A person who has not yet become a poet.

For the past twenty years, every year at the end of April, when the streets of the capital are ablaze with red flags, celebrating the complete liberation of South Vietnam, amidst the general joy, I feel a profound sadness. This sadness is linked to the memory of a comrade who left Hanoi University to fight. He went to the battlefield with the aspiration of becoming a poet, but his dream remained unfulfilled as he perished. Why? Because he was living and adhering to the logic of reality: the nation needed heroes before it needed poets.Actually, I don't know much about him. But the few things I witnessed were enough to understand a person. Because what I know is from the war – a war like a furnace that revealed everything capable of shining. It was truly a trial by fire, distinguishing gold from dross, clearly proving the true value of each individual before the nation. I was assigned to the 37mm anti-aircraft artillery unit of the 308th Division when the entire infantry division was rapidly marching into Quang Tri. As soon as I joined the unit, still wet from the rain and before I could even get acquainted with anyone, I was given a three-pronged piece of wood to wedge under the artillery wheels. The road to the front was steep, full of mountain passes, and in the pouring rain, the ground was muddy and slippery. The "pull-up" vehicles weren't strong enough to pull the artillery over the passes. All the artillerymen had to pull the artillery along with the vehicles, bare-backed. One rainy afternoon, my company was pulling artillery along the road when we encountered a group of South Vietnamese prisoners of war being led north in the opposite direction. The emaciated men were strung together with a loose rope around each wrist. Seeing an older prisoner, wounded in both his hand and head, Bien – a gunner in my company – asked sympathetically, "Where are you from?" Before the prisoner could answer, the political commissar's voice boomed from behind the cannon. "Bien! We're not brothers! Where's your revolutionary stance to address us like that?" Hearing the shout, the entire group in camouflage uniforms recoiled, pressing their backs against the rock wall. They were understandably afraid. Who knows, the commander's rage might turn into a barrage of bullets. But when the sling of prisoners recovered and stood up to continue, another gunner in the company, a tall, burly man, released the rope pulling the cannon, stepped to the side of the road, and silently slipped a few Tam Dao cigarettes and a pack of tobacco into the hand of one of the prisoners. "Share them and smoke them!" the tall gunner whispered to the prisoner before returning to his position. But that action didn't escape the political commissar's notice. From the back of the line, he rushed forward, his feet splashing mud. "And that too?" the political commissar glared at his soldier. "You're a well-educated man, yet your understanding... is still... aiding the enemy." The tall artilleryman frowned slightly, then sighed: "Commander, please calm down! First of all, those weren't spears or anything, they were tobacco, smoked to ward off the cold. Second, they weren't enemies, they were prisoners. They've been disarmed and are in our hands, so we can look at them as... human beings." The commander was silent for a long time. Finally, he slammed his hand against the crossbeam with a loud thud and walked away, muttering, "What intellectual vagueness." Curious, I turned to another artilleryman and asked, "Hey, who was that guy who seemed so tough?" "You don't know?" my comrade asked, surprised. "That should be the first person you need to know. It's Vu Dung!" The second gunner of the 4th battery. This company had many students from Hanoi University, but he was the only one who had graduated. And he was the best gunner, having fought in dozens of battles without a scratch. Everyone respected him. The political officer, who had been transferred from the regimental headquarters a few weeks before him, hadn't yet grasped the "temperature" of each person... From that day on, the image of the "vaguely knowledgeable" gunner remained in my mind as an older brother, an idol. But I was truly unlucky! As an infantry soldier, I hadn't received any training in anti-aircraft artillery techniques, and being "easygoing," I was assigned to the mess hall, so I had few opportunities to talk. One day, I was carrying my rifle and sack, looking for green vegetables and hunting wild animals, when I heard someone call out to me. It turned out to be Vu Dung. He told me to try to find him some rice to feed his birds. Partly out of affection for him, and partly out of curiosity about the anti-aircraft soldier's birdcage, I searched through the "strategic hamlet" and then wandered three or four kilometers across abandoned rice fields, finally bringing him a bag of shriveled rice grains. "Where's your birdcage?" I asked. "There's no cage," he replied. "If we can't keep caged birds, we'll keep wild birds. Do you see anything on that bombed myrtle tree?" I looked in the direction he pointed. It was an old myrtle tree, riddled with bomb fragments. At the top was a bird's nest. "This hill has been bombed, all the birds have flown away," he whispered mysteriously. "Only one dove remains. That's its nest. Yesterday, I guessed either the bird was deafened by the bombs, or it had become hardened by the explosions and become a fearless bird. But this morning, climbing up to see the nest, I realized it was incubating eggs. There were three eggs in the nest." It turns out it stayed here with us to fulfill its maternal duties. "You're so romantic!" I remarked, clicking my tongue. "So, how do you plan to raise it?" "I'll occasionally throw a sack of rice into the empty field by the stream. I've noticed that whenever it gets startled by bombs, it usually flies towards that spot. This species has very keen eyesight. I'm a 'rice field crab farmer,' so I understand this bird very well. This bird doesn't like ready-made food. Even if you hang this sack of rice next to its nest, it won't eat it. It prefers to work, to forage from the ground. Its food has to be dirty, smelling of mud." "You must write a lot of poetry, right?" I inquired. Hearing me shift to poetry, his eyes, which had been full of innocent playfulness, suddenly darkened, becoming profoundly deep. "Actually, I love poetry, but I rarely write it. I heard you're a literature student at the University of Hanoi, right? I graduated from there too. In my opinion, if you're going to write anything, you should write prose or short stories." Poetry, after all, is still a monologue, a language of feelings. And this war is so miraculous, so fierce, that it's hard to understand. It needs a language, a complex, polyphonic language, to be able to appear on paper… Hearing your abstract philosophy, I felt intimidated. With my limited literary knowledge as a first-year student, I wouldn't dare get into an argument with you. I pretended to bring up the topic of raising birds. After chatting for a while, you and I agreed to take turns cutting leaves to cover the bird's nest. Because sooner or later, this bombed myrtle tree would die. Who knows, maybe the bird's eggs would hatch, and one day, we would hear the sound of birds cooing… Cutting leaves to camouflage the nest became a private matter between you and me. We didn't say it out loud, but we both knew that if it came out, many people would consider it a silly thing, and the unit's political officer would have even stronger prejudices against a "vague intellectual." But then, we didn't have time to do that silly thing. At nine o'clock the next morning, the adjacent ground artillery battalion opened fire, intensely shelling the Dong Ha stronghold to support our infantry attack. American planes flew in to bomb the ground artillery battalion. Then it was our turn; all four .37mm guns had to fire at the planes, protecting the ground artillery unit so they could "work" in peace. Throughout the day's fighting, our company, although we didn't shoot down any planes, had effectively limited the American air force and provided safe cover for our friendly units. By 5 p.m., the sky suddenly became quiet. The American jets had withdrawn, leaving only one OV-10 aircraft hovering lazily in the clouds. Seeing that it was getting late, our company commander ordered the breech locks of the two guns to be removed, cleaned, and prepared for the next day's battle. But his order was a grave mistake. Enraged by the constant obstruction from the four .37mm guns, around 5 p.m., American planes suddenly arrived and dropped bombs in retaliation. Because the two cannons were still being dismantled and cleaned, our position was left with only two guns facing dozens of jet aircraft. It was an unequal battle, a desperate fight. Bombs and rockets rained down on the battlefield from all four directions. The hills and mountains were engulfed in flames. The forest fire raged like ocean waves, engulfing one hill after another. The battle was becoming increasingly tragic. Our two .37mm cannons were like two thin, solitary poles, struggling against dozens of American jets swarming from all four directions. After firing dozens of rounds, Vu Dung's right arm was nearly severed by a bomb. Ideally, after having his wound bandaged, he could have been helped out of the battlefield and retreated like a brave soldier who had completed his mission. But he didn't do what a "disobedient" person usually does. Lying in the medical bunker, he gritted his teeth so hard it felt like his jaw would break. Partly from pain, and partly from impatience knowing that the gunner replacing him was shooting so poorly, he writhed and cried out, "How can you hit anything with that kind of shooting!" Suddenly, he yelled and grabbed the medic's chest, shaking her violently. He knocked the company medic to the ground and leaped towards the artillery emplacement. "Get down!" he shouted, chasing the replacement gunner into the bunker, then settled neatly into seat number 2, as composed as a driver behind the wheel. With only his left hand, adjusting the sight was quite difficult. But the bursts of fire he unleashed were fierce and decisive. His experienced trajectory prevented the American pilots from diving too low. His gun barrel proudly spewed bullets, becoming a sharp thorn in the eyes of the enemy aircraft. Nevertheless, they still had the audacity to use all their weapons to destroy the single target on the barren hilltop. After a bombing raid that nearly wiped out everyone on the hill, two F4s followed each other, diving down and dropping two volleys of bombs. Vũ Dũng's cannon, firing its rounds, was suddenly flung out of the trench and crashed upside down onto the hillside. The shelling stopped abruptly. Five minutes later, the enemy planes gloated as they withdrew. I, along with the other survivors, emerged from the bunkers and streams to treat the wounded and search for our comrades' bodies. After a long search, we finally found traces of Dũng's remains. Based on his tall stature, we selected a section of his body with the two largest thighs from the mass of bones and flesh we had gathered, wrapped it in a sack, and labeled it with his name. We divided the remaining bones and flesh into dozens of sacks, labeling them with the names of those who were absent. Everyone went to collect the fallen soldiers' backpacks for safekeeping and to send back to the rear. As for me, I tried to find Vũ Dũng's notebook. I knew it contained many poems he had recently written. In it, he recorded many things he had witnessed and pondered about the current war. Digging through the hot earth until two in the morning, I still couldn't find the two notebooks. I sadly left the battlefield. Out of love for him, I cried my first tears as a soldier. But I cried so loudly I couldn't hear my own cries. A moment later, I realized that the bombs and artillery had deafened my ears. Walking a short distance from the foot of the hill, I stopped abruptly. Was it a dream or reality? Was the ringing in my ears gone, or was it just the echoes of my memories? In the cold, desolate twilight, in the mournful silence of the battlefield, I clearly heard the cooing of a dove coming from the battlefield. The night birds' calls echoed mournfully…