Every night, I dream of you guys coming home.

(Baonghean) -There are no more tears, because the men sacrificed when their mother's hair was still green, she was like a lamp in the wind but every night she still dreams of the men's shadows... coming back! That is the heartfelt confession of mother Nguyen Thi Dieu (91 years old), mother of two martyrs and a sick soldier, currently residing in Hamlet 2, Cat Van Commune (Thanh Chuong District, Nghe An).

We found our way to Cat Van on a hot July day. Mother Dieu’s house is located on the banks of the Lam River. Some locals said that every afternoon or on quiet moonlit nights, when she missed her children, Mother Dieu would go to the riverbank, gaze deeply into the flowing water and cry. Mother Dieu gave birth to 5 children (4 boys, 1 girl), two of whom died in the resistance war against the US to save the country, and another son was a sick soldier.

In tears, mother confided: "I still remember my two sons clearly, even though they sacrificed a long time ago, every night I still dream of their shadows appearing." Then mother Dieu recounted: In the spring of 1967, her first son, martyr Nguyen Hoang Binh, who was not yet 18 years old, and many other children of this poor countryside followed the call of the Fatherland and went to the South to fight the enemy. About the first 5 years, she saw her son write a letter saying that he was stationed in Binh Tri Thien, the unit "ate rice on the North bank in the morning, and fought the enemy on the South bank in the evening" on both sides of the Thach Han River (now Quang Tri province). Missing her son, mother could not bear it so she once walked from Thanh Chuong, Nghe An to the unit stationed in Quang Binh province to visit her son. Seeing the distance of several hundred kilometers that mother Dieu had to pack up and walk, many people asked: "Where are you going?" Mother replied: "I'm going to visit Binh". After a whole week of traveling, despite the bombs and bullets, Mother Dieu was still determined to see her son. And then mother and son met each other on the battlefield, both were very happy!

Mother Dieu with the Fatherland to honor her son.

After that mother-son meeting, not long after, one afternoon in late May 1972, bad news came to Dieu's mother and her family. Nguyen Hoang Binh had sacrificed his life on the battlefield in Thua Thien. The pain had not yet subsided, less than 6 years later, her third son, Nguyen Hoang Thanh, who had just gotten married and given birth to their first child 3 months ago, still volunteered to go to the battlefield and sacrificed his life on the southwestern front of the Fatherland (March 1979).

The war ended, in the triumphant song of our army and people returning home, Mother Dieu's two children (Nguyen Hoang Binh and Nguyen Hoang Thanh) were left forever on the battlefield. Not only that, she also had to accept another pain: the day her second son (Mr. Nguyen Hoang Tinh) returned from the battlefield was also the day he became a disabled soldier.


Portraits of martyrs Nguyen Hoang Thanh and Nguyen Hoang Binh.

Mother Dieu confided: Even though she knew that her son had sacrificed and never returned, she always thought that her brothers and children were still alive somewhere in her beloved homeland, Vietnam. In addition to the pain of losing her son, Mother Dieu also had to work hard to raise her remaining children with her husband (Mr. Nguyen Hoang Nguyen, also a veteran of the anti-French war). When her husband, Mr. Nguyen Hoang Nguyen, passed away, and her daughter-in-law, the wife of martyr Nguyen Hoang Thanh, remarried, Mother Dieu worked hard to raise her grandson Nguyen Hoang Tung. Growing up with her grandmother, Nguyen Hoang Tung (Mother Dieu's grandson) has now graduated from university and grown up.

After days of hardship for food and clothing, Dieu's mother returned to live with her son and his wife, war invalid Nguyen Hoang Tinh. Then, Tinh's wife passed away after a traffic accident, leaving Tinh to raise four children alone and fulfill his filial duties to his elderly mother. Tinh said: Since his mother returned to live with him, although she was no longer lacking in material things as before, her spirit was still affected. Her greatest wish was to find the graves of her two martyr sons so that they could be brought back to their hometown to be buried with their ancestors. Nguyen Hoang Tung, son of martyr Binh, and his relatives set out to find his father and uncle's graves.

Mr. Tung confided: although he did not get to meet his father when he grew up, through the documents left by his family, he knew his father, enlisted in 1978, died in March 1979, at the Southwestern border front, was in units C10, D6, E98, F78, Military Region 4. Martyr Nguyen Hoang Binh (Tung's uncle) enlisted in 1967, died on May 21, 1972, at the Thua Thien - Hue front, was in unit Company 23, Transport C, Regiment Headquarters - Regiment 8, Division 324, Military Region 4.

Following the documents and some friends of his father and uncle that remained, Tung and his relatives traveled to the Thua Thien-Hue battlefield to find his uncle's grave, but there was no trace of martyr Binh's grave. After that, he and his relatives continued their journey to the southern provinces, bordering Cambodia, to find the grave of his father, martyr Nguyen Hoang Thanh. Previously, some people in the same unit as martyr Thanh said that after his death, martyr Thanh was buried in a cemetery in Kien Giang province. After the martyr's family went to Kien Giang to find him, they learned that this cemetery was previously a temporary cemetery, and now the remains of the martyrs were moved to another location in An Giang province. Following the address, Tung and his family went to the cemetery in An Giang province and discovered a series of martyrs' graves all with the name Thanh, hometown Nghe An province, so they did not know which grave was their father's grave. Finally, Mr. Tung and everyone else could only light incense sticks and divide them equally on each grave, hoping that under those graves named Thanh, there was also their father.

Everyone brought that touching story back to tell Dieu's mother, and she cried again: "My last wish in life is to find the graves of my two sons who died on the battlefield, something I have been secretly hoping for for decades."

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