A "War Story" from Laos & Vietnam.
11 October 2018 [link youtube]
This (heartbreaking / heartwarming) story was formerly buried away (along with a lot of other really dark autobiographical reflections) in an old video with a seemingly innocuous title on this channel: https://youtu.be/3HN6nPDNSwE
IMHO, If you CAN'T share this kind of material, why bother being on youtube in the first place? Keep it real and/or GTFO.
Youtube Automatic Transcription
[Music]
I've anis yen hey I've wanted to make a video here for a little while talking about my current job search and my plans to possibly relocate to Japan but possibly anymore on planet Earth to be honest with you I just filled out a job application the other day that asked me the intentionally vague and frustrating question of please describe an experience that has changed who you are in the world and then after that it specifies 200 words [Laughter] asking you supposedly profoundly meaningful and profoundly relevant to the job you're applying for question and then it's given you 200 words to do it so this is really the the Twitter generation of you know define your barriers soul for the world in in 200 words this particular job was indeed relevant to my past work experience doing humanitarian work and research in Southeast Asia so I attempted in only 200 words to tell the heartbreaking story of a woman in Laos who during the Vietnam War a war that by the way is referred to as the American War over in that part of the world if you want to sound sophisticated especially in speaking the local language um during the Vietnam War she had to flee up into the mountains and across the border from Laos and Vietnam to escape u.s. bombardment pretty common story that general outline of it at least and while she was working her way along one of these mud roads through the mountains a helicopter an American helicopter came down from the sky at the slot of them even though they were of course just civilians fleeing that also was fairly common well-documented - on the whole in the in the war anyway so this helicopter came down and shot them or shot at them I might say and they scattered and tried to hide themselves in the water of the river or just fled in all directions as civilians will do in those circumstances and one detail the story that definitely rings true by the way those big guns that are that are bolted onto helicopter gunships it's nothing like a rifle it's not like being shot by a pistol or or handheld rifle this has come up a few different times in my political science career or so to speak if you get hit by around from one of those guns because they're designed to be able to at least stop a truck but quite possibly to stop a tank and also to go a long distance itself tremendous power it'll tear your body in half getting hit by just one shot and if you get hit clean in the midsection it can carry all your internal organs at your body that kind of thing is the the amount of energy is so tremendous I am just now thinking that a couple of people might have clicked on this video not at all expecting to hear a gory war story and that's exactly what your 200 words I tried to tell this heartbreaking story that I heard in in Laos moving through the mountains try to escape the ravages of war and there was one woman who was carrying her own newborn baby still breastfeeding when she was shot by the helicopter gunship in these circumstances and the bullet probably hit her in the hips and took the bottom half of her body clean off definitely took both her legs off and while she's lying there in shock she can still speak for a few minutes or a few seconds or what-have-you after this has happened and she says to the survivors after the helicopter has gone away carry me along with you a little ways so I can breastfeed my infant one last time and then set me down when I died and they did exactly that the men picked up the half of a woman not yet a corpse and that half of a woman held on to her baby and breastfed as they walked along a little ways and after some time they felt the body turn lifeless and of course it wasn't holding on to the baby quite the same way anymore and they put the body down took the body out of her arms and then went along the West supressed of the way they did eventually escape into the the caves they were seeking there in the mountains and the woman who told me that story survived the war learning to read and write at a chalkboard in a cave in the high mountains Northwestern Vietnam so that is the story I attempted to tell in 200 words when this job application asked me to describe an experience that had changed my life in my place in the world [Music]
I've anis yen hey I've wanted to make a video here for a little while talking about my current job search and my plans to possibly relocate to Japan but possibly anymore on planet Earth to be honest with you I just filled out a job application the other day that asked me the intentionally vague and frustrating question of please describe an experience that has changed who you are in the world and then after that it specifies 200 words [Laughter] asking you supposedly profoundly meaningful and profoundly relevant to the job you're applying for question and then it's given you 200 words to do it so this is really the the Twitter generation of you know define your barriers soul for the world in in 200 words this particular job was indeed relevant to my past work experience doing humanitarian work and research in Southeast Asia so I attempted in only 200 words to tell the heartbreaking story of a woman in Laos who during the Vietnam War a war that by the way is referred to as the American War over in that part of the world if you want to sound sophisticated especially in speaking the local language um during the Vietnam War she had to flee up into the mountains and across the border from Laos and Vietnam to escape u.s. bombardment pretty common story that general outline of it at least and while she was working her way along one of these mud roads through the mountains a helicopter an American helicopter came down from the sky at the slot of them even though they were of course just civilians fleeing that also was fairly common well-documented - on the whole in the in the war anyway so this helicopter came down and shot them or shot at them I might say and they scattered and tried to hide themselves in the water of the river or just fled in all directions as civilians will do in those circumstances and one detail the story that definitely rings true by the way those big guns that are that are bolted onto helicopter gunships it's nothing like a rifle it's not like being shot by a pistol or or handheld rifle this has come up a few different times in my political science career or so to speak if you get hit by around from one of those guns because they're designed to be able to at least stop a truck but quite possibly to stop a tank and also to go a long distance itself tremendous power it'll tear your body in half getting hit by just one shot and if you get hit clean in the midsection it can carry all your internal organs at your body that kind of thing is the the amount of energy is so tremendous I am just now thinking that a couple of people might have clicked on this video not at all expecting to hear a gory war story and that's exactly what your 200 words I tried to tell this heartbreaking story that I heard in in Laos moving through the mountains try to escape the ravages of war and there was one woman who was carrying her own newborn baby still breastfeeding when she was shot by the helicopter gunship in these circumstances and the bullet probably hit her in the hips and took the bottom half of her body clean off definitely took both her legs off and while she's lying there in shock she can still speak for a few minutes or a few seconds or what-have-you after this has happened and she says to the survivors after the helicopter has gone away carry me along with you a little ways so I can breastfeed my infant one last time and then set me down when I died and they did exactly that the men picked up the half of a woman not yet a corpse and that half of a woman held on to her baby and breastfed as they walked along a little ways and after some time they felt the body turn lifeless and of course it wasn't holding on to the baby quite the same way anymore and they put the body down took the body out of her arms and then went along the West supressed of the way they did eventually escape into the the caves they were seeking there in the mountains and the woman who told me that story survived the war learning to read and write at a chalkboard in a cave in the high mountains Northwestern Vietnam so that is the story I attempted to tell in 200 words when this job application asked me to describe an experience that had changed my life in my place in the world [Music]