Dan Vu

“They took us to a village somewhere. Back then every rural family was to take in a certain amount of people from the city. We were in one family where there was a very old grandmother, then a woman, on maternity leave I think, whose husband was on the front. So we were there with my sister, brother, and with that family, which gave us what it had. Of course, our parents probably gave them some money. They visited us time to time, and they always spoke with that family, and I think that they gave them something for them to sustain us. We lived in a bamboo house with a straw roof. So we slept on the floor, on straw, and we were happy because the straw was warm in the winter.”

“Towards the end of the bombing I heard that our house had been hit. My brother and I returned to Hanoi. I saw so many dead people on the streets. They had attacked during the night, and we arrived in the city in the morning. Because our house was missing its roof, my brother and I went to find something to use as temporary roofing. We passed through a street where soldiers and policemen were dragging dead bodies out of collapsed houses and laying them out on the pavement. The pavement was endless, the bodies lay in line. That’s when I saw war with my own eyes for the first time. It means ruined houses and dead people. It’s still a nightmare to me. Even years later, I still see it often in my dreams. Once you’ve seen that, you can’t forget it.”