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In 2013, a memoir by the well-known documentary filmmaker Tr?n V?n Th?y was published in Vietnam, with the title Chuy?n Ngh? c?a Th?y: rendered in English as The Life and Adventures of Tr?n V?n Th?y: the Story of a Filmmaker. The memoir, co-written by Thuy and his friend Lê Thanh D?ng was snatched off the book store shelves by Vietnamese readers (both book store shelves and readers still being widespread and extant in Vietnam) and became a run-away best seller. Tr?n V?n Th?y is known for making films which are startlingly original and unblinkingly honest in their portrayal of both the strengths and problems of Vietnamese society, and his memoir was equally honest in recounting his own life and struggles.
A good part of that life and the filmmaker's vision was formed by the experience of war. Born in 1940, in the Northern city of Nam Dinh, Thuy and his family had to flee to a small farming village when French soldiers destroyed their house. That village only proved to be a temporary refuge: it was also attacked by the French, who shot and killed Thuy's 14 year old brother in the process. The family finally ended up in Hanoi, where Thuy grew up. In 1965, after some perfunctory training, young Thuy was handed a Bolex camera and assigned as a People's Army cameraman, tasked to film whatever he could of the war with the Americans. He was sent to the battlefields of South Vietnam, infiltrating down the Ho Chi Minh Trails to Quang Nam Province. He spent the next three years capturing some of the heaviest fighting in his lens, before falling deathly ill after the Tet Offensive and being exfiltrated back to the North. Most of the other cameramen in his unit did not survive the war.
The following three chapters are the excerpts from his memoir that cover some of his time in the war. They offer a rare glimpse of the attitudes, conditions, and events that were common to the "other side" of the Vietnam-American War. Thuy's entire memoir will, hopefully, be published in the United States next year.
Chapter Five
Rebirth
After crawling a few meters from the underground shelter, I
turned over on my back and gasped. This was...