Fortunate Sons

Chapter 26: Help us, help you: Dien Ha village

Up and over the grassy hills, the seven of them hiked with the tropical sun hanging high over their heads and the dull thump of mortar and artillery fire far away. Duc led them on over the crest of the hills until the small village of Dien Ha came into view in the vale below.

It wasn't an impressive village by any means, a simple place built at the water's edge from bamboo and wood with civilians working in the fields day and night or out on the boats to catch fish or shrimp. Men tilled the fields with an ox and a plow while women looked after their children and saw to their chores.

"This is Dien Ha," Duc announced as they made their way down the hills. "Not the most impressive place in the world but it's home."

Onward they walked with their tired feet and their uniforms reeking of malodorous body odor and their skin sunburned. Taylor and the others couldn't help but notice some of the wide-eyed stares they got from people, some of them gawking at the sight of American soldiers entering their town. One elderly woman reached out and gripped Taylor's hand in gratitude before they passed further into the small wooden city.

Somewhere in one of the houses a radio was loudly playing "Gimme Shelter" by the Rolling Stones. It haunted each and every one of them to hear it, forever engrained into their minds like the epitaph on a tombstone.

Duc led them to the largest building built over the water and held up by a pair of sturdy stilts. They climbed the rough wooden steps up to the house and made their way in through the crude tin door.

The house was dimly lit by only the late afternoon sunlight pouring in through the glassless windows. The floors were dark and made of wood while two rows of wooden benches sat on opposite sides of the splintering wooden table. A stone coal pit served as the stove while in another corner of the house were seventeen sleeping mats for the family that lived here.

"Wait here," Duc said.

No one needed to wait. A young woman entered the room wearing a green blouse and black cotton pants, her feet bare and a straw hat on her back. She was a beauty, but she didn't match Sue at all. No girl ever could. But there was something in her eyes that stopped people dead in their tracks, a strength that went unmatched by even the toughest of artillerymen.

The young woman embraced Duc, relieved that he had finally been able to come home. "Are you alright, cousin?" she asked.

"Yes," Duc replied. "I'm fine, but I've brought some people who need help."

The young lady sternly eyed the six soldiers and spoke a few words to Duc. "You five," she said. "Come with me."

Taylor and the others followed her through a heavy curtained door and into a room that reminded them of Maman Louise's house back in Louisiana. On the walls hung whole tiger bones, an animal most sacred to many Buddhists throughout Vietnam. All of them were old, so old that they had browned and nearly petrified until they were as hard as stone. An altar with a large statue of the serene looking Buddha had been pushed against the wall, the table chipped and so old it looked near to falling apart.

Offerings had been spread near the statue, offerings of money, red paper envelopes and joss sticks that burned in their stone urns and filled the heavy, humid air with trails of its smokey scent. Amidst the offerings were icons that had been spared from a ruined stone church in the area, all perfectly intact and bearing the images of countless saints, so many that Taylor couldn't put names to all the faces. There was an eerie orange glow that filled the room as night began to set in outside and a rainstorm brewed on the horizon, illuminating the faces of the figures on the altar and those of the six servicemen.