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Tri'ch "Gone with the wind" [Re: Live, Die for Home Country]



Hi Mrs. Dinh,

I thank you for the meaningful piece from "Gone with the wind" which you
posted.  It really touches me.  

Best Regards,
Frank Nguyen

>>> Dinh Thi Thanh Huong <huong@haiti.cs.uni-potsdam.de> - 7/31/97 12:08 AM
>>>

To^'i qua to^i type ddoa.n na`y trong thu+ cu?a Ashley Wilkes gu+?i vo+.
dde^? ca'c ba'c tham kha?o.

....  
These summer nights I lie awake, long after the camp is sleeping,
and I look up at the stars and, over and over, I wonder, "Why are you
here, Ashley Wilkes?  What are you fighting for? "  

Not for honour and glory, certainly. War is a dirty business and I do not
like dirt.  I am not a soldier and I have no desire to seek the bubble
reputation even in the cannon's mouth. Yet here I am at the wars - whom
God never intended to be other then a studios country gentleman. For,
Melanie, bugle do not stir my blood nor drums entice my feet, and I see
too clearly that we have been betrayed, betrayed by our arrogant Southern
selves, believing that one of us could whip a dozen Yankees, believing
that King Cotton can rule the world. Betrayed , too, by words and
catch-phrases, prejudices and hatreds coming from the mouths of those
highly placed, those men whom we respected and revered - "King Cotton,
Slavery, States' Rights, Damn' Yankees". 

And so when I lie on my blanket and look up at the stars and say "What are
you fighting for?" I think of States' Rights and cotton and the darkies
and the Yankees whom we had been bred up to hate, and I know that none of
these is the reason why I am fighting. Instead I see Twelve Oaks and
remember how the moonlight slants across the white columns and the
unearthly way the magnolias look, opening under the moon, and how the
climbing roses make the side porch shady even at hottest noon. And I see
Mother, sewing there, as she did when I was a little boy. And I hear the
darkies coming home across the field at dust, tired and singing and ready
for supper, and the sound of the windlass as the bucket go down into the
cool well. And there's the long view down the road to the river, across
the cotton fields, and the mist rising from the bottom land in the
twilight. And that is why I am here who have no love of death or misery or
glory and no hatred for anyone. Perhaps that what is called patriotism,
love of home and country.  
...