Allen Nelson

My Marine company was going through a village, when we were attacked by some Vietnamese soldiers. Many Marines were killed and many were wounded. The rest of us just ran around, trying to find a place of safety. I ran behind a Vietnamese house and ran down into their family bunker. …
Once I got down inside of this bunker, I realized that there was someone there with me. I turned and looked. It was a young Vietnamese girl, maybe 15 or 16 years old. … She looked at me like I was a monster. She was very afraid of me, but for some reason she would not get up and run away.
She was breathing very hard, and she was in great pain. So I crawled over to her and realized she was naked from the waist down. I could not understand what was wrong with her. She kept breathing hard, and she kept making pushing sounds. I looked between her legs and saw the little head of a baby.

2 thoughts on “Allen Nelson

  1. shinichi Post author

    その時、
    赤ん坊が
    私の手の中に

    by アレン・ネルソン

    ある時、村を攻撃中、たくさんの仲間が死に、わたしも逃げ回って村の家の防空壕の中に入りました。ベトナムの家族は家に防空壕を作っているのです。そこに15、6歳の少女がいて、彼女はわたしを見るとたいへん脅え、怪物を見たような表情をしました。しかし彼女は逃げ出すことはできなかったのです。荒い息遣いが聞こえました。少女はお腹の下に何も身に着けていませんでした。初め何が起こっているのかわかりませんでしたが、少女の足の間から赤ん坊の頭が見えた時、わたしはどうにかしてこの少女の力になりたいと思いました。

    しかしわたしは人殺ししか教わっておらず、命が生まれ出る時のことを教わっていませんでした。とっさにそこに手を出すと、わたしの手の中に赤ん坊が生まれ落ちました。少女は赤ん坊を奪い取り、歯でへその緒を噛み切って、逃げていきました。わたしは目の前で起こったことが信じられませんでした。

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  2. shinichi Post author

    A Vietnam War Veteran Talks About the Realty of War: An Interview with Allen Nelson
     
    http://www.ic.nanzan-u.ac.jp/AMERICA/kanko/documents/nelson.pdf
     
    (If you didn’t come across the childbirth, what do you think you would be doing now?)
    I have no idea. I think that if I had not seen that childbirth I would have been killed in Vietnam. It saved me. I couldn’t save that baby, I could not save the mom, but it saved me. I don’t know what happened to that girl. I don’t know if she survived. I don’t know if she died. I don’t know what happened to her. I often think what happened to her. But, that child saved me in a way that religion could not, in a way that doctors could not. Because by seeing that child born I realized that these Vietnamese people were my brothers and sisters. Now I didn’t learn this in high school. Did you learn this in high school that the Filipino people were your brothers and sisters? Did you read a chapter in your history book or science book that says that the Chinese, the Vietnamese, all these people are your brothers and sisters? We don’t learn these things. If we learned these things, we might have more respect for them.

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