Hoang liked to tease Lu. He’d pull Lu toward him by the tail, and Lu would shriek miserably and then be mad at Hoang for a few days afterward. But Hoang could also be very generous, throwing Lu scraps of fatty meat when we’d managed to catch a wild porcupine.
But Lu was closest to me. On cold nights he’d jump up onto my bunk and sneak under the blankets, warming my feet.
The rainy season in the highlands that year was awful. It rained for several days straight, destroying all the transportation roads. Vehicles from the North couldn’t get to the front. Rice rations were reduced. At the beginning of the rainy season, the ration was five grams; then, as the season progressed and the rain got worse, it went down to three grams, and then eventually to only two grams per person. When we received our share and untied the little sack, black rice weevils jumped out. We had to rinse the rice carefully to get rid of the bugs, and the good, big grains would wash away in the creek water and we’d be left with only the tiny grains. But if we didn’t wash the rice carefully, it would taste bitter.
The situation with the manioc that season wasn’t any better. They were black and full of fungus. Fortunately, we didn’t have to fight the enemy at that time. Instead we spent our days guarding the battalion’s armory, doing farm work, and sometimes patrolling the worn walking paths that ran along the river on the outskirts of the base. We couldn’t complain, though—at least we still had something to fill our empty stomachs, even though taking care of the farm was a lot of work. Where we’d set up camps wasn’t like the northern villages we’d fought to protect in ’54. Back then it had been easy to hunt animals to eat, as if they’d been caged. In the highlands there were some owls, squirrels, rats, and mouse deer, but we weren’t allowed to shoot them, otherwise we might give away our position. So we set up traps instead and went fishing. If we actually wanted to shoot an animal, we had to walk an entire day, until we were far enough from the camp. And anyway, hunting animals was not our expertise. But we ate everything we could catch, including tough and unpleasant-smelling meat from crows and parrots.
When it was the right season for bamboo shoots to grow, we looked for bamboo rat holes and dug until we found the little furry rodents. Lu would help, sniffing the ground and using his front legs to signal where there might be a rat hole. We all craved something fishy, so in the dry season, when the creeks became more shallow, we managed to catch snakehead and catfish. If we wanted to eat bigger fish we had to walk farther, to a strong-flowing river with deeper water.
Near the border, we found some Laotians and traded them our new double hammock and one-half kilogram of salt for a fishing net that was over twenty meters long. The net worked in places where the water was calm, or where a creek merged with a river. We also used dynamite to catch fish, cutting the fuse short and using only a small amount of TNT so that when it exploded in the shallow water it only made a quiet, bubbling sound. When we saw the water boiling, that’s when we’d jump in and grab the fish. There were a lot of white bangana behri fish in the rivers in the highlands, and when we used dynamite to catch them, their white bodies would float on the surface of the water. We had to be quick or the fast-moving river would carry them away. Our mouths, feet, hands—we used every body part we could to carry the dead fish back to shore.
While we fished, Lu ran alongside the riverbank, barking loudly, which annoyed me.
Later, as we sat around the fire baking the fish, Lu was well behaved. The fish smelled very good, but Lu sat patiently watching the baking fish fat drip on the fire. He knew to expect the baked fish tails that we always gave him.
“You did nothing except bark,” I said to Lu once, getting annoyed with his patient groveling. “You’re a dog. You do nothing, but you want to eat like a king. You’re ridiculous—do you know that?”
Lu knew that I was serious. And I could tell from his face that he was scared and remorseful. His ears dropped and his eyes were wet and downcast. He came over and started licking my hand in a beseeching way.
I believed that dogs could understand human language, even though they couldn’t speak themselves.
Two months later, when we were once again out catching fish with dynamite, Lu jumped into the water with us and carried a big fish in his mouth back to shore. Then he floated downstream another 300 meters to catch another one. We were stingy because of our hunger, but after that performance we had to give Lu an entire fish to eat.
Time flew by and eventually the rainy season ended. It would be time to harvest the farm crops soon. The rice stalks were heavy with solid grains and the corn had turned full and milky. By this point, Lu had grown into a big, strong dog. He’d become helpful. At night he chased away rats and squirrels and even monkeys, who were fast and smart. Every day he took part in the soldier’s work that had become the routine of our lives. He was both friend and comrade.
It was in the following rainy season that the battalion suddenly ordered soldiers to help a company that was fighting back an invasion in the border area. Because our entire company relied on our camp farm for food, someone had
