Today, I would like to write about the entertainment problems of a refugee writer.

I love movies. Prior to 1975, the Vietnamese in the South had a chance to enjoy most of the great movies from the free world, including even Chinese Kung Fu movies. My cinematic experience is probably deeper than that of an average American.

During the first months in Bloomington, I frequented movie theaters.

There was a little problem though: there were no Vietnamese subtitles in any of the movies I saw. That created a big loss to both the movie makers and this refugee movie goer. The movie became half as good. The watcher, trying to hang on to the storyline, was hampered by his lack of English. So, amid the multitude of movie goers laughing or crying in the theaters, there was this one strange guy showing no emotion whatsoever.

A few years later, when my children were older, I brought them along to act as translators. American movies became much better and more enjoyable. I was even able to laugh at the comedies, and became less critical of others in the theater whom I previously thought of as foolish for laughing at the slightest jokes.

As my children grew older, they began avoiding doing any translating with the excuse that they did not want to talk in the theater. They began sitting a few rows away from their dad, and I often had to resort to dictatorial measures, designating one of them to sit next to me so I could ask "stupid questions."

These days, my English is much better. I am quite "Americanized" in regard to native culture. I laugh easily when watching dumb TV shows, and I even stay up to watch David Letterman each weeknight. I follow the recommendations of Siskel and Ebert. I never miss a film by Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Robert Zimeckis, Francis Coppola, or James Cameron.

The only director whose productions I can not enjoy is Oliver Stone, a very famous and, I have to admit, a very talented one.

Not only can I not enjoy his movies, but there was a time when I even considered him to be my number one enemy because of the film Platoon. This is the movie which depicts the everyday life of a group of American soldiers in Vietnam. In it, they commit indescribable atrocities against the Vietnamese.

The first time I saw this film was in a crowded theater and behind me, I could hear two women sobbing during every scene where Stone's soldiers perpetrated their horrendous criminal acts. I found myself enraged by the director.

When Siskel and Ebert gave an enthusiastic recommendation for Platoon, I realized they could sometimes be quite stupid and untrustworthy. And when this film was nominated for several Oscars, I decided to spring into action.

James Banerian, the translator, introduced me to an anti-Oliver Stone ally: the poet Terry Herztler. I have enjoyed many of the poems in his book The Way of the Snake. Terry served in Vietnam, and that's why he could not stand the many fabrications which soiled the image of American soldiers.

We, Terry and me, thought of those who liked Platoon as victims of a scam. They may number in the millions. To reach them and make them aware of the deceitful nature of the film would be a very difficult task. They are in every corner of the U.S. and all over the world. The voice of the poet meanwhile was barely heard outside his circle of poetry lovers in San Diego. For my part, as the upset refugee writer, I had written a few articles highly critical of Platoon. Unfortunately, they were only printed by the Vietnamese news media that few Americans could read.

But we pressed on.

One of our biggest achievements was to organize a poetry reading at the library in Clairemont Mesa. Coincidentally, this was the night in which the Oscar ceremony was held, and that fact increased the significance of our protest which was expressed through the poetry night.

We attacked Platoon, and we also criticized the Oscar organizer who blindly handed out the awards. We were not only facing a formidable adversary, Oliver Stone, we were squaring off with an even heavier weight opponent: Hollywood.

Having been well informed by their spies that there were three dangerous protesters organizing a poem reading in San Diego with the intention of grabbing a big chunk of the viewing audience, Hollywood prepared to fight back. They packed their show with world famous actors, actresses, and super models...(Well, you know the Hollywood people. They never give you a fair fight on the show business battlefield. They outnumbered us and mercilessly crushed us with their entire nuclear arsenal.)

So, that night, the three of us, a not-yet-famous poet, an unknown writer, and a would-be-well-known-in-the-future translator, had to use all of our reserves of charm to compete with hundreds of the most beautiful and sexy creatures in the universe.

But nothing could scare the three brave fighters out of their noble mission: Defending the honor of the American soldiers.

After the opening ceremony, we began reading poetry to an audience of less than twenty people. English poems, Vietnamese poems, one following the other were read while the masses, their backs to us and numbering in the hundreds of millions, sat with their eyes glued to their TV sets! Our effort probably did little to upset Hollywood because our audience was mostly comprised of friends and relatives. Searching through the crowd, Terry, Jim, and I scarcely saw any unfamiliar faces.

There was one nice gesture from the San Diego media that night. A TV station sent the reporter Jack Gates to cover our protest. Mr. Gates arrived before we started to interview Terry and waited around to tape some of the other poets. But about ten minutes after we began, Mr. Gates and his technicians quickly gathered their equipment and disappeared. When I later watched the 11 o'clock news, I found out it was due to an automobile accident near the library. So our poetry reading was not reported. Instead, there was Mr. Gates in front of two mangled vehicles near Interstate 805. So the fates stole our spotlight and gave it to two big heaps of twisted metal while Hollywood carried on with its campaign of deceit.

But back to Platoon.

You probably have seen it. In terms of cinematic excellence, this film warrants high praise. The actors gave great performances and Stone directed with complete mastery of the medium. Even the inhuman actions by the film's soldiers were presented creatively and artistically. Stone skillfully avoided all the boring cliches and made scenes of marijuana use, burning huts, and pistol whipping seem new. Instead of mere drug abuse, Platoon put the soldiers in a exotic drug den deep inside a cave; In place of scenes of innocent people being shot, we were shown the spectacle of a group of American soldiers beating and fracturing a retarded boy's skull. Everything then climaxes with a member of Stone's platoon fatally shooting an old woman and then putting the muzzle of his handgun to the temple of a young girl. In yet another scene, a group of soldiers were preparing to gang rape a little girl. These moments in the movie outdid all of the worst things that have been said before about the American Vietnam Veteran.

But Platoon is not the only movie which assaults us with the ugly side of the U.S. Armed Forces. There have been so many others which depict American soldiers as sociopathic serial killers. So what is it that disturbs me about the events within this particular fictional account?

The reasons do not lie with the movie itself but with the greed of the director Oliver Stone.

While promoting the film, Stone stated that the happenings in the movie were realistic representations of how the U.S. military acted in the war, and that they were based on actual incidents. So in addition to being an artist, Stone also saw himself as a historian. He therefore wanted the film to be viewed as a learning tool to teach future generations and not simply as entertainment.

Millions of movie goers, especially Americans, believe Stone, including Mr. Bob Hope.

Having seen Platoon, Bob Hope later said, "In all the trips we made over there, I never realized what was going on behind our backs. Because we had them when they were in a happy mood, and they were the best audience in the world. I never dreamed what these kids were going through."

It was as if Stone and Platoon finally made Bob Hope aware of what did happen behind his back, what crimes American soldiers had perpetrated before they went to see his shows. It was as if Bob Hope's ignorance of the situation was remedied by Oliver Stone.

Bob Hope sounded as if he wanted to defend himself by saying "...We had them when they were in a happy mood...". He had once thought they were good humans beings because he had met them when they were happy. Only after seeing Platoon did he know what they did when they were...not in a happy mood.

Poor Mr. Bob Hope. From now on, each time he thinks of those soldiers away from home whom he met on Vietnamese soil, he will have those "truth filled" images of Platoon to remember. And hundreds of thousands of GIs will exist in his mind as murderers, rapists, and cruel torturers.

Bob Hope's beliefs are probably representative of the beliefs held by millions of American movie watchers. They mistook the products of Stone's imagination for history. They have accepted his fiction as a testament of fact.

I believe that Stone had no intention of denigrating the image of the American soldiers with Platoon. He just wanted to prove that America's involvement in the Vietnam War was a horrible mistake. That it was instigated by a corrupt American government who destroyed the morale of the GI's and made monsters out of decent young American men. But by making his point with Platoon, Stone had successfully sent to the audience only the last part of his message; "American soldiers in Vietnam were monsters."

Those monsters, while in a "bad mood" and behind Mr. Bob Hope's back, had committed all kinds of crimes: Gang rape, smashing the skull of a retarded boy, shooting an unarmed old woman, threatening to shoot a little girl while interrogating an old man, etc..

More than fifty thousand of them, savaged by this movie, have their names engraved on the Vietnam memorial.

So, Oliver Stone, a talented movie director, in his effort to sell his product, has strewn incalculable, atrocious libels on their graves. Dear James Keeeran,

In ancient Oriental lore, a painter was once asked whether it's easier to paint a real person than a ghost. The artist replied that it's easier to paint ghosts because nobody ever has really seen one. People would know right away something is not right if one cannot realistically paint a portrait of a real person.

After his huge success with Platoon, Oliver Stone decided to "paint a realistic portrait". In 1987, he made the movie Wall Street.

To create a movie like Platoon was like drawing ghosts. He could make unfettered claims about how true to life it is, and the majority of American audiences would believe him. On the other hand, to create Wall Street was equivalent to making a realistic portrait. Wall Street exists right here in America. One false brush stroke and people would know right away.

The majority of the people that saw Platoon and the majority of the movie critics who reviewed it do not have enough knowledge about what happened in a land half a world away. They can't help but believe its claims that it is representative of what US soldiers did in Vietnam. They are willing to accept it as a historical documentary with all the attending politics.

Wall Street, meanwhile, does not have the advantage of a painting of ghosts.

Newsweek magazine, in its December 12th, 1987 issue, had the following review of Wall Street:

"Oliver Stone has tried to airlift us to a new jungle-Wall Street. His set, particularly the fictional trading floor, are strikingly real. The dialogue is so loaded with jargon that non-investment bankers may fret at what they are missing. Don't fear. Those mysterious phrases add atmosphere, only rarely, insight. Investment banking is tough, but not nearly so brutal as the movie makes it. Few Wall Street types spent 24 hours a day shouting orders to launch tender offers, trade gold, manage proxy fights, file 13-d's and 'rip their throats out.' Airlines aren't bought and sold in an afternoon...

"... Wall Street is to investment banking what the movie Casablanca was to running a nightclub: it's entertaining and it makes some timely points about values, but it doesn't cover all the realities of the job...

"...Tom Wolfe's book Bonfire of the Vanities, which in a single phrase-Masters of the Universe-define the investment-banking mentality as aptly as all 125 minutes of Wall Street. Wolf did not pick apart inside traders; he went after the humdrum, avaricious but honest head of a bond-trading department and his partygoing wife. The approach produced a much richer and more representative portrait of Wall Street today.

"Unlike Wolf, who mostly stuck to the human story, Stone damns Wall Street's contribution to the greater economic good. The result is sadly devoid of insight. Whether investment bankers do more than shuffle assets all day would be a difficult question for the likes of Paul Volcker, much less for Stone, who recently described himself as "confused by economics."

Toward the end of his review, the movie critic of Newsweek, Steven Rattner, wrote that those in the finance industries, when seeing Wall Street, will find warped reflections of themselves "...as if they were gazing into one of those distorting mirrors at an amusement park."

This excerpt from Newsweek showed an attempt to treat Oliver Stone fairly. Thanks to the aura of Platoon, Stone's later productions were expected to be more than entertainment. One had hoped to leave Wall Street with a deeper understanding of the American capitalist system. One had expected a Platoon right here in the US, an artistic work that would allow Stone to pontificate on our mechanisms of industry.

The only problem is, when he decided to do a realistic portrait, Stone began to show his true agendas. Wall Street showed itself to be mere Hollywood melodrama, having very little semblance to truth.

Since Wall Street is in America, with its activities going on every day, Stone could have studied and analyzed it, and then make an accurate film. Instead, he decided to produce a distortion, giving the movie a value no higher than a carnival's game.

In 1993, Stone decided to paint another realistic portrait, J.F.K., and instantly became the butt of jokes on late night talk shows. Stone was derided as a man who sees conspiracies everywhere he looks!

As I write these lines, there is no longer in me any anger toward Oliver Stone. It subsided a while back for a few reasons:

The role of a movie director is to create scenes that mimic reality in order to draw in audiences, to make them believe they are witnessing actual events. (A writer whose name I do not recall once said that to be able to retell the truth is to be talented, but to be able to "fabricate" truth, that is the work of a genius.). Oliver Stone was able to fabricate quite a few scenes vivid enough to give the impression of reality. His only problem is being too greedy and giving historical value to his creations. But then, how many artists have ever avoided the temptations of fame and admiration? Like an actress putting on lipstick and false eyelashes to make herself more beautiful to the world, Stone embellishes his products to make himself look more intellectual than the average director. That little amount of greed, in retrospect, forces him to pay a rather high price: his reexaminations of recent historical events are now labeled by many as a farce.

Stone is more tolerable than Richard Ellisson, the man who made Vietnam, A Television History. In Platoon, there are both good Americans and bad Americans. The actions of the latter were resisted, though feebly, by the former. Richard Ellisson on the other hand, had made a serious historical documentary. The producers went to Vietnam to interview Communist leaders and high ranking Communist officers who congratulated themselves and condemned the US military. Not wanting to ignore the "voices of the people", Ellisson then interviewed some old Vietnamese men and women(peasants that Hanoi made available) and recorded their account of horrors stories of American soldiers throwing grenades into a crowd of women and children; of American soldiers burning several families to their death. Ellisson brought back this material to make a historical documentary series to "educate" the American public.

Communism is now in decay. The entertaining movies that debase the Free World and the books and documentaries in American libraries that aggrandize Communists are no longer capable of concealing its disintegrating corpse.

The last and strongest reason is because I am unable to hate any creative artist for long. Oliver Stone belongs to a gifted class of people who try to vigorously alleviate our boredom and bring joy into this world. Dear James Keeran,

Those are the problems I encounter in my pursuit of entertainment. I am not alone in this though. The majority of Vietnamese refugees, even though in general they very much enjoy and admire American movies, are also disturbed by productions like Platoon.

You probably wonder why since Platoon only smeared the image of U.S. soldiers, not the image of the forces of the Republic of Vietnam.

You probably wonder also, as a journalist, what happened to those South Vietnamese soldiers after their defeat? Aside from a small number who escaped overseas, the majority of them fell into the hands of the enemy. How were their lives? In what ways did they suffer?

I am going to try my best to answer these questions.

There have been countless Vietnamese books and numerous articles in Vietnamese newspapers abroad giving accounts of the defeated army's fate. I am not going to make the foolish suggestion that you try to find and read through those volumes of printed material. There is no need for you to do so. There is nothing mysterious about what the fate of those soldiers was. Ever since Communism was imposed on mankind, it has devised new ways in which men could be tortured, and countless prisoners have written diaries about it. A treasure of international literature has given us a very comprehensive overview of the gulag illuminated with Lenin's intellectual prowess. Some Nobel prize winners in literature have given us glimpses into the hell on Earth of those gulags. Given that you have read many books and news articles, what you envision about gulag life probably is an accurate picture of reality.

I just want to add a few more peculiar anecdotes that you may not have heard: the South Vietnamese army, since its defeat, is still proving itself to be one of the most heroic armies in the world.

After April 30th, 1975, the world witnessed the suicide of an officer, in his impeccable uniform, at the base of a sculpture of a soldier. He chose to take his life when the end came for the free Vietnam he had failed to protect. He was not the only one. All over the South, numerous officers and enlisted men also chose to die at their station. Others, in the ensuing months and years of imprisonment, abuse, and vilification that followed, showed their superhuman capacity to endure.

Those that did escape overseas have not been as cowardly as I. They continue their efforts to stand up to our former country's enemy, to try to rescue and help our compatriots adrift on high seas or languishing in refugee camps. Like fragments of a bomb that just exploded, they are scattered all over the surface of the Earth. They show up in every field of employment: taxi drivers in New York, crab catchers in Alaska, bus drivers in Chicago, meat processors in Iowa, ice cream vendors in Hawaii, pharmacists in Houston, ship builders, missile technicians in San Diego....There is a fragment of that army everywhere. They mingle among the crowds of white and blue collar workers in Australia, England, France, Canada....And twenty years later, they still have common traits. Beneath their professional uniforms is an army uniform, invisible, but much a part of them to the point that it seems to have integrated into their flesh. Their minds are preoccupied year round with concerns for their compatriots, homeland, honor, and the responsibilities of a soldier they were unable to fulfill.

Several of them have suddenly left their families, abandoned a life of peace and comfort in America, Australia, France, Canada...to commit themselves to a future that contains nothing but suffering, imprisonment, and death in Southeast Asia. They have banded together to form various groups of insurgents, tramping the mountains and forests of Vietnam's western border, ready to sacrifice themselves for the freedom of their country. Some were killed in the jungles of lower Laos, and some have been captured and imprisoned by Hanoi for decades. Even now, twenty years after the South Vietnamese army had disintegrated, the Cambodian government is occupied with finalizing procedures for expelling one insurgent force that had planned to use Cambodia as a stepping stone for their eastward march to liberate their former homeland.

If the South Vietnamese army were such a courageous fighting force, why was it defeated? I know this is not a question you would pose. You had not posed the question of why we lost when we met at the Peoria airport twenty years ago. Being a professional journalist even then, you had a chance to follow the news relating to the fate of South Vietnam.

But since these are open letters in book form, my hope is that there will be many young readers, and they would probably ask that question. Please allow me to provide them with a few answers.

There have been numerous American books talking about how the North Vietnamese army was a battle hardened militia led by talented and cunning officers. The authors are not wrong in this. The N.V.A. is a strong and skillful fighting force. After the fall of South Vietnam, it only needed a short period of time to invade and occupy Laos and Cambodia.

To face such a fighting force, how strong must the Army of the Republic of Vietnam be?

The ARVN had fought in the face of that skillful fighting force and maintained our borders for over twenty years of war. It only collapsed when it suddenly found itself alone in the fight, facing the strength of the whole Communist bloc which wielded the strength of half the world.

While the Communist superpowers increased their effort to help North Vietnam achieve final victory, soldiers of the South only saw a determination to withdraw among their allied forces.

The USSR and China doubled and tripled their aid to North Vietnam so it could continue violating all the peace treaties it had just signed in Paris. The one man who had the political savvy, the power, the duty to enforce these agreements was finding himself on the verge of impeachment, unable to deal with the impending crisis in that faraway country.

In the midst of the barrage of bullets in the battles leading toward the final conclusion, South Vietnamese soldiers realized they would be alone against the Red tide. Their main ally was being obstinate in ignoring all the signs of the coming doom. Aside from being resolute in its decision to withdraw, the US was also determined to carry out the terms of the Paris Accord and cut back on military aid.

And so, in the final months of the war, at numerous military hospitals, used bandages, no matter how soiled, were saved, washed, and recycled over and over until they totally fell apart. Dear James Keeran,

Please forgive me for bringing back sad memories. Let me tell you now some happier stories. Let me tell you about the Arches of Triumph of the defeated army.

Yes, it did have Arches of Triumph, even though it was defeated, and they were very beautiful arches. They existed at all the small train stations along the trans-Vietnam railway, especially in Central Vietnam.

Nobody ever saw them. They did not have a fanciful design, garlands of flowers, nor flags or banners with slogans. They stood invisible over the rails, never noticed during the quiet every day life at the stations. Among those who came and went, among the crowd of women and young peddlers, nobody ever saw the arches.

Even the soldiers who just lost the war, the guests of honor at these arches, were barely aware that any arch existed.

While these soldiers were in prison camps, guards frequently told them that they were much hated by their countrymen. They were told that several groups of prisoners in transit through villages were pelted with rocks by angry villagers. The prisoners believed the guards because they had known the skill of the Communist propaganda machine. For the duration of the war, it had succeeded in vilifying the South's soldiers. In some books, they were even written of as blood thirsty and cannibalistic.

That was why, when they were herded onto box cars for transfer to prison camps in North Vietnam, none wanted to be seen by the civilian population.

The train made a stop at a small station. A peddler made the discovery that there were prisoners in some box cars. He or she yelled out to other people nearby. In a short time, a crowd of mostly women and children peddling foodstuff gathered. And they started throwing, pelting...

A friend of mine, who was imprisoned for more than ten years, recounted that at first, he thought they were throwing rocks. The prisoners immediately realized however that they were being pelted with presents. Fruits, rice packages, sticky rice cakes, candies, cookies. People were throwing to them whatever they had in their hands. Some peddlers gave them all the edible merchandise made for that day's sale. When the train started to roll, a few women even ran after it, their faces full of tears. There were no rocks of hatred, there were only gifts expressing gratitude and compassion.

Getting over their initial shock, the prisoners felt their chains now weighed much less. Their enemy had failed to sully their image. Even though they had been defeated, their sacrifice and the sacrifice of their fallen fellow soldiers had not been forgotten. In the heart of those simple, work burdened villagers, they were still the heroes of the country.

I do not know how many trains transporting prisoners to the North there were so I can not estimate how many of these beloved Arches of Triumph came into existence after the fall of the South. What I can tell you with certitude is that even though I have never seen one, I do know they were the most beautiful arches in this world.

It is true that our Arches of Triumph did not consist of men in uniform marching through a glorious edifice. Neither did they have crowds of cheering spectators, flowers for the heroes, or confetti. There were only tired, haggard prisoners in torn rags packed tight in box cars. There were only trains sadly rolling under grey skies. There were only villagers slightly better clothed, on either sides of the tracks, with defeat on their faces and tears in their eyes.

But whatever superficial and decorative shortcomings there were didn't matter much. At these arches, there was the love of the people and their gratitude for the soldiers. And there is plenty of that in every person who is of Vietnamese heritage.

In the absence of a victory and continuously worn down by an impoverished present, that gratitude and love are that much more sincere and profound.

At this point, I believe I can go back to the question of why did Platoon bother the refugees so, when it only soiled the images of U.S. soldiers.

We are angered because we have always felt that American soldiers who fought in Vietnam also deserve our love and gratitude.

Given the chance, the people of South Vietnam, just like those villagers I mentioned earlier, would show their appreciation for our allied fighting forces, not just American but also the Australian, Korean, and Canadian forces....

The reason for this is fairly simple. Vietnamese people in rural areas, because of their lack of education and knowledge of history, do not have much interest in either political doctrines or different governmental regimes. The only thing they know for certain is that the soldiers from Korea, America etc... alongside the South Vietnamese soldiers were fighting to keep them from falling under the domination of a dictatorial power and the brutality and impoverishment that came with it.

This is not any different from the respect and gratitude their ancestors bestowed on heroes and martyrs who had fought against Chinese invaders.

Dwelling on a land that neighbors a colossal country and that has a long coastline looking out to the Pacific ocean, thus tempting European imperialist tendencies, many generations of Vietnamese lived in insecurity. Our giant neighbor, China, had this habit of coming down once in awhile and claiming our lands. They did this intermittently for about a thousand years. European imperialists, for their part, would later come in from the sea. And since the end of the war, it has been the Communists who put on the necks of the Vietnamese people, at gun point, the yoke of oppression which had its origins in the most vile system of government ever invented.

Those who helped us in our fights against these marauders have always been considered great allies, regardless of their nationalities. And if they ever were libeled in books or movies, the people of Vietnam, just like us refugees, would feel frustrated and angered.

Keep in mind though that they do not blindly bestow their admiration. Throughout the duration of the war, they have never forgiven those soldiers, American and South Vietnamese, who actually did commit atrocities. Who among the Vietnamese would not be in pain to see the spectacle of Lt. Caley and his subordinates massacring women and children at My Lai? Just like who among Americans did not feel pained at the sight of the deranged gunman killing women and children at a McDonald's in San Ysidro?

Aside from being considered murderers, those soldiers at My Lai have earned the animosity of the Vietnamese because their actions had given our enemy a dangerous propaganda weapon, making our struggle much more difficult.

But a movie maker who would base his story on a group of murderous soldiers and subsequently boast that the film reflects the true behavior of the typical American soldier also would not be forgiven by the Vietnamese audience. Deranged soldiers in time of war and deranged gunman in societies in peace are unavoidable calamities of any army, of any society and of mankind. It is analogous to taking a picture of a gangrenous portion of skin and then presenting it as a portrait of the person. Such films are guilty of insulting the intelligence of the Vietnamese people. Dear James Keeran,

I had thought of using the last portion of this letter to make a deal with you as a concession for compelling you to accept my use of the term Arch of Triumph.

I admit it is a little irrational. I don't believe any argument of mine would convince you to accept it. By definition, a Triumphal arch is a gate to welcome back a victorious army. Without victory, the word Triumph seems inappropriate. I had thought of proposing that we wait for a day when mankind found a precise term for my "....." Arch. Or maybe you can provide me with one. As a penance for my abuse of the language, I would accept any term you may choose, no matter how tame.

That was what I thought of doing until I saw on the front page of an old newspaper laying on my desk, a news article about police dispersing a pro-Communist demonstration right in the capital of Russia.

That article reminded me of other events that had happened around the world in recent years. It hit me that those prisoners on the trains were hardly members of a defeated army.

As they huddled on the dark, filthy train floors, as the women and children were running along the tracks and throwing gifts to them, strange events were happening around the world. The Berlin Wall was about to crumble, the USSR was splitting apart, and a number of Eastern European Communist leaders were waiting to be executed. And busts of the fathers of Communism were about to be toppled at the end of ropes pulled by angry citizens. Communism, the scourge of mankind that those prisoners fought against, was on a path of self-destruction, self-obliteration.

Is it not true, then, that those prisoners were party to a victorious army? An army that is sending their enemy reeling in defeat everywhere all over the world. We can not be wrong in saying that they were marching under an Arch of Triumph.

And with such a grand victory, an ordinary arch would not have sufficed. There has to be just as grand an arch to welcome those soldiers who have brought back such a glorious victory to us all.

• Chapter 5

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