Battle Scars
by Janette Herbers
I tore a big chunk of skin off my finger when I stuck my hand in the door of an elevator in Vietnam. As a foolish American tourist, I assumed that putting my hand in the door would stop it from closing so that my friend could squeeze in. When instead it closed on my fingers, I yanked them back to find that although I'd only felt a small pinch, I was missing skin down to the fatty tissue underneath. My friends worried more than I did. They thought I might need stitches, but there wasn't enough skin there to stitch. I put pressure on it, kept it elevated above my heart, and made it back to our guesthouse to clean it with alcohol and cover it with a big bandage.
I have never had such a deep cut. After a while it did start to hurt, but more than pain I felt both anger at myself for doing something stupid and annoyance that it would continue to inconvenience me for the rest of the trip. I would have to wash my hair one-handed and clean my finger every other night to avoid infection in the tropical climate. As I lay in bed that night, though, I started thinking about all the things I had seen in Vietnam, and how just a little physical pain seemed to alleviate my overwhelming need to empathize with suffering that I truly could not comprehend.
In the central region of Vietnam, we drove through the DMZ to see rice paddies sectioned off in perfect squares of unbelievably vivid green. The places that had suffered the most destruction during the war looked hauntingly recovered, with the vegetation grown back lush and beautiful. Still there are bomb craters everywhere, filled with tiny sprouts of plants that can't disguise the indelible impact. Much to our surprise, we introduced ourselves as Americans only to be welcomed with warm smiles and proclamations like, "We are friends now!" from people who could have blamed our country for so much that they suffered. In their history books, they call it the American War.
When we visited My Lai, the site of a horrific massacre by the American soldiers, I saw the monument and the tombstones and the photographs in the museum, but I couldn't feel the pain. The day was sunny and humid, the grass and trees looked beautiful, and none of it seemed real enough. I found myself searching the ground hoping that I would see a snake. Usually I avoid seeing snakes at all costs because they terrify me, but at that moment I wanted to be terrified. I wanted something to overwhelm me so that my emotions would match the horror in my mind. I saw some snakes after that day, but they didn't seem too scary anymore.
We got to explore some of the tunnels at Cu Chi, where the Viet Cong hid from American soldiers to wage guerilla warfare. For one hundred meters, I crawled through a tunnel barely large enough to accommodate me. At times the guide and his flashlight got ahead so that I moved through pitch blackness, placing one hand and knee in front of the other, the dirt soaking its dampness into my skin and pants. My shoulders touched the clammy walls as bats flew by my head, and the dense air underground made it difficult to breathe. Sweating as I felt my way through, I tried to imagine helicopters and bombs shaking the ground above. At one point I skidded up against the wall, scratching my arm. When we made it to the end, my legs were cramped and my back soaked with sweat.
Learning about the history of Vietnam and the impact of the American war interested me, but seeing the war sites personally made the experience truly profound. I wonder about things that wouldn't have occurred to me otherwise, and I am compelled to try explaining what I saw. Still I know for certain now that I will never understand what it means to be the people left disfigured by agent orange, to be the people who took the famous photographs, or to be a citizen of the country that let it all happen. I will never understand.
By the time I got home, my finger had healed enough that I no longer needed to wear a bandage. Now all that remains of my foolish elevator injury is a ridge of soft, pink skin at the top of my left middle finger. When I catch sight of it while opening a book or run it slowly over my lips, I think of Vietnam. The scar matches the mark left on my heart. I hope it never completely heals.
