Midnight Spy Search

The village where I grew up in Viet Nam during my childhood years was a beautiful place, and the neighbors were always looking out for each other. We were like one big family. There were  other villages around us just like us, but we did not know most of them.  One evening, when I was about five or six years old,  the city official came to our home and told us we needed to evacuate the village because they believed we may have communist spies who came to live within us.  They wanted all of us to move to the city and spend the night in the city hall building so they could identify us.

My mom told us to pack an overnight bag, and we crossed over the bridge into Bong Son.  The building was  crowded;  therefore, people that lived next to the building offered their homes to some families to relieve the overcrowding.  We stayed at our great uncle's house, which was across from city hall.  That night we had to sleep on the floor with other people.  I remember I was lying next to my mom. She had a blanket to keep me warm.  In the middle of the night, a group of soldiers came in and woke us up by pointing their flashlights in our faces.  I was very terrified and started to cry.  My mom told me it was okay, not to cry and not to make a scene.  These men came in and looked  at everybody's faces to make sure that there were no unfamiliar faces. They asked the adults a few questions and left.

I did not have a good night of sleep after that.  The floor was uncomfortable, and there were too many people in the house.  Most of all, I was terrified of the soldier's with flashlights.  I did not know who or what those official men were looking for, and why my dad was not there to vouch for his family.  I asked my mom about it the next morning on our way back to the village.  She explained that the soldiers had to make sure that we did not have enemy strangers sneak into our neighborhood to hurt us. Even though dad worked in the city, we had to go through the event just like everybody else, no exceptions.