QL 4

<p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>QL 4 was a highway in South Vietnam. In 1969 anyone going south from Saigon into the Mekong Delta would follow this national route traversing an expanse of green rice paddies passing through busy towns and quiet villages and crossing wide fingers of the Mekong River by ferry. Squat red-and-white concrete posts marked the highway as QL 4. These concrete markers-old and battered and faded-mimicked those on the country roads of France.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>QL 4 was ... but is no more. It no longer exists on modern maps just as South Vietnam no longer exists. Just as many who travelled down that road no longer exist except in the memories of those they left behind. I know there was a QL 4 in 1969 because I saw the signposts and I have photographs to prove it like the one from which the book's cover is taken; my letters home and voice tapes often referred to QL 4 and what happened along it. But this road is now National Highway 1 of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam part of a system that runs the length of the country from Hanoi to the Mekong Delta. Even the My Thuan ferry crossing which the American MPs patrolled on the northern prong of the Mekong no longer exists; the Australians helped construct a bridge spanning that broad stretch of river years ago.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>We called the road Quan Loc 4 although I'm not sure anyone else did. To me QL 4 was a metaphor more than a road perhaps like the Mississippi in </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Huckleberry Finn</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> which I was rereading about the time I started writing the book. In my mind I envisioned a road novel sort of like </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> or a picaresque novel like </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Don Quixote </em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>a series of connected adventures with roguish and hapless characters. After a number of rewrites it probably has bits of all of these with influences from Sartre and Camus. </span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Why the signposts? Years after the Vietnam War my wife and I visited France. We rented a car and drove through the French countryside on the back roads (N or D roads on the map) eating lunches of French baguettes wine and cheese in ancient churchyards and village parks. I noticed that the roads were marked with concrete posts red-and-white with the road number and often the distance in kilometers to the next village. These were the same types of concrete posts I saw on the roads in South Vietnam. The French had left more than this behind from their colonial past: the boulangeries baguettes some French words some French genes-just as the Americans left behind Amer-Asian children who survived as outcasts after the war. These French influences are reflected in </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>QL 4</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> among them the Boulangerie and a beautiful prostitute the GIs called Sandy. </span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>As evidenced by the signposts we followed in the footsteps of the French and we Americans like the French passed that way only briefly leaving much the same detritus behind. We certainly influenced the culture but I doubt we really changed it nor should we have. The Vietnamese and their culture endure despite our influences and despite whatever government is in power as they have for thousands of years. But one thing I never expected when I was there- and that I marvel at now-is that large numbers of Vietnamese refugees followed us back to The World and they too are Americans now. </span></p>