Wandering souls - Vietnam

2022

She floated on a lily pad in a rice paddy, gazing up at the sky. It was clear, a soft marble blue. Wisps of cloud drifted lazily overhead.
Then the clouds turned black.
The screams came first.
Then the crying.
Then the fire.
Burned bodies drifted in the water—babies, children—some floating, some sinking beneath the surface.
Ahn’s eyes flickered open.
The nightmare again.
She thought she would be used to it by now, but she never was.
Because it wasn’t imagination.
The nightmare had happened.
The Vietnam War, Operation babylift 1975, a token effort from the USA to rescue abandoned Vietnamese children ended in one of the worst air disasters ever, Ahn was testament to this dark history..
——————————————
1988
The old PRC-6 walkie-talkie radio was gathering dust in the corner of a Vietnamese village market stall, surrounded by other war relics—helmets, badges, uniforms, bayonets, and old ammunition.


A British Vietnam War collector picked it up and was surprised by its good condition, complete with knobs and aerial. Soon the haggling began.


Items from the war were plentiful in Vietnam, a treasure trove for collectors. One day, he thought, these relics would be worth a lot of money—a pleasant and interesting kind of savings scheme. But it also felt good to help the people selling them, giving them some much-needed money for objects that once belonged to those who had brought such misery to their country.


Deal done, along with several other items, the PRC-6 was soon on its way back to England.


Twenty-seven years later, the British collector decided to cash in. His Vietnam War collection was sold piece by piece, not from a market stall this time but through an online auction site open to the entire world.


And so the old PRC-6 radio began another journey—this time back across the Atlantic, returning to America, the country where it had first been made.


————————————————
2022

Ahn Minh, a 49-year-old Amerasian woman in the USA was down on her luck & Everything seemed to be against her. After years of struggle she had finally managed to buy her own home, but now she was behind on the mortgage payments. A letter had arrived that morning: pay the arrears or lose the house.


She shrugged it off. She had been homeless before and had survived it.


Ahn had never managed to settle down with a partner or start a family. She had always had to rely on herself. That had been the way of things since 1975.


She had a decent job and had usually managed to keep her head above water. But over the past five years she had been searching for something—someone. She had spent those years trying to track down her American father, a soldier from the Vietnam War.


The search had come at a cost.


Not only was it draining her emotionally, it was draining her bank account too. Investigators, records, travel, endless dead ends. Maybe it was time to give it up.


Maybe it was time to accept that some people were never meant to be found.


————————————————
2022

“Dammit… what a bonus it would be if I could just get this piece of junk working. The new crystals haven’t worked, it’s tripped the electric & stinks of burning, and I paid over the odds for it but That’s what happens when you get caught in an auction bidding frenzy. Still, it’s been fun trying to get it to work, and it’ll look good on display—one more addition to the vast collection.


“Alright then… let’s give you one last try.”


He switched on the temporary power supply.


“That’s odd… I’m sure I heard something. Was that static? Are you actually beginning to work? Well, the day’s just gotten better.”


Despite the excitement of getting the old radio to respond, he couldn’t shake the anxiety that had followed him since bringing the war relic home. He had hoped he was finally getting used to the damned phobia, but the familiar feeling had returned—the unsettling sense that someone was watching him.


Usually he could shrug it off like the other episodes.


But this time felt different.


This time it felt real.
Whatever was troubling him all these years seemed a lot closer.. now uncomfortably closing in..




—————————————————
1969
The little VC in drenched filthy black pyjamas had done a terrific job.


Creeping silently through the Rain, mud and darkness, he had slipped past five rows of concertina wire without a sound. Inch by inch he crawled forward until he reached the claymore mines guarding the perimeter.


Carefully, slowly, he turned them one hundred and eighty degrees so they faced the defenders instead of the jungle beyond.


He allowed himself a small smile in the darkness.


Time to wake the Marines.


The explosions shook the fire base as flares and tracers lit up the night sky. Mayhem followed instantly as the quiet darkness was violently awakened. The probe was over quickly—the attackers gaining the information they needed before the coming main assault.


The lingering stench of cordite and drifting smoke slowly began to dissipate.


Eerie moaning from the wounded added to the grim theatre.


“Goddamn it, Charlie… I ain’t falling for that one again.”


The voice boomed out into the darkness.


The Marine—half his face blown away—stood up from behind the wire. He casually tossed his weapon aside and walked straight toward the perimeter, stopping at the exact place where the VC in soaking wet black pyjamas lay hidden in the mud.


Reaching down, the big Marine lifted the concertina wire.


The VC, a dark hole through his stomach, sighed in resignation and crawled out from his hiding place.


The pair began walking off together through the darkness, trading jibes as they went.


“You’re gonna have to do better than that, Charles.”


“You number ten forever, GI.”


The Marine chuckled softly. “Guess I’ll see you tomorrow—same time. Try to do a bit better next time.”


Other shapes moved quietly in the darkness nearby—figures lingering in the night.


The two soldiers disappeared into the murk, their voices fading as if the war itself had never quite ended.


—-————————————
1975

Dammit what the hell do they expect from us? The Air Force technician grumbled, the Support for the South Vietnamese had been pulled and it wasn’t just them feeling the shortages and didn’t the master sergeant technician know it, the galaxy C5 aircraft cargo door had been experiencing problems and needed 5 new latching locks out of 14, the only door latch mechanisms he could get his hands on were second hand ones cannibalised from other aircraft, there was no need to check tolerances as these were the Alamo, take it or leave it.
When questioned by a Fitter about the state of some of the locks the frustrated Master Sergeant barked, “just get the Goddamned things fitted!!” What else was he supposed to do? Orders were orders, the airmen started fitting the locks.
Once fitted the door was tested on the ground and on reaching its closed position all 14 latches locked Home.. at least that’s what he thought..inwardly he was worried..He knew the pressures on the door up there in the fairy blue were significantly different to ground level pressure, He filed it to the back of his mind.


———————————
2022

Jim was a middle-aged collector of Vietnam War memorabilia. His house was already filled with relics—helmets, webbing, badges, faded uniforms, field gear—each piece a fragment of history. The latest addition to his vast collection was a PRC-6 U.S. military walkie-talkie radio from the war, bought after an intense bidding battle at an auction room.


On the drive home from the auction, the familiar feeling returned.


The scopophobia.
-The irrational but overwhelming fear that someone was watching him.


It had troubled him for years, coming and going in waves. Usually he could manage it by accepting the sensation and letting it pass. But this time it felt stronger than ever before. His hands trembled on the steering wheel.


He wondered if the collection itself was feeding the condition. Perhaps surrounding himself with relics of war was not as harmless as he liked to think.


Back at home he examined the radio closely and made several attempts to repair it. On the third try it finally responded with a faint burst of static.


Jim grinned.


A fifty-year-old radio still working—who would have thought?


Now came the difficult task of finding batteries for it.


After some searching they arrived a few days later, he fitted them carefully and switched the set on.


The radio crackled into life.


At first it was just white noise, but after about five minutes something strange happened. Faint music began to drift through the speaker.


Jim froze.


The sound grew clearer until the unmistakable opening of The Animals’ “We’ve Got to Get Out of This Place” filled the room.


More songs followed—music from the 1960s. Between the tracks he could occasionally hear a faint voice speaking, barely audible beneath the static. Jim assumed it must be a DJ or someone hosting the broadcast.


What puzzled him was the frequency.


Those bands had long since gone silent, and every time he switched the radio off and on again the signal seemed to appear on a different channel. He could never find the station again once it disappeared.


Jim became increasingly fascinated with the strange set.


Over the following days he noticed something else.


Between the music the voice was becoming clearer.


It sounded American.


Not just American—military.


The slang was unmistakable, like dialogue from an old Vietnam War documentary. One phrase in particular repeated itself often:


“It don’t mean nothing, not a goddamned thing”


But there was another voice—speaking a language Jim couldn’t understand, Vietnamese perhaps. Sometimes the voice rose in angry shouting, at other times there were faint screams, so distant they were almost swallowed by the static.


Jim tried forced it away.


He might be picking up CB traffic, perhaps a takeaway service using handheld radios or some Idiot playing games over the airwaves, maybe.


Still, the sounds unsettled him. They did nothing to help the creeping sense that he was being watched.


A few days later he was sitting with the radio again when the American voice came through more clearly than ever before.


Jim picked up the handset and pressed the transmit key.


Static crackled back immediately.


His heart jumped.


He tapped out an SOS using short and long presses.


A moment later the pattern came back through the speaker.


Jim stared at the radio in disbelief.


“Dammit… I knew somebody was there,” he muttered.


But who?


Suddenly the angry shouting returned, louder this time. The voice filled with rage. Jim couldn’t understand the words, but he could feel the venom injecting his soul..


“Hey! Can you hear me?” he shouted into the handset.


There was no change—only more shouting, more chaos and torment in the background.


A chill ran through him.


Whatever he was hearing… it wasn’t worth it, nothing as bad as this had ever had such a hold on him..


Jim reached forward and switched the radio off.


—————————————


Despite the fear, Jim couldn’t leave the radio alone.


It still played the same persistent music from the 1960s. The latest song drifting through the static was “Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide.”


Jim couldn’t help noticing how appropriate that felt.


The voice was clearer now—more frequent too—talking as if it were still over fifty years ago. At one point it mentioned that “SOB LBJ abandoning them,” and then complained about “the crook Nixon as president.”


The other voices were becoming clearer as well. The angry shouting in the background was sharper, more venomous. The language sounded oriental to Jim at first, but after writing down some of the words and searching them online he realized what he was hearing.


Vietnamese.


Frustrated, Jim still believed someone must be messing around with him.


He began keying the handset repeatedly—faster and faster—sending bursts of static into the ether. Each time the radio answered with a crackling response between the music.


Then suddenly a voice broke through.


“Who’s there? Who the hell is there? Goddamn it—stop screwing with me!”


In the background came the unmistakable sounds of chaos: gunfire cracking, explosions thudding in the distance, men shouting and screaming somewhere in the jungle with its own natural sounds..


Jim froze.


He recognized the sound immediately.


A firefight..


Shocked but curious, Jim spoke into the handset.


“Who are you?”


For several seconds there was no reply.


Then the voice returned, breathless but steady.


“Bobby Fabrizi. Rifleman. Five-six-six-nine-seven-six-eight-two. United States Marine Corps… 1972.”


Jim rolled his eyes.


Yeah, right.


To him it sounded like another Vietnam War enthusiast, maybe a reenactor with an old radio set tuned to the same frequency, playing music from the era and having a bit of fun.


But then the voice began asking questions.


That was odd.


Jim felt his anxiety rising again. His condition made him uneasy when strangers questioned him, and this was no different.


Yet he noticed something strange.


Whenever the Marine’s voice spoke, the other angry voices vanished. The screaming Vietnamese voice—what Jim had started to call the demon—fell silent.


It was almost as if they were taking turns using the radio.

Every so often they'd burst back in, shouting furious, unintelligible abuse before fading again into the static.


Jim found himself wishing he could keep talking to the Marine. Anything was better than hearing that Demon.


More than once he considered switching the damned radio off for good.


But something had changed inside him.


Jim had begun to accept a disturbing possibility.


He was—unwittingly and reluctantly—a psychic.


The radio was simply the conduit.


“Scopophobia my ass,” he muttered to himself.


This was why he had always felt watched.


The spirits had been with him all along.


He just hadn’t known it.


Now he knew for certain.


—————————————-


2022
“Goddamn it, Charlie, you little bastard—where are you?!”


The big Marine stood ready for the usual probe, scanning the darkness beyond the wire.


But nothing came.


For a month now it had been like this.

Dawn was beginning to show along the horizon, pale light creeping across the jungle. Normally by now the night’s deadly ritual would have played out—the crawling through the mud, the wire, the Claymore turned the wrong way, the sudden explosions and chaos.


Every night for fifty years.


Ever since the night he had left this earth.


But tonight there had been nothing.


No movement in the jungle.


No whisper of black pyjamas in the wire.


No attack.


As the Marine slowly walked away from the perimeter, he realized something else.


The other figures were gone too.


The silent shapes that had always lingered in the darkness—the ones he could see but never approach—had vanished.


For the first time in half a century, the big Marine stood completely alone.


And now, as the jungle grew quiet in the coming daylight, a feeling he had not known in decades began to creep over him.


Fear.


And something worse than fear.


An intolerable Loneliness.


—————————————————————-

4th April 1975
2 year old Ahn Minh was being strapped in to a chair with kind foreign ladies looking after her..
After a while surveying her surroundings she was uncomfortable as the heat became unbearable, then a jerk and the feeling of movement and a sensation she’d never felt before, Elevation, pressure change hurting her ears, then the force of being pushed down into her little bed… The Giant Claws started their work…One claw finding it’s target, then another, and another, then a Claw not finding its way, another Claw like the last.
The air was now cooler, cleaner, the kind people around her more relaxed and happier, another was Claw finding its mark but another claw forlornly trying to reach its locked home position and failing.
As the plane banked the sea majestically appeared beneath her glinting the sunlight, it felt like heaven to her, she felt safe..
More Claws appeared in her dream now, then a final 5th Claw was making a desperate final attempt to lock home then just gave up violently springing backwards in defeat..
An explosion, her ear’s bursting, a white blinding mist everywhere, a storm broken loose with a violent wind blasting her, screaming, crying, a sense of falling still strapped into her chair, no way of escape, Ahn woke up from the nightmare curled up in a ball at the bottom of her bed shaking and drenched in sweat with tears in her eyes, this re occurring nightmare never eased up…


——————————————————

2022

Now Jim could hear the voice as clearly as if the man were standing beside him.


“Alright, Jim, start talking. What unit are you from? How the hell am I picking you up on this radio? And how come you’re stateside? How old are you? What’s the date over there?”


Jim hesitated, then answered.


“Two thousand and twenty-two.”


Silence.


Then the Marine burst out laughing.


“Yeah, right. That cannot be. What are you, some kind of time traveller or something?”


Jim snapped back. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”


“Stop jerking me off and start talking some goddamn sense,” the voice replied.


Jim sighed. “You tell me the date first.”


“1972.”


Jim laughed. “I don’t think so.”


The argument went back and forth for several minutes, both men accusing the other of messing around. Eventually the absurdity of the situation got the better of them and they both started laughing.


“Time traveller my ass,” the Marine said between chuckles.


After the laughter faded, the voice grew serious.


“Alright… you want proof I’m telling the truth, check something out for me. My twin sister—Debbie Fabrizi. And my best friend from