War (2002)
War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. A peaceful village in the province of Da Nang, where elders wise with years sit slowly. The women shell the rice brought by their husbands from the field. Children playing in the street. The common people never ask for more than to be able to live their lives. The common people do not want the riches of the world. The common people want the common. But they do not want bunkers dug underneath their houses, and their streets lined with hidden mines. They do not want patrols of foreign men to ravage their homes.
A unit of sweating soldiers tramples into the village with confidence until the man up front steps on a mine that jumps up from the sand and explodes at waist level. Everyone falls down for cover. The exploded soldier falls down too, a bit later. His legs here, his torso there, and his blood everywhere.
The common people do not ask for the body parts of foreign men to fly through the air. They do not ask for panicking soldiers to run through their houses searching for that certain something. They do not ask for their daughters to be raped by foreign men, and their sons’ skulls to be smashed by the butts of their guns.
When the so-called enemy jumps out of their tunnels, the bullets tear everything apart. The gold painted Buddha statue is ripped in its shrine. The sweaty foreigners screams are stopped short by a bullet straight into the throat ending in nothing more than a gurgling of blood.
The bags of rice are torn by a hail of lead as the little white grains pour out along with the very livelihood of the people here. The hail does not discriminate. It tears the rice bags, the Buddha statue, and the small, fast beating hearts inside the chests of the little children running and screaming. The little ones fall, right into the streams of crimson from the sweaty soldiers.
When the smoke clears, and the sweaty survivors have left the village, the so-called enemy crawls back into the tunnels. The village is quiet, and the white rice is strewn. The white cover is broken only by the red blood. Blood of the elders and blood of the wives. Blood of the husbands and blood of the children. A hungry dog is still alive.
