Beyond Survival. Gerald Coffee

else, I think.” I could see more sadness creep into Lan’s eyes and for the first time I doubted that Bob was still alive.

      In an instant Lan’s eyes became shiny with moisture and she lowered her gaze. God, she is actually sad for us! She may actually hate me but it’s clear she is sad, too, either for me or for Bob, or about the whole damned situation. I didn’t know if she had even heard my “Cam Ud!” croaked in the darkness behind her.

      I thought of Bob and prayed hard—but without much conviction— that he was also alive and being treated all right. I thought of the seeming miracle of my own survival through it all; how I had removed my oxygen mask, released my parachute harness, and then inflated my flotation gear—all with only one hand and while unconscious. That was the miracle, the miracle of the subconscious. If I had been able to recall and implement the survival procedures learned throughout the years, could I trust my subconscious to recall all the patterns and processes I had ever learned in my life? Did it necessarily require unique life-and-death circumstances to bring them to the surface?

      At this moment I began to realize, though not yet fully, that I had within me all the knowledge and intuitive resources that I would ever need to survive. Right here I began to trust myself and my capabilities. This was to be the intellectual foundation of keeping faith in myself; that along with my faith in God’s help and comfort—the spiritual foundation—I would be able to survive the incredible challenges that were yet to come. It would take even more time to realize that just surviving would be the minimum and that I would ultimately go beyond survival.

      But for now, in February of ’66, the short-term perspective prevailed. Surely now with our Marines in South Vietnam, and the resumption of our air strikes in the North following the Christmas holidays and January bombing pause, this whole mess would be wrapped up soon; it would take only a few more months at most. A political settlement—if not an all-out military victory—was very likely. Uncle Sam will have me out of here by summer, I told myself. I can hack it till then and if Bob is alive I know he can, too.

      I didn’t realize I had just exercised a critical survival tool. I had defined the first of many six-month increments by which I would measure my time remaining. Not “one day at a time,” but one half-year at a time. How could I know at that point that there would be fourteen such increments, that these were but the first few days of a seven-year journey? Thank God I couldn’t.

       3

      Forgiving Oneself

       The decisions we make out of loneliness and pain, uncertainty and fear can take us to the extremes of shame and pride. The turning point that changes adversity into opportunity, defeat into victory comes when we are willing to forgive ourselves. Too often our unreasonable expectations lead to self-judgment and guilt. Our best is the best we can do.

      “If you do not cooperate, there no reason to keep you alive.” The province administrator, as he had called himself, shrugged as he said it, then commenced lighting a cigarette very deliberately. The click of his small metal lighter that he snapped closed deftly with one hand punctuated the silence that followed his words.

      He still exhaled smoke through his nostrils as he continued, “And if you are to die, maybe you have some last words you are pleased to tell this man of the cloth.” He flicked his head toward the man seated at my right, the only one dressed significantly differently from the other four at the table. The table itself was rough-hewn wood and looked almost as though it had been built hurriedly for the occasion. It matched nicely the tree-pole rafters of the low ceiling and smooth dirt floor.

      We seemed to be in some kind of anteroom of one of the more important cadres’ houses. The host was seated at my interrogator’s right, probably a low party official, perhaps the political cadre of this tiny hamlet. He and one of the other men slouched at the table were dressed similarly, in clean but drab and threadbare work clothes. The army uniform of the fifth member of the delegation was so faded it looked like a khaki work outfit; only the bright red insignia on the collar—a red felt square with two gold stars—distinguished him as military. The insignia was like a dab of bright crimson pigment on an otherwise dull canvas. It must have been pinned on for the occasion. My two guards stood at either side and slightly behind me, their arms crossed and feet planted firmly at shoulder width apart, like eunuchs guarding a harem. Their stern pose appeared to be well rehearsed.

      The head man at the opposite end of the table continued to stare from beneath his bushy brows and pale forehead; a forehead still marked by the red indentation from the headband of his dirty gray pith helmet, which now hung askew on the back of his chair. He had the only chair. The rest of us sat on very crude benches like the ones pictured in my Boy Scout manual that you hew out of rough logs in the wilderness with knife and hatchet.

      “Well?” he said with a sharper edge to his invitation, “this is your last chance.” Again he nodded toward the “man of the cloth.”

      I looked at the man to my right and he looked at me. His gaze was almost passive, slightly expectant. The faded brown frock that buttoned high in a stiff collar flowed loosely everywhere else and was as clean and threadbare as the work clothes of his comrades. After the two buttons at his collar, none of the other buttons down the front matched. Like the others, he smoked almost constantly. His Truong Son cigarette package, his lighter, and cheap souvenir plastic rosary were on the table in front of him. He looked like he could be a priest. He was older (there were no young priests here), and his eyes held the classic tired compassion of a priest in a war-torn country.

      In the predawn darkness, the guards had shaken me roughly from a stonelike sleep. One had pulled sharply at my swollen arm. As the pain shot through my upper right quarter, I had cried out and bolted upright, searching the darkness for the source of the cry. The guard jumped back, himself startled. The pain or the cry—I hadn’t been sure which—had brought me instantly awake and alert. The guards had laughed at my bewilderment and seemed to be in a nasty mood, out of character really with their previous attitude of curiosity and businesslike indifference. They had tied my wrists behind me with the same strip of cloth that had been my blindfold earlier. That would have been hard enough on my injured arm, but the stiffness of sleep on straw caused me to contort down and to the right as I tried to minimize the pressure and the pain.

      For the next fifteen minutes they had yanked and jerked me along the little mazes of the hamlet, pushing me one way, then another, spinning me sideways, twice into the smelly binjo ditch that seemed to carry urine and feces nowhere in particular. Each time I had tried to roll with the fall, but the prickly bushes scratched and punctured my feet and hands and face. God, just what I need! More open wounds to attract the millions of deadly bacteria among which I was groping to regain my footing.

      Finally, as one edge of the gray sky was tinged by pink, I was jerked to an abrupt halt in front of an open doorway. One of the guards went in and announced our arrival in a respectful monotone, received his orders, stepped back outside, and snarled at me: “Go through.”

      In the relative darkness of the room I could distinguish the five men at the oblong table, one at the far end and two on either side of it. The near end of the table was open for me. A small kerosene lamp like the one that Lan had used sat in the middle of the table, barely revealing their faces, the papers spread before them, and the emptiness of the rest of the room.

      “Sit down.” A hand belonging to the toneless voice at the far end of the table gestured toward the spot in front of me. “I am the administrator of this province, and these are my . . . my . . .” He searched for the word. “. . . my council.” His hand made a small circle indicating the others at the table. I was surprised that he spoke English.

      “You are captured by the people of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and have been caught redhanded. You are the blackest criminal. You have no rights, no rights for medicine, no rights for anything. You are at the complete mercy of my government and my people. We can kill you at any time and your fate will be unknown. We can keep you in prison for many, many years. When the war is over in my country, and the heroic Vietnamese people have defeated the U.S. imperialistic aggressors and their lackeys, maybe you can go home and