He was a statue in living clay, part of the soil come to life in human form.

"My people have always been here," he said. "My father, my father's father and his father as long as we can count back. Their bones lie here, even if the Yankee devils have torn up the tombstones with their bombs and shells and tanks. I will live and fight here and if I die from Yankee shells or bombs, at least my bones will remain on the same bit of soil as those of my ancestors."

I asked how anything could be produced under such conditions.

"We can't produce as much as before, but enough to keep us alive and fighting," he said. "We have no buffalo and the Americans have destroyed most of the plows. They plow the fields with their bombs and shells. Sometimes we have only to rake over the water-filled craters to plant some rice seedlings and a few cabbages. They started to send tanks to crush our little plots but after the first couple got bogged in the mud, they gave up. We give the plots a bit more water these days," he said with a grim laugh which brought some cakedmud peeling off his cheeks. "We from Củ Chi," he concluded, "will eat grass and roots, the earth itself if need be, but we will never leave this soil of our ancestors. We will fight, and our sons and grandsons will fight until the invader takes himself off."

— Wilfred Burchett, from VIETNAM WILL WIN (1969)