I only ever knew my uncle from the telegrams he'd send us every Christmas saying how well the war was going for us. It took me years to read the fear on my parents faces as that worn paper appeared in the living room every year, as a child I just thought of it as another part of the magical atmosphere that manages to snatch the minds of almost every child.
When I was eleven I began to realise that the war he wrote about ended in nineteen seventy-five, April thirtieth officially yet somehow my uncle was still right in the heart of Vietnam losing friends left, right and centre while still maintaining a full unit of men to carry on deeper into the jungle.
My parents refused to explain it to me, only ever saying that he was my uncle and that he was away in Vietnam sending us telegrams to remind us that he's still alive and well. I still don't know how he fits into our family tree - there's just no record of him anywhere. As far as I can tell neither of my parents had siblings, neither did my grandparents who carried forward the tradition of one child only.
There was always a return address on the telegrams, some tiny village in the Hoái Ân District whose name I forgot as soon as I wrote it down. I should have put more thought into what I was writing and who it was to instead of replying to his questions as though it was nothing unusual.
I told him that we were well here, that we missed him and we couldn't wait for him to come home safe and sound. When I told my parents they froze, slowly glancing at each other in pure terror. I begun to wonder if I had unleashed something terrible on us all.
They kicked me out of the house, refusing to tell me why it was such a crime to reply to someone who they'd always said was my uncle and who always asked if we were alright back home. That was the last time I saw them alive. Two weeks later the police called me apologising for my loss and asking that I come in to identify their bodies.
They'd been slashed up so badly I barely recognised them. Apparently they'd just been found that way with an outdated army car in the garage, a single set of large muddy footprints leading into the house and out into the nearby woods.
I can only assume that my uncle came home.
When I was eleven I began to realise that the war he wrote about ended in nineteen seventy-five, April thirtieth officially yet somehow my uncle was still right in the heart of Vietnam losing friends left, right and centre while still maintaining a full unit of men to carry on deeper into the jungle.
My parents refused to explain it to me, only ever saying that he was my uncle and that he was away in Vietnam sending us telegrams to remind us that he's still alive and well. I still don't know how he fits into our family tree - there's just no record of him anywhere. As far as I can tell neither of my parents had siblings, neither did my grandparents who carried forward the tradition of one child only.
There was always a return address on the telegrams, some tiny village in the Hoái Ân District whose name I forgot as soon as I wrote it down. I should have put more thought into what I was writing and who it was to instead of replying to his questions as though it was nothing unusual.
I told him that we were well here, that we missed him and we couldn't wait for him to come home safe and sound. When I told my parents they froze, slowly glancing at each other in pure terror. I begun to wonder if I had unleashed something terrible on us all.
They kicked me out of the house, refusing to tell me why it was such a crime to reply to someone who they'd always said was my uncle and who always asked if we were alright back home. That was the last time I saw them alive. Two weeks later the police called me apologising for my loss and asking that I come in to identify their bodies.
They'd been slashed up so badly I barely recognised them. Apparently they'd just been found that way with an outdated army car in the garage, a single set of large muddy footprints leading into the house and out into the nearby woods.
I can only assume that my uncle came home.
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