Vu Dinh Son (left), Vu Ba Con and martyr Doan's relatives

Based on fragments of information from the diary of martyr Vu Dinh Doan, we found the way to his hometown in Binh Giang District, Hai Duong Province on a rainy day this August. Unfortunately, the martyr’s wife, Ms. Nguyen Thi Phuong, had died recently.

Let’s start with the small mistake mentioned in the previous part that delayed the finding of the owner of this diary. In April 2012, Vu Dinh Son, the third son of martyr Vu Dinh Doan, was sent a photo of two young girls, which the martyr kept in the diary, for verification but he failed to identify who they were.

Vu Dinh Son showed the photo to his father’s old friends, who identified the two young girls in the photo as Yen and Nhat, guerillas from the same village as his father. Before Vu Dinh Doan went to the battlefield, they presented him the photo as a souvenir. After this fact was unveiled, martyr Vu Dinh Doan’s personal effects were sure to find the right owner.

The journey to seek the father

Martyr Vu Dinh Doan died in 1966 but his relatives had lived in anxiety and expectation for many years after that with no news from him. After Southern Vietnam was liberated in 1975, they were informed by Vu Ba Con, one of his comrades and also a native of Hai Duong province, that Doan had heroically sacrificed himself for the national cause.

During the war, Vu Ba Con and Vu Dinh Doan were artillery soldiers from C14, plantation 21 (present Regiment 21) and on his way back to his home town, Vu Ba Con brought along a game card with Doan’s writing on it. The card also bears the note “Vu Dinh Doan died on March 7th, 1966, AL, at Chop Non hill, Son Tinh District, Quang Ngai Province”. The card had been given to the martyr’s family.

Vu Ba Con also wrote a paper confirming the death of Vu Dinh Doan as a foundation for the Ministry of Labour, War-Invalids and Social Affairs to recognize the martyrdom of his comrade.

Overcoming the grief of losing her husband, the martyr’s wife, Ms. Nguyen Thi Phuong, had to strive very hard to bring up her children and, in 1986 when the construction of the village’s cemetery started, she urged her children to find their father’s remains.

Unfortunately all the martyr’s comrades told her that after the fierce battle, Chop Non hill (or Yen Ngua hill) was razed by American bombs, so they could not find Vu Dinh Doan’s body.

After painstaking efforts to search for information about his father, in 2001, Vu Dinh Son left for the old battlefield where his father had fought and died. Son was made welcome and supported by local people in Son Tinh District, Quang Ngai Province, as they knew that he had come to find his father’s remains.

They took Son to Chop Non hill and recalled the events of the fierce battle in which the liberation fighters had been the target of serious bombing and shelling from the enemy, and only a few survived. The former battlefield is now covered with green trees.

Son also recalled that upon seeing him and his wife, a local man said he looked very much like a soldier of Hai Duong Province called Doan or Hoan, but that person was a little bit taller than Son.

That local man recounted that the martyr Doan was a member of an art troupe, and used to sing and play musical instruments; therefore, many local people still remembered him. Thanks to this information, Son was able to find his father’s grave after several tries.

Having received an official document from Quang Ngai Provincial Military Headquarters in April 2008, Vu Dinh Son and his wife headed for Quang Ngai in November for verification. Later on, they decided to take martyr Vu Dinh Doan's remains back to his hometown.

In the memory of the living

Vu Dinh Son’s father had died when Son was just over a year old, and he was brought up in the love and care of his mother. That is why Son could only imagine of his father through the stories recalled by his mother and his father’s comrades.

“One of the former guerrillas told me that my father used to be the deputy head of the communal detachment in our hometown. He was jovial and keen on playing musical instruments and singing; thus, he was loved by many people who still remember him now,” Vu Dinh Son said about his father.

Vu Dinh Doan and his wife got married early, but they were over 20 when they had their first child. During his enlistment in the army, his wife had worked very hard to take care of their mothers and four children. For many years, even before she died, the faithful wife kept telling stories about her beloved husband and longing for any information about him, as Doan used to write letters home from wherever he went. Martyr Vu Dinh Doan’s wife did not read the letters to her children. She did not even store them, because whenever she opened them she could not hold back tears.

“My father did not leave behind many belongings. When I was over 10 years old, there remained his thick khaki coat and we took turns wearing it on winter days until it was completely worn out,” Vu Dinh Son recalled. Obviously, the coat left by his father kept Son’s siblings warm during their childhood.

Martyr Vu Dinh Doan’s wife was very happy to know that a US veteran had wished to return her husband’s diary and she was impatient every single minute to see her husband’s diary.

Unfortunately, she passed away less than a week before the day when US Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta handed over the diary to General Phung Quang Thanh in Hanoi.

Being a comrade-in arms with Vu Dinh Doan before his death, veteran Vu Ba Con recalled that in 1966, his unit was assigned to defend the regiment. On that day, after lunch, the unit was informed of enemy penetration from the sugar-cane field to Chop Non hill. Having heard some shots, Vu Dinh Doan immediately rushed to the cannon with a portable optical vision device in hand. He was killed in action later in that battle.

At the bottom of his heart, veteran Vu Ba Con still remembered clearly the image of his sincere comrade Vu Dinh Doan, as well as his sentiments and memories of their first days in the army and their march from Chi Linh to Cao Xa station in Cam Giang, Hai Duong and on the trip to the Southern Vietnam in a train together. It was the encouragement of comrade Vu Dinh Doan that helped Vu Ba Con have more strength and energy to overcome malaria and serious sickness, and to stay firm in the heroic fight for nation salvation.

Reported by Thu Trang and Vu Hung
Translated by Mai Huong

Source: qdnd.vn

Related:

Souvenirs awake (Part 1)

Confidences from the battlefield (Part 3)