All for the price of peace

VNS illustration Trịnh Lập

When I moved in with my father, I noticed something odd about him I've never had the chance to see before.

At around 2am, he would sometimes go down the floor and check up on me in my room. He would pant a lot, looked all sweaty and grunted angrily if I stayed up late.

This was for me uncharacteristic of him - during the daytime he would be smiling all day long, cracking jokes and spreading a positive vibe to others.

Mother would say that he's sometimes 'loony' and had been ever since they met and I've been wondering why for years, until I heard his backstory. He had tried to tell me these stories, way back when I was a child, but when I was young, I felt indifferent to them.

My father fought in the American War, at the height of it when he was just 17 years old and at one of the war's most fiercest battles, in the 1972 Battle of Quảng Trị. He was sent there to reinforce a seven-man squad and after the war only him and two squad members came home.

It was not until recently that I had a chance to bond with him more and asked him questions about his past. As a medical officer he had seen it all - the deaths of his friends, the horrifying injuries and the atrocities of war - all vividly retold to me.

In the fight for freedom and independence many young men and women in their 20s, sacrificed their precious lives. Some left a part of their body at the battlefield. And for some who returned home with all their limbs, like my father, they left a piece of their young, carefree soul.

Father always said that we young people are fragile nowadays, that: "When I was your age, I was at the border of life and death, constantly, daily." I used to disagree with this phrase of his, until I encountered a tragedy later on that changed my perspective forever, when a friend of mine passed away due to an accident.

As I connected all the pieces of information, I started to understand that my father might have been struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and for a long time, a condition that many war veterans faced.

PTSD and other mental health issues faced by veterans is a topic rarely discussed by the public and whenever the phrase 'invalids' come up, many would think of veterans who are amputees, or those whose health has been damaged by Agent Orange. Vets who suffered from mental health issues are called 'mental invalids' in Việt Nam and are put in mental hospitals.

For some mental invalids, although the war ended, they still hear the sound of bombs and replay the memories of war, of comrades dying which bring them back in time. "Some shouted, some would stand up immediately and sing the National Anthem... and some would wake up at night crying for their comrade who passed away," described a nurse at Thái Bình Centre for Caring and Nurturing for Mental Patient, in a piece for Thái Bình Television.

According to the article, most mental invalids cannot even remember their identity, with only the memories of war, both the painful and victorious ones.

As a military man, my father can get to sleep very quickly, but he never has a long slumber. I reckon that perhaps, dreams of his wartime memories wake him up at night and take him back to the past.

When he woke up to reality, he would rush downstairs, open the door to my room, and slowly comes to his senses.

The war is over, he went home in one piece, married the woman he loved and had two sons, one of which is sleeping soundly after a hard day's work at Việt Nam News.

He closed the door silently and walked upstairs with a smile, knowing the past fifty years was not a dream, knowing that he and his comrades, both those who are here and those who have sacrificed their lives, have done it all.

All, for the chance to see their children and perhaps their grandchildren, live harmoniously.

All, for the price of peace.