A novel by Ngo The Vinh
EXTRACTS FROM "THE GREEN BELT" - 1 2 3 4 5 NEXT CHAPTER I
CHAPTER XX
he hand-over ceremony was conducted with full formal ritual. As a line of honor guards saluted, the head of the American Special Forces A-Team handed over the camp's standard to his Vietnamese counterpart. Both smiled and gave each other a firm handshake. |
|
|
Subsequently, on behalf of his team, Captain Cobb, the American leader, originally from Owellsboro, Kentucky, took the floor and expressed their impressions at the point of departure from this camp.
In a voice lightly shaken with emotion, the captain spoke in fluent Vietnamese. “We’re very sad, and we find it very hard to part from this camp, where for years American and Vietnamese Special Forces have labored and shared hard work with Kinh and Thuong Mike Force units to construct infrastructure and develop a security system in order to protect the lives of approximately six-thousand people. Those people came from neighboring areas to settle in hamlets built near the camp’s encircling belts of defense. But, at the same time, I must also say that we're very happy to witness the beginning of peaceful co-existence, and close cooperation, between ethnic Vietnamese and ethnic minorities, with a view to building together a modernized Vietnamese nation.”
It was obvious that his opening remarks conformed well to diplomatic protocol, the same protocol that made it inadvisable for him to bring up his true concerns about Kinh-Thuong antagonism still haunting him, and especially his detection of signs of protest from pro-American Thuong leaders which had appeared from the initial stage of Vietnamization of local CIDG camps.
As soon as the captain finished his last statement, the military band played the special Green Beret march while Mike Force teams, looking fierce in their leopard-skin-patterned camouflage fatigues, marched past the review stand. And subsequently, like many times before, Vietnamese officials once again were forced to witness the ritual of buffalo sacrifice by which Thuong Mike Force units took an oath of loyalty to the Government of South Vietnam. At the camp’s central command post, the American flag was slowly lowered; then a Vietnamese flag was raised in perfect timing with the strongly accentuated beat of the familiar national anthem. NEXT
