The Girl in the Red-Ribboned Hat
Note: I DID NOT WRITE THIS. I AM NOT THE AUTHOR. I CAN ONLY WISH I WROTE THIS GOOD. This is a story a friend of mine- a vet of the Vietnam War- wrote about 10 years ago in a creative writing class. Just found my copy of our old Uni-published writing anthology, and thought I'd share this amazing, haunting story, which he based directly on something that happened to him in combat.
THE GIRL IN THE RED RIBBONED HAT by Norman Briers.
I don't have the nightmares anymore. Not really. But I dream. And sometimes memories of things I'd thought well and truly buried come back. Like the one I had the other night from which I woke up crying. I saw straight away the connections to other things. I don't know if I want to point out those connections to you. But you can work them out for yourself, if you want to. I guess you have that right.
In the dream I am driving along the back road to Bien Hoa. Marjorie is standing at the crossroads. I call "Hey! What are you doing here, love?" Marjorie smiles. "-Let's go for a walk". We are walking through a rice paddy. Spears of green shoot from the water to near our heads. Our hands touch and she gives me a puzzled look. Another old friend- Patrick- stands beside a fallen tree that is blocking the path. "What's going on?" He is stern "It's a VC ambush, Norm". The three of us go creeping down the road towards a church. It is, oddly, our parish church from back home. I am standing now with at the communion rail, looking down the aisle. I see that the building has been bombed out- it is a blackened shell. Marjorie is coming up the aisle wearing an 'ao dai'- the Vietnamese dress- and a huge white picture hat with a red ribbon around it. The ribbon hangs in long tails down her back. I am anxious. A priest emerges from behind the altar. I shout "It's a monk! We're in the wrong place!" I am suddenly alone and black with smoke. The monk nurses me in his arms. It is my friend Wing Cho, "Joe".
I wake, flesh wet with tears.
I was driving what the Americans called a 'travel-all'- a clumsy vehicle like a mini-tank- along a back road from Saigon to Bien Hoa. It was early morning. I should have been on the main road because it was quicker and considered more secure between sunrise and sunset. But the highway was a nightmare to travel on- a snarl of endless convoys of military vehicles, sometimes in groups of three or four, usually filled with Vietnamese ARVN, tough and looking like militarized cowboys. They drove with horns blowing non-stop, often with a shotgun poking up through the roof, waving angrily. Demanding right of way from all but American vehicles. Darting about in this river of camouflaged force were scooters, bicycles, ancient cars and even, along the sides and on foot, people, loaded like donkeys. The whole frenzied stream was enveloped in smokey yellow fumes, like driving through diesel soup. You could see what you breathed.
So, anything but that. I usually turned off the highway at the bridge and turned to the back road. It was reasonably safe in the daylight- fringe VC territory, if such a place could exist, with nobody knowing where or who the VC were. This unsealed road ran past rice paddies where brown boys in loincloths rode water buffalo, placidly going about timeless tasks. There were few trees and in the early light it seemed bleak and cheerless. But the air was clean.
There was only one village on the road to Bien Hoa. It looked well established, but it was obviously now a home for the uprooted. The shacks were tarred paper and flattened cans- some still sporting the red Coca Cola logo. Some had roughly thatched roofs. It looked like people had made an oasis here- a temporary out from the war. No wayside stalls to attract passing soldiers. No sin-stops like off the side of the highway. No laundries, or massage parlours. Just a few trading posts where villagers bartered with villagers.
There was a T junction at the other end of the village. The leg of the T went off into undisputed VC territory. A few children were always playing at the junction. I got used to seeing them, and they me. I don't know if they waited there for passing vehicles- few came this way- but I certainly always looked forward to seeing them. Brown and skinny- I prefer to think 'lithe'- and their leader, who I always thought of as 'the Girl in the Hat." She was twelve or thirteen, and she always wore an old party dress, all frills and flounces, though patched. Topping off her costume was a large yellow hat encircled by a huge red ribbon that hung down her back. She looked as though she'd raided an impossible dressing up box. The hat framed a round, olive space, with eyes at odds with the big smile. Strange eyes. A look that could have meant challenge or childish mischief. Or even learned hate for the invader. I always saw something cynical in it, too. She always brought Marjorie to mind. We used to argue, Marjorie and I, about what I was doing in the army. I'd protest my basic dedication to peace and Marjorie would give me the same look as the girl in the hat, smile and say "Then why don't you come out of the bunker?" and we would laugh together.
Those kids. They'd wait, and as I slowed to a crawl they'd dance around the vehicle and bang on the sides, laughing and shouting. "ULLO 'MERICA!... ULLO JOE!" and I would yell back in bad Vietnamese "NOT AMERICAN! AUSTRALIAN!" and they would not and then, with screams of laughter, repeat their cries of "ULLO 'MERICA! ...ULLO JOE!" Always the same. Our running joke. Sometimes they would bring pomelos or lychees or fruits I couldn't name. And I would have beside me on the seat biscuits and sweets and chewing gum- which they loved. I would hold up the gum and make a face to show I didn't really approve of it, and they would scream all the louder and grab at the packets.
Then, that day.
I was driving along the road to Bien Hoa. The boys were not there on their water buffaloes. There was no life in the paddies- no activity. From over the rise at the end of the road, streamers of smoke rose, yellow smoke against the blue sky. I was curious. Not thinking. Not putting things together. I entered the village very slowly. The smoke came from the other end. There was a smell like tyres burning. And diesel oil. And something else, indefinable. None of the usual comings and goings. A muted stillness. The trees were bare and blackened skeletons, the shacks leaned back. The road looked like it had been carelessly tarred- dirty. sticky, browny black. There was something at the side of the road and the sound of voices keening. Not loudly, but soft and penetrating and hopeless. I stopped, and people turned. No smiles. Faces twisted in grief, crumpled, and at the edge of the road bundles like rolls of ruined carpet. 'FIRE SALE' flashed through my mind and I was almost overwhelmed by a wave of hysteria. Bodies. Dark and heat distorted, like cast-iron sculptures. All caked in a black crust. There was one bundle bigger than the rest. All black below the one arm welded to the chest. Only one side of the face blackened, though. She must have turned her head away from the napalm. I stood there and time stopped. Her eyes were fixed on mine- one a milky spot glaring from an obscene scab, the other whole in the olive skin. We knew each other.
I was barely conscious of the roar of an engine and the sound of wheels locked in the dirt.
"WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?!" it was a red-faced, beefy American MP- angry eyes taking in my civilian slacks and shirt and cotton hat. I turned away from the other eyes and handed him my Army ID card,
"Major Briers. Australian Army attached USAID" he read, and saluted. "-Sorry Sir, this area is off limits. I must ask you to leave."
There was no point in arguing. No point in asking questions. Other vehicles were arriving. A napalm drop? Wrong intelligence? Why ask? I was in the way.
I turned back towards my vehicle and as I clambered in, I looked back at the girl. Then for the first time I saw, on the unscorched side of her head, a strip of colour over the ear. Bright red against the black. Our eyes met again, and this time I knew what the message was. I drove away.
Marjorie... I have come out of the bunker.
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