Road to Reunification Day

(Baonghean) - 11:30 am on April 30, 1975, became the most sacred, important, and emotional moment in the nation's history. Poet Huu Thinh, when writing the famous epic poem "The Road to the City", first named it "Journey on Barbed Wire". Yes, the journey to that moment is a journey of strict limits, of each human destiny, of the entire nation.

The joy of total victory is multiplied by the joy of complete unification, no longer divided land, no longer divided people's hearts. Unity in will, sentiment, in national harmony, in the country's rivers and mountains reunited, which musician Vo Van Dy sang: "The sea and sky of our homeland - Beautiful as brocade - The country and mountains are one - The ships go North to South" in "Song of Unification". Perhaps the greatest joy is the joy of unification. The greatest victory is for everyone, even the great rear: "This campaign eats rice without additives - If we are happy, we will be so happy that we miss our mother so much" (Huu Thinh).

In the rear, mothers have dedicated the best rice grains and the most quintessential children to the battlefield. On the way to Saigon's total victory on April 30, we have gone through many historical milestones: From the days of Dong Khoi Ben Tre, to the Mau Than Campaign in 1968; from the fiery summer of Quang Tri Citadel in 1972 to the brilliant spring of flags and flowers in 1975 in the City named after Him; from the historic Dien Bien Phu campaign in 1954 to the "Dien Bien Phu in the air" 12 days and nights in the sky of Hanoi shooting down B52 fortresses. The whole country has shared the fire with the traditional strength of a thousand years of building and defending the country...

Teammates reunited. Photo: Tran Duy Ngoan

40 years later, returning to Ho Chi Minh City. The summer sky was still blue, the rows of ancient trees cast cool shadows on the streets, the cicadas were chirping and bustling the trees. The soldiers had now become men and women. They walked quietly, hand in hand, leading the children who were playing with pink balls in their hands. Those veterans still wore the green uniforms of withered grass. They remembered their first meal in liberated Saigon, still cooked in a field kitchen, which Poet Huu Thinh had a rather unique verse, "Dinner in the Independence Palace", with: "The morning glory was green as if picked from the pond at home. The first night I slept, I still hung a hammock from Truong Son, my knees on my backpack, my gun still slung across my chest, I was startled and thought I could still hear the "Gecko" marking the even and odd rhythms of the sun and rain".

And how can one forget the image of one's comrades who had fallen at the Saigon bridgehead before the moment of total victory when peace was only a hair's breadth away. Life and death, peace and war, nameless and forever. They, the soldiers who made today's victory, blended into the flow of people in the flow of everyday life. The tank numbered 830 lies in the grounds of the Independence Palace, the grass has turned green between the links of the chain that still shine with the green light of steel. The war has receded, the war seemed as if it had never happened. The tank has become a historical artifact for future generations to take pictures of, the film footage, the black and white documentary photos are still cherished and kept, the marching rhythms still resonate in people's hearts.

On this great victory day, we have relived the heroic atmosphere of history with the formations, the army, the parades, the marches with many modern weapons on the roads of 40 years ago, the revolutionary troops with lightning-fast steps: "Cut down Buon Me Thuot, the whole Central Highlands fell - Sweep Hue - Thua Thien overthrew Da Nang..." (Total victory is ours - To Huu). In today's thunderous footsteps, we seem to see and hear the footsteps that remained along the battlefield, along the road to liberate Saigon. We still hear in the murmuring sound of the earth, the sound of footsteps that never disappear, for today and for tomorrow...

Writer:Nguyen Ngoc Phu