The Sorrow of War: Pages 3-8 Summary & Analysis

It’s the wet season of 1975 in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Kien is part of a military team tasked with finding the remains of soldiers who have gone missing in action. But the Remains-Gathering Team is unable to do much during the wet season, since the jungles are too muddy to trek through. It isn’t until December that Kien and the other soldiers can finally make their way toward the Jungle of Screaming Souls, where many unfortunate fighters died gruesomely in violent combat. Until now, their bodies have been encased in mud and hidden by the eerie, overgrown jungle.

Kien is all too familiar with the Jungle of Screaming Souls. He was part of the 27th Battalion, which in the dry season of 1969 found itself surrounded by enemy forces in this very jungle. Napalm coursed through the area and lit everything in a horrible blaze, trapping the members of the 27th Battalion in a hellish landscape. Only 10 soldiers survived, the others either burning to death or desperately running into waves of enemy bullets. Kien now recognizes the clearing where this horror took place: no vegetation has managed to grow back.

Kien remembers the terrible slaughter of the 27th Battalion. He himself was shot in the side and fell into a shallow creek, where he then lay for several days. When the American troops left the area, massive rains came. Kien managed to haul himself along the banks of the river, finding countless water-logged corpses as he went. He was sure he would die, as snakes and centipedes crawled through his wounds. And though nobody talks about the “Lost Battalion” anymore, Kien knows that the gruesome bloodshed that took place in this area gave rise to many lost souls, which now flit through the jungle and moan, letting their cries carry on the wind. Their howls are the reason the area is called the Jungle of Screaming Souls.

There are also civilian spirits in the Jungle of Screaming Souls. Long ago, there was a small village in the area, but it was consumed by disease. By the time soldiers reached the vicinity, they found the village completely abandoned. Unsettled by the empty homes and the specter of illness and death, they burned the village. Still, they avoided the charred remains—until, that is, “Lofty” Thinh from one of the squads went into the village and shot an orangutan. He summoned other soldiers to help him drag the kill back to camp, but when they skinned the animal, it looked exactly like the corpse of a sickly woman. Kien helped “Lofty” and the others bury it, but it didn’t do any good: the corpse’s soul still haunted everyone, and they all died in battle—except Kien.