Page 513 - Thorn In The Heart

Chinh Nguyên

" You had to forget about my parent. They died at Tet Offense by
Viet-Cong... ! they took them into the cornfield in Resettlement
Hung-Dao and chopped their heads...! I was living alone now...
Sometimes my students

looked at me and had wondered in their eyes because I cried
while I was talking in their class..." in the sorrow she said.

Nguyen, I knew what she was thinking of... One week vacation
we lived together in the hotel like we were in heaven. The peaceful
in my life which I lived with Hong-Cuc as a couple of husband and
wife. But I could not keep her in a happy life. I had sobbing when I
was thinking of her. Love made me feel warm in my heart and grow
with sharing, war made me falling into deeply of the sorrow and
could not run away from it...! I was born to be a Vietnamese with
nothing in my hand, until I was a soldier I never think how to make
money and rich as some people have done, so I am poor...! I had
proud to be poor in the Hornets and responsibility with this country
which I had learned in the schools and Da-Lat National Military
Academy. You had known that our Government had very poor
benefits policies for the soldier family, so the widow and fatherless
children were living with the hardship in their life. Therefore I do love
Hong-Cuc, but I never asked her to marry me, and I knew she was
waiting for it...! Because I was not a man in the city any more from
the time I was a soldier. I was a man of forest, and countryside! A
man went with the flame and sound of bomb, canons, and cry! A
battlefield man will go with death in his bad fortune. How I can take
care of her. My true love could not cover her sorrow in the deep
night without sleeping...! She wished to care my kid along with her
life, and she had to get...! She always said: you will get what you wish
for... It was hard to believe that she did it for me; she loved me
without condition and request. She wanted to look at me kid,
thinking of her lover and living alone whole her life if I have the bad
luck to die on the battlefield.

Nguyen, we were a real friendship. We knew either from the
time of our youth. We had happy and sorrow together in the school
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