darkness, and I could barely distinguish their forms in the opening of my shelter. Soon the man disappeared in the direction from which they had appeared. His companion stood quietly and waited. When the man returned he had a small oil lamp, the flame hardly bigger than that of a birthday cake candle. They approached together and squatted down very close to me. Only then could I see that they were a boy and a girl, probably in their late teens. The girl appeared to be the elder and was truly beautiful. They exchanged a few words in Vietnamese before the boy set the lamp on a cross-piece of the rickety little fence that separated my stall from the next one. Then he looked at me thoughtfully. After a moment, he spoke: “Her brother and her mother are killed by U.S. napalm. She hate you very much.” The young interpreter shaped his words carefully, his boyish face overacting the emotions he felt appropriate for the statement. It was clear that he had practiced this opener. “She herself call Lan,” he said more casually. “Lan . . . nurse! Different village. It call self Son My.” His inverted sentence structure belied the French background of his English teacher.
The two of them sat low and side by side, their eyes slightly above the level of my own. The boy, like the old man, squatted squarely on flat feet; the girl knelt symmetrically on her knees, her hands pressed palms down against her thighs. But for the simplicity of her clothing, she exuded the elegant grace of a Tonkinese courtesan.
Lan! Even in the dim light I could see that her face was almost a perfect heart shape, with a delicate chin and cheeks curving gracefully up and around to the top of her forehead and the distinct widow’s peak. Her jet-black hair was pulled to the back of her head in a bun, but the wisps that escaped here and there arched down over her delicate ears and forehead, adding to the weariness in her young face. A thin gold chain around her neck hinted at the femininity otherwise obscured by the coarse gray cotton blouse that buttoned down the front and was gathered into the small waistband of her classic black pajama pants. A webbed military belt cinched her waist even more trimly.
“She hate you very much! Nevertheless, her heart is in the right place.” My eyes flicked to the boy’s expectant face, then back to Lan’s eyes. His well-rehearsed speech couldn’t have seemed more incongruous.
Lan returned my stare with her enormous dark eyes, more round than almond-shaped. It’s likely there had been a Frenchman in her ancestry, I thought. From the depths of her eyes I could sense her confusion; some hatred, yes, but more than that, searching and curiosity. She uttered a quick phrase to her interpreter without breaking our eye contact. “You must remove shirt,” he said. While I did so—very painfully and laboriously working the sleeve down and off my swollen arm—she began methodically removing the small first-aid kit attached to her belt. I was struck by its resemblance to the play-nurse kit that my daughter Kimmie had received for Christmas less than two months ago. And Lan herself—dark hair and eyes and diminutive frame—caused me to recall for a trembling instant the bright effervescence of my little first grader now so far away in space and context. Lan’s touch upon my arms and face belied whatever hatred she might have harbored. Her gentleness seemed to be the most natural part of her, both as Lan the nurse and Lan the girl.
From her touches and terse commentary I deduced my situation before it was interpreted to me—mostly by signs and motions—by the boy. My right forearm was broken; my right elbow was badly dislocated, probably shattered as well. There was a gash there—now crusted over— that had probably been caused by striking some part of my jettisoning canopy or ejection seat. My entire arm and shoulder were swollen to twice their normal size and were completely immobile, just as if in a cast. Lan applied Mercurochrome to the numerous cuts on my face and gently spread some kind of ointment on the burns there and on my neck and arms. As she finished knotting the gauze-strip sling around my neck and arm, she sat back in her best courtesan pose. She shook her head slowly from side to side, her huge eyes fixed upon mine, and then, like the old Viet Minh soldier who had visited me earlier, shrugged her tiny shoulders in helpless commentary. “Lan say you must wait more for doctors. You hurt very bad but you OK. She say you have very good fortune.”
“Why does she say that?” She turned toward him to catch the gist of my question. “Because the brave army men of Tan Loc show they courageous. They shoot down your American piratical airplane on the spot.” The airplane motions with his hands ended in a squirming tangle of fingers and flip-flopping palms. “It blow up over the water. Everybody think you must be killed, but I don’t think so.” He smiled as if happy for me.
“But there were two of us. What about the other man who was in the airplane with me?” Lan knew my question by the anxiety in my voice and my two upraised fingers. “He is . . . I don’t know. He is somewhere else, I think.” I could see more sadness creep into Lan’s eyes and for the first time I doubted that Bob was still alive.
In an instant Lan’s eyes became shiny with moisture and she lowered her gaze. God, she is actually sad for us! She may actually hate me but it’s clear she is sad, too, either for me or for Bob, or about the whole damned situation. I didn’t know if she had even heard my “Cam Ud!” croaked in the darkness behind her.
I thought of Bob and prayed hard—but without much conviction— that he was also alive and being treated all right. I thought of the seeming miracle of my own survival through it all; how I had removed my oxygen mask, released my parachute harness, and then inflated my flotation gear—all with only one hand and while unconscious. That was the miracle, the miracle of the subconscious. If I had been able to recall and implement the survival procedures learned throughout the years, could I trust my subconscious to recall all the patterns and processes I had ever learned in my life? Did it necessarily require unique life-and-death circumstances to bring them to the surface?
At this moment I began to realize, though not yet fully, that I had within me all the knowledge and intuitive resources that I would ever need to survive. Right here I began to trust myself and my capabilities. This was to be the intellectual foundation of keeping faith in myself; that along with my faith in God’s help and comfort—the spiritual foundation—I would be able to survive the incredible challenges that were yet to come. It would take even more time to realize that just surviving would be the minimum and that I would ultimately go beyond survival.
But for now, in February of ’66, the short-term perspective prevailed. Surely now with our Marines in South Vietnam, and the resumption of our air strikes in the North following the Christmas holidays and January bombing pause, this whole mess would be wrapped up soon; it would take only a few more months at most. A political settlement—if not an all-out military victory—was very likely. Uncle Sam will have me out of here by summer, I told myself. I can hack it till then and if Bob is alive I know he can, too.
I didn’t realize I had just exercised a critical survival tool. I had defined the first of many six-month increments by which I would measure my time remaining. Not “one day at a time,” but one half-year at a time. How could I know at that point that there would be fourteen such increments, that these were but the first few days of a seven-year journey? Thank God I couldn’t.
3
Forgiving Oneself
The decisions we make out of loneliness and pain, uncertainty and fear can take us to the extremes of shame and pride. The turning point that changes adversity into opportunity, defeat into victory comes when we are willing to forgive ourselves. Too often our unreasonable expectations lead to self-judgment and guilt. Our best is the best we can do.
“If you do not cooperate, there no reason to keep you alive.” The province administrator, as he had called himself, shrugged as he said it, then commenced lighting a cigarette very deliberately. The click of his small metal lighter that he snapped closed deftly with one hand punctuated the silence that followed his words.
He still exhaled smoke through his nostrils as he continued,
