The Spy Who Loved Us_ The Vietnam War and Pham Xuan An's Dangerous Game ( PDFDrive )

The Spy Who Loved Us 209
from the Americans, to communicate with our headquarters
over the Cambodian border. One time the Americans picked up
our signal. They fired on the house with two hundred rounds.
They used to bomb the garden regularly. We would jump in the
canal and hide until the bombing stopped.”
Tu Cang takes my notebook and draws another map. It shows
how this house, lying only a few hundred meters up the road
from the headquarters of the 25th Infantry Division, marked the
southern end of the Cu Chi tunnels. The network stretched
north from here along the river, which allowed for quick escape
and provided a natural barrier against American tanks.
Standing in the garden where he lived for a decade like a
mole popping in and out of tunnels to avoid bombs and artillery
shells, Tu Cang pauses, brushing his hand over his face
and looking up at some birds flitting through the trees. “All
my old comrades are dead,” he says, speaking in the French he
learned as a schoolboy in the 1940s. “I miss them when I stand
here and look at this garden where I used to live.”
Tu Cang starts to sing an old revolutionary song about Vietnamese
children fighting the French with bamboo poles sharpened
into pungi sticks. Thuy Nach joins his high, sweet tenor.
She too knows the words to all these songs, which she learned
as a child living in a Viet Minh zone in the north. Together
they stand in the garden singing “Autumn Victory of 1945.”
Small as you are, you can still kill the French.
Even with wooden guns, you can load, aim, and fire.
You will dye the whole forest red with the blood of the enemy.
“Most of my soldiers were women like her,” Tu Cang says,
beaming down on the diminutive Thuy. He is pleased that she
knows the old songs. This means she is still Vietnamese at
heart, even after moving to the United States and marrying an
American diplomat.