Summer 2009
Author: Nguyen Tam Linh
Translator: Pham Hong Son
Copyright © 2010 by Nguyen Tam Linh
PREFACE
I am only a layman, an ordinary citizen, a Protestant, an officer in the Military Intelligence Department of the ARVN, a prisoner of the war of the Communist Regime, a boatpeople for liberty. I have been living under 5 colors (Japanese, French, RVN, North Communist, American) and finally I have been allowed to be in the USA with the mercy of the American. I greatly admire the ‘Stick and Carrot’ policy of the American, I should bow down before the four words ‘IN GOD WE TRUST’ printed in every American bill of dollar.
These four words alone - the message of the American - do present to the world, to all nations and all countries the unique statement that people should never forget: “For everything in life, if we like true freedom, real happiness, we should trust in GOD.”
I am by no means a critic and I am not an analyst either. I do not like to take part in politics. I have no experience in the military and I am not a supporter of the movement of living together with the Communists. Nowadays one still witnesses however, the two-sided Vietnam’s implacable hatred of one another, they do not like and do not see the divine mercy.
If the North and the South were to sit down together, they would see who sew the belligerent seed in the human heart and why they did so? Then they could know clearly that they were only actors that performed under the sorcerer’s maneuver, they were like chessmen of sacrifice moved back and forth on a chess-board by the key player who is no other than Satan with his invisible powers and forces that the Scripture describes as “the powers of this dark world and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6:12) I wish that people come to the LORD to receive His mercy and forgiveness. The Scripture states clearly that “A man can receive nothing, unless it has been given him from heaven.” (John 3:27)
@ With this writing I would like to express my gratitude to the American nation for allowing me to live in its soil in several years.
@ I am writing also to speak to the Vietnamese Communist Party not to believe that they are “the world’s oysters” and have the right to violate the human rights that the Creator reserved for His beloved creatures (Lamentations 3:34) since He said “I am the One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity.’’ (Isaiah 45:7)
@ I am writing to address as well to my people with the hope that they all would come to the LORD with repentance in order to receive forgiveness of all sins. He will show them from where the true freedom and real happiness come. He will teach them the way for the entire nation to get away from the Communist toxic and the demonic yoke with which Satan locked them up in several decades. Since: “In whose hand is the live of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.” (Job 12:10)
PROLOGUE
@ To tell the truth, writing with exaggeration to win readers is not my ability. Writing to divide my fellows is not my attempt because the Heavenly Father hates those who “spread strife among others” (Proverbs 6:19). Writing to heal the animosity of men is not my qualification. Writing to remind men of GOD is my happiness. I am ready to do so as I have been doing so far. A verse from the Scripture is here-mentioned for you to think about:
“Do not fear mortal men who are but grass! That you forget the LORD your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth.” (Isaiah 51:12, 13)
@ Standing in front of a house, I looked to the inside, how can I know about the owner’s arrangement? Stepping in, and being led by the steward from room to room with his explanation of the things disposed therein my eyes will see, my ears will hear and my guess if I had… Going out of the house I really never come to know much more than what I have seen… I heard but I didn’t recognize anything!
Without knowing, without eye-seeing, with our ears which never heard how can we tell others? With our eye-witnessing and ear-hearing, we are however never sure that telling to others is whether truthful or not. Seeing clearly is not surely true knowing. Hearing is sometimes wrongly heard and misunderstood. Meeting with somebody, listening to what he said, to every story he told how can we know that he was telling the truth or bluffing? Just speaking of a fellow or a certain person without dealing with his family, his community or his society we feel already somehow embarrassed.
Speaking about a country or its people how can we know and understand its governmental organization or structure? About the governmental cabinet from high to low level and its personals and works, how well we know?
Telling about the armed forces, the soldiers know only their tasks, obligations and responsibilities. They have none to do other than the obedience of the orders and authoritative commands.
We know the hardness, softness, coarseness or smoothness of things only by touching them. Sweetness, sourness, hotness, bitterness, or styptic was recognized only by tasting. Experience, maturity and evaluating that life is worth or worthless to live made people swallow too much grief.
“The first to present his case seems right till another comes forward and questions him.” (Proverbs 18:17) Life is too complicated to imagine or to appraise.
People will estimate differently from one another what is behind a bamboo curtain, an iron hanging, or a velvet one, and so do they behind the shameful wall or behind the door of liberty. How can we know gain or loss, this matter is better than that matter? Only in reality, we are able to see the right and the reverse side… but sometimes we must bow the head and accept, keep the mouth shut and swallow our grief so as to survive.
Do not be sad with this saying, the past of our Vietnam fatherland through the years 1945 till 1975 and up to now as you may see it. The on-going present, and maybe to later time, when you look back to yourself, how can you say without your past eye-witnessing, ear-hearing and non-comprehension? Can you really read the tea leaves?
Since many years long the Vietnamese Communist Party had been seeking to approach the USA for aids. The gold-and-red-triple-flag (the former RVN’s color) is presently flying over in many States of the USA on the one hand and the red background and the yellow star in the middle as emblem of the current RSVN’s color on the other, anything strange? What will be happening later on? Are the people involved aware of everything? How to make a surmise about stories so long hidden that we did not know, we did not hear? How to know and how to explain to others everything when we are not involved in those matters?
Everybody knows well the American policy is ‘the stick or the carrot’ thanks to the witnessing of their works in the world in the past and in the present as well. How do you know whether there is change in the future? You do not know, do you? Therefore, do not make any guess, do not assess and do not raise voice.
I always keep in mind my Dad’s voice: “The political play is often odious, extremely fiendish.” As a child I did not understand all about, at my grown-up it penetrates my heart with the bad and good luck of life. Controversy, cheat and killing among men never come to a halt. The manifold and inestimable ploys are well-hatched up, people still seek to step on others for superiority and power, men died, imprisoned and scourged unjustly and mercilessly… A whole nation is still living in poverty and in shabbiness! Many generations have passed, the Vietnamese are still deprived of human right by the Communists, and they cannot get rid of the satanic yoke that locks them up so tightly. Should they remain helpless?
“Trust the LORD you will thrive like a green leaf.” (Proverbs 11:28)
“Come to the LORD of hosts, He shall be your fear, then He shall be a sanctuary.” (Isaiah 8:13-14)
PART ONE
1. How and where to start? Let’s take the day when my sister grasped my hand and walked me about, loitering along the railroad near the station, then I saw a group of Japanese soldiers patrolling in the streets with their flag of rectangular and white linen and the sun at the center, all with short body and murderous face, together with a long sword hung at the waist. Scary was all of this.
The Saigon capital was plunged in awe. Few people were seen in the streets. The vacancy and quietness reigned during the night, nobody dared to be outdoors. Sometimes a noise of explosion was heard from afar, at some corner of the streets, the people were bewildering and did not know what would be happening in the days to come. The space seemed to be in communion with the Vietnamese people in their sadness, hatredness, grudge and lamentations. Whereas:
@ The Japanese did not allow the Vietnamese people to plan rice, the fields were to be used for jute planting.
@ The railroads were destroyed by the Viet Minh in several fragments and the supply of rice from the South to the North became difficult and tardy.
@ Rice and paddy, in place of coal, was used for fueling the locomotive engines.
@ The Japanese used a great quantity of rice to nourish their troops.
As the result of the rice shortage the famine was brought forth in 1945 of which millions of northern common people were tragically died (while the death toll for that famine reported by the Protestant Church of the North was none. What a miracle!)
2. News let know that two American atomic bombs had been dropped down two Japanese cities: Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese surrendered. Some days after, the Japanese soldiers were seen nowhere, in place, the presence of French soldiers, black of Morocco, big and tall, with slit faces and malicious airs. They all quartered in a row of houses right at the intersection near the Iron bridge and near the Dat Ho market (Da Kao area). Hearing their mobbing somewhere women and girls thereat were frightened and sought to flee without letting a trace behind. In case they were captured, their life would come to an end. The French blue, white and red color flew everywhere. As a boy, I was not aware of what was going on at all!
3. The situation became increasingly tense. Being unable to live in peace, my father brought my whole family to Binh Nham village (Lai Thieu province) for a time of refuge. Then thieves were as numerous as sea slugs therefore my family was to move back to Da Kao. It was then a period of light and dark combined, and like being between the hammer and the anvil the people worried day in, day out.
4. Time keeps going on, no matter what happened. Those who worked for the French were called traitors by the Viet Minh and the French called Viet Minh those who went after the Resistance Movement. The neutral citizens did not know how to do and how to be. A national?
Whatever happened to the nation, I was still happy with my fellows in the neighborhood, we played cricket fights, spinning top, shooting marbles, hoping from foot together… I never knew what happened to my country. I was only a child!
5. One day, when walking up I felt something abnormal happen because my whole family were speaking in a low voice… all their eyes were toward the door. I went out to have a look. The Viet Minh’s corpses filled the streets with blood spilling around, at every road junction and at every intersection. They were not yet smelling and seemed freshly killed! On the left side of every shirt was pinned with a small flag badge. The bloody and deadly scene made people nauseate. Such was the way of warning the Viet Minh’s followers by the French. Those who adhered to Viet Minh would have the same fate!
6. Viewing the tragic scene of those dead people lying on the streets, I had no more interest in playing together with my friends. In fact, the youth was easy to forget, everything ought to be OK. Nevertheless, the young unaffectedness which was supposed to be dormant had to sit up unexpectedly since Viet Minh distributed leaflets calling for Resistance against the French Government. The red and yellow star color appeared and my joys vanished right at my first days in the elementary school…
Seeing a shell set at the side of the railroad, a grenade laid at the school-ground, the teachers’ complexion changed, male’s as well as female’s, with the withering and worrying face, they seemingly wanted to tell something to their small and naïve students but they couldn’t. I was silently joyful when I saw the mine expert coming and taking away the killing device safety. I felt sad for those malicious people who conspired behind their fellows’ back. They were ready to sacrifice the life of their fellows to attain their goal however illicit it was.
7. The shadowy trees in rows along the streets were in blossom. The wind blew, the flowers dropped and covered the surface of the streets. These tiny and unfortunate flowers had to bear the same fate as the Vietnamese people when they were trampled upon by the passersby’s merciless steps on the street occupying them. In the early morning, the Dat Ho market began to be crowded with the sellers and buyers, boisterous like an alarmed beehive. At the end of the day, the sellers moved the merchandise back home and let their stands vacant, some of which were sloping or being turned over on the piles of stinking and putrid rubbish and trash difficult to breathe.
A sweeper with a long stick broom in his hand was sweeping to gather and dump all these garbage and trash into heaps. The rustling of the sweeping broom was heard like the sigh of a poor man who was mourning for his ill fate to live in an era of conflict and between the pressure of the anvil and the strike of the hammer!
8. Every day I saw the traffic cop standing on the top of a white and round barrel at the center of the intersection. His whistle is constantly in his mouth and blown all the time together with the movement of his hands for the regulation of the traffic. He did have a good job. When the traffic was not heavy the cop let the vehicles regulate the traffic themselves and he stepped off the stand to be at rest, drying his face and neck filled with sweat with his handkerchief. On the whole, I greatly admired his duty as a traffic cop.
The people of the city were still living in a hurry for breadwinning. They moved back and forth without a moment for resting. Sometimes the secret servicemen, the policemen stopped at the intersection and captured the adults as well as elder people. They put them all on the military trucks and ran… The victims appeared to be dismal and alarmed, some wiped away their tears. They did not know for what reason they were arrested, what felony? Military service enlistment? Mobilization? Alliance with Viet Minh?
9. In 1948, there was a new flag, the yellow and three red stripes color, it appeared and flew over in every road of the city. “The national flag of our country” my father said. The common people no longer worried like before because their life was somewhat settled, but temporality. Difficulties never ended. French men and ladies and French mama were everywhere in the streets. Binh Khang brothel and Kim Chung the great world Casino abounded with noisy debauchees and gamblers. At night, the night clubs with their ‘DANCING’ electric signs seemed to call for the visitors to come and have a good time with the dancers who also sat in front and waited for attending their guests. For the dancers, it was unknown that how long they were in the career but they all seemed very artistic and professional in their dancing style. Dance and music intertwined together that made so pleasant to watch. Moreover the willowy figure of the dancers were very appealing. Nevertheless, a stranger passed by at times and a hand grenade was thrown to the inside, and then, a terrifying explosion and the disintegrated corpses followed. What a pity!
10. I went to school every day. Nothing happened to me till one day the schools were closed. The pupils and the students went to the rally troubling the whole Saigon city. Riot took place unavoidably due to the Viet Minh’s instigating, they willfully and skillfully stirred up the patriotism of the people of Saigon against the current Administration - the student On’s cause - Viet Minh’s calling, inciting, entangling naïve people in the struggle against the French Colonialism. A number of thoughtless adults believed them and said goodbye to their school, parents, relatives and friends to go to the maquis for resistance with an amazing zeal. With the effervescency of love for the country and the nation those young people were totally exploited by the Viet Minh. From then on the rancor was lying upon the scimitars and sharpened bamboos.
11. In the other side of the river, in the direction of Gia Dinh province, no more green was seen in the rice-fields, the white pelicans flew away with no return, the people of everywhere came in flock to build houses therein. Saigon became increasingly populated, men and transportation means abounded. The emperor Bao Dai was still in France, he had not come back yet. The government changed constantly. The citizens still had to live their long days accordingly, with no relief nor beguilement. They laughed and cried whenever they would! The Cinemas Asam and Casino at Da Kao had always spectators watching the shows primarily with the hope that their everyday life be forsaken. (At the time of the Prime Minister Nguyen van Tam, the quarter of thatched houses along the Cau Bong bridge, in the direction of Tan Dinh, Phu Nhuan, Gia Dinh, were set on big fire with a tinder by the strangers. Nobody knew who did, but the residents, frightened and chilling, felt unable to live in peace at any moment. Nevertheless, in order to have a dwelling place they ought to work hard to get money and means for rebuilding the new ones, not thatched any more but with the iron roofing with the corrugated iron tiles recently imported).
12. My elder brother worked at the US Information Hall (the Embassy was not yet in existence at that time), he often brought home all magazines of the free world. Everybody was interested in reading them to know about the outside world, the democracy, independence and liberty. One’s country was excessively civilized! Novelties abound. Indescribable progress in science and technology was in great plenty!
Sometimes my brother rented the cinematograph and invited his neighbors to come and view different kind of movies showing many scenes of activity abroad that they were not aware of, such as modern weaponry, jet-planes, rockets, tanks, heavy artillery, submarine, torpedo… and nuclear weapons.
13. Every day my father read the Tieng Dan (People’s Voice) newspaper to follow up the issues of the day. I heard vaguely my father tell about Ho Chi Minh, the founder of the French Communist Party in 1920, and became afterward a high cadre of the International Communism. In 1930 he founded the Communist Party of Indo-China. It was he who signed the decree of Land Reform on December 19, 1953, and launched a barbarian campaign of denouncement and accusation that killed hundred thousands of innocent people and hundred thousands of others having to live in isolation, and thereafter, successively and slowly they all died… they died in their very beloved land of their fathers, Vietnam. It is hard-hearted and blood-thirsty indeed!
News also let know that the Israelites came back from everywhere in the world to rebuild the nation of Israel in 1948. Quemoy and Matsu islands (Taiwan) were bombarded with shells every day. In North Vietnam, the French were in fight with the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu campaign. The French asked the American for the supply of bombers but the American ignored the request. The Viet Minh had different kind of helps from the Chinese in their fighting. The circumstances became more and more disadvantageous on the part of the French because the Viet Minh made use of the in-mass strategy and overwhelming attack. When the battle became animated and violent, the French and Vietnamese soldiers were commanded to destroy their individual weapons. Finally, the French army was defeated and General De Castries gave up. Hearing the news, the people lived in worry and in wait-and-see situations…
14. The 20 of July 1954 was the national day of resentment. The French and Ho Chi Minh signed the Geneva treaty dividing Vietnam into two with the 17th parallel as the demarcation line. The North fidgeted, millions of northerners left their houses, rice-fields and gardens, native lands and evacuated to the South to evade the Communist calamity. They knew for sure that Ho Chi Minh would impose the Communism in pursuance of the ordinance of the International Communism though he solemnly declared before the people of the nation that he would disband the Communist Party on November 11, 1945. His lying promise, his false statement and his cheat caused millions of dead thereafter. The Viet Minh being deceived had to be erased and changed its name.
The emperor Bao Dai remained in France. The USA repatriated Mr. Ngo Dinh Diem and designated him as Prime Minister replacing the prince Buu Loc. According to the Geneva treaty the French had to withdraw from Vietnam at the end of April 1956 since the year 1956 was the year of general election between the North and the South Vietnam. Since the banquet was already prepared, the election cancelled. The First Republic of Vietnam took shape and Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem became President. At that time, the ‘Personalist Labor Party’ was brought forth as well.
15. Since the post-treaty of Geneva, the liberty was got back in South Vietnam. The people lived in tranquility for a time. The aggroville and land development policy was responded. The people running into the maquis for resistance were regrouped thereafter into North Vietnam (1954). They were hooked up and inescapable. They didn’t believe that the Communist noose had been drawn too tight. Ho Chi Minh deluded them and they had to eat the leek to remain the Communist’s slaves.
Those of whom the Viet Minh posed back in South Vietnam to act against the government didn’t know anything about the other side of the 17th parallel, a velvet curtain drenched with blood was covering the destiny of all the Northerners. A minority of people dissatisfied with the South government and the men of learning didn’t like to see but heard the Communist’s inciting with propaganda for ‘honey is sweet, but the bee stinks’ they designed many fashions to provoke troubles, rise in rebellion and demonstrate… and, as a result, the people of the South enjoyed no more tranquility and happiness. (As the consequence of the 1954 Geneva treaty, the South Vietnam, a country of independence, freedom and democracy, didn’t need the liberation of anybody including the Communist of the North Vietnam. However they brought their troops to the South to emancipate… who? and what? No other than the legitimate reason affirming Ho Chi Minh’s evil intentions and mean ploys contributing to make red entirely the South in obedience to the order of the International Communist).
16. The people of the South could not seize all these mean tricks of the Communist. They suborned the light-hearted people and grafted more of their people into the governing mechanism of the South, in the Vietnam Army, in religions, in schools and in the very populace of all classes. In the meantime, in the North, Ho Chi Minh hastily organized a whole army of infiltration into the South. That was his clear and undeniable design of invasion.
As of 1960, the Communist started their terrorist policy in the South. The guerilla war began, at night the guerillas made trouble to the rural area by the sabotage of the bridges, digging the roads, mounding, sniping, laying mine and explosive, random bombardment with shells, sentencing to death the innocents, heedless of the life and property of the people. The Communist (Viet Cong) intimidated and deceived the country men and those hapless people were required to supply food, to do the dugouts for the concealment of the VC cadres’ in order to be out of all calamity. Many other unfortunate folks were forced to labor for them and to live a miserable life abounded with all kind of hardships. In December 20, the Communist set up the Front for Liberation of South Vietnam at Chau Thanh district, Tay Ninh province. It was a disguised and puppet organization of the Communist with the intention to create an echo in the World. It was also the reason why the guillotine was brought from the South to the Central Vietnam. At the same time, the Press disseminated groundless information which caused disadvantages to the South government. The advantages would be Viet Cong’s.
Viet Cong incessantly instigated, split up the popular situation, creating discord between Buddhism and Catholicism leading to the conflict between the two religions (1963). Taking advantage of that occasion, Viet Cong manipulated the rebellious students in their rally that rendered the situation more and more complicated. The people lived no longer in safety and they had no more happiness. Freedom, independence and democracy were also dimmed more and more heavily with the Press and Media. The southerners were waiting for the overwhelming of the Communist’s wicked waves.
17. In November 1961, the coup d’Etat failed. The generals and high ranking officers of the RVNAF were in disagreement and split apart. President Diem prevailed. Again, the Press and Media cried out, exaggerated, spread scandal that Diem’s administration was nepotism. Thence were demonstrations and riots. A lot of people took part in opposition activity against the government unaware of the fact that they were the Viet Cong’s very prey storks. Some people, for the compulsory condition, had to follow the Viet Cong and came in the maquis with them or entered into secrete activity within the city.
During that time the Communist expedited in sending their troops to the South. The Ho Chi Minh trail came to be efficient. Understanding the Communist’s design, the US began to send American advisors to the South with the purpose of organizing and training… seeking to impede the grave danger of the Communism attempting to take over the entire South East Asia since the US regarded the South Vietnam as a crucial stronghold against the Communism of the North.
18. The ‘Carrot or Stick’, my father explained that worldwide American approach to me: “Obedience equals reward, disobedience, punishment. Simple, isn’t it?” When I was a boy, I heard but paid no attention at all. The second coup d’Etat (Nov.1963), President Diem and his brother Nhu died in an armored car. Suddenly I remembered what my father said in the old days, it’s really sorrowful for the fate of people who were born in such a weak and small country, they were unable to do any better! (The press acknowledged that the ambassador Cabot Lodge was an expert in political engineering. He assumed the position of ambassador at Saigon a short time before the coup d’Etat took place).
Politically - how were decent citizens able to know what was going on between President Diem and the White House? Differing opinions? Or anything else? Why was President Diem excluded from the current political arena of South Vietnam? If someone was behind the scene, with proximal witnessing and hearing could he understand or have thorough knowledge of what would be the end of it? Lugubrious? Dirty?
The scenarios of the first coup d’Etat in November 1961 and the second one in November 1963 were scrupulously and thoroughly designed (?). Who could respond who the designer had been? Afterwards, until 1965, when the US realized that the South Vietnam by themselves were unable to annihilate by forces the Communist’s plan of making red all the South, the US took part in the battle with their troops as the immediate coworker! (After the treaty of Geneva in 1954, the URSS, the Red China and their tributary states providing a great quantity of weaponry as fraternal aids for the North Vietnam, with men, gasoline, food, and bikes exclusive…).
19. Standing in a building at Nguyen Hue street, I could not imagine while looking down the streets with flocks of aggressive people moving like a big snake pursuing its prey. Those flocks of people started their march from Tam Da shopping center, coming down Ben Thanh market like a torrent and creeping towards Tran Hung Dao boulevard… They knocked down all pro-government editorial offices. Columns of black smoke rose and covered the sky. The residences in the neighborhood unwillingly involved significant detriment. It’s painful indeed!
In the matter of retaliation for satisfaction, the men in the name of intellects, and mimics as well, were taking to the streets, participating with zeal and eagerness without being aware of the VC’s standing behind. Opposing the Government with incapacity of measuring the aftermaths was only damaging the plebeians. Those men really didn’t know they were assisting their common enemy. In addition, the Chinese in Cho Lon China town used the riotous situation for speculative hoarding of necessities and raising their price. Mainly the common people would suffer the victimization! Moreover, the generals and the high-ranking officers in the RVNAF disputed for influence, killed one another, shared out powers and responsibilities, carried out the commands of the higher… It was an easy season for the VC since they could harvest where they had not sown and gathered where they had not scattered seed.
20. Saigon, the Far East’s pearl did not remain as it was once, instead, like a glass marble, it was handed and put in the pockets of many! Once again the people witnessed the devil-may-care scenarios of life, all kind of cheated scenes were mounted cynically before their eyes and they found no more enjoyment therein.
The parasitical and greedy intellects profited from that golden opportunity to engage into war of words. Those ungrateful persons leaning into the wind to enjoy all benefits granted by the opponents of their people.
Being sick and tired of the treacherous deeds of the world I gave up my schooling and paid a visit to my old parents and lived with them for knowing that sooner or later I had to leave them for engaging myself in the fratricidal war that was hurtful to both regions of the country.
21. The Qui Nhon seashore, the place where I used to have fun with the sea waves during my childhood. Many souvenirs were difficult to be erased from my mind. I looked at the sea, the hazy mountains from afar, blue water and gold sand-bank with all my nostalgia.
In 1965 the coastal city became more boisterous due to the recent arrival of the US GI’s. The activities of the people became seemingly more vivid. Snack bars. The girls came from everywhere to make their living. The PX merchandise overflew the market. Red and green dollars. The American trash was also put out to tender. The people of the city felt much peace in mind when they saw the presence of the Korean allied army coming for help fighting the Communist though the Vietnamese of the South generally never tasted or smelt the communistic toxic, only hearing made them shocked. The Northerners who immigrated to the South had seen clearly the Communist’s real face in their barbarous behavior towards their fellowmen.
22. The American ship unloaded its cargo right on the beach filling with crowd going in and out. The 7th Fleet remained off-shore. The American Transport battalion was stationed along the beach. The ever-poetic feature of the beach was no longer fascinating. There were no more people who used to go to the beach every night to enjoy the fresh sea wind and admire the evening twilight scenery. The oil released from the ship made the water surface shining iridescently under the sunlight. The fish had oil smell when eating but the people living there still felt happy, they had no idea of unpleasantness or annoyance.
Captain McBurney, the commander of the Transport battalion, was a white American with a lovely and complaisant smile always in his mouth. He behaved toward his subordinates like friends, especially, his driver who was a black and lively guy. The intimacy and open mind of the captain created in me a sentiment of friendship and made me comfortable when approaching and conversing with him. Viewing the organization, the camp made me joyful because of the fact that the GI’s could not get out of the activity in discipline and order… I was able to recognize some aspects of the American civil spirit. They always liked and respected independence, democracy and freedom.
A ‘Off Limit’ sign put in the entrance of the camp made me joyful when seeing that the young GI’s couldn’t get out of the camp to meet with their girls in the snack bars, and, when they ought to stay in their barrack, the sadness appeared very clearly on their face. Was it due to love-sickness? Falling in love with someone? Nostalgia? Missing relatives?
23. Having approached and conversed with the overseas GI’s we could understand their love for their country and for ours. They assumed their obligations only because of the word ‘liberty’. They all showed that their coming to Vietnam had the purpose of helping the Vietnamese people have freedom, happiness and deprivation of the Communist oppression. The war has no excuse!
Without being in the military and not engaging in combat how can we comprehend to what extent the sacrifices of the soldiers, the national as well as the Allied forces soldiers are? How can we know the loss that they must suffer? Upon seeing a young and white soldier holding a guitar and singing unskillfully a melody with tears flowing along his cheeks in a twilight evening, I came to understand the grief of those young guys and especially when I hold in hands my mission order to be present at the Thu Duc Infantry School for the military training course in the coming days. Only thinking of the fact that I had to leave behind my old parents, my friends, my relatives include my girl, Suh Kyoung Ja (my first girlfriend) to join the army made me depressed. A loss indeed!
24. A young and kind girl was standing and biting her lips while anxiously and expectantly looking at the gate of the Thu Duc Infantry School. It was evening and the sunlight was dying away. Time passed silently. Standing inside the fence and looking in the direction of the Thu Duc market, I was waiting for my brother who promised to come to my graduation day but I didn’t see him. The cadets’ parents and relatives successively got access to the gate. The girl was still standing and waiting, so was I. The lights were on and the sunlight vanished. Looking around I only saw both of us: the girl and myself. The girl seemed to be about to cry. Seeing so, I came to her and invited her to attend the ceremony in place of my brother. A smile was half open in her mouth together with a nod of assent. My sadness disappeared slightly. Walking slowly I felt sorrow for the disabled girl stepping beside me. Her body slanted slightly at every pace when pulling her feet along. The opening ceremony had already begun. There was still a long distance to the dais. Suddenly I thought of my own life, my walking with GOD didn’t keep up with the poor girl’s current walking.
25. Time passed without waiting for anyone. The battle field became intense. The South and the North soldiers, like the ephemera, competed to throw themselves into death. The ones died in the day, the others, at night. They died with no time to shut their eyes. And the saddened and painful death of the Allied troops included. Tears dropped and flew down. Was it tears that wiped the human sentiment off? I tried to refrain my tears from running down but I couldn’t. My friends of the old days now fallen, lay down and passed away.
The war kept going on and no sign of stopping. Batch after batch of people went to the living place of the earthworms. Going in the world with my head bowed down I prayed silently thanking my Heavenly Father for allowing me to survive and to put up with the glooming days with challenge and trials that surrounded me.
26. The rain continued during the afternoon, water stagnated in ponds, the sky was blurred. In the other side of the playing ground and under my eyes was a prison camp locked up with an iron door, nonchalant and bleak like a man who was unreceptive to the suffering and grief of others. I saw a small square opening on the iron door through which the food could infiltrate to the inside. A detainee might set his eyes at that small window to look outside with his regret, dream, longing and expectation… Thinking of the prisoner’s eyes, I felt sorry and compassionate for him. It was sad for him and his friends who had to sacrifice their life for nothing and blindly perform the order of the Communist Party by going to the South and dying for a group of people who had wild and crazy ambition and ignored human feelings. That poor man had to leave behind his parents, his wife and children, his relatives, his native land, and arduously going uphill and trekking through the Truong Son range with a pair of sandals made of rubber tire. With a rifle in hands and a band of ammunition on shoulders he left the North to the South he carrying with him the poverty and wretchedness of the human life.
27. Day after day, month after month and year after year, the mournful and chilly Tchepone river kept flowing and witnessed many troops ‘born in the North and died in the South’ going by without return. The 9th road and the tri-border area were sighing of being disappointed to receive many invading troops passing by on their way to the South. The soldiers’ remains were feeding the wild trees as unexpected food. They still cried quietly for unwillingly sucking in those cold and lean died en route because of hunger and sickness. Those soldiers who were sent to the South heard the Truong Son wail for receiving the bombs that dropped like rain on their head from the B52 bombers. The flesh was in smash and the bones scattered along the Ho Chi Minh trail, at the versant of the low Laos on the Cambodia border.
28. Saigon at the approach of Mau Than Tet (1968), people were still eating drinking and dealing with marriage. They were enjoying themselves hurriedly. At night the light was always resplendent. The frequent luxury and frivolous scenery shadowed the war which was going every part of the country. The streets were filled with all sorts of people and all kind of vehicles. Life with its persistent trouble, overcrowd and boisterousness obliterated the explosive noise of the bullets and the cry and wail of the people. And right at the first days of the year, the VC troops infiltrated and attacked the city. The explosion of the bullets replaced the fireworks. Panic and terror covered all the cities of the South. It’s truly painful! Again men lay down, blood mixed with tears. The jail had no more room. At Phu Tho Hoa the Binh Tan battalion of the VC was eliminated. A number of VC cadres were caught but happy to be still alive, although stupefied and disconcerted.
In Hue, the VC massacred thousands of people by striking their head and burying alive, what a barbarity! The people went in search for the corpses of their relatives in several collective graves with tears in eyes while the Press and Media kept quiet. Very bizarre indeed! Villainous too!
Every time I had to look at the opening on the iron door of the prison camp and the eyes of the prisoner I felt tormented and truly saddened. (After the attack in Mau Than Tet by the VC, Ho Chi Minh was disappointed, and had to increase the troops because too many were dead. Well, the young soldiers of the North had to be en route for the South to fill the vacancy. Without attaining his dream Ho Chi Minh ought to die the year after and left his ‘dirty and fetid’ heritage to his successors leading the nation to the deadlock).
29. The C130 airplane ran in the runway and took off to the sky in the direction of South West. The South seemed too small, it quickly became out of sight. The sea was blue and the cloud was wandering.
Arriving to the land which was not mine, I fell that my heart was preoccupied with something I missed. How empty it seemed to me! Being far from home not too long but homesickness has already invaded me and love has overwhelmed my heart. It was such when living far from home. After class, I used to take the bus to the city, walking along lonely expecting to find something that reminded me of my hometown but I didn’t find anything. I got lost, lonely and alien. Time was going on too slow, it seemed very long to me.
At the end of the training course, on the way home, I exulted inwardly because I was going to see my relatives again. How joyful I was! Coming back to the unit, my heart ached because the country became more tattered and torn. How indifferent the rear-line was in the care for the frontline! People did for killing time and not for real help. Before this, all I could do was bowing my head, speaking but not in words, I kept speechless when hearing my friends who were died one by one, the one just fallen down, the grass on the grave has not yet grown up, then the other followed. Oh War! Oh Human affection!
I was walking with my mental distress and I had to put up with all bitterness tearing my life apart. It seemed that I heard love and compassion follow my pace everyday for remembrance of my deceased friends that rooted in my heart.
30. Leaving Saigon for my new unit and at the first day, as a newcomer, I didn’t know why the chief of section liked me and let me sit and work beside him. Other officers and personals looked at me with their strange eyes. Before the unusual look that I had then from my colleagues I remembered the eyes of the prisoner the days before and I felt my heart tear down. I seemed to be abandoned and isolated. Anyway, I tried to forget everything for work so as not to betray the trust of my new chief whose age was equal to that of my father and not to be ungrateful to my deceased fellows who lay down for me to live.
31. When I was on leave, I came back home for a short visit. The people of the city were still living with the normal rhythm in spite of the war which made the nation collapse day by day. The silkworm and mulberry’s obligations, who think about? Who pay? Who borrow? Life is always competing and deceiving. Every class of people of different ages was continuing their way to the dark without saying goodbye. On the part of the VC cadres, many died along the HCM trail on the way to the South - malaria, cholera, bombardment - nobody knew the death toll, uncountable. The North Communist leading bodies tried to conceal all and so did the head office of the so-called National Front for the Liberation of the South. The relatives of the VC cadres and soldiers were waiting for their fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers, or sisters in hopelessness.
The VC steadfastly called for struggle against the American and the ‘puppet’ government of the South. The people of the South of whom some were light-hearted followed them. And the men in the designation of intellects covered by the cloak of religion, the students as imitators took to the road for rally and demonstration. The Administration divided in parts. In the Armed forces, the generals sitting in air-conditioned rooms, drinking cognac and whiskey commanded their troops to defeat the Communists. The hearts of the enlisted men changed their form and their faces were distorted for being obligated to obey the orders. How unlucky they were! The soldiers had to engage oneself in hard and dangerous combats; they ought to swallow all bitterness of life and lost many things but nobody comprehended and had mercy on them.
32. The helicopter flew over the military cemetery, the general Lam Son greeted with his hand rising and his melancholic eyes. He looks quietly, ejecting a long breath, swallowing the saliva and biting tight his lips. Me too, I inclined my body, pursued my view with head bowing and an aching heart! My military fellows were lying there, with small number before but abounded now. Graves and graves! The small cemetery of the past was recently immense in space and occupying more graves than ever… The statue of a lonely soldier sitting with a mourning air was there under and when I looked at it my heart fell compassionate for the soldier’s life. The servicemen departed with no return leaving their hurt, love, souvenir to the remaining relatives. How plentiful were mourning that the young widowers and the small and innocent children hastily wore on their heads? And the fathers and mothers waiting for the return of their sons with tears streaming on their cheeks and how many hearts withered and broke with the bad news of their deceased children from the battle field?
The Dong Nai, a mild river, kept flowing smoothly as ever. A helicopter flew over the Boi Loi concentration zone, I knitted my brows looking carefully at this homeland stripe of mine with many hollows of bombs transforming in ponds of stagnant water with various colors, green moss, fellow and dark purple. Here was the burial place of the crushed corpses of the VC who came here with enthusiasm.
33. Spring came round. The echo of the explosive noise of the rifle heard from afar made people think of the fireworks. Sometimes the 52 bombs made a noise of which the repercussion was perceived somewhere far away. Nothing changed in Saigon. The colored lights were brilliant at night. The tea rooms, the dancing clubs kept up their boisterous activity without any care about the war, which was going on in the country. The music in unison with the lyrics of the singers seemingly told everybody to forget about it… Listening only made people sad (?). Would it cover up the distress (?).
34. And then the fierce war was launched one more time throughout the South territory in Summer 1972. Who would loss? Who would win? It was difficult to say or to foretell. The enemy’s T54 tanks aggressively overran the city. The cannon balls, the rockets 107 and 122 flew and dropped everywhere. The An Loc town (Binh Long province) changed into enormous piles of debris mixed with corpses transforming in mash. Cry and wail overflow the streets. The trees were uprooted. The fallen leaves bathed with blood.
General Hung, Commander of the 5th Division together with officers and soldiers tried to defend. Nobody could sleep because of weariness and fatigue. B52 spread out several times many carpets of bombs above the head of the enemy. The Front headquarters of III Corps at Lai Khe had to maintain their continual transmission although they had no ability to back up. The 81st Airborne Ranger unit was deployed to increase the number. The M72 anti-tanks were also in mission. With those forces in supplement, the enemy tanks had to decline their offensive activity and the rockets had to keep quiet as well.
The people of Binh Long ran for their life to Chon Thanh district. The distress and fatigue for unwillingly fasting and fear appeared on their face. The women holding their baby in hands and in arms, some babies were covering up their face on the mother’s breast for warmth. Some people carried clothes with them. They all seemed risky when passing through the VC blockade and successfully coming to their safe place.
Later on the battle was silent of gunfire. Everything was all right. Time made people forget the deceased and the men kept their living as usual. The cemetery had more patrons and guests.
35. Having with me a sealed dossier I boarded the helicopter which brought me to the other side of the border. The propeller of the helicopter turned regularly. Its customary sound seemed to tear the human heart. The Ho Bo Woods secret zone also was abounded in numerous bomb pits with stagnant water, the one after the other with an uncountable number. Suddenly the helicopter elevated its altitude to evade the SA-7 heat seeking missiles of the North Vietnam Communist although there was no sign that they were shot from the ground. The Ba Den mountains range appeared and disappeared in the clouds. We were arriving to Kampong Trach where the III Calvary brigade had been present before. Viewing from the helicopter the friends’ tanks resembled the crabs crawling about in the rice field to search for food.
The armory cars continued to hunt for the VC. The earthy and dusty coats threw into the sky behind their running path. It was extremely hot, to the extent that skin would be burnt. There was no rain. No wind. The wells had no water. There were only stubbles in the rice field. Nobody was in the village. No enemy was met during the operation. Very strange indeed!
Based on the recent news of SPAR, the colonel, brigade commander found out the place of which the coordinates being marked on the map but nothing was discovered except rice in bags of green thread. The helicopter was ordered to come and carry the loot to the rear camp. The dragonfly plane flew back and forth as if it had fun of bathing in the sun in a late afternoon until the sunlight came to hold back its rays. The tanks retreated in line to Tay Ninh. Everybody breathed a sign of relief. The operation was ended.
36. Standing on the floor of the hospital and through the window I was looking down. The roofs stood close together, high and low, wide and narrow, in concrete and in iron tiles, with different forms. All of them were exposed to the rainy or sunny, windy and stormy weather and let the time pass without regard. They all lamented silently of their fates, they didn’t know if they would be adjacent once more or they would be separated from one another or destroyed by the human hands.
The strong smell of ether emanated in the air. I breathed it was if I were inhaling all the distress and bitterness of the destiny. The hospital bluish clothes I was wearing, though large and light, made me feel that the body was tightened and insupportable because of pains. Every day I had some pills and one injection that made me sad and want to shed tears. Nevertheless, I tried to endure and to put aside all grief for looking upward and accepting everything with the hope of return to my unit to continue my everyday activity.
37. The news let know that Foreign Minister Kissinger (a Jewish American) often in secret met with the North Communist officials in France, he privately talked with Le Duc Tho in August 1969. In 1971, he revealed the US withdrawal of troops to China Communist. He was also one who paved the way for Nixon’s visit to China in 1972. It was he who made a transaction and an agreement with the North Communists and signed the treaty of Paris on January 27th 1973 to attain the cease-fire in the South (two months after the US and Allied Forces left Vietnam).
Upon hearing the news I had the impression that Vietnam, both regions, could not avoid the tearing apart by the Communists. All grief, suffering and heart-rending distress should be the part of a small and weak country. There was no place for complaint.
38. After March 1973, when the US and the Allied Forces withdrew from the South Vietnam, the Communist regime of the North was supplied by its brotherly Communist nations and their tributaries with an immense quantity of weapons and ammunitions helping them deliver a deadly blow to destroy the South once for all.
The North Communists used up all their manpower with a short and speedy training so as to dispatch them to the South. The gasoline pipelines were linked from the North to the South. The 559 Transport group worked noisily and without stopping days and nights. The HCM trail was wide-open. The image of the eagle was not seen overhead any longer. The SAM missiles haughtily went in company with the Communist troops, the molotova vehicles were on the run with smoke rising into the sky…
Time passed. The intensity of the war was escalating. Men kept going into the dark.
39. The US stopped their aids. The Republic of Vietnam was being in ruin. The South was in agony. No other aids were available. Profiting of that golden occasion the Press and Media launched their mode of ‘troubling the waters’ making many people of the South terrified in the tragic sight and have to evacuate in horror. They ran away trampling down the bodies of their fellows just fallen, they ran for their life since behind them was the pursuit of the red-and-yellow-star color and VC’s bombardment of rockets overhead. There was nothing else to cling to or to hold.
Taking advantage of the prime victory and ignoring their secret agreement, like a tiger hunger of prey the Communists made a fierce assault without limiting the place and time of the operation already consented and two BLU-82B bombs were delivered as chastisement of the infringement. Many were dead standing and sitting while many others inanimate with a gun still in hands. A Communist division was eliminated. Oh! Born in the North and dead in the South. (After the drop of the bombs the US took the fuses to Thai Lan. General Le Minh Dao sighed and a helplessness came over him. My boss shook his head, disappointed. “We are defeated, my friend.” he told me.)
40. April 22, 1975: The US forced President Nguyen van Thieu to resign. He said goodbye to his compatriots and left with a bleeding heart. On April 30, 1975 at 10:00 AM the Second Republic of Vietnam collapsed and stopped breathing.
41. April 30, 1975: the day the Vietnam nation was mourning its children. It was the day of an end and of a beginning. It was the day of controversy and of metamorphosis. It was the day that the paradox changed its countenance. It was the day of flag and regime change. It was the day that the blind could see and the deaf could hear. It was the day that the presumptuous laugh was mixed with the cry of pain. It was the day that chaos was incessantly going up and spreading out. Everything was melting. All scattered like a thatched cottage in the storm.
42. At midnight the noise of the molotova vehicles stopped in front of the school. The sound of their engines made me more distressed than the explosion of the rockets that the enemy bombarded overhead on my way of running away for life with the friend units the days before. I reported to the unfriendly officials and went up the vehicle with a broken heart. I was feeling that the ruin of my life and the separation began. That’s done and there is no more hope!
Years and years, living with the fate of a prisoner meeting with all excruciation and misery in the midst of the Ka Tum jungle of the War Zone C and beside the enemy as the jailer I counted every lunar season to know that the time kept moving on. I was living in the regret of the absence of my parents and relatives and in expectation. I heard the harmony of the birds’ chirping, the frogs’ croaking, the rain’s and wind’s sounds that consoled me. I lived in long days and months with my tears of disgrace, shame and starvation. Oftentimes I had to struggle with the birds for some grains of rice or some small pieces of salt on the ground. Then I understood more about the pain, hurt and bitterness which began to sprout and the poignancy of the human feeling that put forth its bud. Every day I had to walk with my sidelong body because of the load of the tree trunk that weighted heavily on my shoulder. Remembering the consolation of the Scripture my heart became warm anew because in the penal servitude I suffered, my Heavenly Father was frequently with me, I was walking with Him but my walk was dissimilar to that of the disabled girl I had met before.
43. I had had a long night filled with love because I was about to go away. My mind fell extremely troubled and annoyed. I bowed my head and prayed GOD once more upon my preparedness for going to the station of the coal truck near the Hang Xanh intersection. I took leave of my parents and got out of the house. I rode my wife and daughter on a bike to the rendezvous. My luggage was a pair of clothes and a small towel. I ought to quit that decadent regime which made people complain and me stand aloof. I went with my feet, but in my heart I wanted to turn back regardless of whatever would happen to me. Finally I had to constrain my heart, to bite my lips and to swallow my sorrow for stepping forward although in my mind remained the clear image of my old parents shedding tears when knowing that I would set off.
While waiting for the guy who came for me I saw the red eyes of my wife and my daughter who saw me off at the meeting place. Then, I thought of my future that I was obliged to live lonely in a foreign country, how sad I feel! I didn’t know whereof I would be adrift? Was I able to reach the destination? Would I be caught by the communist police or would I have the opportunity to sit in the prison with those who failed in the attempt to flee from the country? Many questions arose in my mind causing me so dizzy that I would cancel the journey. Nevertheless, the red-and-yellow-star color and the four-hole manacles in the jungle of the old days together with the saying ‘our Party is a ruling party’ recalled me and I had to stop thinking and continued to move forward.
The sun changed its color and concealed itself in the dark. The stars started blinking. I followed the guide, walking in the night. The chilly sea-wind blew from afar. The new moon also pretended to open up the cloud and showed off her young face to bid farewell to all the men who packed and fled from the country. While being in wait I looked at the watery surface of the rice-field and I saw the images of the moon and stars shimmering underneath as if they were waving goodbye to us. I heard the sea waves at a long distance as if they silently wept bidding farewell to the reluctant travelers. I didn’t want to go at all and wanted to return. Anyway, ‘the fatherland is always better than any other place’ I told myself. However, again, the image of the yellow star in the middle of the red of blood background fluctuated in my mind and the scenario of my fellow prisoners being handcuffed for fleeing from the prison camp re-appeared to me. All of that made me stop thinking to go back home.
I continued to move forward with tears. I wiped out tears with my hand when I heard the engine starting and the boat began to set off. All were done! All my love remained then at the stern. My nation was there and my native land was still there but all seemed to be lost! Each of my fellow countrymen with head bowing and eyes casting down was weeping for distress.
44. The sea was immense, immeasurable. The tiny boat kept moving, up and down in the heart of the remote ocean. The horizon was all around and nothing else was viewed but water and cloud. Sometimes, I saw some planks of wood floating on the sea that made me dumbfounded. The Bien Dong sea was shadowy at sight. Three days lapsed and the small boat was still about on the indistinct sea breaking the waves and moved forward. The day was on the wane and the night began. A spot of light was flashing far ahead in the darkness of the night. Our joy arose and our weariness vanished. The boat kept moving forward, the engine sounds like a ballad which was in harmony with the sound of the sea-waves on the remote sea. It was an awesome sound!
Each boat person was helped to board the ship, near the oil platform in the name of ‘Centurion Service Panama’. I was so moving that my tears poured out of my eyes when I witnessed the human feelings of my rescuers totally in contrast with those of my fellow countrymen. They were hospitable and caring with their wholeheartedness. Looking down once again to the small boat carrying me and the others to that safe place I saw it pitching and tossing alone as if it were waving goodbye to me!
The day after, the dark clouds moved on in curls and covered the sky, the hurricane arrived unexpectedly, the waves as high as mountains took turn to knock the ship, incessantly, with their first coups as if they wanted to send it to the bottom of the ocean.
45. Standing on the Ku Ku small island (Indonesia) and looking in the direction of the other foggy side of the Pacific Ocean my heart was fluttering with disturbing thoughts. My fatherland was there! My fellow citizens were diving in the deadly waves of the Communists which buried them so long. I wished silently: “A fine journey! Please give a back-home journey, Oh GOD!”. I thought about a verse in the Scripture: “the mirth of the wicked is brief, the joy of the godless lasts but a moment.” (Job 20:5). Believing that the fact would take place, sooner or later, I was expecting it day and night with excitement.
46. In Autumn the yellow and red leaves dropped everywhere. When the Winter came round the tree had its bare branches but the grass was evergreen. It was too cold in that foreign land. It was so amazing to me to see the snow flying. It was snowing. I tried to listen to its sound but nothing was heard. I was thinking of the present, my life was relying on other people’s country. It seemed ruthless to me when walking in the freeze and I tried to accelerate my pace to keep myself warm and to avoid the external chill, but the internal chill of love and remembrance made me more freezing.
I continued walking road by road and street after street and looking at the nice and beautiful houses of all colors, all styles and all models, new and old but all kept their doors closed. I was walking continually but noticed no extraordinary things, there was no more than what was in my sight. I turned back home with a void and forlorn feeling.
Leaving the city I went to the suburban area living alone in an island.
47. Throughout the long months and years in the rural area and among the immense fields of crops I felt desolate and the love and remembrance of my family and my country became more profound in me. Time and space in the foreign land created much more unappeasable sorrow in my heart. I had been mooning about all day in the back yard listening to the bird songs, contemplating the shrubs and trees, and the air. Occasionally, I saw a flock of birds flying from the North to the South, that evoked my past memories, my childhood, my family, my days in the military services and those of penal servitude in the jungle… now my family is still there but I had to be isolated from them.
Every evening I used to be at the riverbank in front of my home, sitting wandering, looking at the river surface at sunset and waiting for the night. Every year when the Autumn came around I saw the leaves changing their color, and then, my heartfelt agitated. The Winter arrived, before the snow I had an anguish of heart. Viewing the top of the mountains covered with white snow I felt myself more desolate, solitaire than ever, I could not put up with. Without comfort from the Heavenly Father, certainly, I would be crazy.
Time went by in love and remembrance I began writing, composing songs. Until a day a guy came to pay me a short visit and after a trivial talk I let him know that I was tired of politic matters, he had a long breath and took leave of me. Many years after I met him again, a long smile was still on his lips but the smile seemed not radiant. I asked him “what about that story? still work for?”. He shook his head with a reluctant smile. On bidding farewell he held tight my hand saying: “They know everywhere we go!”. Then, I grasped one more thing “again, Vietnam, our mother land was sifted by Satan”. How could we do? All we could do was bowing our head before the Heavenly Father asking for His mercy and forgiveness… because our nation had already suffered much bitterness and heartbreak under the Communism, an atheistic and barbaric regime. It unceasingly sought for infringing the human right and rejection of GOD!
Oh! VIETNAM, my country.
PART TWO
(1) A heart-rending story happened at the Cay Thi intersection in Gia Dinh area, the people came and eye-witnessed the Japanese behavior toward a Vietnamese woman who was involved in an illegal trade: blending saw dust with rice bran for sale. Looking at the scene everyone had to be terrified. The abdomen of the horse dead for eating the rice bran mixed with saw dust was cut in two and the entrails were taken off, the woman was trussed like a pig and inserted to the inside abdomen and sawn tight again. Being inside the horse’s abdomen the victim was stirring, shaking for a while and remained inert.
For making a living not in a normal but in a cheating way for her greed for money the woman came to the horrible result that she had to be buried alive in the abdomen of a horse. Before that tragic scene the Vietnamese had to have their head shaken with a long sigh of disappointed with the Japanese way of ruling. Without explicitly expressing their disagreement they silently swallowed the distress against the Japanese cruelty. Is that fraud worth death penalty? What do you think?
In the present days, because of money lots of people have a various form of mixing, blending and intermingling… without taking account of the human life.
The Scripture states clearly: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” (I Tim. 6:10).
(2) The Viet Minh’s policy in the money making for funding the resistance against the French was relying upon the people having fortune and those who were aimed at would have their life withered. My father was one victim of that policy.
The VM sent their men to my father and bought two carts of cloth. My father was compelled to sell with a bill of debt as proof of payment. Upon the delivery of merchandise he went bankrupt. He had to sacrifice his property for his life. He had to redo from the beginning. After that incident we believed that everything would be alright, but the day after the French security came and captured my father to the Deuxieme Bureau at Catina Street and gave him a good thrashing to the extent that he was more dead than alive for pleading guilty of supplying the enemy.
In jail, the Scripture consoled my father with: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both body and soul in hell.” (Math. 10:28).
A few months later, thanks to the intervention of a Protestant evangelist and minister my father was released. He went home with an injured and emaciated body… Being able to see him again made me happy but I could not restrain my tears from running.
In the VM era, it was customary that the citizens were living between the hammer and the anvil. The VM didn’t like the Christians, mainly the Protestants and they sought to destroy them in several ways. Today, the Communists still continue the same policy.
(9) For me, at the age of naivete and unaffectedness, I would have my prying eyes on everything with concerns and questions. Was it because of witnessing the scenes of life, the ill and merciless behavior toward one another that made me so? I saw the Japanese flag appear for a time and then, it was not seen any longer. In turn, the French color was flying over everywhere and thereafter, the national flag, the yellow background and three red stripes. I asked my father about the signification of the flag (?). He explained to me: “The red and yellow colors are emblems of the blood and the skin of our people. The three stripes are symbols of the three regions of Vietnam: the South, the Center and the North”. I continued my question: “Who is so wise to be the flag designer, Dad?”. He shook his head and answered me: “Maybe the French govern our nation so long, so they understand our customs, the practices of three regions and they believe that the three regions are not be able to get along together, therefore, they designed the three parallel stripes to mean that they never converge and… never agree upon a single thing!”.
Asking about the VM flag, I was responded as such: “Ho Chi Minh follows the Communism. Of course, he must depend upon them. The red background and the yellow star is the son flag, born from the father flag, the URSS flag, and the master flag which is the flag of the Communist of China. Ho Chi Minh also used the blood color, the yellow star, but wittingly left off the hammer and the sickle so as to cover the eyes of the Vietnamese people. The hammer and the sickle are symbols the worker and peasant. But not really so, instead, the hammer is used to strike the head and the sickle to cut the neck of the people.”
My father said further: “The VM seized political power on June 19, 1945. Ho Chi Minh read the declaration of Independence on September 2, 1945 and on June 3, 1946 he signed the Preliminary Treaty with the French, and relying upon the French he eradicated all the followers of the Chinese Kuomintang. HCM designed many tricks to kill the patriots without mercy and many people had lain down!”.
Today, the VN Communist Party still follow HCM’s path, they don’t hesitate to eliminate one another, they are contending for interests without taking account of the comrade love of their old time when they have lived and made war together in the bloody, futile and long combat on the Vietnam soil. Oh! Such is HCM! But the VN Communists kept calling him the ‘godfather of the nation’. Ironic, isn’t it?
(10) Following some noisy demonstrations of the students the Viet Minh propaganda was so pleasing to the people ears that my sister quit her schooling and followed her guide to the guerilla area at Vinh Long, Tra Vinh province, for being member of the force of resistance to the French. In her young age, full of enthusiasm and fervor, inexperienced of life and no awareness of the trap that the VM set anywhere awaiting the prey… my sister left behind her parents, brothers, teachers and friends and went her way. She didn’t know that she and her ignorant fellows would be the prey that the VM were going to catch at any time.
After a time of living together with the resistance group, my sister acknowledged the reality. The uneducated people (illiterate) but as cell, team and platoon leaders, they were haughty, they played the bully and forced the newcomers to do all dishonest and deceitful things. For the struggle against the French, no Frenchman was seen, but only the people who had a little money were ordered to pay contributions every month to show their patriotism and support the resistance force. Anyone who didn’t do what they asked to do would be considered as pro-enemy element and the victim would have the opportunity to live with the worms!
Knowing that she was in a deadly danger, my sister felt contrition of being so foolish! She swallowed her affliction, silently asking GOD for opening one way for her. After many months of the unforgettable lesson she succeeded in escaping that demonic place and turning home with an indescribable joy. She had no more courage to come back to school and if she needed to do so, she would be in no mood for study as the VM deceiving image was still haunting her mind. It’s enough! Let pass the student time!
(12) When a boy being allowed to watch movies, I felt a great joy, especially the kind of movies my brother brought home from the US Information Hall. Many were foreign and exciting films: films about science, technology… fiction and war. Films creating deep impression in heart made me remember so long and difficult to forget, such as, the jet plane taking off vertically like a dragonfly in a windy sky. They are really genius! The jet plane took off, landed, and flew to the right and to the left, forward and backward without requiring a long runway. Until now, within a long time of almost sixty years I have never seen such an aircraft. Was it a fictional movie?
Thinking of one’s country with a very high civilization and looking back at my own; it is pretty much behind the times (?). They made war with sticks, scimitars and sharpened bamboos, and the infantrymen had to walk until their heels were worn out or ride the bike with sweaty bodies.
Then, until the people of the South VN saw the images of the North Communist soldiers - ‘the pinnacle of the human intellect’ - with a pith helmet combat on their head and feet with a pair of tire tread sandals, an AK47 rifle in hands and an ammo belt on shoulder. The South VN people saw also the policemen in yellow uniform, they saw the military boonie hats with wide brim, and they saw the opportunists with a red band in the sleeve of their shirt. Then, the people came to understand how the “jungle civilization” is with its aggressive march into the alleys and streets, sowing a multitude of terror and fright overhead of the Vietnamese people without spare.
(13) Dien Bien Phu: Our people fall into the habit of telling about the past, when two or three people sit together, they would discuss about the topics of the day, life story… A friend opened up to me: “Thanks to the VM winning over the French, our people are no longer under the French’s domination! If otherwise, today might be…” I laughed when hearing that, I took the bible and read a verse: “…that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.” (I John 5:19 NIV) and another one: “Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?” (Lam. 3:38 NIV). He understood that I didn’t tell my own idea, he skipped and smiled.
The Chinese population is overcrowded, so, when in battle they often crushed their opponents by taking their bodies to cover the rifle-pit. Vo Nguyen Giap had a Chinese general named Wei Gouqing as master and military advisor. As always and no exclusion: first cannon and assault, after - VM made use of the mass to overflow Dien Bien Phu after bombarding over the enemy with shells. It is worth to say that both side, the French and the VM, were engaging in violent combat without result showing either winner or loser but the French soldiers were ordered to drop their weapons and gave up (?). The French was defeated and the dream of establishing a colonialist government in Indo-China was like rice husk flying with the whirlwind. The French left, the American came and helped the South VN re-organize the government as they helped Israel rebuild the nation in 1948.
Israel: Is Israel the stronghold to guard the oil pouch of the Middle East? Why are the US to help Israel exist with all their readiness and efforts? Rather, they let the RVN collapse on April 30, 1975, the nation that they once considered as an outpost against the Communism (?).
After three decades of living and building the nation, Israel was attacked by the Arab block (Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq) simultaneously and vehemently, and the US responded at once by establishing an airlift for helping it and made the Arab block hold its pace… The US helps Israel, for what reason? Please read some verses of the Scripture so as to get the response:
@ “Israel, whom I have chosen.” (Isaiah 44: 1).
@ “See, they will come from afar - some from the North, some from the West, some from the region of Aswan.” (Isaiah 49: 12).
@ “If anyone does attack you, it will not be my doing; whoever attacks you will surrender to you.” (Isaiah 54: 15 NIV).
@ “Israel was holy to the Lord, the first fruits of his harvest; all who devoured her were held guilty, and disaster overtook them, declares the Lord.” (Jeremiah 2: 3 NIV).
@ “For the nation or kingdom that will not serve you will perish; it will be utterly ruined.” (Isaiah 60: 12 NIV).
@ “The city will never again be uprooted or demolished.” (Jeremiah 31: 40 NIV).
The US is a Christian nation, they study the Scripture very carefully, they fear GOD, they understand His supreme power and take the Word as the precept for the national administration. They also know where the power comes from (?).
“For the Lord Almighty has purposed, and who can thwart him? His hand is stretched out, and who can turn it back?” (Isaiah 14: 27 NIV).
This is the reason why the United States should help Israel; just because of the existence of itself.
Looking back at Vietnam, our country, they are proud to be in possession of a four thousand-year culture, and their ancestors belong to ‘Con rong chau tien’ (i.e. descended from a dragon and a fairy). Nevertheless, the Scripture relates: “The great dragon was hurled down - that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan, who leads the world astray.” (Revelation 12: 9 NIV).
Is it true that the Vietnamese people’s ancestor was the dragon who leads the world astray? If so, do not be wonder why the April 30, 1975 happened. In fact, our country had a whole sea of idols and the dragon sculptures have been found everywhere in the nation, from the North to the South, and the people bow down to and worship all these idols, in violation of GOD’s command.
“You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water below. You shall not bow down to them and worship them; for I, the Lord your GOD, am a jealous GOD.” (Exodus 20: 4,5 NIV).
I tell you the truth, don’t be angry! Try to come to the American church and ask them for money to built the temple or pagoda! You might be answered ‘no way!’ but they told you the truth for the Lord, their GOD! So don’t dream about asking them for aid for edification of all those kinds of idolatry!
Concerning Vietnam, before the invasion of the VN Communist, from the leading rank to lay people, how many of whom venerate and fear their Creator? Until now, they are still living their way and know nothing about:
“The fear of the Lord is the key to this treasure.” (Isaiah 33: 6 NIV)
If they knew this long time ago, they would have not needed the US aids, and not to run away from their country as exile and refugee! And if they knew those words of GOD, they would have not to take to the road to call for fighting the VN Communism as they are doing currently.
TAIWAN: At the end of the 19th Century, the Japanese occupied and ruled Taiwan for about 50 years. In August 1945, the Japan surrendered the Allied Nations and Mao Tse Tung embraced the whole mainland of China. As leader of the Communist China, he chased Chiang Kai Shek to Taiwan, a small island standing outside the mainland, and Chiang Kai Shek chose it as an asylum after the defeat by Mao.
Chiang Kai Shek was setting in Taiwan and with the support of the US he established the Republic of China in October 1949.
Being a small island next to a great continent, everyday Taiwan had to receive volleys of cannon-ball of the mainland. Mao’s dream of invading and taking over Taiwan never comes true; just because Chiang Kai Shek’s wife is a Christian, the daughter of a Methodist missionary who had studied in the United States. They all were children of the Heavenly Father, how could they not help one another? It’s easy to understand, isn’t it?
Surely you know the reason why our country is still living in abject poverty under the yoke of the Communism?
The VN Communists have swayed the balance of justice, they oppressed and exploited their fellow citizens and believed that they were able to sit firmly on their throne permanently. They should have thought that they were at the ‘lavish banquet’ of the plunderers, they were drinking a delirious drink and they would be drunk of delirium, and sooner or later, they had to vomit what they ate and drank. They should abate, fall down and sleep a never-awaken sleep.
(22) In 1965, at Qui Nhon the American ship landed right at the seaside of the city, with numerous materials of war like tanks, armored cars, cannons, vehicles and military equipment. The surrounding area of the Qui Nhon airport was used as storage. When the GI’s were allowed to leave the barracks they went downtown Qui Nhon and had a good time in snack bars. In daytime, the red, blue and green lights were flashing dimly because of the sunlight of the day. The American military police in their jeeps were patrolling along the streets and picking up all the drunken GI. The people of the city were also drunk for the US blue and red dollars because they were a hundredfold more valuable than their own. The brothels sprang up like mushrooms. The ambience was happier than before the coming of the US. Besides, at time, at Qui Nhon stadium, there were the Tae-kwon-do shows performed by the Korean soldiers and other musical shows in open air which could entertain the people of the city.
Over a quarter of the Qui Nhon beach surface was the American Transportation Unit abode with tents. The people came searching for and getting their job so easily in the PX of the US military compounds. There was no sabotage yet. The security was applied in a very lax way until an afternoon, the building leased by the US for their pilot’s dwelling was destroyed by the VC cam tu quan (volunteers for death). The day after, on the other side of the Thi Nai marsh, the VC incited the people to go with their boats to the city and invaded it. It was the usual trick of the VC, so, when the boats were in the middle of the sea, they were all wrecked by the US helicopters’ fire and I was stupefying witness of that tragic scene. The blood mixed with the seawater made the pain more pungent.
(24) (26) When I was in the Infantry school I didn’t see any gun similar to that of the US soldiers I had seen before. It was a hard time for me but I tried and drilled to be familiar with endurance. My body seemed brawnier than it had been during my time at school, but I felt something wrong in my heart. I was exercising the firing, killing, retaliating; I was practicing the way to win over the enemy and keeping safe… The human teaching and learning seemed contrast to the word of GOD that I had learned before (?).Who could answer the question I had in mind? Upon the graduation, I had to learn more about how to interrogate, to torture and to use tricks to exploit my victims. Oh! Many things! Such is life? However I should been a part of it for my survival? Until a day, I saw the eyes of a POW, I remembered that my life was liberated by GOD from the captivity of Satan long time ago. How happy I had been!
The crack of the jail door which had been closed by the jailor together with the night rainy sound was sadder than any other sound! It seemed that it were the long sigh of distress. On my duty hours, I went room after room and ward to ward, and through a square opening I look into, I felt profoundly conscious of the unhappiness people had to overcome.
“TWO IDEOLOGIES, ONE DRAMA” it is worthy to struggle, to win or lose so as to come to destruction? For how long the Vietnamese people had to bear the yoke of the Communists, the satanic yoke? When would that yoke be taken off?
(28) The Combined Military Interrogation Center (CMIC) was of two sides, the US side and the VN side, combined at work, searching for knowing the enemy situation via the statement of the VC POW’s and Hoi Chanh ralliers. Those were my everyday things and nothing was special to me. I read all those statements to learn more about how to get information, to have comparisons, and distinctions of the true and false statements. Most of them were the youngsters of the North VN.
About the Mau Than event, the American side of the Center seemed unrelated and uninterested as if it were only the question of the RVN and the VC, not theirs. Therefore, they were not involved and their servicemen were not confined to quarters like the Vietnamese soldiers. Many soldiers of the enemy were caught at Phu Tho Hoa, in the direction of Cho Lon and Phu Tho race-tracks and their statements were in accordance with the US information given to us. It appeared strange to me! How come the US knew everything? Many questions rose in my mind and remained unanswered!
Owing to the interrogations of the VC cadres and soldiers, I knew more about the North VN. The Communists of the North controlled their people’s stomach so that they were forced to go to the South battle, otherwise, their family and them, they would have nothing to eat and they would have to starve to death! What a great policy!
(29) In the final year when the Great Britain gave back the autonomy to Singapore I attended a new course. Although the teaching was given by the English, I didn’t see any difference with the lessons I had before. They look alike as ‘conformable to the original’.
A difference to me was a new lesson I learned from my friend of the same room: the lesson ‘smuggling’. All I learned from him were how he did the smuggling dollars in the body, the way of his contact with the partner for payment at the rendezvous, the way he’s awaiting the seller (of diamond, marble, cosmetic powders, women underclothes, abalone and playing cards…), how he coaxed the pilots to bring merchandise to Vietnam, and how he got over the customs at the airport. There were many stages, it was not easy! It was very hard to get the money, and then, the money illegally and hardly obtained soared like a phoenix! Really, easy go but not easy come! Such was life!
Thinking about the present, the Communists are in the quest for money, they are using many ways, many tricks, they are living in ecstasy on their ill-gotten wealth and believed that they are enjoying happiness (?).
(30) I was working at the III Corps in the sequence of five generals, but I had only two office bosses. I left being engrossed in my assignments. I was happy there because I had no more opportunity to see the prisons, that small and square opening and the eyes of the prisoner. I sat and worked beside my new boss and an American advisor. We were three in the office. Occasionally, a guide (with a secret number A 22) came for a visit. Every time he came, he was warmly and friendly welcomed and when he left, the advisor gave him an envelope of money. Knowing that he was from Cuc-R coming for information and news exchange, their co-operation was totally unquestionable to me and I took it for granted.
Being familiar with the job, getting along with the co-workers, with mutual comprehending and experience sharing, I believed that I were a shuttle but it seemed to me that in my learning I didn’t find anything new. For me, people didn’t gain anything from doubt because much doubt would render people more painful in a lot of ways. I often used the information and news given by the US and considered them with those of the friend units, I forced myself to keep them in mind so as to accurately report them to my superiors.
When I was on duty in the evening I tapped the conversation of the VC and rewrote it in blank writing. I didn’t understand what they said, but with the code keys of the US the text was decoded and it became clear and understandable. Making war that way seemed slightly indisposed!
I was often in service out of town. I came to the friend camps near the border (Thien Ngon and Tong Le Chan), in the blockhouse and through its loophole I looked at the sky or in a rocking havoc I thought of the war, communicating with the friend units or following up the enemy situations. Also through that loophole I could see the shell stars illuminating and extinguishing in a corner of the sky. I could hear the explosive sound of the enemy cannon balls flying by through the wind or the song of the cricket at night. There was nothing to say. Truly boring! Like a prisoner, no difference at all.
To the neighbor country, at Kompong Cham, probing the Khmer Rouge, news and information were all from the US. They gave instructions and led. Just go and obey the superiors’ orders, what else can I do? As soldier, submit and execute according to the responsibility and obligation, no other than that. No option. Life in the army was only the days of deep gloom and darkness. What to be ‘proud’ when we knew that we were only puppets and ‘do as one is told’ as the saying goes, we had to jump up and down to the movement of the hand of ‘someone’ who had the rope and pulled.
The Corps Commander and the chief of staff without the staff’s briefing of the friend and enemy situations would have nothing to do but sat and drank tea. The President, too! (The artillery, with the help of the friend units, determined accurately the grid coordinates of the target, its direction and distance, shift, and then, fire. The Air Forces, too, with the information given, fly to the target push the button and return.)
Was Kissinger able to do alone?
Upon the issuing of the superiors’ commands, their subordinate ranking had to carry out, the same was in all domains. That’s it.
(33) After the event of Mau Than Tet in 1968, the North Communists met with the grave failure although the RVNA used the obsolete weaponry which was ready to go to the dump. Acknowledging the RVNA fighting ability, the US government began to furnish them with the weaponry such as M16 rifles, tanks M48, cannons 155m/m, re-equipping the South Vietnam so that both side killed each other in Summer 1972. (At the end of 1974, the US replaced the jet F5 by the F5E.)
The weapons provided to both side - the NVA and the RVNA - nobody knew who had more, who had less and their correlation of force remained unknown. Although the US deployed their troops in the South in 1965, no one could answer why the US and the Allied Forces came to help the RVNA pursue the war against the Communist and no longer after they let the South Vietnam collapse!
A multitude of lives were sacrificed, a whole sea of tears was flowing and a great number of hearts were in pain. Who could heal, comfort or do anything to recover the human distress?
(38) The days of working together with the US soldiers at the Bureau of Intelligence of the Third Corps I often asked myself where the SPAR news (of A1 value) came from? A finger pointed to the sky, just it! The US probing machinery followed up and knew to the details the movement of the enemy troops, their shelters, their number, the kind of their weapons. They knew also the name of those who were recently dead and the people replacing them! The unauthorized people were not allowed to touch the ‘confidential’ documents. The US dollars expended not for fun. Nobody of the cadres of the Central Committee of the Communist Party could get away from their ‘blue eyes’. Even the high ranking cadres of the RVN government were also carefully scrutinized.
The American advisor repatriated long time ago and my boss had no friend to converse with or discuss about the enemy situations. He sat alone looking at the map of the III Corps territory but didn’t find the Cuc-R anywhere. Three divisions of the regular North Vietnam Army (Cong truong 5,7,9) and the 429th Regiment of Special Forces were in evasive motion. He exhaled a long sigh of disappointment.
One day before April 30, 1975, two American in civilian dress came to see my boss, they spoke to one another making a rendezvous. He had to wait to know the appointment location and the time to leave his native land for living an exile life overseas. His heart was broken.
(40) The time before I went to jail, I used to wander about the railroad station, seeing the people of the North happy to come to the South. I couldn’t believe that they were so ragged! Those people were never released by their raggedness and their poverty. They brought with them what they possessed, a farmer’s pipe, a pack of local shredded tobacco, a deformed and sooty metal pot, a piece of tattered mat. They all had a joyful appearance, but they were not able to conceal their misery for living many years in destitution. Seeing them I could not hold in my tears. Such were the people living under the Communist regime!
(42) Arriving to the prison-house standing in the jungle of the Duong Minh Chau war region, the sun was about to set. No sunlight was seen for direction, not a cottage of the local people. Everybody was tired and worn out for hunger and thirst. It began raining and it was chilling. During the night the rainy sound was heard like a lull. The prisoners of ‘re-education’ saw that there was nothing to keep for their life. The freedom for running away was no more. Our future was before the muzzle of the AK47 rifles and the bright bayonets. There was nothing more to dream of save the desperate expectation. The home-coming day was unknown.
They gave us a butler’s knife and a saw without handle but they wanted us to build a prison house in thatched. It was the primal challenge of the jailbirds. With many hands and joint efforts the hut was done. Only two packs of instant noodle were used to feed hundreds of prisoners, which remind me of the North Communist soldier status in the old days. The status of both, the prisoner and prisoner keeper, was of no difference.
Months and years passed away, the prisoners’ bodies didn’t remain the same as they had been before. Edema, paralysis, dysentery, malaria were the prisoners’ partners. Many had lain down. There were no more tears to mourn the deceased.
The time kept moving on. The former ‘blue eyes’ didn’t have the heart to move out and then they came to pay a visit to the ‘old and antimate friends’ with their gifts: sorghum, salad oil, wheat flour, rice (blue thread bag from Seattle) to warm their heart. It’s very painful!
(46) In the US soil, there is no more anxiety to have someone knocking at the door at midnight. Often in my dream I have the feeling that I have been still in prison. It is very strange! The image of the prison house in the jungle cannot be erased from my mind. It still follows me in my sleep and remain when awaken (?). How to feel comfortable, happy, life worth of living when we are in prison? Closing my eyes and thinking about the freedom I am enjoying in the foreign country, how wonderful it is! Looking back at the day when I received the release paper from the re-education camp how joyful and frustrated I was! I am free now and I am no longer in bondage, no longer being obligated to do what one commanded me to do. Joy and happiness! But please put in mind that every freedom must be paid with a price but an expensive one. All the same, the human freedom must be in a framework no other than to be like ‘fish in a pot and bird in a cage’ (?).
Anyone who loves the country and the nation should want their people to be free from the Vietnam Communist bondage, from the devils. Looking back at myself, being tied up firmly by Satan how can I do? The very self is not liberated yet how can we liberate the nation? The people still have their heart filled with hatred, discontentedness with others, wanting to prevail over, struggle for influences, having unlimited desire of all kind of things, divisions and factions. They still bowed down before the idols made by the hands of men. The idols have eyes but they cannot see, they have ears but they cannot hear, they have mouths but they cannot speak, they have legs and feet but cannot walk, they keep silent, inanimate and how can they bless their adorers? Thus, many people are still on their knees praying, prostrating themselves before them and making angry their Creator.
There is still greed in the people’s hearts, “evil desire and greed, which is idolatry” (Col. 5:6 NIV), their persistent jealousy, envy and unforgivingness. They bring back their past to find fault with one another. They know that the act is not good but they still do. Everyone likes a life of happiness and of prosperity but nobody thinks that above each one is the presence of the Loving Heavenly Father whose “eyes are on the ways of men; He sees their every step” (Job 34: 21), He “richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment” (I Tim. 6:7).
Please read a segment of the Scripture to know clearly the reason why our people are still wearing the VN Communist yoke.
“If at anytime I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be build up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.” (Jer. 18: 7-10 NIV)
Please remember those words ‘IN GOD WE TRUST’ and seek to come to GOD, destroy all the inanimate idols, that is the unique way (and no other way is available) if our VN nation wants to be liberated from the Communist yoke and the satanic power tying us up for long time.
EPILOGUE
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also seen eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what GOD had done from beginning to end.’ (Eccl.2: 11 NIV)
Through many decades of war, the Vietnamese have been recipients and witnesses of the collapse and destruction of several families. Death of life could not be anticipated. Nobody could estimate the price to be paid for freedom. Many hearts could perceive the ‘disgusting truth’ in the war on their soil, they were still doubtful, distrustful, envious, refusing the immediate truth like the Israelites of old rejected THE ONLY SON OF GOD.
Those many decades had consumed great pains and experienced the virulence of the VN Communism, atheists and excluders of the Truthful God. The Communists of the North kept persistently on “throwing the truth to the ground” (Dan. 8: 12), and deprived their people of the basic right of life that GOD granted to human beings: freedom.
The eyes have seen, the ears have heard and the hearts have been aware of the Communistic and satanic impostures for long. Nevertheless, men still feel free to launch themselves to death and never come to know the blessed happiness that the Heavenly Father always keeps ready for them.
This reality is clearly seen. The Israelites of whom GOD spoke: “I will make you a ruin and a reproach among the nations around you, in the sight of all who pass by.” (Ezek. 5: 14 NIV)
The Vietnamese people still refuge GOD as always. They consent to be bound all their life by the evil without considering their capacity nor entrusting GOD for help. Thus, how can Vietnam get away from the barbarian oppression of the Communists?
Somebody, in ignorance, is still interested and passionate in the inducement, the lull and the call of the Communists and Satan although he knows that presently the VN Communists are in daily dispute for the allotment of the wealth plundered from their victims. Taking advantage of the love for the country, the fatherland and the propriety left behind on the day of running away of a great number of Vietnamese overseas the Communists are throwing dust into the eyes of the world. Many of their entertaining games are displayed to lure our people overseas so that they forget the pain for the country and forsake their identity as beings who are in need to be liberated and to enjoy forgiveness from above.
Looking back into history when men were divided in two, being defeated and submitted to Satan’s bondage, and like fish out of water they were living under the demonic yoke, and being deceived, cheated and exhorted to get away from GOD, they were incapable to escape from the invisible power, their freedom was robbed and their joy of living in happiness was out of reach.
For all these reasons JESUS has come to earth as a man to liberate human beings from Satan’s bondage as the Bible teaches us that JESUS died on the cross for mankind’s salvation.
You are living in the USA you surely have seen the cross on the top of every church in all States. The cross is also a living proof of their faith. To live in liberty, independent and happiness is to trust in GOD. Only GOD “has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sin.” (Col. 1: 13,14 NIV)
In Vietnam, our native country, the people have frequently much hard work, they used their life to change everything and they didn’t have the change to enjoy themselves but had to leave their ‘fortune’ to the possession of the wicked Communists. Today, viewing those evil people abuse their power and tear the nation into pieces, what will you do with your empty hands and minds? Should we prostrate ourselves before the inanimate idols to implore and to beg for their rescue from the chains of the Communists and the yoke of Satan? Doing so will make angry the Creator once again.
Please come to JESUS CHRIST today, asking Him to forgive us and our nation. “Come near to GOD and He will come near to you…Grieve, mourn and wail” (James 4: 8,9 NIV). When JESUS was on earth, he said clearly that: “Apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15: 5 NIV)
It’s Him who “is the faithful witness, the first born from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.” (Rev. 1: 5 NIV)
Two world circumstances, only one choice!
THE STORY OF SATAN
Satan summoned a secret meeting with his staff. In the beginning, he ordered his subordinates to spare Israel due to MASTER’s prohibition (1), he had no comply with it absolutely. Looking at the world map before him and well scrutinizing, finally he picked Vietnam.
He raised his voice: “German, Italy, and Japan are considered as being already broken up. Now there are only two blocks: the Communism and the Free World. It’s easy! The French have spent US money, have their part in Dien Bien Phu, and they seem to be tired and exhausted now, so they must be off. The people of the North, the Center and the South VN cannot put up with one another, they have no solidarity, so they must have a lesson from us to learn. Let the American come in and separate them in two, so that they can make war with each other. While producing the new weapons we give the South Vietnam some old which are still in stock so that they can use them up for us and through this transaction we may have some profit.”
“The North Vietnam has been assigned to the Communist bloc (the URSS, Red China and the tributary countries) and the South Vietnam has been ascribed to the Free World (the US and its allies); the 17th parallel was like the throat; if we cut it off, the North Communists cannot penetrate the South and then, how can our weapons be used up? Impossible!”
Hearing this, a henchman said: “How about the Geneva treaty? How about the general election if it should be carried out?” Satan smiled and unhurriedly replied: “Cancel it, will be the best way.”
The meeting became exciting and enthusiastic with many ideas. The fate of the RVN Government has been put in the scale to see which side prevails.
“Priority is the conveyance of the weapons to the South! Negotiating with Laos and Cambodia, giving them some to use their borders for not going deeply to the mainland, they should surely agree. The US has its man available for repatriation and this guy will be in charge of the setting up of a government in the Republic of Vietnam (the First Republic). That’s the first stage, it is supposed to be done”.
The next meeting seemed ameliorating. Many proposals have been reviewed. “The weapons furnished to the North must be modern, as many as possible to urge the leaders of the free world enter into the battle, otherwise, we surely incur losses!”
Satan set up the plan perfectly, he let down the leading man of the RVN because that guy got in his way. Exactly as expected, the leader of the free world went to Vietnam without any obstacle.
The URSS, the Red China and their tributary countries with all their efforts supplied the North Vietnam an immense quantity of weapons. Ho Chi Minh satisfied with the weapons obtained signed right away a decree for general mobilization and sent his troops to the South.
The US searched for a second man. The Second Republic was set up. They provided the RVNA with new and modern weapons so that they could fight against the NVA. And the life-and-death struggle between both sides increased its intensity. All kinds of weapons were brought into use in the battle.
Satan disclosed a secret to his staff: “I understand very well that both sides - the Communist world and the Free world - are fighting for supremacy. In this fight they have the chance to show up their power. The North Communist wants to consume entirely the South and then, they have to agree with any conditions provided a great quantity of weapons will be in Ho Chi Minh’s hands so that his dream can come true. The US has all their power to win their combat but I have another strategy! The MASTER allowed me to have all dominion over this world and in the heavenly realms with a recommendation from Him ‘not to harm His children’, I must obey and dare not do against His command.” (2)
Satan spoke in a roundabout way and didn’t say about his secret, the whole staff became agitated since they wanted to know the truth. He smiles: “The problem is simple. I send a personage to France, he will call for both sides to sit down and discuss about the cease-fire and the question is dealt. Let the US come back home and relax for a while and then I shall make another arrangement. I know that the North Vietnam Communist have many artifices and I let them take possession of the South Vietnam; and when they have already the South they will see that it is impossible for them to eject. They will pay back to their brothers the capital and interest of the money and materials they borrowed from them. To solve this problem, I think, sooner or later they will ask help from the US their old enemy.”
Satan continued: “It’s easy for me to act because Vietnam is not the MASTER’s son, the China Communist as well. If the money problem is not settled once for all, many stories will happen, my dears. Surely you understand what I am saying?”
Everyone in his staff seemed entirely half-witted. The meeting room being stirred up became suddenly mute, they heard Satan disclose his secret: “The North Vietnam Communist has been provided with all kinds of weapons except one thing (?). The RVN organized many units save one (?). If the foreign aids are cut, one of them should show his hands to be tied up. The war was over as such! Now I let you know this ‘missed thing’, the thing ought be thought of but both sides didn’t do, that’s it!”. All the staff didn’t know what their boss said, they looked at one another with their head shaken and the long sighs. It’s very mysterious to them. Nobody understood what the ‘missed thing’ was about.
In a celebration party Satan inquired his subordinates about the “lack” of the North Vietnam (the Communist) and the South Vietnam (the RVN) in the past war.No one knows how to answer! Satan chuckled with the peace of mind knowing that his secrets rere not yet exposed. He emptied his glass of liquor, and stood up, promising to make his staff know about his plan performed in the Vietnam soil in the past, at the present and in the future.Hearing this promise everybody was eagerly longing for the next meeting.
With the same World map of the preceeding meeting , Satan recounted: “We have the intention to leave some countries for the Communist Block (Red China, Vietnam, North Korea ang Cuba) to make a profit! Being diversely manufactured our weapons are just for testing and their types shall remain non-knowable to everyone! And now the arsenals are full, we must search for consuming markets so that the storage can be discharged to make room for the new weapons.We have to blind the human hearts, create hostility among people and nations and give them the chance to be at war with one another and I can make a great profit from it!
Previously I played a nasty trick on the International Communist that might be painful and unforgotten for them, I made use of a big-league guy with his One-World-ism that is as gentle as a lullaby and very pleasing to hear. In the present days yet I see the enthusiasm of Vietnamese Communists with the three no’s theory! I am so happy for that! They know nothing about our strength or weakness. With them the Communism only matters, as long as it still exists they will have the chance to plunder their people. They are not aware of the MASTER’s command: “all the illegal profits should be returned and the maker can’t enjoy nothing therefrom” because when the unjust and ill-gotten wealth is in their hands, their conscience will go away. Actually, how wise the Eastern Communist Block was! They changed direction, wisely and in due time! When the water stream is limpid everything therein shall be clearly seen, but nothing can be seen as the water is troubled. The European Common Market with their eurozone money sooner or later will be staggering like a boat encountering the great waves, or like a log flowing up and down in water.”
Satan spoke in a roundabout way without reaching the point he had promised to his staff and his men began to be fidgety. Satan gave an appeasing smile he ever had and explained: “I don’t talk about World War One or World War Two, not necessary now! I don’t want to speak of the ‘Freedom and Communist Block’ that bored people either! I only like to tell about the Vietnam War of the other days: whereas one side was lack of ‘bombs’ was it necessary to the opposite side to ask for ‘cannons and field artillery’? At Dien Bien Phu I have let Viet Minh win the battle, perhaps you guy don’t understand my scheme, do you? Fighting requires no conventions, no regulations, no tolerance but you need to have a backup planning for the immediate future if you don’t want to be pushed.Sooner or later the losers shall run away with head bowed and indignation buried deeply in their hearts! The winners also have no different fate. Who can escape from my hands but the MASTER’s children?” Satan also quoted the scripture: “Money is the answer to everything.”
With the briefing stick in hands, Satan looked at the Vietnam map and pointed to the geographic name Khe Sanh asking: “The beeline from here to Hanoi, and from here to Guam, you guy to compare the difference and let me know with your idea…”The whole conference hall seemed noisily insistent, the attendants looked at one other with heads shaken since they didn’t know what Satan wanted them to say. With an inherent smile, Satan revealed: “With the Khe Sanh battle alone we have gained much! Is this true that people should yield up for having no bombs? Anyway, I have let the North Vietnam Communist win over the South Vietnam because I know that the immoderately greedy guys ought to be docile and obedient. Just give them the blooze and you can have what you want. Of course, they will fall and lie motionless when boozed up!”
Satan kept on saying: “Let the VN Communist Party enjoy the exclusive control for a time, no harm to us, since I know them like the palm of my hand: they want to be god like me, they are also master in treachery, in fraud, in greed for wealth and in love with money-squeezing. The Communism is always their idol of which they are loyal disciples. Besides the irregular features above, family and motherland are worthless to them. Then, our immediate job to be done at any cost is using as many projects as possible to blind the eyes… also to give the subjects of the so-called ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’ the chance to be metamorphosed into true ‘RED Capitalists’. And the coming step is clearing the obstacle which stands in my way. For clearance, I will make these Red Capitalists expel all the Montagnards living along the Truong Son Range and along the VN-China border from their native land because of their perfect knowledge of the land, their ability to defend it and their ready living sacrifice for it, and because most of them are MASTER’s children, with this alone, it is too difficult for me to do something!”
Hearing this, a subordinate raised his voice: “Let’s apply the method of intercalation among the people, it will be easy for us to manage. Interpolating the policemen, the gangsters and mobsters in the midst of the mass… Allowing the Red Chinese to easily come n and out of Vietnam and letting them approach and live together with tha natives… in doing so we are prepared for our involvement in any case. And about the projects, the Highway and the High-speed railroad should be performed as quickly as possible. The other projects could be dependable, no big deal! We must agitate the intense hatred of the Vietnamese people toward the VN Communist Party, and it shall make the people stand up in rebellion just because as long as the Chinese Communism – their god – still exists, the Red Chinese would go in and out of the VN territory in great mass and the Vietnamse people will have the chance to be assimilated with them… thus it will last long; our weapons in store will be piled up for having no consuming market, how can we put up with this loss?”
Another subordinate contributed his ideas: “The VN people love their country and their kinsfolks, they would oppose the perfidy of the Red China but with their used and out-of-date weaponry over three decade, how can they deal with the power of the Communists of China? If they want to fight back their excessively bully brothers they aue required to provide more modern weaponry. How can they have a way? Evidently, they can’t rely upon the US because the American are not allowed to sell weaponry to the Communists, hence I think that it is better to let the VN Communist abdicate!”
Hearing this, Satan burst out laughing. He striked the table to make sign to everybody to be silent and to listen to the announcement of his decision: “MASTER is the Lord Almighty and Sovereign, He has allowed me to have the world and the kingdom of the air in my palms but once His commands are given they shuold be done and done right, no wrong-doing is allowed.
The Vietnamese don’t know that I am the dragon, do they? By origin, I am the dragon, GOD’s creation in Eden,the garden of GOD, and…I am the Guardian Angel. I have neither offsprings nor descendants! What an excessive and false claim! If one day the VN people find out whom their true and original ancestors are, they will repent and come to trust the MASTER, taking Him for shelter and then I should give up, paralyzed!”
At breaktime Satan left, his staff kept on discussing. One of his subordinates stood up and spoke freely with his own idea: “ There’s no saying about us, however every man can’t live long after one hundred years of age! Almost all of the generation of the Communists who have proudly boated themselves to be the pinnacle of human mind should pass away and the successors building upon the inheritance of the wealth plundered shall not hesitate to lord it over the people, with no minding any rules and laws and tear the nation apart before the outcry and protest of their fellow folks.
Surely the descendants of the coming generation will do the same thing: clinging to the riches plundered they kept on squandering them regardless of the debt burden the plebeians and their offsprings shall bear! And… the Red China becomes their god, and will have powers and principalities! Such is the leadership status of the VN Communist Party, why do we keep silent and do nothing in the moment like this?”
-“We must wait for the orders from our leader!”
The bell rang, the conference resumed. Satn took his seat, all the staff were listening to a subordinate who presented his question:
“In 1958, to acquire the weapons offered, for exchange, and in form of debt payment in advance, one of the chiefs in the Central Committee of the Communist Party sent a diplomatic note to the Red China government recognizing their sovereignty over Paracel and Spratly Islands, while those sea-island territories were under the sovereignty of the Rpublic of Vietnam! Why did the Red China consent and accept? How strange it is!”
-“The sea-island territory tentions and conflicts are exploding and escalating. The 1958 document is still there, in the hand of the Red China! How can the Red Vietnam respond to his Communist brother? In fact, the people living under the Communist regime are standing up and claiming that the sovereignty over the sea-island territories is for Vietnam and the Vietnamese people. When the VN Communist Party is defeated and no longer exists, is still valuable this black and white sheet of paper?”
Satan stood up and announced: “The meeting ends up. You guy, do not bother whether it is still valuable or not. My last word shall count. MASTER has given me all the authority over this world and I will act as I see fit. Do not let doubt torment you!”
Coming back to his private room with his persistent thinking, Satan spoke to himself: “For clarifying all non-necessary query I shall let my men know a little about my identity and my plan I have been making so far! I will select some faithful guy of my staff and offered them a copious meal and drink, and I try to inquire them about some matters that they might give me some worthy and helpful ideas in return!” From the bottom of his heart Satan knew very well that “the truth can never be hidden but sooner or later it will be shown out”. With this idea in mind he secure to perform his plan of eating and taking over the world affairs with his servants.
All his loyal confidants were on the list – those who shook the earth and made kingdom tremble – they would have a good appetite. At the meal Satan stood up and narated all his past: “Becoming a favourite of the MASTER, I walked among the fiery stones in Eden. I was the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty, and blameless in my ways. I said in my heart, I will ascend to heaven, I will raise my throne above the stars of GOD. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the MOST HIGH. As soon as the idea came into being in my mind without putting into action yet, MASTER discovered and expelled me from the garden.” No servant is greater than his MASTER.
“Anyway, I have the right to destroy this world, I have the authority to control every domain in the limit decreed by the MASTER. I expect that you all be aware of your position, listen very carefully and cary out accurately all plan and program given, set apart and do not touch any chosen people, races and nations of the MASTER even they are against us. Let’s never violate His command and never think that He ignores, the consequences will be beyond measure! Our fate is already disposed, we have no words!”
With a long breathing of disappointment Satan continued his account: “However, I still have my ability to sow the intoxicated seeds of doubt, hatred in the human hearts and once they sprout, take root, bud, blossom and give fruit, the crop will be great, and all is mine. But at all, MASTER is dissatisfied with my doings, I should give up and get nothing! With a few words I think you all understand me.” In reality, nobody in his staff could not grasp what he wanted to say. However, he kept on his philosophy with another story: “There was an eagle that built nest in the treetop. From his nest he launched his eyeshot far away, he looked on the air, he looked upon the ground and he looked deeply in the ocean with his prey-seeking eyes. His two strong and wide-expanding wings motivated him to fly without restriction everywhere on the air. His solid and sharp claws made him the defensor of himself and the prey-chaser for his eaglets. He was excessively intelligent since he knew very well that the MASTER liked him and protected him everyday in the absolute security, so he didn’t fear or worry anything. I wished to be like him but it was impossible for me, never could I be!” Hearing this charabia his men were struck dumb and looked at one other with a long breathing. They didn’t understand what their boss meant.
Satan laughed reluctantly and told another story: “Acquiring tons and tons of solid gold, and having gold as pledge the heads of the Freedom Block have printed countless bills of ‘IN GOD WE TRUST’ money and filled the world market. The multitude of those currencies, uncountable of course, has made their initiartor the most credential in the Universe. I myself tried to abate those In God We Trust bills and to put them out of the world market but I never succeeded. I had a lot of plans of conversion proposing the use of another currency instead, but my plans were dead too soon to be put in practice. Many people cried out and risked their lives, many unfortunate countries were under trying conditions, afflicted, deprived of supports and scattered due to the absence of the dollar backup! Finally, this is a fact but I am always the loser!”
Feeling the stuffy air in the room, Satan changed his subject, he spoke of the war topic: “Anybody who walked in the open air, and it rained suddenly, he had no umbrella, no raincoar, and then did he have to use his hands to cover his head and face and ran as fast as possible to find a shelter? In the instance of running rapidly away from the rain would anybody have any intention to comtemplate other things? In the dry seasons would people expect the rain? When it was raining, no more anxiety and came happiness?” The whole conference room stayed dumb with this mystification and waited for the boss’s charification: “In the war, bombs should be abounded (of various kinds) to prevail over the enemy. When bombs were dropped overhead like sprinkling pepper on the soup or like the shower dropping on earth the enemy couldn’t do anything but raising hands for surrender.
Once, the militaristic Japan had to bear the acute effects of two nuclear bombs and they ought to raise their hands… no longer ruled the roost!
With the unexpectedness factor the Israelites gave the Arabian Block a preemptive strike with massive bombardment and they also prevailed !
And about the Vietnam War, two bombs have been dropped over the heads of the Communist troops at Xuan Loc and caused one division to pop off…I am telling you that story and, you guy, give me your idea… In those days, if the USA consented to bomb Dien Bien Phu would General Vo Nguyen Giap be known for something?
The plan should be kept secret and it be done in due time. Being defeated the French had to make off. Viet Minh captured two VIP: Ta Thu Thau and Ngo Dinh Diem, one was sentenced to death and the other left alive. Were bombs a decisive factor of victory or defeat in the field of battle? The North Communist were on the verge of giving up, just because of the bombs and the excruciating effects of those explosive devices… However, I didn’t want to lose a loyal servant as they were. I still wanted them to serve me. They would be paid for their wage and they would be given some more gifts to accomplish their role on the stage, to have kept in mind my transcript and after all, they had to terminate their play to the final scene… I knew clearly that they are double-tongued, ungrateful, unfaithful and ready to betray their teachers and friends…and… I allowed them to capture the South Vietnam to see them fighting and killing one another for their titles and positions and… their deadly competition with the sharing of the public wealth and riches and powers and principalities that fell into their hands… and…they should enter the orbit of hatred and loathsome following my design.”
With a slip of liquor Satan continued: “The heads of the Communist Party treasure they would not think about safekeeping the country or anything else. Once the power was in their hands, they were looking for more wealth to satisfy their covetousness. The nation had been in great debt on a daily basis for their robbery of the national fund but they wouldn’t care and they wouldn’t be silly enough to think about paying it off with the riches they had as their own property. The motto ‘Eat and Run’ had been always in their heart and it was also their reason of living. Therefore, to be bound to power they should be obedient to the Red China, their god, and should do exactly what they ordered and let the nation and their fellow citizen alone with their hardship and misery and suffering at the present time and in the future… This status would not last long, sooner or later it wold come to an end. What do you think?”
One subordinate stood up and said: “The more oppression the people suffer the more reactionary they will become! On one side being the creditor, the Red China feels free to deploy their people to Vietnam, control the East Sea and station their troops along the China-Vietnam border to be prepared for…At the onset, nothing risky is seen but the nations of the South East Asia are already on guard… On the other side, the Vietnamese people hate their good-for-nothing government, they are also hostile to the people of the North, their evil enemies. All those situations shall be like a boil swollen with pus and coming to a head, with a single needle draw the pus will come out.
It shall be easy! The people need only to hinder the supply of food and drink for the so-called Chinese workers on the Vietnam soil and to hem them in without doing anything else. That is the best way for an effective retaliation with the approach of burning the house and the rats will come out and that is also a way of displaying the presence of those illegal people sneaking in the VN territory and another way to cause the leaders of the Communist Party to go ape shit…”
Satan applauded and said: “It’s nothing hard! With a single sound of my cough all the storages of weapons will be vacant to make room for other stuff! I have the authority to sift Vietnam one more time, MASTER will not forbid me!”
_________________
(1) Isaiah 27:3
(2) I John 5: 18,19
THE GARDEN
The story is about a master who used to set up the games for money. He chose his two disciples for the game. One is a crafty, malicious and greedy guy. The other guy is stupid, vicious and foolhardy. Their strengths and their weaknesses, the master knows very well. The crafty one is non-submissive and the stupid one, obedient. The reward for the winner is the garden flowing with milk and honey.
The day before the contest, the stupid one had the support of two coaches, they gave him the tonic to reinforce his strength. Although the master loved the crafty one but he didn’t do anything for him and remained as referee.
Of course the stupid one won the contest very easily. Practicing the law of the jungle he caught and tied up the crafty one, giving him a severe thrashing. Being painful beaten, the crafty had to transfer all the tricks he had to the stupid one so as to spare more pains. Learning some new lessons the stupid one seems proud and happy and did many strange and silly things. Even his reward was also sold to have money for his spending.
Afterwards, the master came and see the crafty guy, taking care of the injury and giving him some dissuasion. Sometimes the master visited the stupid guy and gave him some gifts.
Ten years after, the master sent his attendant to both sides for reunification, asking them to sit down together and put aside all the stories of old.
Knowing that both sides were irreconcilable, the master made another choice, using the gifts to win the stupid guy’s favor. In addition, he also brought home the crafty guide to live with him so as to compensate him for all the inconvenience he had encountered previously.
More than twenty years after, before his death, the stupid guy let to his children the garden and a quantity of his toxic remaining that he had used of in his old days. As for the crafty guy, living at the master’s home for a rather long time and feeling that his health was degrading so quickly and his death was also near, he asked the master for permission to go back to his home and profiting from the occasion to pay a short visit to the garden he thought that the stupid guy had made it devastated.
Being aware of the disciple’s intention the master didn’t let him go because he knew that when seeing together they would be fighting for their stories of old. Not being able to go the crafty guy bore a grudge against his master and cursed incessantly the stupid one.
Nearly twenty five years had passed, the master loved his two disciples and their children. He had a particular affection for the children of the stupid guy, he let them come to his house for study, acquiring his teaching and training how to cherish and preserve the garden bequeathed by their father. The master looked after the children of the crafty guy as well. He recommended them not to sow the hatredness like their predecessor. Although the children of the master’s disciples lived under the same roof, they were continually at odds with one another and didn’t want to sit down together.
The master sat counting the tips of his fingers and he figured out that the time passed quickly, more than thirty years already! His two beloved disciples had been sleeping peacefully, well, waiting for the 42nd or 44th year ( i.e. two generations) he appeared again with his extremely effective treasure ‘the stick, the carrot’ and let the children of the crafty and the stupid guy make their choice. They would be prosperous in their career then.
Presently, the master is accumulating all his efforts to train the children of his two disciples the practice of the cunning betrayal to be ready retaliating the coach of the stupid guy who gave him the tonic previously. That coach also wanted to have a share of profit from the garden rewarded to the stupid guy.
Suddenly the master remembered that the stupid guy had many children rather one. Both coaches also brought home those children for education as he did. The master thought again and again and said to himself: “Surely, to the grandchild generation, they would bury the hatched!”
The foster child getting out of the room (his father died 25 years ago) reminded the master the phrase ‘such father, such son!’ The master nodding repeatedly thought it over carefully: “The offspring of a dishonest person and those of the wicked one never get along with one another. That garden must be in ruin!”
The adopted child gave a further comment: “You teach your disciples retaliate and attack unexpectedly their trainer, don’t you be afraid that they would use the way of turning one’s battery against oneself to play against you? What do you think?”
The master seemed indifferent with a smile of self-complacency, putting his hand in his pocket taking out a dollar bill and showed to his son asking him: “Do you see these words ‘IN GOD WE TRUST’ on the face of this dollar bill? This is the secret of living in true happiness, son.”
The foster child heard but kept silent, no comment!
FURTHER READING
(Some excerpts from ‘THE WAY BACK TO THE MOTHERLAND’ of the same author).
We see the Communists still living in prosperity, power, and luck through many and many years although they do not fear GOD at all. We see that they still have great power ‘expanding like tree growing in old land’. The Communists still survive, still exist, for what reason? Because evil still exists. ‘The more the evil submerge the more the Communists become strong and powerful.”
The Communists are immoral and irreligious people. If we vindicate that we are not irreligious, not immoral and we also know GOD, but we don’t pay attention to GOD’s mercy, we don’t care about His teachings and commandments and we are still judging one another, practicing mutual suspicion, addiction, material covetousness, selfishness, keeping up vicious practices, distrusting the saving power of JESUS CHRIST. Then, what benefit for oneself and for others shall be earned from this kind religiosity and deism?
Where is the location of the adoration, obedience, love and gratefulness dedicated to GOD? In the current life, if our heart and soul is still attached to the evil, and if we don’t have sincere love, there is still ground for the settlement, development and long-life of the Communism. Because we know that ‘the Communism lives with and by the evil, it lives in our wicked heart’ which is ready to accommodate it whether we are in our land or overseas.
Remembering Vietnam, our native land of old, what did we have before the Communism stepped on in our land with its treading down, trampling on and tormenting? Vietnam used to boast and to be proud of being offspring of the ‘dragon and fairy’ couple with its more than four thousand years of culture and its fine traditions. Vietnam had thousand years of Chinese domination but our soil was not dependent upon the Chinese dominion, furthermore, we were under hundred years of French domination but we didn’t bear their influence, Vietnam has all… Nevertheless, do we ever have more knowledge or ever think or seek to know that love comes from GOD, i.e. the good news of JESUS CHRIST, the saving grace that GOD pours on our nation like a much watery rain (?). Do we ever boast that we are the people who fear, love, obey and trust in GOD or those who hate evil?
Looking back to our nation what will we see? The widespread of carved idols, mediums, divinations… covetousness, selfishness, disunion, faction and rancor… And simply because the leaders, the authorities, the rulers and the people don’t fear and don’t obey GOD, the evil has the opportunity to emerge and develop… and taking advantage of the appropriate occasions the Communism got over and invaded the whole country. For this reason, the South Vietnam lost in their hands!
Standing outside the wicked Communists could see that our people don’t love one another, the administrators hold on to their power, they struggle for positions and creating separation, dissidence, corruption from top to bottom. Taking advantage of the opportunity they introduced more evil into the intelligentsia, the working people and the evildoers dug their way through the government, the army, the religion, the schools, the markets and every house of the South Vietnam people. Seeing the evil in our world the VC knew how to use the evil against our evil. They relied upon the evil in our heart and made use of their tongue to deceive our people and employ their devilish force to seize our native land from our hands as a robbed propriety. And thus we were empty-handed because of their cunning deception!
The VC crushed freedom into dust and made our people from the North to the South wear the infamy yoke of which we had the taste. Today, the VC are still seeking to lay their hands on the lay people and abuse them. They are even greedy for ‘the dust on the head of the poor people’, they are still seeking for making evil soar high as possible because we still have covetousness and selfishness in our heart, the in-country and the overseas people. The selfishness, the covetousness are still lively and incessantly moving forward alike. The more those evil things keep growing their expansion and intensity, the more the VC can live peacefully in their wickedness.
Please keep in mind this important matter and we should meditate it carefully. We must think about ourselves and about the Communists if we are still loving our nation and native land and we want to come back one day.
The South Vietnam people live selfishly, without concern about our neighbors, we dislike unity, we don’t humble ourselves to work together in the struggle against the devilish VC although we have eye-witnessed many mass graves they conducted, although we have seen the bodies being thrown about by the rockets launched to the city by the VC or the mines buried in the middle of the road on which the vehicles were running. Also being deceived by the VC the authorities and their subjects became more and more divisive, and turned against rather took care of one another. Not a drop of tears was poured for the brave soldiers of the RVNA and the Allies died in the battle save the tears of their relatives. Nobody remembered those people who died for their fellows to live. The soldiers of the Allied forces came to reinforce ours, to help us wrestle with the Communist danger, who thought of them, who knew about that precious love and sacrifice for others? They worked and fought together with us, they helped us bear the insufferable burden, but in response, they got back only our negligence and indifference!
The love of our brothers in the Allied Forces has been abused by the RVN and the Communists made use of it. They twisted that love and transformed it into animosity, enemy and aversion for one another. Many people, losing their clear-sightedness, were bewitched by the sweet lull of the Communists believed them and wiped out GOD’s love granted through human feeling, up to the moment when the country was in their hands we came to recognize our foolishness that we were clearly deceived and then we only stood and looked, swallowing our pains, beating our chest, lamenting, repenting and regretting.
The Communists, looking at the South and taking advantage of our squabble, our disunity, our lack of love for one another, offended us and plundered all that we spared long time ago. The loss of the country was due to our life that depended upon our greed and our naivety in hearing the false flattering of the Communists and forsook GOD’s love and mercy. If you don’t want to lose your country, if you don’t want to lose freedom, your independence and your happiness, if you want exterminate the Communism to be off their yoke imposed on the country, if you want your offspring not to bear the communistic or satanic burden, the prior condition is to exterminate all seeds of evil which are in our heart and are dominating us now. We should teach our children to know GOD’s truth right now.
“Knowing the fear of GOD, the evil will be far from us.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment