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formulae. Jim Feng identifies it in rather Confucian terms as ‘the power of his silence, and the
calm in his face’ (HW 326). During the worst of the ordeal of capture, when they were forced
to march through ankle-deep mud and were sick from fatigue and dysentery, Mike kept all
three of the journalists, as well as many of their NVA captors, from despair with his silly jokes
and soft encouragement. Feng says, ‘His voice was a half whisper, and it somehow soothed
you’ (HW 339). He even extends his help to the NVA. When Weary falls sick with malaria,
shivering in regular spasms, his eyelids half-closed, his face a bad yellow colour and shining
with sweat, Mike ignores his own exhaustion and takes up his pack (HW, 328). Mike’s
perseverance influences everyone equally, excluding perhaps Lenin, who is the one truly evil
character amongst the North Vietnamese. Feng, with the others marching together in single
file, remembers watching ‘through the gloomy green light’ as Mike moves away to walk with
Captain Danh at the front, taking on a position of power. His equality with Captain Danh—
and perhaps his dual role as servant and counsellor to Danh along the lines of Krishna to
Arjuna—and his willingness to sacrifice himself (as symbolised by his loss of one arm) is
shown through his bending ‘to speak in Danh’s ear, gesturing in that way he did, but only with
one hand, since the extra pack impeded him’. The magnanimity of Danh—important in
showing how it is Mike who moves up in stature through the hard times rather than Danh who
moves down—is maintained by his willing acceptance of Mike joining him at the point,
listening to him, and even once turning to look at him and laughing (HW, 329). Mike’s effect
has reached even to those he might consider the enemy. This goes beyond the assertion Feng
and Volkov make that as journalists they are always neutral, which, as has been shown through
Koch’s application of the Bhagavad Gita in The Year of Living Dangerously as in Highways to
a War, cannot be taken as the author’s position on the matter. A better explanation of
Langford’s ability to empathise with the North Vietnamese, and further, to gain and restore
their confidence, is Feng’s statement that
Nothing ever changed Mike, I thought; nothing ever could, it seemed. And I
found myself looking at him as a child looks at a certain kind of adult,
believing that such an adult has the ability to solve any problem, and to remove
all fear from the world. (HW, 326)
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