I don't know what to say.

The printer continues: "You cannot defeat us. You do not even know who we are. You cannot even see us. Your country lives inside a dream and tries to kill anything outside of the dream, but we live in the real world, so you cannot kill us. We have fought for twenty years and we will fight on until weare victorious, until we have freedom. Just as your forefathers did two hundred years ago. Uncle Ho began the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence by quoting the American Declaration of Independence: 'All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' American armymen no longer fight to protect their liberty but to steal ours. Chien Si My, how did your great and heroic country lose its greatness and allow itself to be taken over by gangsters?"

The printer is watching me closely as he speaks, pen poised, as though he expects me to reveal the secrets of the universe in twenty-five words or less. Suddenly I realize that I am being interviewed for a Front newspaper.

"Khoung Biet," I say-"I don't know."

The printer nods, disappointed, but easily convinced that I really don't know.

The printer looks at his wristwatch. He says, "You know, some of the big shots here want to send you to prison in Hanoi. But you have a powerful friend in the Front, Tiger Eye, the Commander of the Western Region." He looks at his wristwatch again. "Come with me, please."

The printer says to Commander Be Dan, "Comrade Major, may I please speak with you?" and the Commander joins us. We walk past strange humming machines, manned by workers, chugging away, smelling of Cosmoline and oil, factories under the earth.

We pass a huge tent. Inside, seated at a long narrow table, are fifty or sixty North Vietnamese Army officers in short-sleeved khaki uniforms, red collar tab rank insignia heavy with brass stars. The officers are eating, drinking tea, playing cards, dropping sugar cubes into their coffee, telling jokes, telling lies, laughing, smoking pipes and cigars, reading newspapers.

We see a religious shrine ten feet high, a brass Buddha.

We enter a large chamber filled with a couple of hundred Bo Doi snuffies squatting on a floor of beaten earth covered by palm fronds. The Bo Doi are all nineteen years old, healthy and strong, with regulation haircuts and clean khaki shirts and shorts. They are so squared-away, they must have junk-on-the-junk inspections five times a day, or maybe it's junk-on-the-hammock.

Many of the Bo Doi are writing in small pocket diaries. Others are eating snacks, sleeping, writing letters, reading letters from home, or telling sea stories to their comrades and passing around photographs of pretty girls they claim are their girlfriends.

At the far end of the chamber is a small movie screen.

The printer, Commander Be Dan, and I squat and wait. After a few minutes the electric lights are lowered and a film projector switches on. The projector hums, rattles noisily, wheezes, snorts, and threatens to explode. Finally light appears on the screen and we see an old Charlie Chaplin film with French subtitles.

We watch the flickering, jerky black-and-white images on the screen. The Bo Doi laugh and cheer. "Charlot! Charlot!" They laugh, slapping their stomachs and thighs.

Charlie Chaplin flickers across the crude rice-paper screen, looking sad. He's up in the Yukon someplace, looking for gold, but not finding any. So he makes a federal case out of eating his shoe.

The Bo Doi laugh so hard that there are tears in their eyes. "Charlot! Charlot!"

After the movie Commander Be Dan and I thank the printer for taking us to the movie. We say goodbye to the printer, bowing, then shaking hands.

Commander Be Dan and I walk back to our area and fall into our hammocks. Before we go to sleep Commander Be Dan says to me in English: "I liked that movie."

Master Sergeant Xuan wakes us up. We pick up our gear and hump out of the main tunnel complex and down long dark tunnels that get smaller and smaller until, crawling on our hands and knees, we emerge from darkness into blinding sunlight.

We march down again, toward the lowlands.

Climbing down rocky mountain trails is some real number-ten-thousand humping, the worst. The whole process of walking down a steep incline is clumsy and strains all the wrong muscles. Our backpacks shift back and forth and throw us off balance. My bandaged leg hurts until it goes numb and I have to look at it to see where it is to check my footing. Every few hours a fighter falls, tumbling headlong down the trail, but the worst injury is a broken arm.

At a waterfall Commander Be Dan calls a halt and we eat a meal of glutinous rice and tomatoes.

Speaking over the roar of the waterfall, Commander Be Dan informs us that we will reach our destination by twilight and will be going into battle tonight. We're instructed to take a break for a couple of hours so we'll be fresh for the battle.

Without taking off our sweaty clothes we walk barefoot on slimy moss-covered rocks and into the green water. The fighters dive in. I sit down on a submerged rock and rub my leg.

Song stands on a stone ledge under the waterfall. The water is a monster shower, a collapsing column of wet silver dissolving into sparkling white foam as it hits a jungle pool. Song plays a game to see how long she can stand up under the weight of the falling water before it knocks her into the pool. Then she climbs out of the water and tries again. Soon the fighters are all competing in the game and are yelling and laughing like children.