Calgary, November 2019
Jane was a patriot. She grew up in the Mid-West of United States and believed in God, democracy and the American way of life. To contribute to the saving of the world and to help other people, she became a qualified nurse and worked in a local hospital. The year was 1972, she was 25 years old, and the world needed all the help it could get. The Vietnam war was raging, people were dying, and the American public was bitterly divided between the anti and pro war activists. To show her patriotism and to help American boys to defeat communism, Jane volunteered to serve in Vietnam. She joined the Army Nurse Corps and was posted to the 12th Evacuation Hospital in Cu Chi, but her satisfaction of being one of the good guys evaporated pretty quickly. She did not see a heroic struggle, only young men, some no more than 18 years old, dying in the war, which was impossible to win, defending a corrupt government not worth defending. The killed Vietnamese enemy, so proudly displayed by the US commanding officers, were the same young boys in different uniforms. It was impossible not to feel sorry for them; all were too young to die.
One day was particularly brutal in Jane’s ward. There was an ambush in one of the landing zones; most of the Americans were killed and only the napalm bombing of the landing zone saved the rest of the platoon. When the fighting finished and the helicopters could pick up the survivors, all of the North Vietnamese Army soldiers were burned to ashes. Only one of them, a young man of no more that 18 years, survived with burns all over his body. He was evacuated with the rest of the Americans and was brought to Jane’s ward. It was obvious that he will not survive, there was no point to interrogate him, but he kept saying something. Then he grabbed Jane’s hand and it was obvious he was pleading, begging her. The translator explained that the boy says that he never had a sex with a woman and that he does not want to die a virgin.
“Will you do it for him?”, asked the doctor who saw too much suffering to care about the rules.
“OK, I will.”
Orderlies brought the dying soldier into the operating room and left, Jane kneeled over the boy and fulfilled his last wish. He smiled at her and died. The problem appeared few weeks later, when Jane realized that she was pregnant. An abortion was out of the question because of her religious beliefs, so she was discharged from the army and returned home.
The return was not easy. Her parents were outraged that she had sex before marriage, and when the baby was born, showing clear Vietnamese features, they were beyond enraged. She invented a story about the father of the baby being a heroic soldier of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, who fought and died shoulder to shoulder with the Americans, but it did not help. The mixture of the fundamental Christian morality combined with the inherent racism overwhelmed her parents.
“How could you do that, to go to bed with a stinking gook?”, asked her father.
“It was a war, of which you know nothing.”
“War or no war, you brought a shame to our family. What will the neighbours say?”
“They won’t say anything because I am leaving.”
The next day Jane called her younger brother, who lived in a city far away from the stifling atmosphere of the U.S. Mid-West bible belt. She explained the situation to him, packed her old car, put little Robert in a car seet, and started to drive. She stayed with her brother for a few weeks and contacted the Vietnam Veterans of America. They helped her to find an apartment and employment in Boston, and she started her new life in a big city, where nobody knew her, and nobody cared.
It was a relief not to be observed and criticized by gossiping neighbours, but life was hard. With her work experience she had no problem with her job, that was true, but she was lonely. There was no contact with her parents, they even did not know her address, and her brother had his own life. Also, she could not join any Vietnam Veterans club; her story about the heroic South Vietnamese soldier would not hold. The veterans would want to know his name, rank, where he was posted, in what battle he died, and Jane could not answer any of those questions. If they discovered that the father of the child was an enemy soldier, they would consider her a traitor and would ignore her completely. On the social scene, no man wanted to get involved with a woman who had a Vietnamese child.
When Robert started school, things got worse. The American public was in denial of the lost war, hated all Vietnamese, and the kids in Robert’s school made that feeling abundantly clear to him. There were fights and false accusations; they made him suffer, and used every possible nasty trick they could think of. Robert had no friends at that school. Fortunately, Jane was a good mother and made a good, safe home for him. They together faced the hostile world. Then, slowly, things got better. The U.S. administration realized that the war was a tragic mistake, and in 1995, 20 years after the end of the war, diplomatic relations between the two countries were established. The United States opened a consulate in Ho Chi Minh City and the Vietnamese reciprocated by opening a consulate in San Francisco. For Jane it presented a possibility to find out more about the father of Robert. She contacted the doctor with whom she worked in Vietnam; he still had the “Dog Tag” of the dead soldier and sent it to the Vietnamese consulate. That enabled the Vietnamese authorities to locate the soldier’s parents, and one day Jane got a letter from Ho Chi Minh City. The parents would very much like to contact her and find out more about what happened to their son. Jane wrote a long letter explaining everything what had happened, and included photographs of Robert, of herself, of the apartment where they lived, and mailed it to the address the letter provided. Several months later came the reply. The soldier’s parents were very grateful to Jane for what she had done for their son, were delighted to have a grandchild, and also send photos of themselves and of the village where they lived. Jane read the letter several times and realized that this was the first time somebody thanked her for what she had done in Vietnam. When she gave the letter to Robert, he looked for a long time at the pictures of his grandparents and had a strong feeling that the village where they lived was the only place where he would be welcome