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An Interview with Bao Ninh: Part Two

By Marc Levy

Part 1 of this interview appeared in the Fall/Winter 1999 issue.

We got up, shook hands, and headed back to the main campus. Bao Ninh stopped to view Boston Harbor and light a cigarette. I took the opportunity to show him a small photo of my platoon, taken on LZ Compton, near An Loc. He held it firmly, for several minutes surveying the young Americans with their heavy steel helmets, brindled nylon and leather boots, grenades at the hips, machine guns, bandoliers and M-16s draped like metal flags across their chests. How many were killed? he asked. Just a few, I said. Most were wounded. Except for Cambodia, 1970 had been a comparatively light year for the 1st Cavalry Division.

Near the end of my stay in Boston, several American and Vietnamese veteran writers held an impromptu gathering at a local Boston pub. I sat katty corner to Ninh, who sat pensively, occasionally sipping whiskey from a shot glass and casually chain-smoking Camel cigarettes. I offhandedly asked him what he thought of the standard issue M-16, an icon of the War Against The Americans, as the Vietnam War is known to the Vietnamese. He slapped my knee and smiled. His response was swift and direct, expressed without passing judgment on what remains a controversial weapon. The M-16 often jammed, he said. It was prone to malfunctioning if submerged underwater or fouled by dust, dirt or mud. The NVA had difficulty finding the lubricant used to maintain it. In contrast, Bao Ninh described the legendary qualities of the AK-47. Submerged, soaked or covered in mud, this emblematic weapon of the NVA and VC performed without fail. In all ways save one it was a superior weapon. Where the trusty AK-47 hardly ever misfired its larger caliber bullet, the smaller 5.56 M-16 round tumbled after entry into the human body, causing flesh wounds and trauma to internal organs disproportionate to its size. However, Bao Ninh was quick to point out the NVA coveted the now discontinued M-79 grenade launcher since it was simple to operate and very easy to maintain.

Another American vet asked Ninh what was his saddest memory. Ninh looked into the curling blue smoke from his cigarette, then answered the question matter of factly, with little apparent display of feeling. It was the task of burying his friends, he said. After combat the able-bodied were required to collect the remains of the dead. There was a brief and respectful silence, after which the mood changed, the group returning to lighter topics of conversation, free-flowing beer further working its way into each man. Bao Ninh, however, remained pensive and silent, and I felt it best to say nothing, though from talking earlier with a Marine combat vet, now a teacher and war poet, I had learned about the NVA poor man's version of the American cleft metal dog tag (which all grunts will recall as noisy unless taped or otherwise noise-suppressed, often strung into boot laces, there to collect dirt and mud). It was likely that Bao Ninh and the soldiers in his unit sewed their names directly into their shirt collars and wore body hooks when going into battle. Strung around the legs or ankles, these wooden hooks, snared by poles, enabled the NVA to drag dead and wounded soldiers quickly out of battle. The cloth dog tags helped to identify KIA not immediately recovered, or who were blasted beyond recognition by heavy artillery or air bombardments. However, when I later mentioned this to Lady Borton, the well-known Quaker and writer who provided medical aid to casualties during the war, and who coordinated and accompanied the present NVA delegation to America, she was of a different opinion.

Although cloth dog tags may have been used by the NVA, she felt they would be useless after two or three days, as the bodies and fabric decomposed under the heat and organic processes of the jungle. Whatever the case, the attentive reader will recall the opening chapter of Bao Ninh's book, where the main character has been assigned to burial detail. It is 1976, several years after the Americans have left, a year after the liberation of Saigon. An NVA burial detail is scavenging for the remains of those killed in the Forest of Screaming Souls, where a great battle had taken place. According to Vietnamese culture, the spirit will not rest until the body is buried whole. Whether or not one assumes Bao Ninh here represents himself, one is compelled to recall his personal losses. In his six years with the 514th Glorious Youth Brigade, Bao Ninh survived the vast and murderous American arsenal of napalm, heavy artillery, Arc Light, and what the Vietnamese called "lazy dogs," an aerial-dropped hybrid of the Bouncing Betty and Firecracker rounds which had a killing radius of three hundred yards. Where the Americans designated GR Point to assemble the remains of the dead prior to shipment back to the United States (often recovered at great risk by regular grunts or elite teams), it is reasonable to assume Bao Ninh helped to recover and bury several score of his comrades each year, six years on end. Perhaps this is the reason he maintained silence, having briefly answered a most painful question.

Midway through the evening, when the beer and liquor had begun to work their fermented magic on the now lively crew, Bao Ninh remained quiet and somber, only occasionally speaking. At that point I excused myself, made my way to a liquor store, returned unnoticed to the table and waited for the right moment to hand out the bottles I had purchased. Three seats to my right, Larry Heinemann, author of the award-winning Paco's Story, and the highly acclaimed Close Quarters, had mentioned in passing Bao Ninh's acquired taste for Jack Daniels. He enjoyed the crisp taste and distinctive slow burn once gulped down. I handed a bottle of scotch to Mr. Mau, a ten-year NVA veteran and distinguished poet, who unwrapped the paper and smiled. Heinemann encouraged me to make an appropriate speech, and with his adept coaching, the right words were exchanged. Another bottle, this time to our patient translator of the evening, Mr. Chung, and finally Bao Ninh, who simply bowed his head, until I gestured to him to open the wrapping. What followed was completely unexpected. Ninh undid the wrapping, and seeing the coveted label, his eyes wide in wonder and disbelief, shouted "Jack Daniels" at the top of his voice, then embraced me hard and strong and close, not once, but three times, each time slapping me on the back. What, in fact, had I done?

Just as it is helpful to gain some perspective on the NVA in war, it is instructive to learn how the NVA and VC veterans handle war stress, or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Larry Heinemann and two other vets who know Ninh were quick to point out that many Vietnamese combat veterans drink, and that drinking, and perhaps drinking heavily, unlike in the Western point of view, is culturally and socially accepted in Vietnam as a way to tolerate or dull the war stress, although since an entire generation suffers, it is more a fact of life than an exception to it. Unlike our Veterans Administration, perhaps only too willing to prescribe from its well-stocked pharmaceutical cache, the Vietnamese government does not or cannot as yet provide sufficient relief to civilians and combatants who suffer from PTSD. Bao Ninh's surprise and deep expression of thanks might then be seen as measures of war trauma and what works to relieve it. And besides, it's American and tastes good.

Near the end of the conference, Ninh was slated to give a public reading from his book. Since prose writing is relatively new to Vietnam and prose writers do not often read in public, I was curious to see how Ninh would approach reading at length to an assembled group at Yenghing Library in Harvard University.

When his turn arrived, Bao Ninh took the stage almost diffidently, bowed slightly, then began reading. Slowly, in an unhurried atypical Vietnamese voice, the atonal and glottal stops noticeably diminished, he read as if imparting a child's lullaby, soft and gently, the tone incantatory, almost hypnotic. Ninh rocked imperceptibly back and forth, his voice never faltering in its rhythm. When finished, he smartly closed the book shut, bowed humbly to modest applause, then waited as Larry Heinemann, who would read the same passage in English, stepped on stage.

There is no distinguishing between Heinemann the writer and the man. He is unswerving in purpose: every bold word and partnered action arrives at precisely the right place and time. He is a master raconteur. Direct and solid, at all times elegant yet ordinary, he embodies the craft and art of storytelling. Opening the English translation of The Sorrow of War, he read, in his signature crisp and booming voice, the same extended passage, the slaughter of an entire NVA unit amidst the Forest of Screaming Souls, a passage so terrifying, so astoundingly read, no one in the audience moved, no one, and those who had not known the book would not soon forget it. When he finished, stunned silence followed by thunderous applause, Heinemann graciously gestured to Bao Ninh, who bowed modestly.

Where the ideologues on both sides will continue debating the sore points of the war, Bao Ninh, an ordinary (or perhaps elite) grunt, has written of its great and overarching sorrow. His reluctance to talk about combat suggests the enormity of his suffering, his extraordinary resilience and his great literary accomplishment.

In a brief correspondence with Bao Ninh regarding this article, he reiterated his difficulty in talking about the combat experience of NVA soldiers. Indeed, Ninh preferred not to discuss the matter at all. Instead, he asked that I be truthful in recollecting our interview and again emphasized the humanity of the NVA. He hoped an article such as this might further improve relations between the Americans and the Vietnamese. His letters are compelling for their wisdom and understated reference to suffering, eloquently translated by Long, his son, now the same age as his father when he went to war.