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STUDENT PERSPECTIVES
MESSAGES
I wanted to
see if I could
understand the
experience of a
conflict I could
never share
The memorial to St Francis
Xavier in Nagasaki – the
characters translate as
(heaven)
Thom Mallon
(2009, English), winner of the 2011
Wallace Watson Award, writes about his
experiences following footsteps of his
POW grandfather across Asia.
In the summer of 2011, I trekked solo through three
locations: southern Laos, Korea, and the area in and
around Nagasaki, Japan. The link between them was
American military activity in backwards-chronological
order, but the idea was born from the Vietnam War,
in which my grandfather participated. Having heard
stories about the Vietcong’s supply chains, and the
American efforts to undo and destroy the network of
paths and tunnels they used to move supplies from the
north to the south – known collectively as the Ho Chi
Minh Trail – I wanted to see if I could bridge the gap, in
some small way, between my own experience and the
experience of someone who walked that trail in earnest.
In other words I wanted to see if I could understand the
experience of a conflict I could never share.
To be clear, there is no way to understand what it is
like to participate in a war, in that way. Not for us any
more, not in the days of drone strikes. This was fighting
against an enemy that was vastly superior in terms of
military strength and resources. The fear and terror
that must come with such a commitment is terribly hard
to imagine. I had my own brushes with fear – actual,
Sharing breakfast with Vietnamese truckers.
physical fear – during the trek, and this served mostly
to help me understand how extreme the fear felt in
war must be relative to my own. In the jungle, at night,
it is very, very dark. Animals live there. You can hear
them. There’s no one around to help you. Sometimes
it’s eerily quiet, and sometimes you can hear snakes
hissing. Needless to say, it was very difficult to sleep
in such a place, so I ended up walking every night until
the sun rose, until I was exhausted to the point that my
own anxiety could no longer suppress the hormones
telling my brain to shut down. I felt that afraid, and
there wasn’t even anyone in particular trying to kill
me. But if I couldn’t understand the experience of a
Viet Cong, at least I understood a little better why I
couldn’t. And I was able to understand other things –
the communist guards who I had to bribe coming into
Laos, and the communist guard who treated me to
lunch on the way out. The Vietnamese truckers who
invited me to have breakfast with them on the side of
32/THOM MALLON
ST CATHERINE’S COLLEGE 2012/32