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

40 THOMAS A. BASS
“‘I would like you to save his life,’ she said.
“‘I will lose my job. I will be dismissed from the army.’
“‘Yes, but I love him very much, and he loves his country. He
is a patriot.’”
On the next beat, An starts rewriting the dialogue.
“‘He loves two countries. The country of his mother, and the
country of his father.’
“In the end, the major released his son,” An says. “He lost
his rank and returned to France. His son was regrouped to
North Vietnam and stayed there until 1975, when he returned
to the south. By then he had lost everything, all of his father’s
estates and property. Today he lives in Saigon, a poor man.
This happened to many children of landowners. Their parents
were killed by the Communists during the revolution, but they
continued to serve their country.”
In September 1945, An signed up for a “crash course” in soldiering
taught by the Communists near Rach Gia. For a
hundred recruits there were only fifty weapons, including some
muskets left over from World War I. Trainees had to pick up
spent cartridges to make new bullets. Although he was involved
in fighting first the Japanese and then the French, An dismisses
this experience as little more than running errands. But a government
Web site, recounting his activities as a Hero of the
People’s Armed Forces, describes An as “a national defense
combatant who participated in all battles in the western region
of South Vietnam,” and it is not until March of the following
year—six months after enrolling in his crash course—that An
undergoes what he calls his baptème de feu.
“This course was reserved for the peasant class and the
children of workers,” An says. “I was considered an intellectual.
My father was a fonctionnaire, a cadre supérieur, which was considered
a pro-French element.”
The Communists were also suspicious because An owned
land. Doubting that his son would get far in school, An’s father