by Ngo The Vinh

Ngo The Vinh
and THE BATTLE OF SAIGON

by Nguyen Manh Trinh

Mat Tran o Sai Gon (The Battle of Saigon) is not Ngo The Vinh's only work of literature.  Vong Dai Xanh (The Green Belt) and  Cuu Long Can Dong, Bien Dong Day Song (The Mekong River Drained Dry, South China Sea in Turmoil) are among other works he produced which embody thoughts and feelings of one who fills his life with dreams.  And, as ever, in dreams are projected idealistic purposes always beyond reach.  For a positive person who is inclined to look straight ahead into the future, literature helps to expand his horizons and to render his mind as well as his heart more perceptive to all aspects of humanity.

Even as reality is loaded with difficulties, and satisfactory answers have not been found for many old problematic questions; even as the conflicts between the Kinh and the Thuong peoples have prolonged for years in "The Green Belt"; even as the Mekong River has been abused because of the dams built by those countries situated on the banks of its upper reaches in disregard of international law and conventions, entailing border conflicts between China and Vietnam as described in "The Mekong River Drained Dry, South China Sea in Turmoil"; even as all these events form hot topics in newspaper reports of world affairs, they are endowed with greater appeal in Ngo The Vinh's novels.  All factual events were fictionalized by the author for a single purpose: to search for a satisfactory solution to dilemmas of which any Vietnamese who cares for his homeland must take notice.

The Viet Nam War ended thirty years ago but its echoes still resound.  There are many ways of evaluating it, each person from a unique perspective of his own.  To describe chains of events throughout that war is also a way of recording a special period of history.  With distance in time, the past is viewed more accurately.  More than most others, Ngo The Vinh was involved.  The chief surgeon of an excellent and most intrepid unit of the ARVN, he participated in many battles throughout the duration of his military service.  His books -- reflecting real life, real thoughts and emotions -- are saturated with humanity.  In them one will not encounter the kind of propaganda slogans embedded in literary works about the war written by North Vietnamese authors.  Instead, in Ngo The Vinh's writings one detects the presence of a Vietnamese forever tormented with issues of conscience, a representation of committed writers.

I read "The Battle of Saigon" as a way of recollecting a period of history.  In each period and from each position we hold a particular point of view.  While in high school and university, we possessed different thoughts and ideas.  But when, like our peers, we joined the army, our ideas changed.  And now in the aftermath of the war, our perspective shifts evermore.  Indeed, as time went by, we have come to perceive more and more clearly the fate of our small underdeveloped country, where during the war those at the frontline sacrificed themselves just to make self-indulgence possible for a number of people on the home front.

Author Ngo The Vinh related the circumstances under which he created "The Battle of Saigon", a short story which caused him plenty of trouble.

As I remember it, it was also the time when reconnaissance teams of Airborne Ranger Groups discovered that the Ho Chi Minh Trail had become as broad as a superhighway on which supplies were being transported day and night all the way to the Tri-Border Area.  The trail was like a knife stabbing into the throat of that strategic border area in the highlands at that time.  From the President's Palace down to the General Staff office, no one could have been uninformed about this.

Against that back drop, the 81^st Airborne Ranger Group was recalled to Saigon. Instead of being surrounded by green forests, the courageous soldiers of the Group were confined to Tao Dan Park behind the Presidential Palace and adjacent to Hoi Ky Ma, the Equestrian Club.  They found themselves bewildered and lost, like wild animals deposited in the city.  They were given gas masks and bayonets and ordered to break up and disperse demonstrations.  But who were among the demonstrators?  They might be youths and students enthused with idealism; they might be hungry orphans and widows; or they might very well be war invalids – those disabled fellows who, at one time or another, had wielded their weapons and fought alongside these soldiers.

Indeed, the soldiers found themselves posted in the heart of Saigon, surrounded by high-rise buildings bustling with prostitutes, next to the Equestrian Club where constantly were seen plenty of stud horses with their glossy rumps.  Those combat soldiers could not help but realize that in this life, not only the sorrowful war afflicted them; but more than that, in this motherland of theirs, no farther than on the other side of the fence, there existed a separate high society, magnificent and gloriously bright, wrapped in its detached happiness.  That separate society was a world alien to the soldiers, drenched with a pervasive fragrance and excessive consumption.  It was the world of those people who clamored for war while managing to stay above the fighting or to remain outside of it.

"The Battle of Saigon" is the title of a short story written against that background, which ends with a moment of awakening for the soldiers who realize that besides the battlefield familiar to them, they have to face a more depressing frontline – which is defined by corruption and injustice in society.  That their foremost struggle is not in the border area of the highlands, but on the more challenging battleground right in the heart of Saigon.

At that point in time, the political situation abounded in many agitations and disorders.  The more intense the war became, the greater anxiety lay in the heart of the soldier at the frontline about the unsettled condition on the home front.  The author depicted a true situation.  The lot of the soldier was written from the subjective and truthful judgments of an insider.

I have had many occasions to talk with the author of "The Battle of Saigon".  He is "a writer of dreams" as described by writer Nguyen Xuan Hoang.  Or, in my personal view, he is one who nurtures much "idealism" in life.  Ngo The Vinh dedicates his mind and heart wholly to whatever tasks he undertakes.  Writing a book to him is not meant to tell purely imagined stories.  Rather, it is a confrontation with reality.  "The Green Belt" was drawn from his experience during so many months spent in military operations in the Central Highlands, where he witnessed true-life events that affected Kinh and Thuong peoples.  To write "The Mekong River Drained Dry, South China Sea in Turmoil", he traveled to the actual location for firsthand observation and research.  And as a result, we can read in this work truthful records of his exciting and lively journeys in the Mekong region.

Vong Dai Xanh (The Green Belt) and Mat Tran o Sai Gon (The Battle of Saigon) have been published in English translation.  It is a true fact that local translators -- those who live in the U.S.A. --only notice and focus on works of literature produced by North Vietnamese writers and other authors living in Vietnam.  Very rarely can one see translations of works created by authors living in the former South Vietnam previously or overseas at present.  In this light, one wonders if these two translated works by Ngo The Vinh do not mark the beginning of a new and different stage of development of Vietnamese literature.

Nguyen Manh Trinh
February 25^th  2005