When I was about ten or twelve, on a trip to the Mekong Delta with my mother, our bus had to stop and wait for a long time. All the passengers were asked to get off the bus, and waited in line to be checked by the police and soldiers. Other buses and trucks also had to lay over for a long time, at least three hours or more. The police searched all luggage left inside each vehicle. It was a very tiring and worrisome experience. My mother thought we might have to change the route and take another bus. Finally, we were told we could continue our journey. We had to walk a long distance before we could get into the same bus. As we were walking, I saw a big pool of blood, right next to an abandoned bus with broken and bloody glass windows. The ambulance might have taken away all the victims. There had been an explosion from a mine buried in the road, or some bomb attack by Vietcong in the early morning that day, they said. But the road was cleared and safe now. Only snack vendors and owners of food stalls along the road seemed to profit and feel good about such traffic delays.
I was too young when Tet Offensive 1968 broke out. Families in our neighborhood were celebrating Tet just as we had been doing it for years. My brother and his friends were playing with some firecrackers in the alley, when suddenly there were a series of gun shots and explosions from some streets not far away, which even children would not mistakenly have thought as firecrackers. Our elder sister called us to get inside immediately, and again all doors and windows were locked. From then on we could no longer hear firecrackers during Tet.
The war seemed to change a lot when I entered high school, at least in my perception about it. There were no more GIs or "Rooms for Rent" and "House for Rent" signs. Nor was there black markets with boutiques that sold all kinds of American GIs' foods and goods along Nguyen Thong Street, things like canned peanut butter, cheese, 555 or Salem packs of cigarettes, candies, beers, alcoholic and soda drinks, etc. Just a few years ago, it was along that street where once in a while I had strolled with my Mom to buy some American butter or cheese, which we could enjoy with freshly baked bread in the early morning. But that did not last long.
All young men in South Vietnam during war time hated military draft, and they had to live under great pressure: they either had to study hard to avoid exam failure, or used every possible means, including bribing local officials and military officers, using false documents, and fasting to lose weight during the army enlistment months, in order to avoid being forced into the army and sent to the front. There was news about the Paris Peace talks. At night now and then I still heard rockets echoing from afar.
One evening, my eldest brother, a college student in Saigon, gave me a ride to a big university dormitory called Minh Mang Dormitory, to watch a student gathering around a bonfire in the middle of the dorm yard. I now have no clue why he took me there, for it was obviously not safe for little girls like me. That gathering turned out to be one organized by a politically-motivated anti-government group, not a simple social get-together by students living in the dorm. Most students were clapping hands and singing antiwar songs, some sitting around the fire, some standing nearby or watching from the windows of their rooms or hanging in groups in the halls and balconies. All of a sudden the leader's voice from the microphone and the singing stopped short, and the students started to run in all directions: the police had come and might have thrown some tear gas into the crowd. Before I knew it, my brother already got me on the back of his Suzuki motorcycle, and rode me out of that chaotic scene in time.
From my mother I learned that my brother cried hard after he had returned from Quang tri in Central Vietnam, where he had to perform his duties as a physician serving the wounded at the front during the Fiery Red Summer of 1972. He said to her: "Why was I forced to heal wounds and put together human bodies, while the meaningless war continues to tear them apart?" That statement, a resonance of many lyrics in Trinh Cong Son's antiwar music, was the protest voice of many young people growing up during the war like my brothers and their generations.
During those years the cost of living seemed to be sky-rocketing for all families. My father had to work very hard. He would come home very late in the evening, exhausted. Soon after his supper, he would go to bed immediately. It was not simple to support a big family with so may young children. Finally, in addition to my father's salary, my parents decided to rent parts of our house to students and those who had come to Saigon to study or to work, and needed a place to rent. My mother also had to cook meals for them. Our meals seemed to improve considerably. Together members in the household lived like one big family.
