Page 47 - Thorn In The Heart

Chinh Nguyên

of sunset. Time was slowly going into the dark while the waves
of the rice stacks frequently seemed to accumulate continuously
without ending with the winds.

Nguyen remembered his friends, who had studied together
in the classroom. They learned about behave kindly toward the
people with loved, shared their ways of life and patient to
sacrifice for the motherland as Tran-Xuan-Khai, who played
together with him any games on the front yard of the elementary
school. He talked and walked side by side Nguyen to go back
home along the roads in the village after class. Khai was taller
than all of his friends, skinny and running fast. He always ran
after a butterfly on the field to catch it and giving to his friends.
Few times he took a butterfly, squeezed it into his book until a
butterfly, played on the road mud while it had rain and dashed
rainwater at his friends when they stayed under a porch roof.

Nguyen and his friends were growing upon the peaceful
years in the village until late December 1950. That time Nguyen
was a boy of eight years old and nonsense about the war in his
mind.

On Wednesday afternoon for the late of October 1950, while
Nguyen went back home after class. Nguyen was so surprised to
watch the strangers with the dirty dark green uniforms and
rubber sandals walking on the road. They had made the
abruptness and worried about the people in the village because
they carried the wounded into the village. Some wounded were
crying for help with their blood were dry on their faces and
clothes. Few stranger persons lost their arms and feet. Their
blood had gone through the bandages with infection.

Nguyen saw the stranger soldiers held the rifles on their
hands, ammunition was around their bodies and moving into the
village in quietly. They dug the trenches, bunkers on the
roadsides in the village and a soldier guarded at each crossroads
to prevent their enemy.
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