Page 185 - DACSAN71
P. 185
185 Muõ Ñoû 71- Xuaân AÙt Muøi - 2015
I had fought in the “Kontum Battle”.
Now, we must defeat their main thrust.
We were moving north toward Quang Tri.
We were tasked to destroy the NVA.
We crossed a river and we saw death.
The bridge had been destroyed by the NVA.
Refugees feeing war were stopped at the river,
The NVA systematically killed them with gunfre.
The killing had been done several days before.
The vehicles were burnt out, the bodies mummifed.
A macabre view of war, death and destruction.
Even tough soldiers can cry at horror and brutality.
Stunned, I wandered through the death scene.
I picked up a little shoe with a foot in it,
I could not fnd the rest of the child’s body.
Everything had been destroyed and by-passed.
A line of destroyed vehicles fve kilometers long,
Twenty fve thousand dead; innocents feeing war.
Only the vultures and rats visited here.
“What the hell is this war about?” I voiced.
No one answered, the dead do not talk.
Inhumanity does not respond, no press coverage.
The voices were silenced, bodies decaying in the sun.
I wept for a child, a parent, a grandmother.
I wept for mankind.
By John J. Duffy
Tieåu ñoaøn Quaân Y - Giöû ñôøi cho nhau
I had fought in the “Kontum Battle”.
Now, we must defeat their main thrust.
We were moving north toward Quang Tri.
We were tasked to destroy the NVA.
We crossed a river and we saw death.
The bridge had been destroyed by the NVA.
Refugees feeing war were stopped at the river,
The NVA systematically killed them with gunfre.
The killing had been done several days before.
The vehicles were burnt out, the bodies mummifed.
A macabre view of war, death and destruction.
Even tough soldiers can cry at horror and brutality.
Stunned, I wandered through the death scene.
I picked up a little shoe with a foot in it,
I could not fnd the rest of the child’s body.
Everything had been destroyed and by-passed.
A line of destroyed vehicles fve kilometers long,
Twenty fve thousand dead; innocents feeing war.
Only the vultures and rats visited here.
“What the hell is this war about?” I voiced.
No one answered, the dead do not talk.
Inhumanity does not respond, no press coverage.
The voices were silenced, bodies decaying in the sun.
I wept for a child, a parent, a grandmother.
I wept for mankind.
By John J. Duffy
Tieåu ñoaøn Quaân Y - Giöû ñôøi cho nhau
