Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Earth Changed
Places: American
and Vietnamese
Attitudes During the
Vietnam War
Meg Masters
12-3-2014
1
When Heaven and Earth Changed Places details the experiences of Le Ly Hayslip (nee’
Phung Thi Le Ly) both as a child and young women in Vietnam during the war years, as well as
her return to Vietnam in 1986 after nearly 20 years away. The narrative is non-linear and
changes back and forth between her past and present to demonstrate the cyclical nature of her
life as a journey that leads her back to her beginning. As she progresses along her journey, she
invites readers (Americans in particular) to examine their own experiences or beliefs concerning
the war as she reveals the motivations and obligations of villagers caught between both sides of
an intractable conflict. Le Ly challenges the ethnocentric American view of the Vietnam War
where weary draftees fight off countless, faceless Asiatic hordes as she comments: “For you, it
was a simple thing: democracy against communism.”1 Instead, she deftly presents a nuanced
and bracingly human account of our former enemies, our Vietnamese allies and even ourselves
in a war that all too often demonstrated the very worst in humanity on all sides.
Born premature and underweight during the war between the Viet Minh and France, Le
Ly started life at a decided disadvantage. French forces sometimes attacked her village and
burned buildings, while French Moroccan “slash-faced” soldiers would assault and rape
villagers.2 Her mother and father would sing songs of the daily shelling and fighting, both to
comfort the frightened children and to instruct them how to hide when the French came.3 This
introduction to war as a daily companion reverberates through the narrative in a way that
American civilians could not have understood or experienced since the American Civil War.
1
Le Ly Hayslip, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places (New York: Penguin, 1990), XV.
2
Ibid., 16.
3
Ibid., 3.
2
After the French surrender at Dien Bien Phu, the war takes a different turn as a strictly
Vietnamese affair between the Republican south and the Viet Cong forces supplied by the
communist north. The villagers around Le Ly for the most part had no idea what Communism
even was. Political and economic concepts of communism and capitalism simply had no
relevance to rural farm life that had subsisted on the same spot for centuries.
The children played war games based around their vague ideas of surly Republican
police and Viet Cong “gangsters”. “’How bad can this be?’ we asked ourselves during rests
between mock battles. ‘A family feud? A spate between brothers?’ We had seen plenty of
those in our own families.”4 Le Ly relates that while paying these war games as a child she
could not help but think of her brother, who had gone north to be a soldier; or her sister who
was marred to a Republican police officer. No matter which side she chose in play, she would
be aligned against one of her own siblings. This would come to have very real personal
Soon, Republican soldiers began to frequent the village and inevitably, Viet Cong
soldiers began to show up after dark. They shoot the local school master as a traitor for
denouncing communist guerillas and Buddhists. This salutary lesson in terror and
consequences commences Le Ly’s education in trying to please all sides, and therefore pleasing
none at all. She, and the villagers at large, learn to cooperate with the Republican troops by
day while attending Viet Cong indoctrination sessions at night. Republican building materials
and weapons get purloined for Viet Cong use. In particular, Le Ly and other children (she is
4
Ibid., 36.
3
about 12 years old at this point) get used as sentries and thieves while being taught “patriotic
The ability of the Viet Cong to infiltrate villages and dominate village life to such an
extent became a problem that American and Republican planners never fully understood (or
even if they did, could do little to combat). Moreover, cultural misunderstanding and brutality
widened the war by actively driving villagers to the Viet Cong for protection. Vietnamese
villagers soon learn that running from combat helicopters (a natural reaction born of fear)
would result in being fired upon and likely killed. Being seen once too often by Republican
security forces can get one assigned to a prison camp and torture, as Le Ly soon discovers when
The impossibility of her situation becomes manifest. Tortured for days by guards before
she gets released, she also becomes suspect by the Viet Cong because of her (relatively) short
stay in the prison and an accidental encounter with Republican forces near a communist hiring
place. Under threat of death, she flees to Saigon after being raped by Viet Cong soldiers.7 This
problem is not restricted to her by any means, as she describes the lengths that the Viet Cong
get shot after sundown and their homes burnt. Food is tallied and farm animals assayed while
the villagers food gets rationed.8 What had started as patriotic support for a unified country
5
Ibid., 45-47.
6
Ibid., 81.
7
Ibid., 93.
8
Ibid., 69.
4
quickly turns into terrorized submission while both sides kill parents, loot food and leave
orphans.
On the other side, American involvement for most soldiers was strictly a one year affair.
“The ‘Nam” was a destination best avoided. If one could not keep away from Vietnam, then
one did as little as possible to stay or understand the local culture. The entire focus of most
soldiers was surviving the tour of duty and “rotating back to the world”, which certainly
suggested that Vietnam was not considered part of the Earth as American soldiers understood
the concept. The lack of continuity in American forces guaranteed that people like Le Ly would
always come into contact with foreigners who either did not understand the culture or nature
of the war. Those who did were going to be leaving soon and take the institutional knowledge
with them.
relationships are often exploitive, echoing the larger problem of American involvement.
Instead of a war to end communism and “save” the Vietnamese from themselves, the
relationships on macro and micro scales become opportunistic, cynical and dehumanizing.
While Le Ly’s admonition that the war was a “simple thing” for Americans is correct, she is
mistaken in what that thing was: getting home. For her, home was the proverbial hell that
Americans were busy avoiding or escaping from (while they were also busy blowing it up).
Le Ly, and South Vietnam as a whole, are forced to engage in increasing desperate and
sordid measures to survive amidst rampant corruption, death and uncertainty. The Americans,
9
Ibid., 221.
5
clad in invincible, ignorant, arrogance and hailing from a land of unimaginable plenty, become
both despoiler and savior as they deal death and misery while handing out candy bars and
medical care. For Le Ly, this means an eventual ticket out of Vietnam as the war bride of an
American twice her age.10 For too many other Vietnamese, it often means begging for
handouts, hawking junk or selling sex while trying not to get killed by either side. The American
Leviathan does not care about communism in the end. It cares about getting what it can before
When Heaven and Earth Changed Places provides a unique perspective from the
Vietnamese point of view. Many memoirs of Vietnam exist, such as We Were Soldiers Once,
and Young, and A Rumor of War. These books focus on an American infantry perspective of
combat, and do little to illuminate the Vietnamese culture or motives for fighting in the first
place. Le Ly closes that circle, both in her narrative where she returns to Vietnam as a
perspective.
Instead of the faceless, black pajama masses in a movie or manuscript, the reader can
finally see the real people who fought on the other side, both in cruelty and sincere patriotism.
Better still, she also shows American audiences a mirror in which to look. The disturbing,
disquieting images she produces of American servicemen provide valuable historical testimony
from a time and people almost swept away in a collective amnesia. As a matter of social
history, her work avoids combat hagiography or martyrology. We get a section of her life, warts
10
Ibid., 333.
6
and all, the good decisions and the bad, in social context. By extension, we see a larger picture
of Vietnamese interaction with America during a critical period for both countries. The