Page 151 - Thorn In The Heart

Chinh Nguyên

on the battlefield, sometimes they threw their rifles in the air,
felt on the field and struggling.

From the bamboo bushes, Nguyen left the Bai-Vang village.
He ran on the field banks as fast as he could to far away from the
battlefield and going back Bim market. Nguyen thought he
would meet the dike at his right about two kilometers away from
Bim market; then he will get safe to go back Hanoi capital.

Nguyen had exhausted while he was running for away the
dead, and after he had reached a large foot tree on the dike. He
lay down on the ground, gasped for breath and felt a nap in
accidence. The French canons and all kind of the guns of both
sides had fired on the paddy field, and around Hoang-Nguyen
Village. Two aircraft observers flew in the sky over the field and
villages to guide their ground troops moving into their positions.

It was an early 1952 summer evening. The gray clouds were
dull in the sky and covered the weak light slowly. The hot
breezes still affected in the air and made a little noisy on the top
of the tree. The weak sun was on the top of bamboo bushes,
which they were dancing by the wind, and the bright of sun
beams were going through the light yellow clouds at the horizon.
The birds crossed the sky and lost somewhere in the branches of
the trees to clear the day for the night coming.

Nguyen walked by the sound of a blackbird on the branch
when the sun was behind the mountains, and the sky was
beginning going dark. He was slowly walking away from his
root on the dike while his mind had sunk deeply in the sorrow.
He cried in silent while his tears dropped on his hands when he
looked up in the sky at his village direction.

Nguyen saw the strong of dull gray mixing with the light red
clouds in the Western. It looked like the flames and smokes of
napalm and canons that dropped onto the Hoang Nguyen's
Catholic Monastery.

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