Saturday, July 19, 2014
Colonel Walter Kurtz talks about the tenacity of the North Vietnamese
For a century
and a half the Vietnamese waged wars of liberation against the Chinese with all
the physical and mental endurance they could muster, refusing to remain
subservient subjects living under the auspice of Chinese rule. The Vietnamese aspired to create a dynasty
patterned after their former mandarin masters, but with a glorious history
exclusive to the Vietnamese people. They
would proceed to erect their own empire, canonizing their reverent struggle of
rolling back the jungle and taming its ‘primitive’ inhabitants. There they would build their great cities and
temples to house their own mandarins and seat their own emperors.
Once embarked
upon this endeavor, the Vietnamese found it more foreboding and far less
romantic than Chinese lore explained Sino ascension. Neither the jungle nor its inhabitants were
willing to cooperate with the making of a Vietnamese empire. The kemois, as the Vietnamese referred to the
indigenous Jarai and other montagnard tribes they encountered, resisted Vietnamese
subjugation and attempts at their destruction.
Nor would the jungle—its impenetrable foliage, driving rains, searing
heat, relentless insects, and deadly animal life—give up without a fight to the
death either.
In battling the
Chinese for consecutive generations, the Vietnamese not only developed a fierce
warrior mentality, but also great patience and resolve. They unleashed these things on the kemois as
well as the jungle, fighting them with the same tenacity as they did the
Chinese. The Vietnamese tried to drive
the kemois from their land, but they were as determined to stay as the jungle
was to keep them. Soon the Vietnamese
push for empire found them fighting wars in all directions, the kind that could
bring them the great victories needed in the making of a glorious history. They continued to fight off the Chinese,
pursued the destruction of the kemois in northern Vietnam, and ventured south
into Champa to conquer yet even more lands.
In their struggle they learned it was not an attitude of self-reverence
or exaltation of a dynasty yet to be constructed that vanquished people and
fashioned empires. The Vietnamese came
to understand that they were built by men who had no fear, felt no pain, and
lived without the weight of conscience or remorse weighing them down. They learned this through hundreds of years
of observing the jungle maintain its own imperium without displaying even a
hint of regret or lamentation.
The Vietnamese
desire for their own domain led them into hundreds of years of horrific warfare
with the Chinese, Mongols, Chams, and various montagnard peoples occupying what
was to eventually be greater-Vietnam.
Living in this state of perpetual warfare slowed Vietnamese aspirations
of empire, bogging it down in the mud, thick foliage, and stiff resistance from
the people they intended on erecting their kingdom on top of. Their golden dream soon tarnished in the
humidity of the tropical heat, making it unrecognizable even to themselves. Generation after generation of Vietnamese
fought their endless war, numbing not only their bodies but their minds, and
eventually they knew not of those earlier aspirations and only that of
war. Forgotten were their dreams of
kingdoms and empires, and Vietnamese emperors ruling all of Southeast Asia. Instead of walking bronze hallways in Annam
and golden corridors in Cham, with silk draped around their bodies and jewels
on their fingers, the Vietnamese trudged through rivers of blood and crawled
over piles of corpses, with rags on their backs and dirt underneath their
fingernails. The jungle slowly lured the
Vietnamese in with false promises of wealth and power, but instead took their
hopes, dreams, and dignity without them even knowing it. In return the jungle made them hard and feral
with the stamina to endure any and all pain and suffering their endless war
would bring them.
In the beginning
it was the want of riches and glory that gave the Vietnamese the stomach to
fight the endless war, but in the end their desire for these things had long
left their conscious mind and the endless war became their empire. Back then the Vietnamese pallet would have
settled for nothing less than the prospect of dining on roast pheasant and a
fine wine suitably served in an elegant dinner hall. Now, some rat meat and swamp water eaten knee
deep in mud and leeches would better serve their fancy. The future that the Vietnamese once aspired
and longed for has arrived, but not their empire. Those visionary, long-suffering plans have
now been replaced by their present thoughts consumed with that of mere
day-to-day survival.
Warfare and its
subsequent death, disease, and poverty have become a way of life for the
Vietnamese. There is no time to mourn
the dead. They are merely those who
cannot fight anymore. The rest must pick
up their weapons and continue on in search of the pain and suffering that they
have become so accustomed to. Like the
Jarai, the Vietnamese live in the jungle, carrying the same traits and armed with
the same instincts as their home and creator, willing to bare any burden to
protect who they are and where they come from.
The Vietnamese now have for themselves that glorious history they so
very much desired, and it is one that stretches farther across the landscape of
time than any empire or kingdom the world has ever known. The history of the Vietnamese is also the
history of the jungle, the two having coiled themselves around one another over
the course of two thousand years. The
jungle generously shares this part of itself for a complete and unwavering
obedience to its every will and desire.
At the feet of the jungle the Vietnamese kneel, imprisoned in the
endless war by the forgotten aspirations of their ancestors.
It did not seem
to matter to the Vietnamese who came to make war. Each was just another in a long line of
enemies who never stopped coming. Their
foemen once wore loincloths and carried spears, making their way on foot. Now they come in decorated uniforms,
traveling from far away lands by sea and air.
The Vietnamese have been fighting wars in these jungles for over two
millennia, and will continue to do so until their enemies are no more. You can kill their women and children, but
not their will. Cut their eyes out and
they will still see. Slice their ears
off and they still hear. Sever his
testicles and tear out his wife’s womb and they will still multiply. Burn them with flame and they will not
whither. Bomb their homes and they will
find shelter in the dirt. Destroy their
crops and livestock and they will subsist on vermin. Should you cut off his right arm he will kill
you with his left. If you cut off both
arms he will kill you with his cunning.
Do not be satisfied with killing all but one of them, because that one
will kill all of you. And never follow
him into the jungle, for in that jungle you will surely die.
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