My School Days in Vietnam

My experiences in high school during the Vietnam War had both sad times and happy times. To begin with, in Vietnam, high school began with Grade 7 and ended with Grade 12. When I started high school, it was run jointly by the French government and a dedicated group of doctors who were Chinese. Every day we had lessons in French, English, Chinese, and Vietnamese. At that time, this school was famous in Saigon and throughout all of South Vietnam. By this time, I had been there for four years. The Viet Cong army took over the school for living quarters because it was a large school which covered approximately two blocks. When I first went there, it also contained houses for the teachers to live in permanently. When the soldiers took over the school, we had no classes at all, and the teachers had to give up their houses. Consequently, many of them escaped to the countryside.

Although, we had no classes, we still had to go to school. Early every morning, we were forced to go to the school and do manual work for the soldiers. First, we had to clean the streets near the school and clean the river where people had dumped garbage in it. Then, inside the school, we had to do all the cleaning. Since the soldiers cooked, ate, and slept in the school, there was a lot of cleaning to do.

When the soldiers were going to cook, they went to the forest and got wood which they brought back to the school. In the gymnasium they actually made a fire on the floor, surrounded it with stones, and did their cooking. As a result of this, the floor was burnt and the walls became black because of the smoke. One day, when I was walking home from school, I saw a group of Viet Cong soldiers who had caught a pet cat which they had skinned and cooked; they also killed and cooked a dog. In addition, they caught frogs along the river and in the garden. The soldiers stole vegetables and fruit from other people’s gardens. As you can see, unlike the American soldiers, they had very little to eat except what they could find or catch.