Along the Truong Son road, I met poet To Huu.
After the Paris Agreement was signed (January 1973), our frontline unit, Group 559, had the honor of welcoming poet To Huu - at that time a member of the Politburo, Secretary of the Party Central Committee, Head of the Central Propaganda Department on his way to the battlefield to disseminate the Politburo's Resolution on the Strategy to liberate the South and unify the country.
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General Vo Nguyen Giap and the poet |
Colorful orchid baskets hang from the trellis, birds and animals are kept in pretty cages, chirping and dancing to greet guests.
The white-haired commander, wearing a military uniform, walked beside the elegant, scholarly-looking poet, introducing and explaining like a bonsai expert.
The poet stopped in delight before a young bear cub that was being locked up. The commander opened the cage, caught the bear, and gave it to the poet to hold in his arms. The bear obediently sniffed all over like a puppy. Seeing this, the commander happily said:
- I give it to you to take back to Hanoi!
- Thank you, I will send it to the Zoo, and ask my brothers to take care of it. Then he improvised a 4-line poem to give to the Commander, titled "Commander Bear". It's been so long that I can't remember it all, but the gist is to fight like a bear, but live like a fairy in everyday life... Everyone who heard it laughed and applauded.
When talking to the officers and soldiers, the Commander gently reminded him to reread the poem with the line "secretary but not secretary secretary", the poet smiled happily and explained the reason for the poem's creation, then he talked a lot about anti-American poetry, acknowledging the generation of young authors whose poems had just won awards such as: Pham Tien Duat, Nguyen Duy, Nguyen Duc Mau... He confided: "It's been a long time since I had a pilgrimage across Vietnam on the East-West corridor of the legendary Ho Chi Minh trail. Wherever I went, the scenery and people moved me, giving me a lot of inspiration to compose. After this trip, I will definitely have poems about Truong Son, about the thousand-mile mountains and rivers of my Fatherland!".
Not long after that, entering the 1973-1974 dry season campaign, in shipments to the front, we received the long poem "Nuoc non ngan dam" by poet To Huu, printed on small paper, the size of a notebook, very convenient for our soldiers to put in their pockets. We passed it around to read, copy and quickly memorized the whole poem. The poem conveyed the spirit of the Politburo's resolution, anticipating the aspiration of the entire nation to liberate the South and unify the country.
The poem was written more than 30 years ago, but the verses that clearly depict Truong Son still linger in our minds: "...Truong Son, East sun, West rain/ Those who have not been there do not understand us"; or "Young soldiers/ Humming and banging on bowls, waiting for the rice to boil"... It sounds so touching, lovely and spirited. And only two years after the poet entered the battlefield, the Ho Chi Minh Campaign was completely victorious, our "thousand-mile country" was reunited!
Nearly four decades have passed, both the poet and the commander have passed away. The young Truong Son soldiers of that time have now entered their sixties. Reminiscing about the memories of the old battlefields on the occasion of the upcoming 69th anniversary of the founding of Group 559 - the heroic Truong Son troops - (May 19, 1959 - May 19, 2009), I would like to record a small story that still resonates in the heart of a veteran from Nghe An.
Le Lan -(47 - Dang Thuc Hua - Truong Thi - Vinh City)
