NGUYEN VAN THO

  Nguyen Van Tho, who sometimes writes under the pseudonym Thu Nguyen, was born in 1948 in the northern province of Thai Binh. He is a veteran of the war with America, which he fought in for nearly a decade, from 1965 to 1975. He has written several books, including six short-story collections, one novel, and four works of nonfiction, and has won several awards from the Vietnam Writers’ Association, though his work is not well known outside of Vietnam. Many of his short stories deal with the experiences of the common soldier; his characters are often bo doi, the enlisted men of the North Vietnamese Army. “Unsung Hero” is in this vein, with the addition of a new, unique type of soldier—the canine combatant. The original Vietnamese title of the story, “Vo danh tran mac,” emphasizes the anonymity of the dog at the center of the story, especially in the context of the normal cultural rituals for honoring a war hero. Nobody will celebrate this special soldier, the narrator suggests, despite his selfless acts of courage and heroism.

  * * *

  I was about to leave the village when I heard a voice coming from the ground. It sounded like a weak kind of shriek, a sound we heard a lot in the war. But it wasn’t that. Bombs from a C130 night patrol plane had destroyed the village. Everything was burnt. The tree in front of me had been ripped up by gunfire. I kicked away a fallen branch and saw a pair of sparkling eyes staring out of a dark hole in the burnt ground.

  For a few seconds I was just confused. I shouldered my gun. It was a kid, about eight or nine years old, and he was holding a dog. The kid was clearly dead—his head smashed, neck twisted against the side of the hole at an awkward angle. He was staring straight up at the sky, eyes white and stunned. His blood had dried black all over his hands, which were clutching this puppy. I almost had to break the kid’s fingers to get the dog loose.

  We named the puppy Lu. Don’t think that this was some trendy Western name. It was just like the other common names for dogs—Ven, Leu, Eu. We knew that it would sound Western if we called him LuLu, so at first we avoided this and only called him Lu. But he didn’t know his name—he was only a puppy, after all—so we had to repeat it twice, and then it just became our habit to call him LuLu.

  He became the seventh member of our squad. We shared our food rations with him. Lu was too weak and skinny to find food himself, so we mixed rice with water to make porridge that he lapped up. If I happened to catch some small fish in a nearby creek and then stewed them with wild tamarinds, I’d let Lu taste a little of the sauce.

  In secret, of course, so the rest of the squad didn’t find out.

  “I wish we had milk and egg powder like back in ’54,” said Bao, who was from Hang Thiec Street in Hanoi.

  This was an unrealistic daydream. The truth was we didn’t even have enough salt. We used to hoard the stuff like treasure. Sometimes I’d take a little pinch and put it on my tongue. It felt incredible.

  So obviously we couldn’t even think about sugar or milk for the dog. But Lu got stronger anyway. After three days he started running around our camp, and eventually he started jumping up and down to greet us when we’d come back from patrol. He got healthier and put on weight. His fur, which was yellow with black dots, had been patchy and bare before but began to grow back, thick and shiny. He was quick now, and energetic, just like a normal dog. We were living deep in the jungle, which was lonely and isolating. It was nice having Lu around. About a month after I’d first pulled him from the bloody hands of the dead kid, we heard him bark for the first time—“Arf … arf … arf!” Lu had been practically dead when I found him. Now his barking echoed against the cliffs and the thick jungle foliage.

  It made me feel something that was difficult to put into words.

  We were all soldiers from Hanoi. There was Hanh, the experienced squad leader who had fought everywhere, North to South. Then there was me, and Hoang, Lam, and Bao—all experienced veterans who knew about the bloody battle of Hue in 1968 and the enemy’s brutal Operation Lam Son 719. There were also Tam and Khanh, both newly enlisted soldiers.

  Each of us had a different relationship with Lu. For example, Tam was usually the one who fed Lu, and each time he’d pet his head and say things like, “Hurry up! Faster! Six bowls, six bowls!” in this kind of sing-song voice. Even though Tam was a skinny guy, he lusted after food, whether he or Lu was the one eating it.

  Hanh was different. He was quiet. Sometimes he’d sit with Lu for hours, just scratching his head or rubbing his back. Lu would get silent and move his ears, as if he were listening closely to what Hanh might say. I wondered if maybe Hanh had told Lu what he’d told only me, about his sister who spent her days, year in and year out, unloading sacks of coal, fish sauce, and heavy dyeing yams from boats at the Black Ferry Pier. Hanh had been born into a poor family. His parents died when he was young, and he’d been raised by his sister. He’d spent his childhood pulling bark from medicinal jungle trees to sell at the market. A person like Hanh couldn’t live a carefree life like someone whose parents had been state officials or longtime Party members. Maybe it was because Hanh had been through tough times that he was so frugal. He’d never waste even dirty old gun-cleaning rags or a smashed manioc that he found in a field, which he would mix with his daily rice for a little extra food.

  Enlisted soldiers like us came from all sorts of backgrounds. Hoang, for example, was the opposite of Hanh. His family was very wealthy. Hoang claimed that his parents sold government rice and his family ate very well. He’d had plenty of pork sausage to eat growing up. When he ate chicken, he said, he only swallowed the juices, not the meat itself. Maybe he only bragged about his family because he was as hungry as the rest of us. I knew that Hoang’s mother and my mother were friends. Back in Hanoi, my mother sold clothes at Dong Xuan Market, in the center of the city. I remembered Hoang’s mother vividly—she had dark skin and often wore an expensive-looking jade necklace.

  Hoang liked to tease Lu. He’d pull Lu toward him by the tail, and Lu would shriek miserably and then be mad at Hoang for a few days afterward. But Hoang could also be very generous, throwing Lu scraps of fatty meat when we’d managed to catch a wild porcupine.

  But Lu was closest to me. On cold nights he’d jump up onto my bunk and sneak under the blankets, warming my feet.

  * * *

  The rainy season in the highlands that year was awful. It rained for several days straight, destroying all the transportation roads. Vehicles from the North couldn’t get to the front. Rice rations were reduced. At the beginning of the rainy season, the ration was five grams; then, as the season progressed and the rain got worse, it went down to three grams, and then eventually to only two grams per person. When we received our share and untied the little sack, black rice weevils jumped out. We had to rinse the rice carefully to get rid of the bugs, and the good, big grains would wash away in the creek water and we’d be left with only the tiny grains. But if we didn’t wash the rice carefully, it would taste bitter.

  The situation with the manioc that season wasn’t any better. They were black and full of fungus. Fortunately, we didn’t have to fight the enemy at that time. Instead we spent our days guarding the battalion’s armory, doing farm work, and sometimes patrolling the worn walking paths that ran along the river on the outskirts of the base. We couldn’t complain, though—at least we still had something to fill our empty stomachs, even though taking care of the farm was a lot of work. Where we’d set up camps wasn’t like the northern villages we’d fought to protect in ’54. Back then it had been easy to hunt animals to eat, as if they’d been caged. In the highlands there were some owls, squirrels, rats, and mouse deer, but we weren’t allowed to shoot them, otherwise we might give away our position. So we set up traps instead and went fishing. If we actually wanted to shoot an animal, we had to walk an entire day, until we were far enough from the camp. And anyway, hunting animals was not our expertise. But we ate everything we could catch, including tough and unpleasant-smelling meat from crows and parrots.

  When it was the right season for bamboo shoots to grow, we looked for bamboo rat holes and dug until we found the little furry rodents. Lu would help, sniffing the ground and using his front legs to signal where there might be a rat hole. We all craved something fishy, so in the dry season, when the creeks became more shallow, we managed to catch snakehead and catfish. If we wanted to eat bigger fish we had to walk farther, to a strong-flowing river with deeper water.

  Near the border, we found some Laotians and traded them our new double hammock and one-half kilogram of salt for a fishing net that was over twenty meters long. The net worked in places where the water was calm, or where a creek merged with a river. We also used dynamite to catch fish, cutting the fuse short and using only a small amount of TNT so that when it exploded in the shallow water it only made a quiet, bubbling sound. When we saw the water boiling, that’s when we’d jump in and grab the fish. There were a lot of white bangana behri fish in the rivers in the highlands, and when we used dynamite to catch them, their white bodies would float on the surface of the water. We had to be quick or the fast-moving river would carry them away. Our mouths, feet, hands—we used every body part we could to carry the dead fish back to shore.

  While we fished, Lu ran alongside the riverbank, barking loudly, which annoyed me.

  Later, as we sat around the fire baking the fish, Lu was well behaved. The fish smelled very good, but Lu sat patiently watching the baking fish fat drip on the fire. He knew to expect the baked fish tails that we always gave him.

  “You did nothing except bark,” I said to Lu once, getting annoyed with his patient groveling. “You’re a dog. You do nothing, but you want to eat like a king. You’re ridiculous—do you know that?”

  Lu knew that I was serious. And I could tell from his face that he was scared and remorseful. His ears dropped and his eyes were wet and downcast. He came over and started licking my hand in a beseeching way.

  I believed that dogs could understand human language, even though they couldn’t speak themselves.

  Two months later, when we were once again out catching fish with dynamite, Lu jumped into the water with us and carried a big fish in his mouth back to shore. Then he floated downstream another 300 meters to catch another one. We were stingy because of our hunger, but after that performance we had to give Lu an entire fish to eat.

  Time flew by and eventually the rainy season ended. It would be time to harvest the farm crops soon. The rice stalks were heavy with solid grains and the corn had turned full and milky. By this point, Lu had grown into a big, strong dog. He’d become helpful. At night he chased away rats and squirrels and even monkeys, who were fast and smart. Every day he took part in the soldier’s work that had become the routine of our lives. He was both friend and comrade.

  * * *

  It was in the following rainy season that the battalion suddenly ordered soldiers to help a company that was fighting back an invasion in the border area. Because our entire company relied on our camp farm for food, someone had to stay behind to take care of the crops, and the squad leader chose me.

  “You’ll stay here with Lu,” he told me.

  Looking after the farm wasn’t as dangerous as fighting, but I knew that it would be boring and lonely. I wanted to go with the other soldiers, but I had no choice.

  “You and Lu get along well, and he listens to you,” the squad leader said, tapping me on the shoulder. “So you’ll stay here. It’s my order.”

  The next day, Lu and I saw everyone off at Ben Rung as they crossed the river.

  At night I slept in a hut near the farm to keep an eye on the crops. It was comfortable enough, except the nearest source of water was far away. Then, three days after my squad left, I came down with a malaria fever. This was common among soldiers who had been sent to the highlands. I took some pills, but they didn’t seem to work. The fever got worse. I lay on the straw mattress in the hut feeling miserable and unable to eat even a small bowl of rice. Even though I had no appetite, I craved something sweet, so I went and plucked a few young ears of corn and a pumpkin to eat. I knew that Lu was hungry as well, but I couldn’t cook anything for him. He didn’t have a fever and was healthy, so he’d be fine. Probably animals could deal with hunger—at least better than most humans could.

  By the third day of the fever, the water in the bamboo containers had run out. I was so thirsty. That night, the fever knocked me out and I had a terrible dream. I was sitting in our house in Hanoi. My mother was across from me—I saw her clearly. My grandmother was sitting next to me and I felt her caress my hair; then she started to sob. When I woke up, the full moon lit up the night sky with bright yellow clouds. One of my arms hung off the side of the bed. In my dream, I’d torn off my sweaty old soldier’s shirt. I sat up in the moonlit darkness, bare-chested and trying to breathe.

  It was okay, I told myself. That wasn’t actually my mother. Lu was in the bed next to me. In the light from the moon his eyes looked blue, and I could see that he was staring up at me anxiously. He licked the sweat off my face and chest. Lu seemed to understand how miserable I felt—he put his warm mouth against my neck and pushed my head back onto the straw pillow, as if he were putting a child down to sleep.

  I thought about death. The night went on. Even if I didn’t die from the fever, I would die of thirst. I forced myself to get up and walked out among the crops to collect some young corn, hoping to maybe suck the water out of the ears, and I dragged a canteen to the edge of the jungle where I knew there was a small creek. But the ground became steep and hilly all of a sudden and I fell and rolled down into a shallow ravine, knocking my head against a tree trunk.

  I have no clue how long I lay there unconscious. When I finally opened my eyes again, Lu was right next to me. He latched on to the hem of my pants with his mouth and tried pulling me out of the ravine. But it didn’t work, the fabric just ripped. I thought I would probably die, and it made me weep all of a sudden, lying there in the ravine, thinking about such a pitiful, lonely death.

  Meanwhile Lu started running around me anxiously. Then he stopped and started to howl. It was the first time I’d ever heard a domestic dog howl like a wolf. I’d read books that said wolves howled on quiet moonlit nights to attract a mate. I wondered who Lu was calling. I wanted to talk to him. He probably wanted to talk to me too. Looking into his eyes, I could just tell.

  In that terrifying moment, when I was fully aware that I would die, I had no fear. I closed my eyes—I was only semiconscious—and imagined that my soul was leaving my body. With arms extended, I flew above the dense jungle foliage, back toward Hanoi.

  Then all of a sudden I felt a strange shaking. It was a sensation I wouldn’t experience again until years later, when I was on an airplane flying abroad for the first time and the plane hit an air pocket that caused turbulence. When I opened my eyes I saw that a group of people were using jungle vines to carry me across a deep canyon. They looked like Montagnards. At some point, I remembered vaguely, we’d patrolled this area. It was a natural border between the two mountains that an average person could never manage to cross by themselves. Once we reached the other side, they gave me some water to drink. It was the sweetest water I’d ever tasted.

  They were a Montagnard family who lived on the far side of the mountain. There were three of them—an elderly man, his wife, and their daughter, all living in a stilt house under a tree. They also had a dog that had a Montagnard name I couldn’t pronounce. Lu must have come here looking for help, I figured. Actually, he’d been here before, though I hadn’t realized it. The Montagnard dog was pregnant; her hard swollen belly was covered with nipples.

  The Montagnard family gave me a bitter leaf medicine that made me want to throw up. I also ate a kind of root vegetable mixed with honey, and some ground corn stewed with meat. I didn’t speak their language and they didn’t speak Vietnamese. I wasn’t sure exactly why this family was living in such isolation, since the Thuong or La Vang ethnic people normally didn’t live like this.

  I stayed with them for several days as my fever started to subside. One day an enemy plane flew very close, crossing the empty space between the mountains, and the husband pulled his wife and daughter behind a big rock to hide. The elderly man had long black hair that reached his shoulders, and his body was as lean as a khoop tree after a farm fire—I noticed this clearly as he stood next to their lean-to hut slicing strips from a hanging chunk of dried meat. He’d throw the meat at the dogs—Lu and his female friend were fed well.

  After five days, when I started to regain some strength, I learned from the Montagnard man how to trap animals. His trapping techniques were simple yet effective; it wasn’t surprising that his house was full of hanging cured meat. He taught me how to chop down bamboo trees to make sharp stakes. Lu and his friend helped us track the animals, sniffing out their muddy prints on the sides of tree trunks. We chose narrow paths where wild animals crossed and planted sharp bamboo stakes that were as high as a deer’s chest. We also collected ant eggs. There were lots of ant colonies scattered around the jungle, little mounds made of leaves that we sliced open like a melon, letting the eggs fall and collect on a piece of banana leaf. Ant eggs smelled really good and were tasty when baked in banana leaf. I learned later that some bugs had rare vitamins that humans couldn’t produce in their own bodies. That was why I recovered so quickly from the malaria.

  After my stay with the Montagnards, I had newfound respect for Lu—he knew where to find food and even where to satisfy his dog’s lust, but he still had returned to save me.

  * * *

  Over a year went by. It was now 1975. A week before Tet, our squad was ordered to participate in a meeting. It had been a long time since we’d reunited with the rest of the battalion, and I was happy to see some old friends. Lu seemed excited as well. He sniffed everyone he came across, trying to recognize their typical soldier’s smell. He didn’t know, of course, that we were about to fight a big battle. Fighting was business as usual for us. But still we couldn’t bounce around happily like Lu. We cleaned our guns, adjusted bayonets, and sharpened daggers. The officers handed out extra grenades and bullets.