The Sorrow of War

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ON THE BANKS of the Ya Crong Poco River, on the northern flank of the B3 battlefield in the Central Highlands, the Missing In Action body-collecting team awaits the dry season of 1976.

The mountains and jungles are water-soaked and dull. Wet trees. Quiet jungles. All day and all night the water steams. A sea of greenish vapour over the jungle’s carpet of rotting leaves.

September and October drag by, then November passes, but still the weather is unpredictable and the night rains are relentless. Sunny days but rainy nights.

Even into early December, weeks after the end of the normal rainy season, the jungles this year are still as muddy as all hell. They are forgotten by peace, damaged or impassable, all the tracks disappearing, bit by bit, day by day, into the embrace of the coarse undergrowth and wild grasses.

Travelling in such conditions is brutally tough. To get from Crocodile Lake east of the Sa Thay River, across District 67 to the crossroads of Cross Hill on the west bank of the Poco River – a mere fifty kilometres – the powerful Russian truck has to lumber along all day. And still they fall short of their destination.

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