This is the testimony of Floyd Maddox, Which I took note with Mr. C, Arizona

During a good part of the Vietnam War, I was a prisoner in the Laotian jungle

  We built the " Trail Ho Chi-Minh ", sad famous.  Of the Great numbers of prisoners condemned to this work much died of hunger, of maltreatment and diseases.  For me I still carry the print from there.  That of the bitterness and Hatred, that of violence.  It was a building site infested of mosquitos and devastated by the epidemics.   

  We had for food only one thin ration of rice per day.  No drugs for the patients.  That which did not greet the Sentinels or was not inclined like wanted it; the payment was beaten wildly.  It was enough to look at them opposite to be made strike.  These treatments, coming to be added to exhaustion and the disease, were right soon of my moral.  

  The construction of the trail required an effort that would not have supported even robust and well-nourished men.  Paining paddle at the night, we were to clear a way through the jungle and the mountain to build the earthwork and bringing the ground basket by basket

  We worked naked head and feet by temperatures reaching 120 degrees Fahrenheit with the sun.  We slept with the same ground and we were wearing rags.  With our ridiculous rice portion, to mislead our hunger, we cooked sheets of hibiscus or other plants.    

  In a few weeks, strong solids men were turned into the state of skeletons to the skin desiccated and faded with the hollow eyes.  We all were almost covered with these ulcers of the hot countries, which corrode the flesh, attack the bone and very often require the amputation of the member reached.  Our wounds were infested of worms.    

  Even sick, no prisoner was free from this hard labour.  Men burning of fever went to the building site while staggering.  When they collapsed they were left there.  The finished day their comrades raised them and transported them to the camp.  If somebody tried to help a patient fallen before the end day, they were attached naked to a tree, was beaten with blows of stick or was struck with his own shovel and remained exposed one whole day with the bites of the tropical sun and the insects.   

  As whoever had done in similar circumstances, a number among us turned to the religion, called the delivery in their prayers.  But, fault of being fed, the small spark of faith that we had tried to relight wavered, then died out, to leave the room to the bitterness.  God himself appeared to have given up to us.  Morality degenerated in alarming way.  Hatred became irrational.  We knew nothing any more but the law of the jungle, that of most extremely, most pitiless.   Prisoners flew, them to sell with the Laotians, food, clothing or the poor objects, which their comrades had succeeded in keeping.  Certain same went until the denouncement to reconcile the good favours of the guards.  I had a companion who belonged to my unit and which was catholic.  Me I was Protestant.  A Vietnamese officer who hated him for his noble soul crucified this companion with the exact direction of the term, which torture had not managed to break.   

  One day, after more than two years spent on the track  Ho-Chi-Minh, I broke down.  Exhausted since months by paludism, the amoebic dysentery, beriberi and the scale, I contracted diphtheria, which for lack of care, degenerated into polynevrite.  Paralysed starting from the size, I was left in an abandoned hut opened with all the winds.  Infested bugs, lice and scorpions.  With half-unconscious already, I heard the others, which said that I did not have any as a long time and that that entire one could do was to let me die there, " LONELY LIKE a DOG ".  Then I lost conscience.  I do not know how much time I remained in this abandoned hut.   

  I ended up taking again conscience and an old BONZE Laotian was leaning above me.  He came out me of sorrow and of misery of the given up hut, a hut of bamboo built where he hid me.  He found in the jungle of the medicinal plants to look after me.  It looked after me and helped me to nourish me in hiding-place during two months and half.  This old Bonze who saying to be called Phan had returned me to the life.   

  Even if him and me we could not understand ourselves because of the language, we know what is called the solidarity of those which are marked by the suffering, and which form in the hell that we live be separate, linked by secret bonds.    

  Sometimes I saw him making a prayer with his God, Buddha, but me I did not request any more.  In Saigon, I had seen Bonzes like him, who had been immolated by fire and I never understood the reason, the significance of these sufferings, nor the place, which they held in the order of the things.  " How can one find a meaning with this cruel irony?    

  One morning close to the trail, the Phan Old man was cut down, I do not know for which reason, by the Communists who did not smell the Buddhist Bonzes.  I fled by the Mekong River under abominable conditions as far as Thailand, where I found myself with a band of deserters of the army.  All Americans like me, and who had become frightening traffickers or smugglers.  I knew with them during months, an existence filled of crimes of all kinds and also of terrible violence.  With them, I killed more people than on the battlefields in Vietnam.     

  Some of them died as they lived, in this violence.  Remained over there with the network head of traffickers who always operate.  I brought back with me this violence, when I decided to return to the country of K my native state, until out of O while passing by Colorado, I continued to live crime  

  My existence was never happy, nor peaceful.  I wander now since years of place in place, knowing how all that will finish.  Thus while passing by Pearl To rivet Indian Reservation, in the Mississippi, at the time of " Honouring Our Powwow Veterans ".  In November, I made the meeting of " Skipjack ", Seminole of the E, F, with which I then made the road of the states of the south.   

  " Skipjack " is a veteran who also knew to him a past marked by the crime and violence.  In the Seminole reserve of B F the name of the killer J O fed the conversations a long time.  He east was should I rather say for he died " in strange way " it is a long time.  But his sons survived to him and they " have heard enough of it ".  By making the road of the states of the south, " Skipjack " and me we took with us ED Lee, " Chesty " and Everett, all wandering veterans them also, which as us have " fed up of it ".  Of this miserable existence.  Each one has his batch of sufferings and in a more than enough of this increasingly painful life.   

  This is why we decided by mutual agreement to finish of them all six once and for all, the day of " Memorial Day ".  We had spoken about it with some other veterans, if they would have liked to join us in death but they continued their road, rather than to follow us.  You know one of these:  Anthony.  It is him which spoke to you about us and who led you to " Skipjack " in SA Texas.   

  The long road that you crossed from Canada to come to our meeting, the prayer written for us the veterans, the cassettes, the new Testaments, the charts with the beautiful thought, the sculptures, the cases of survival kit and the gifts with our intention have surprised us.   We would never have thought that people of Canada were interested in our fate and wanted to help us without asking anything in return.   Here are which made us reflect seriously.   

  After having made the road with you up to now in this Canyon, and well weighed for and he against your remarks we came to change our plans judging that that is worth the sorrow of it.  " Skipjack " wants to go to the L O, " Chesty " wants that you go up with W with him, ED, Lee, Everett and me we will go with the L M at the Border of N maybe then will go us in " MR. Reservation " Nevada, to see there a " Brother in Arms” who lives there.  Now that we revised our plans it may be that with him we were going with " Q to r. I. R. " on the " F. M. Reservation ", Nevada

Here, you know now where I am and from where I come it is good to have met you.  I feel much less hatred in me.  Thank you greets the others.