  To avoid the dust in the propwash, they covered their heads before opening their eyes. What had settled on their uniforms and faces was not dust, but white ash and black soot from the smoldering inferno. Everything in the village had been destroyed. The roofs had all been incinerated, and the plaster walls of the houses were blackened and either crumbled down or punctured and looking like tattered rags. What once had been wooden pillars now looked like shrunken animal bones as they still burned, emitting white smoke.

  Burnt corpses and charred furniture and tools could be seen scattered in the ruins. The commander of the search-and-destroy company, who had been standing nearby with other soldiers, rushed over and saluted the two majors. The sentries on lookout for snipers were standing in the empty field with their rifles trained on the jungle and the smoking ravines. Everyone’s eyes were red, and the corners of those eyes seemed taught with bloodlust. The battalion commander glanced at his watch.

  “The search-and-destroy team is ready to head out?”

  “Yes, sir. They’re standing by at the mouth of the ravine.”

  “Do you plan to set up a defensive post at this village?”

  “No, sir. A platoon from headquarters will be stationed at the entrance to the ravines, and two other platoons will be set up to block the left side of the highlands and the eastern approach to Lien Hiep. It’ll be as easy as capping the neck of a bottle, sir.”

  Slowly, the officers moved ahead toward the center of the village, and the soldiers standing guard trailed behind them.

  “Where did you find the suspected VC yesterday
?” Major Pham asked.

  “Right over there, sir.”

  The company commander pointed to a bamboo grove where several soldiers were pacing back and forth. The company commander spoke effusively as he walked alongside Major Pham.

  “After the gunships finished strafing, the company forces blocked both sides of the village and our second platoon swept right into the heart of the burning village. As we passed this way, one soldier said he thought he heard a baby crying from over there, in the direction of the bamboo. Just by looking, we never could’ve guessed anyone was hiding there.”

  They walked over and made their way in through the thick wall of bamboo. About a dozen soldiers, apparently a squad team, had taken off their shirts and were busily working, spreading out army ponchos. The outer ring of the grove was dense with bamboo, but inside was mostly clear and full of knee-high grass. The soldiers were loading dead bodies onto the ponchos and then carrying them over to a central pile. Decomposition already seemed to have begun, for there was an awful smell like overboiled salt.

  “The entrance was there, sir.”

  It was a low wooden box about the size of a dinner table, filled with soil and planted with grass. When the box was pulled down over the entrance hole, it seemed unlikely to arouse any suspicion. The entrance to the underground air raid shelter had collapsed completely, revealing the interior below. It looked as though the villagers had dug out a big hole in the ground, lined it with thick bamboo branches as supports, filled the gaps up with plaster, and then covered it all with dirt. Blown-up body parts were still strewn all over inside the shelter.

  “Grenades?”

  “We shot a rocket in first, then tossed in grenades, sir.”

  The buzzing of flies could be heard from the dark interior. Pham Quyen threw a glance at the space behind him where the corpses had been laid out in piles.

  “What are you doing now?”

  “We’re searching for captured weapons and documents, sir,” the company commander said. “We must make an accurate estimate.”

  There may have been a guerrilla or two among them, but Pham Quyen could readily see that most of the dead were ordinary villagers. In one corner of the shelter, an entire family had been killed while tightly embracing each other.

  “Sweep the bodies back in and burn it,” Pham Quyen said.

  “We’ll still need a record of the numbers and identities, sir,” the battalion commander said.

  “We’ll do our best to finish the task, sir,” the company commander said.

  Once again Pham Quyen turned back and surveyed the carnage laid out on the grass. He saw the whiteness of a brain spilling out of a head onto the ground, the swarm of flies hovering around it. The flies were attracted not only by the corpses, but by the smell of living and sweating flesh. Pham Quyen rushed out of the bamboo grove, covering his mouth and nose. The battalion commander followed behind and asked, “Are you all right, sir?”

  “Yeah. Just felt a little nauseated.”

  The battalion commander spat, then took Pham Quyen by the arm. “Don’t worry, sir,” he said in a low voice. “Things like this are common in jungle operations. Besides, it’s not as if you handed down a written order.”

  Running out of patience with the battalion commander’s shrewdness, Pham Quyen sharply snapped back at him, “Don’t you ever forget that the commander of this operation is you. I’m just a liaison officer.”

  But the battalion commander refused to back down. “Sure, we’re merely carrying out orders from Division and Corps. But, as I said, don’t worry too much, sir.”

  “Worry?”

  “Right. Where are we, anyway? Most of these highlanders are not even ethnic Vietnamese. In the mountains from here to the Laotian border they’re mostly Katu tribesmen. The whole tribe has joined the NLF. The Katu act as guides on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Our men don’t think twice about this sort of thing.”

  “Is it like that all the way to the western edge of the jungle?”

  “It’s safe to assume so.”

  Pham Quyen let out a heavy sigh. “These mountains and jungles belong to the Vietnamese people. From now on, don’t evacuate any of the villagers who stay behind in any of these villages.”

  The search-and-destroy platoon set off for the ravines. The other units began to excavate trenches and put up bunkers. For a passing moment, Pham Quyen wondered if the cinnamon-harvesting operation had not been insane. But he immediately shook the idea out of his mind. As long as the cinnamon was out there, he had no choice.

  32

  “Look, a truck is coming in,” said Toi.

  “I wonder what that is. We’ll call the clerk at lunchtime and ask him.”

  Ahn Yong Kyu was sitting with Toi at the mouth of the second alley between the main streets into the new and old markets, overlooking the warehouse of the Puohung Company. They were lounging on plastic chairs, cans of beer in hand, around a white table set up out in front of a bar.

  “Wait a minute, it’s eleven.”

  Toi looked up at the clock and Yong Kyu said, “Go and check it out.”

  “What if they get suspicious?”

  “Don’t worry. Let’s get some fruit to eat.”

  Toi did not agree. “Old man Hien, he’s a sly old fox. He already knows who I am.”

  Yong Kyu squashed the empty beer can and got to his feet. “We’re making daily reports, so we can’t omit mentioning that load, can we? I’ll walk by and find out. Then I’ll meet you at the Chrysanthemum Pub. Wait about five minutes and then pass by as I do and we’ll see what you can find out.”

  “All right.”

  His hands in his pockets, Yong Kyu sauntered down the alley with an air of terminal boredom. Both sides of the alley were packed tight with hole-in-the-wall shops, carrying everything from candy and coffee to small but sturdy tools. Everything was US-made. Those tiny shops with nostril-sized doors should not be underestimated, for behind the miserable facades there might be a big warehouse in the basement, or the entire house itself might be a storage space. Yong Kyu repeated to himself the license plate number of the truck that was blocking the alley in front of the Puohung Company. The workers were busy unloading boxes from the covered bed of the truck and quickly moving them inside. A young American soldier who seemed to be the driver of the truck was watching the activity with a beer in his hand. Yong Kyu lingered for a few minutes, staring as if amazed by they way they worked. He recognized a fat American sergeant, with whom he had recently become familiar, sitting inside the warehouse with his back turned. Only the short-sleeved poplin shirt of old man Hien could be seen in the dark beside the sergeant.

  “Get lost, gook.”

  The American bastard shooed Yong Kyu away. Yong Kyu was tempted to cuss him out, but he was afraid that the old man would recognize him and so quickly turned away and left.

  Once out of the alley, Yong Kyu turned right at the intersection and passed the new market headed for the bus terminal. The space in the middle of the street was barely wide enough for a single car to pass, and both sidewalks were spilling over into the street with different goods being hawked by peddlers. He shouldered his way briskly through the crowd toward the freight terminal lot. By then it was past the time when the outbound trucks normally pulled out of Da Nang for inland destinations.

  He had been coming down and prowling the freight terminal at around midnight to check on the trucks set to leave at dawn the following morning. Some trucks were in the process of loading at that hour and others had only recently arrived at their warehouse docks. Since there was a nationwide curfew restricting night travel regardless of locale, the transports did all of their moving only in daylight hours and nights found them parked at rest.

  There was no way to keep track of all the cargo loaded on the trucks. It didn’t much matter whether it appeared to be vegetables, grain, or handcrafts, nor was it feasible t
o make any accurate inventories. Even if guns and grenades were concealed inside big squashes and pumpkins, there was just no way to know without chopping them up one at a time. All Toi and Yong Kyu could do was record in their notebooks what they could find out about the routes of the various trucks that were making regular runs. Within a few months, this information might be useful in conjunction with other clues.

  It was usually around lunchtime when the short-haul vehicles pulled in from the immediate vicinity of Da Nang. They were mostly three-quarter ton pickups or three-wheelers. Their main cargoes were agricultural or fish products brought in from the outskirts to be put on the tables of Da Nang residents: dried and salted fish, sprouts and sauces, ducks, chickens, cabbage, sesame seeds, beans, corn, or sometimes handcrafts made from bamboo or sedge and so forth. Yong Kyu jotted down in his palm-sized notebook as many details of the truck license numbers and their cargoes as he could. He would do a survey of a whole block, record as much as he could remember at one stretch, then put his pen and notebook away, get closer to confirm more details, and then jot more down.

  When he reached the Chrysanthemum Pub, Yong Kyu pulled aside the cloth curtain and went inside. He took his usual seat next to a window with a bamboo screen for a curtain. From there he could see the bus terminal as well as the freight lots at one glance. The waiter came by and gave him a knowing look.

  “Lam on vo toi, cha.”

  He had ordered tea by the time Toi got there.

  “That American sergeant, what unit is he with?”

  “We’ll find out when we confirm the vehicle’s license number.”

  They cross-checked the license plate number each had memorized and then recorded it in their notebooks.

  “What kind of goods were they?” Yong Kyu asked.

  “Well, some of the crates said California vegetables. I’m guessing it was potatoes, onions, cabbages, and that sort of thing.”

  “Not much change the last few days, it looks like. They’ve been handling vegetables and meats.”