(Note: I wrote the following article in Burma, in 1989)
My watch showed exactly 9 p.m. when Burmese government troops resumed their attack on the Karen National Liberation Army at Mae La. By 9:10 p.m. a single thought kept flashing through my mind: if any war movie ever attempted to depict such intensity and volume of fire, the armchair film critics in America would laugh it off as mere Hollywood exaggeration. The deafening reality was indeed so excessive that it seemed artificial, as if any minute some director who had never fired a weapon in his life would stand up and yell “Cut!,” bringing the unceasing small arms fire and artillery rain to a screeching halt.
Of course, that was not about to happen. And yet, in the eyes of the world, this might just as well have been celluloid fantasy, an irritating rerun with an unoriginal script, a nameless jungle hell for a set, and a cast of faceless extras. Time to switch channels, sighs the collective global village…
Eighteen-year-old Karen guerrilla Maung Thein Kyaw was one of the “faceless extras” at this battle. Had there actually been a script to go by, the chances are that he wound have been unable to even read it. When your people have been fighting for forty years, you learn guns before grammar. What you don’t learn, however, is how to tell when a Burmese Army soldier has just fired the 76mm artillery shell that will take your life. You also don’t learn how to tell when an explosion is going to produce that one small piece of burning-hot shrapnel destined to shred your heart and kill you instantly. Or perhaps you do learn how to tell these things, but only during that final split-second when instinct also tells you that this arcane knowledge has come too late…
By 6:30 a.m. the following morning, the pounding of artillery has been replaced by the pounding of a hammer: Maung Thein Kyaw’s coffin is being built during the lull in the shelling, and it is obvious that the three soldiers engaged in the task are doing it by rote. The corpse lays nearby, unceremoniously wrapped in a green plastic tarp. Two young fighters, neither over fourteen years of age, loiter in the area, brimming with curiosity about the fatal shrapnel wound. At last they pull back the wet tarp and stare at the hole in the center of Maung Thein Kyaw’s chest. Their large eyes immediately betray the fact that each boy sees his own face on the corpse.
The makeshift wooden box is soon completed, and the body is placed inside. A small group gathers to drink Karen-made whiskey and smoke cheroots in remembrance of their fallen comrade. There is much conversation and laughter here, for death is no stranger; emotion and mourning are the aliens after so many years of revolution.
Three teenage soldiers shouldering M-16s suddenly appear, the honor guard for the burial. They are given a quick inspection by their platoon leader, who straightens a collar here and buttons a button there. The boys are then run through the simple drill-and-ceremony movements they will be expected to execute during the funeral. The youngest-looking of the three is obviously perplexed by these maneuvers, but since the Burmese Army is likely to begin shelling again at any moment, there is no time to fine-tune his technique.
The signal to begin the procession is given and the coffin, wired to a long, thick bamboo pole and borne litter-style by two soldiers, is carried over the burnt, cratered ground and past the splintered teak buildings of the rear-area camp. More people join the march at each turn, emerging from trenches and bunkers or from the jungle. Finally, at the end of a narrow trail, the group enters a clearing dominated by a freshly-dug grave; there are three other recent gravesites next to it.
The coffin is lowered into the ground, and its lid is placed so that the corpse is visible from head to waist. In accordance with tradition, several handfuls of boiled rice are dropped onto the dead man’s face, followed by a stream of water. After the assembled group salutes the body in sharp military fashion, a KNLA captain reads a proclamation from Brigade Headquarters, honoring Maung Thein Kyaw for his contribution to the Karen fight against Burmese socialism and oppression, and releasing him from any further duty to the KNLA. The captain then tears the proclamation in half and lets the two pieces of paper flutter down onto the body. As this occurs, one member of the honor guard points his M-16 straight into the air and discharges three rounds.
No sooner do the echoes of the gunfire fade off into the surrounding jungle when a solider wielding a large knife steps from the crowd and jumps down onto the open coffin, straddling the corpse. Tradition and respect will not allow Maung Thein Kyaw to be buried while enemy shrapnel still remains in his body. To this end the man with the knife uses his weapon to saw open the corpse’s chest and stomach in a straight vertical cut. He then reaches inside the body and feels around for the jagged pieces of metal. They are difficult to find, and it takes minutes of searching before the shrapnel is extricated. All eyes stare transfixed during the operation.
With all religious and military traditions satisfied, the lid is nailed onto the coffin, plunging into darkness the body of just another war death, eyes closed, rice and water and two pieces of paper on his face, his chest and stomach slit open, a gaping cavity where his heart used to be. This is the end of eighteen-year-old Karen guerrilla Maung Thein Kyaw, just another “faceless extra” killed in an unpublicized battle of an unknown war.
Ho hum, sighs the collective global village, as the artillery rain resumes and twelve-year-old soldiers dive for the trenches, scrambling to beat the odds and reach eighteen like the friend they have just buried…