Gilda Trillim

by Steven L. Peck

  my work to do,

  only through you.

  Through you to put matter into motion

  all my glory, all my love is expressed.

  Only through you

  can the pot be stirred at all.

  And so the children watched as things unfolded, emerged, what wonders they beheld as things blossomed into being.

  “Look, that Toodon goes upon two legs!

  Its brain is large? Will it be our home?”

  “Wait and see my children.” Wait and see?

  But no, a meteor strikes and all hope ends.

  “But on that planet,

  in that galaxy over there,

  is that language?

  On that one, hands?

  On that far planet,

  song like those in the heavens are sung?

  There! There is an orb where intelligence reigns,

  where behemoths use their trunks for tools,

  then fashion more of rock and stone.”

  “Will that do? It’s not like you in form, but it will do.

  See they love and talk and sing like angels too?

  Consciousness is there. Is it not? Can we go?”

  “Patience my children, wait and see, perhaps for another, but not for you.”

  “Then … what’s this? Little insectivores develop tiny hands,

  Their eyes are focused straight ahead.

  We watch as selection does its work,

  on variations, random

  threads, passing down generations of

  these tree dwellers

  chattering free.”

  “Cross your fingers. Hold your breath.”

  “A promising beginning sure.

  Sociality makes their brains to grow,

  their repertoire of sounds

  and gestures grow and mount.”

  “Can it be so? They seem familiar.”

  Their tail grows smaller, the brain gets larger.

  “Please, oh please. Let the tail go. Let it go!

  Let it go away.”

  And it does. Down from the trees they come

  and soon walking

  develop a smooth and careful gait.

  They hunt.

  From rocks

  they hammer tools.

  One of the children cries:

  “What a piece of work is protoman! How noble in reason!

  how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how

  express and admirable! In action how like an angel!

  In apprehension how like a god!”

  “Are they conscious

  in just the right way?

  Are the categories in place?

  Can they reason, can they feel?

  Can you touch their minds dear

  God? Can you thus enter now

  and influence the universe?”

  And there, in Earth’s glades,

  A male and a female

  Human squat across from each other.

  A gourd of red ocher in the male’s hand,

  Each dip a finger,

  into the bowl.

  And each to each apply a stripe,

  down the other’s face.

  A decoration.

  And act of love,

  making art.

  And consciousness entered

  into the world.

  In just the right way.

  Vignette 12: Trillim’s POW Experience in Vietnam. 1968–1970

  I have agonized over how to present this part of Trillim’s life. It is crucial to my thesis and yet there is not a single account that does justice to the particular aspects I want to pick out. The following is constructed from scattered notes, an unclassified interview conducted by the US Army and another given by the American Embassy in Moscow. Both were obtained through a FOIA request. In addition, I have used letters from Gilda to her mother and to her friend Babs Lake. I’ve used recollections given in television and newspaper interviews. I also interviewed Podpolkovnk Vatutin, who was in charge of the Soviet attaché that brought Trillim to Moscow. The volume of available information is staggering, largely because so much attention has been paid to this aspect of Trillim’s life.

  In what follows, I’ve taken some creative license by imagining a narrative of what happened, i.e., this is a piece of creative writing, mixed with selections of her own voice to give a reality-based recreation of these series of nearly unbelievable events. However, it is based on a close reading of everything Trillim has said or written about the subject. In addition, I sent this to Lark Melk and Kaija Linnainmaa, leading Trillim scholars with particular expertise about her time in Vietnam. Their suggestions have been useful in getting an as accurate portrayal as possible. Still, many questions remain unanswered. For example, such basic information about where she was held prisoner remains uncertain. Scholars have suggested that it might even have been Laos, rather than Vietnam. The actual location has never been found, despite efforts by researchers such as Nguyen Binh, who spent considerable time looking for the camp.

  I fear this attempt to construct an account of these events will be considered controversial, as any writing will always reflect the biases and inclinations of the individual investigator and I have not escaped this weakness. It seems this cross between creative-nonfiction and historical fiction may be the only way to capture these strange events. Whenever quotes are actually Trillim’s I have marked them in italics. This includes several long sections from her journal.

  Her most vivid memory of the events occurring early in her captivity was being transported in a small wooden wagon lurching slowly through thick tropical vegetation along a narrow two-track path. The cart was pulled by two small water buffalo. She found herself lying face down with her left hand frapped to her stump and both arms bound behind her back. Her legs were tied together. She tried to turn over, but she was also tied to the side of the vehicle. When she tried to move, a fierce pain shot through her side, especially whenever she twisted her torso. She remembered thinking that her ribs were surely broken. In her struggles to orient herself, she turned her head to the other side and saw a dead American soldier tied similarly next to her. He had an open head wound and his eyes were staring straight ahead, glassy and inanimate.

  When the cart hit a pothole, it all flooded back. The USO tour. The helicopter ride back to Saigon. The bang. Tearing of metal. The crash. Major Oaklanding pulling her from the wreckage. Shots. The pilot slumping over after his head exploded in a spray of blood and brains. The look of pop singer Dick Flemming lying face-down in the mud. Artist Fran Treacle hanging from her seat restraints limply, her femur twisted at a right angle. The Major kneeling and putting his hands on top of his head in a posture of surrender. His signaling her to do the same. Being bound. Tight. Without mercy.

  As she bounced along in the small wagon, she looked at the Major beside her and wondered how he had died.

  Whenever the cart hit another bump, it felt like someone was pushing something thick and dull into her lungs. Where was she?

  Back in the helicopter, the Major and the pilot had been arguing. The navigation system had glitched, then quit working completely. The pilot believed he knew where they were, but the Major asserted they ought to follow a river down below, which he had insisted was the River something she cannot remember, but the pilot was sure it was River something else. The Major ordered that they continue following the river. For what seemed like a long time they did. Gilda kept thinking, why does no one have a compass on this damn thing? She could see the Major’s confidence wane every mile they traversed over the verdant landscape. Then the river just disappeared into the unending jungle below as if it had been nothing but a mirage. The pilot tried to circle back, but it started to rain. As the clouds descended, visibility shrank. She remembered that the Major and pilot were bickering again and insulting one another’s competence. The pilot was sure they had crossed into Cambodia. Then a bang and a jolt. They went down. No one would have any idea where they were or where to begin to
search for them.

  As the cart made its way down what was now only a dirt path, it started to rain. Strange to see the Major with his eyes still wide open in the pouring rain—not blinking as the fierce raindrops struck and then beaded on the ocular surface. She could swivel her head around to the opposite side of the Major, where she could glimpse thick rainforest through the slats in the wagon’s side. The vehicle, designed to hold hay, had been conscripted to carry prisoners. Despite the pain, she strained to get a look at who was driving the wagon. It was the farmer she saw first, but next to him were two Viet Cong soldiers huddled together and sharing an American Military poncho to keep off the rain. Soviet rifles poked out of the nylon gear.

  Gilda began to weep. The horror. They had crashed. Good friends she had met on the USO tour were dead. And now she was a captive. She vomited weakly, and then looked up at her captors and said in English, “Please, I’m just a writer on a USO tour. Please, please help me.” In answer, one of the men perched on the seat directly above her angrily barked something incomprehensible then cracked her on the head with the butt of his AK-47. She was knocked from consciousness.

  She woke up confused and groggy in a small dirt-floor cottage with a bamboo mat on which she’d been laid. Straw was heaped along the edge of one wall. A small trench on the opposite wall served as a lavatory she guessed. She could hear voices outside, but understood nothing. Through a gap in the thatch she could see she was in a small village with huts of various sizes scattered about a small clearing in the forest. Within her field of vision she could see a peasant woman and some men, most in ragged Vietcong uniforms. Others were dressed in black shirts and trousers; these seemed to be in charge and drifting here and there among the huts of the village. Nothing, however, made sense and she feared to arouse anyone’s ire. At night she was given a small bowl of rice, maybe the equivalent of half of a cup, and a piece of fruit by a woman who opened the door and laid the bowl on the ground and left.

  No one but the woman bringing food visited her for several days. Nights were miserable, her ribs and head hurt from the blows. Almost worse, after sunset mosquitoes bit her relentlessly, leaving welts and itchy sores. She had constant diarrhea and her stomach felt as twisted and bruised as the rest of her body.

  After about a fortnight of this, one morning she awoke to the sound of large trucks entering the encampment. There was much shouting of what seemed like commands. Hustle and bustle and laughter poured from the camp as well as other signs of excitement.

  After about an hour, her door burst open and several men entered the hut. They were dressed in green uniforms, much cleaner than the ones she had seen around the camp. A short, bullish man spoke harshly to her, then said in broken, barely comprehensible English, “You Nurse?” Gilda shook her head, and said, “Please, I am a writer. Here with USO. I read my books to people.”

  He answered her roughly, “No, you Nurse spy.”

  She shook her head again against the accusation, pleading that she meant no harm to anyone. The man stepped forward and punched her in the gut. She curled up on the dirt floor of the hut protesting her innocence in small gasping whines. He kicked her twice and walked out.

  She crawled scared and crying to her mat. He came back a few minutes later without his entourage and raped her. After, he punched her twice in the face, breaking her nose. He left shouting, “You spy. You American bitchdog.”

  That night the sound of the truck’s engines signaled their departure from the camp.

  For three days she did not stir, not even to eat. She did not slap away the mosquitoes. She peed freely on the mat and let the liquidly diarrhea pass through her like water from a leaking pipe. The old woman who brought her food tried to push rice into her mouth, but she would not take it. The ragged lady poured water into her mouth, which Gilda reluctantly lapped up. She willed herself to die. But death eluded her.

  On the morning of the third day after her rape, she heard again the sound of the trucks entering the encampment. She crawled to a corner to hide. It was a different group of men, but on entering they quickly covered their noses and fled. After a few minutes the woman who had been feeding her returned with several other women. They threw buckets of water over her then motioned for her to remove her clothes. She did and they threw more water over her, cleansing the blood, fecal matter and urine from her body. Then they brought her some trousers and a shirt. These she put on slowly. She weakly tried to thank them. They did not smile, but rather hurried out of the hut.

  She could hardly walk, but they pushed her forward to one of the trucks. It was a troop transport vehicle with a canvas prairie schooner-like cover. She was thrown forcibly inside the back of the truck. It was dark at first, but as her eyes adjusted she saw she was not alone. There were two American soldiers sitting side by side on the left bench, both a bloody mess, their eyes nearly swollen shut. They were dressed in loose pants without shirts exposing badly bruised and bloody backs and chests. One’s arm was clearly broken. They wore no shoes. They did not look at her. Perhaps they could not.

  A guard climbed aboard, looked around as if inspecting something then climbed back out. In fear, she moved toward the front of the truck and sat on one of the two benches that rimmed the inside compartment. She sat on the opposite side of the two other male prisoners. An additional pair of Vietnamese soldiers climbed aboard carrying side arms and sat near the tailgate so they could look through the opening of the canvas stretched over the skeletal frame enclosing the back area. They paid no attention to the prisoners, but rather lit a single cigarette, which they passed back and forth to one another—saying nothing. One of the American prisoners seemed to perk up at the smell of tobacco, but then quickly fell back into his silence.

  They traveled for four days. They stopped every few hours and allowed the prisoners to step out and pee in the forest. This at least allowed them to stretch their legs. At such times they were given a drink of water. Once a day they were given a little rice.

  None of the American soldiers said anything to each other or to Gilda. Once only when they were on a break did she see any attempt at communication. One of the POWs limped up to a guard and looking at him miserably, tried to smile through his beaten and bruised face, and mimicked smoking by holding up two fingers and tapping his swollen and cracked lips in imitation of taking a drag. The guard laughed, slapped him, and walked away. The broken soldier never tried again.

  They eventually reached something resembling a paved highway, or so Gilda believed because the speed of the vehicle increased and the ride became smoother. Ten years after these events Gilda wrote in a published interview:1

  What was I thinking as I rode in the back of that transport? What thoughts crossed my mind in these horrible circumstances? These were a few: was it really only a couple of weeks ago I walked with my father and younger brother up to Delicate Arch near Moab, Utah? That we laughed at a joke about a shark and a lawyer? That the sun reddened and dehydrated us? How is it I find myself alone? Without allies? No connection to culture, meaning, language? I sobbed invisibly and soundlessly, not wanting to draw the gaze of my captors. I feared them. I feared them. I feared them beyond reason and beyond hope. I felt lost. I felt abandoned and forsaken. I smelled of my own shit and body reekings. My ribs and nose were broken. My face from the blows felt swollen. And more than these, my soul through violence had been poisoned and I could not shake the feeling that such damage had been inflicted that not even death would erase the taint—because it bored down to the core of who I was.

  Despite the oppressive heat I sat shivering and trembling on that bench, knowing that I was helpless to whatever harms were presented to me. Whatsoever was handed to me I would take. I went numb for hours or maybe days, oblivious to sense. Not like a Buddhist monk whose thoughts have been quieted through mindfulness and attention, no, my mind was shocked to stillness like a piston frozen because no motor oil lubed the engine. I awoke during one of the nights on our journey, late. In the headlights of some car fol
lowing us I could see that both the guards and my fellow prisoners were asleep—lightly, as people do in a moving vehicle, maintaining some modicum of posture to keep from sliding to the floor, but even so, their heads were bobbing on their shoulders loosely and unconsciously. Waves after waves of panic and fear bubbled over me; my breath became gasps for air that I could not obtain. It felt like I was being held underwater. I felt doomed. I felt damned.

  I reached out. I called upon the God of my youth. I sent my mind heavenward pleading for him to take me back into his care. I knew I had abandoned him. I thought of the pictures I’d seen in Sunday School as a child in Idaho of Jesus with his soft chestnut brown hair, smiling down on a child and I begged, “Help me Jesus. Help me now. I’m lost.” The truck rolled onward into the night. Why would he come to me? I had abandoned him long ago. And yet I hoped. I wanted to believe that someone somewhere was aware of what I was feeling and it mattered. Calmness drifted over me for a second, as if it were seeking a worthy vessel, but as I tried to reach out to it, it fled. I cried silently. Alone.

  The trip is largely remembered as a progression of shifting olfactory sensations. The stream of smells seemed flighty and ambivalent, changing constantly, with particular smells never staying long before moving on. There were a few repeated patterns pushing through the slight whiff of wet canvas as the background aroma ping-ponged between the scent of verdant forest and the stench of sewage laced rivers. I remember suddenly catching a smell of burning wood or from time to time some strange pungent food. I remember vividly that the odors were ever present under that dark canopy, always growing more chaotic and foreign, but accompanied with a diesely infusion from the truck, an oppressive caustic background smell as the air wafted through the canvas shell.

  I remember looking down at my stump and being reminded of what I had suffered to receive a vision of the beginning of creation. In the distant past, unimaginably distant, was a great thing that filled all of existence with undifferentiated substance. Where had I gone wrong? I cried silently. I had set out to discover one thing, the being of objects, even an apple seed. I’d spent a year coming to know one thing intimately, to discover one thing through and through. That pip. And yet it had eluded me. After a year, I still knew nothing. Then I had turned to the ecology of everything, objects, things, persons, living things, non-living things, noting connections wherever I could find them. But now I had lost them all. I had become empty. A void. A hole. A zero. I contained nothing that I wanted to own. I’d seen it all! The expanse of eternity! But now all my connections were severed. All my being sucked through the straw of human cruelty and emptiness—like an egg siphoned though a pin prick through which the yolk and marrow has been drained away leaving naught but a hollow shell, fragile and ready to break upon first touch of resistance. I was void. The empty set. Alone. Without value, I was cast aside. From the inside, all that I am had been stripped away, from the outside I had been forsaken. Nothing within nothing. I could make no sense of this. How had it happened? Once I was surrounded with people and things knitting together who I was, but they had all been unraveled, leaving me to drift alone in this faraway place. Why was not I dead? Like Fran.