NATHAN NGUYỄN
Prologue
On 24 August 1945, the peasants of Vĩnh Linh District scrambled to the nearby highway, where they caught quick glances of delegates representing the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), as they hurried to Huế. The following day, Emperor Bảo Đại abdicated the throne in the presence of the delegation, ceding control of the short-lived Empire of Vietnam. With the capitulation of its sole contender, the budding DRV presided over a newly-unified Vietnamese state. Its aperture of independence was just as fleeting. In a month’s time, the DRV's provisional government was ejected from Sài Gòn, as France sought to recover its empire's Indochinese holdings in the Far East. A thirty-year war followed.1
Childhood Trajectories
Just a stone's throw away from the highway, in the hamlet of Thủy Ba Hạ, Cao Duy Vấn and Nguyễn Thị Phân celebrated the birth of Cao Thị Phi Phúc, on 25 August 1946 — precisely a year after Bảo Đại's abdication.
Phúc's parents gave birth to their first daughter against an especially bleak backdrop. Before the August Revolution, landlessness was the norm among Vietnamese peasants. Most collected paltry incomes as sharecroppers, tenant farmers, or fieldhands. From 1944 to 1945, a famine devastated the northern and central provinces, killing thousands. Later, in mid-1945, areas of Quảng Trị Province, including Vĩnh Linh District, were subjected to deadly American airstrikes targeting the garrisons of the occupying Imperial Japanese Army. These encounters with deprivation, destruction, and death led to some young peasants — about the same age as Phúc's parents — joining the Việt Minh. Indeed, in early 1947, the village of Thủy Ba, comprising the hamlets of Thủy Ba Đông, Thủy Ba Tây, Thủy Ba Hạ, had aligned itself with the resistance, inviting numerous assaults by French soldiers.2
"My family's social class was poor. We had enough food to eat, but we weren't rich, we weren't landlords, we didn't own a lot of fields or gardens like other people."
As the intensification of the war drove waves of people from the cities to the countryside, Phúc's family was one of few to swim against the current. In 1947, the French recaptured the imperial city of Huế, sending DRV functionaries and refugees fleeing into rural areas. One or two years later, Phúc's father enlisted in the army of the French Union. The family naturally followed, renting a room south of Huế in An Cựu, where Vấn was stationed. Now, they fed on a soldier's salary, offering some stability to the family during Phúc's formative years. However, though controlled by the French, the city was by no means insulated from the fighting, with DRV troops frequently probing Huế. At some point, the family ran, journeying through mountains and forests; in their flight, Phúc's brothers perished — hastily buried, their three graves were lost forever. 3
Fate's Hand
After the Geneva Accords, Phúc returned to Quảng Trị Province. As agreed by signatories of the conference, the territory of Vietnam was partitioned, establishing the anti-communist Republic of Vietnam (RVN) in the south, and maintaining the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north. Past the natural boundary dividing the two nations, the Bến Hải River, was Phúc's birthplace, monitored closely by RVN security agents patrolling the southern side of the border. Thus, the family — Phúc, her father, her mother, and her two younger sisters — settled in the city of Đông Hà, one of Quảng Trị's two major municipalities, where she enrolled in a local primary school. The cities had amenities that the thinly-populated countryside lacked: quality roads, government services, and telegraph networks, albeit unreliable ones. They were also safe from the catastrophic flooding which typically afflicted the province's rural areas.4
Upon Phúc finishing primary school, her father enlisted in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), bringing the family to Quảng Trị City, a provincial capital of some 15,000 residents.5 There, she attended Nguyễn Hoàng Secondary School. Phúc was a good student, even receiving an award for speaking French well.
In the Republic of Vietnam, pupils navigated a rigorous education system which shaped one's avenues of upward mobility. Students nearing the completion of the eleventh grade took a baccalaureate examination (tú tài) in order to advance to the twelfth grade. Entry to university required that students pass another baccalaureate examination when they prepared to conclude secondary school.6 One day in May 1964, a truck took Phúc, a few other students, and their bicycles from Quảng Trị to Huế, where the test was held. When they reached the imperial city, swarming with anxious examinees, Phúc and her friends pedaled their bicycles across the Trường Tiền Bridge. Among the traffic of cars and pedestrians was Nguyện Lữ, a graduate of the Thủ Đức Military Academy and, now, an aspiring first lieutenant in the ARVN. He ran frantically behind the group of teenagers, seeking the opportunity to ask out Phúc. However, before he was able to catch up, the girls entered the school where the exam would be administered. When the test concluded, students teemed into the grounds outside of the school; standing nearby was Lữ who walked to Phúc. They immediately connected upon learning that they both hailed from the same province. As the conversation ended, Lữ promised to visit Phúc when he finished his errands in Huế.
Even prior to the baccalauréat implemented by colonial administrators, examinations were particularly important events for Vietnamese, because they granted entry to positions within the imperial government, affording prestige and benefits to the families of successful candidates.7 Possibly emerging from the cultural importance of examinations was the expression học tài, thi phận: an examinee could scrupulously study in preparation for their tests, but fate ultimately determined one's performance.
Alas, Phúc failed the baccalaureate. It was heartbreaking but not unfathomable. Indeed, in 1964, just twenty-percent of examinees earned a passing grade for the Tú tài I. The test was intended to be challenging, asking students to answer lengthy essay prompts. Corresponding to the high rates of failure, students were able to retake the examination, if necessary.8 However, repeating the Tú tài I was not possible for Phúc; the family was unable to financially support Phúc in continuing her studies. Thus, after completing the eleventh grade, Phúc went to Huế, where she rented a room and enrolled in a vocational school. There, she learned to work a typewriter. After two months of schooling, Phúc returned to Quảng Trị Province, finding employment in the province's Information Service. As a secretary, she worked at its office near the Bến Hải River, handling the service's payroll. The humdrum of administrative work was depressing for Phúc, and after some time, she left the Information Service, going back to live with her family in Quảng Trị City.
If fate had divined Phúc failing the baccalaureate examination, it had also, on that portentous day, delivered Phúc and Lữ to each other. Though a few other men had approached Phúc asking for her hand in marriage, none were more endearing than Lữ, kind and charismatic. On 31 October 1965, they tied the knot in a small wedding ceremony, hosted at the bride's home. The đám hỏi celebration brought together a few of Phúc's relatives and Lữ’s large family. Over drinks and roasted pork, they inaugurated the couple’s marriage. In 1966, they welcomed their first son, Long.
To Live and Die in Quảng Trị City
Upon returning to Quảng Trị City, Phúc applied to the province's Primary Education Service. Prospective teachers were expected to hold at least an eleventh-grade diploma, the criterion for entering the RVN’s pedagogical institutions. However, there was a critical demand for teachers, whose ranks were depleted due to military conscription as well as unsafe conditions in the countryside.9 Thus, after undergoing a month of training, she was assigned to the fifth-grade class at Nguyễn Văn Luyện Primary School, joining a crew of four other teachers and a principal. Bearing the name of an ARVN captain, the small school taught the children of ARVN soldiers.
Around eight o'clock, at least four days a week, Phúc arrived at the school to begin instruction. The curriculum for older children in the RVN's primary schools typically concentrated on science, mathematics, and ethics. At noon, the teachers took a two-hour siesta. Phúc bicycled a short distance to her home at 41C Duy Tân Street. When they returned to the school, teachers taught for two more hours, until finally retiring for the day. Compared to other professions, the job did not pay well, but it was easygoing. A teacher's shift generally ended once they stepped out of the classroom at the end of the day. When the year's session concluded, teachers enjoyed a three-month break during summer.10 Tthe job also afforded some financial security to the family, supplementing Lữ's salary as an ARVN officer. Chiefly, Phúc was passionate about teaching children, feeling that it fulfilled an important purpose.
Life was uncomplicated in Quảng Trị City. Towering in the middle of the city was a pre-colonial citadel, flanked by the city's two main avenues. Owing to the province's strategic location, along these roads were the numerous offices of the Vietnamese technical bureaus, military installations, and a compound where American advisors worked and slept. The city hosted a theater as well as a market, but Phúc primarily bought goods from the vendors who set up near the citadel’s eastern gate, across from her home.11 She lived on the corner of Duy Tân Street and a nameless road leading to the neighboring village of Tri Bứu, a prominent Catholic community. Lữ, now holding the rank of major, was always closeby; he worked busily in an office next to the American advisors' compound, seldom venturing out the city. Occasionally, on a Saturday or Sunday, the family took an excursion to Huế. Aboard their father's Jeep, Phúc and her children drove through the city, stopping to watch a film at a theater on Trần Hưng Đạo Street. Afterwards, the family enjoyed a picnic at Phu Văn Lâu, eating a snack and basking in the air of the Hương River, before returning to their home in the afternoon.
In Imperial Russia, a common saying was “zaglokhnut’ v provintsii” (to stifle or waste away in the provinces), referring to the “boredom" characteristic of its rural towns. 12 Locally, there was no hamlet, village, or town that could surpass the significance of Quảng Trị City, the administrative center of the province. Yet, in the RVN, no other provincial capital was farther from cosmopolitan Sài Gòn; indeed, the city seemed to sit in between Sài Gòn and Hà Nội, which stood at opposite ends of Vietnam, spatially and even ideologically. The local climate was far from desirable. Six months of the year were inhospitably sunny; the other six were wet, flooding the countryside. Just on the border, the sky above the city also bore lethal gifts. The threat of artillery barrages scarcely escaped the thoughts of the city’s inhabitants. Indeed, in 1968, Phúc scrambled to an underground bunker, hiding with neighbors, when rockets slammed into the city, during the Tết Offensive. The couple dreamed of moving to Sài Gòn, farther from the border, farther from the fighting, and where Lữ sought to find a position in the ARVN's Joint General Staff. When they finally did leave the city, the choice was not of their own accord.
Flight
By early 1972, the family had added two more sons, Chung and, later, Cang. Some time then, a three-year-old Cang randomly blurted, "Bé đi Nẵng! Bé không về nữa!" Two months later, they were refugees, fate had it, living in Đà Nẵng.
On 30 March 1972, an intense barrage targeting the ARVN's border outposts inaugurated an unprecedented invasion. Soon, divisions of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) streamed across the Bến Hải River. Despite early bouts of fervent resistance, the ARVN's frontline ranks broke. On 1 May, the units defending the provincial capital withdrew, crowding onto National Highway One where a massive exodus of refugees fled southwards. PAVN howitzer batteries bombarded the route, hardly discriminating among the evacuees — it was a bloodbath.13 Separated from her husband, Phúc grabbed a water bottle, a thermos, and a few cans of Guigoz milk before boarding a bus with her three children and their grandmother. With stricken refugees running down the highway's shoulders, the bus drove to Huế, passing the charred skeletons of vehicles and lifeless corpses. Somewhere, Lữ was hurriedly headed in the same direction, wearing a face blackened with soot. Unknowingly, the couple was bidding farewell to the lives that they had built in Quảng Trị City.
Upon reaching Huế, Phúc rented a room — for perhaps the third time in her life. As refugees poured into the city, they poured out, accompanied by some residents, fearing an impending assault: "Hue’s new bridge at sunset May 2 was a mammoth production of ‘Waiting for Godot' — endless silhouettes of bent figures, carts, bundles, bicycles and wheelbarrows plodding toward an elusive safehaven." Delirium blighted ARVN soldiers and government cadres, who discontinued their duties or simply fled, too. 14 Amid the deteriorating conditions, Phúc chose to follow the refugees, walking for over fifty miles until they reached Đà Nẵng. In the coastal city, the family lived briefly at a technical school, before finding shelter at a government-sponsored refugee camp. A former American military base, the camp at Non Nước offered a moment of relief for the famished, exhausted family. Though its original occupants had returned to their country, electricity and water systems were still working. The government also quickly distributed cooked meals to the refugees. One of the few municipalities to operate its own Social Welfare Service, the local government had assisted refugees fleeing from other regions throughout the war. The Ministry of Social Welfare's regional inspectorate was also headquartered in the city, likely helping maintain administrative cohesion. 15
Though the ARVN eventually recaptured Quảng Trị City, there was little to rebuild. Phúc chose to stay in Non Nước for the remaining duration of the war. In 1975, when a renewed PAVN offensive steamrolled through the RVN, the family fled to Đông Giang, living in a school and, then, a church. When the offensive reached the church, a priest implored Phúc and other refugees to salute the new revolutionary government, as they welcomed coltish communist guerrillas on the grounds — it signaled the end of the war for Phúc.
Following the collapse of the RVN, on 30 April 1975, Phúc settled the family in Sài Gòn, where they tried to keep their heads above water, amid dire conditions of postwar scarcity. Informed by the revolutionary authorities that ARVN soldiers were going to attend a ten-day reeducation session, Lữ packed a small bag and headed to a reeducation camp in in Bùi Giáp Phúc; six years later, he was finally reunited with Phúc. In 1992, with her husband and their family of five children, she boarded a plane at Tân Sơn Nhất International Airport, destined for the United States. As of 2024, Phúc lives in San Jose, California.
Notes
Hữu Thắng Nguyễn, Lịch sử Đảng bộ huyện Vĩnh Linh (Hà Nội: Nhà xuất bản Chính trị quốc gia Sự thật, 2020), 90; Christopher Goscha, The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022), 18-19, 24.
Ngô Vĩnh Long, Before the Revolution: The Vietnamese Peasants Under the French (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 44, 130; Hữu Thắng Nguyễn, Lịch sử Đảng bộ, 84, 115-116; former DRV cadre, interview by Phan Tuấn Phương, 23 March 2010, interview 205, transcript, The Indochine War (1945-1956), Université du Québec à Montréal, https://indochine.uqam.ca/en/component/content/article/1850.html.
Goscha, The Road to Dien Bien Phu, 137, 143.
Howard W. Hoyt to R. Williams, J. Marlow, and L.C. Boudrias, "Reconnaissance Trip to 17th Parallel on November 3-5, 1955," 21 November 1955, box 684, folder 23, Vietnam Project, Michigan State University Archives and Historical Collections (hereafter cited as MSUAHC)
Michigan State University Vietnam Advisory Group, report, January 1958, box 682, folder 42, Vietnam Project, MSUAHC, http://vietnamproject.archives.msu.edu/fullrecord.php?kid=6-20-1543.
Harvey H. Smith, comp., Area Handbook for South Vietnam (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1967), 149.
Smith, Area Handbook, 145.
Smith, Area Handbook, 149; Nguyến Hữu Phước, "The Philosophies and Development of a Free Education," in The Republic of Vietnam, 1955-1975: Vietnamese Perspectives on Nation Building, eds. Tường Vũ and Sean Fear (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019), 100.
Nguyến Hữu Phước, "Free Education," in The Republic of Vietnam, 1955-1975, Vũ and Fear, 101.
Smith, Area Handbook, 147-148.
US Army Topographic Command, Quảng Trị, Scale 1:12,500, in Vietnam City Maps, 2-TPC, L909, Record Group (RG) 77, National Archives and Records Administration (hereafter cited as NARA).
Anne Lounsbery, Life is Elsewhere: Symbolic Geography in the Russian Provinces, 1800-1917 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019), 15.
Ngô Quang Trưởng, The Easter Offensive of 1972 (Washington, D.C.: US Army Center for Military History, 1980), 1, 45-46.
John A. Graham, "Hue City Monthly Narrative," 2 June 1972, box 1, folder 3, Vietnam Center and Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University, https://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive/items.php?item=0930103027.
Monthly Report for Đà Nẫng, March 1969, box 7, RG 472, NARA; Tống Quyền, Monthly Report, 5 December 1970, box 13, RG 472, NARA.
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