On July 10, Mr. Tran Van Quy trembled as he flipped through the files the Americans had handed him, more than 50 years after the end of the war. The 66-page file contained coordinates and information about his younger brother - martyr Tran Van Phu and his comrades who died in 1967 in Quang Tri .
At the same time, 21 sets of records of Vietnamese soldiers who died in the war were given to families from Lao Cai, Ninh Binh, Phu Tho, and Hanoi on the occasion of the exhibition on 30 years of Vietnam - US diplomatic relations organized by the Central Archives Center III in Hanoi.
The file includes passports, personal lists, notebooks, ammunition tracking tables... The individuals listed include Platoon Leader Tran Van Phu and assistant Phan Xuan Niem, along with a list of 27 platoon members. Names and ages are listed along with enlistment dates, local codes, hometowns, heights, and number of guns. Some items clearly state relatives and village addresses such as Hong Chau, Kim Hai...
The file opens up hope for the family of martyr Phu to search for his remains, a task they have been doing for the past three years. "My brother and I are one year apart in age, we joined the army one year ago and the next. I am 84 years old now and he will forever be 23, if we were alive we would probably have the same grey hair," Mr. Tran Van Quy cried as he talked about his younger brother.
Mr. Quy joined the army in early 1961, a time when the war was fierce and the enemy's activities were escalating. His younger brother Tran Van Phu was 17 years old at that time. On the day he saw him off, he firmly said, "Next year I will also join the army." True to his commitment, in 1962, Mr. Phu joined the 9th Battalion, 90th Regiment, 324th Division.
During the years of resistance, Mr. Quy and his brother met only once at Mieu Mon, more than 40 km from their hometown of Dan Phuong. The older brother does not remember what he said to his younger brother. "At that time, our parents were young, and we were only eighteen or twenty years old. We did not think much to give them profound advice," Mr. Quy said.
Letters home gradually became less frequent as the troops marched deeper into the southern front. The only address relatives could remember on the envelope was "Vinh Moc" - a place name in Quang Tri near the border dividing the two regions. In 1968, the family received a death notice for martyr Tran Van Phu, who died on July 3, 1967, and was buried at the "southern front".
For more than half a century, Mr. Quy, like many other families, began their search for the remains of martyrs who died on the "southern front" from scratch, without a specific address. They searched for clues through their old units, comrades, witnesses, and went through rows of tombstones throughout the cemetery that was once a battlefield.
The only information the family got after the connection was that martyr Phu died at "Highpoint 90 Con Tien - Doc Mieu". The place is in Gio Linh, once the most important stronghold of the American military defense line established on the Truong Son road to prevent the North from supporting the Southern battlefield. The fallen soldier was buried by his comrades, but then fierce battles continued to plow the battlefield. Until now, no one is sure if there are any traces left.
The family of 12 made their first trip to Quang Tri in August 2023 when the pandemic ended. Mr. Quy stayed for a week to find his way to the old front, asked his comrades from the 324th Division, and went to cemeteries but got no information. The search continues to this day, spanning nearly 1,100 days with dozens of trips undertaken by Mr. Quy's son and his wife.
"After each return trip, the family feels heavier, but we never give up hope of finding the remains of our loved ones," said Ms. Tran Thi Thu Ha, Mr. Quy's daughter-in-law.
The trips were usually on weekends when Mrs. Ha finished her work at the study abroad center. She and her husband took a sleeper bus from Hanoi to Quang Tri on Friday nights, rented a motorbike to visit each cemetery, and returned to the capital on Sunday nights. Mrs. Ha returned to Truong Son Cemetery, Road 9 many times but to no avail.
Once they returned to the old battlefield and saw traces of it, but they were not familiar with the route so they turned back. On the trips on the anniversary of martyr Phu's death, on July 27, Mrs. Ha prepared an extra offering tray and burned paper clothes "hoping that he and his comrades would soon report back."
"Normally, someone would think that the daughter-in-law has little blood ties with her husband's relatives. But the more I go, meet my uncle's comrades, hear stories about the battle, and see rows of martyrs' tombstones in cemeteries, the more I feel heartbroken and hope to bring my uncle home soon," Ms. Ha said about the reason why she has never given up hope of finding him in the past three years.
Earlier this year, the family connected with the former commander of Division 324 and got more information about the 1967 battle. The search area for the remains was eventually narrowed down to about 2 square kilometers around the site of the battle at Hill 90. The phone call in early July from the National Archives Center III, announcing the return of the documents and evidence of martyr Tran Van Phu kept by the US side, gave the family more confidence that they would soon find their loved one.
The USB containing the information and the 66-page file made the family "feel like a part of the martyr's soul has returned". Ms. Ha said that the coordinates provided by the US were more than a kilometer away from the place the family was searching for. On this July 27, their journey back to Quang Tri will continue with the plan to connect with relevant agencies to soon excavate the location in the file. Because there is hope that besides martyr Phu, "there may be many other comrades waiting to be found and brought back to their motherland".
The Vietnam Center - Texas Tech University (USA) is storing a microfilm archive of nearly 3 million pages of handwritten notes, images of relics, and memorabilia of the Northern and Southern Liberation Army soldiers during the resistance war before 1975. Agencies of the two countries Vietnam and the US are making efforts to search for archival documents to find information, memorabilia, and evidence of war to hand over to families.
Source: https://baohaiphongplus.vn/hy-vong-cua-nhieu-gia-dinh-liet-si-tu-tap-ho-so-my-cung-cap-416214.html
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