Anzac Day is dawning. Brian, an ageing Vietnam veteran lies unsettled in a hospital bed. His mind is tormented by memories, foreign songs from a lifetime ago; from another county and a city with two names, Saigon and Ho Chi Minh City.
In Australia, from 1965 and the next seven years, many 20 year old Australian men’s lives were interrupted when wooden marbles with dates on were drawn from a barrel to seal their fate; conscription, commonly known as ‘Nashos’.
With an engineering degree not yet tried or tested, Brian’s birth-date was traded for the humid battlefields of Saigon. A war his fellow Australians didn’t understand and didn’t want. He continued his life in monochrome, without colour; in a battlefield where 200 Australians died and 1200 were wounded; where horrors of war played out and young men strove to survive.
Many years on Brian still cannot un-see the terrors, or erase the haunting memories that back up like a play list. He has known restlessness since his shattered youth, he wants it to end but his wrinkled, grey haired chest raises and falls to remind him he lives. His mind feels dark and dead.
Two young sisters of Saigon sang happily; songs of their homeland, of romance and their hopes and dreams as they worked in rice fields. Their youth and innocence was blown away by a mine, as Brian watched on helplessly. The sister’s faces were never to wrinkle, hair never to grey or voices no more to feel the joy of their song. Brian wondered if his survival was reward or punishment; to age, his skin to wrinkle and blister with sun cancers? Was his body spared and tormented to later die another way? His legacy carried forward by alcohol and drug abuse to ease the pain. He showed no social niceties and no one carries his name. He became invisible, tormented and lonely.
In dreams he runs and scoops the girls up, protects them with his very life from the buried predator. He hears their songs. They play over and over until nightmares flush them out and the horrors of war and suffering return. An unpopular war that he and his peers were not welcomed home from. No public knowledge or understanding and no heroes were honoured.
Brain’s dark veil lifts, his eyes see a fresh faced, Asian night nurse who looks warmly at him. She sees him as a hero, someone of value, someone worth caring for. He can’t let her suffer like the singing sisters. ‘Enough young have already suffered’, so he must rally, fight the demons for her sake, for the sake of all and to right wrongs of his past.
“Would you like to the TV tuned for the Anzac March?” She enquires. He nods.
“Is there any two-up games going on later?” He asked.
“Shh,” she whispers, “I’ll find out.” She says with a huge and understanding grin.
“Cam on, Quynh!” “Thank you, Night Blooming Flower.” He says and smiles. She understands, and for a while he feels peace.
DoubleSpeak 