Remembering Soviet Russian Writers

I remember the early days when the American invaders were bombing North Vietnam, poet Xuan Hoang and I stayed in the fiery land of Quang Binh - Vinh Linh. When the beautiful town of Dong Hoi by Nhat Le estuary was devastated by American bombs, Russian writer Boris Polevoi, author of the famous book We the Soviets, came to us. When he returned to Moscow, he spoke out against the American president, calling on the Russian people and the world to support Vietnam in fighting the Americans to the end...

After Boris Polevoy were Russian writers and poets such as Simonov, Eptusenko, Nikolayev, Niculin, Kachov… who were not afraid of American bombs and bullets. They came to Quang Binh - Vinh Linh, went with us to Hien Luong bridge, Ben Hai river, visited Mui Si and Vinh Moc tunnels. They went to the battlefield and lived “three together” with anti-aircraft artillery and ground artillery soldiers…

Simonov, who wrote the famous poem Waiting for You to Come Back during the war against Nazi Germany, also went to the fiery land of Quang Binh - Vinh Linh during the fierce days of fighting against the Americans. We welcomed Simonov and his wife at the underground house of the Quang Binh Provincial Party Committee. He hugged us and said: “In this fight, Vietnamese writers will never be alone. We are always with our comrades and colleagues.”

Simonov visited underground kindergartens, hospital operating rooms and underground schools; lived in tunnels with soldiers and guerrillas. Wherever Simonov went, he saw white mourning bands on the heads of wives who had lost their husbands, children who had lost their fathers and mothers... Simonov cried. Not long after returning to Russia, he published a book about the war against the US in Vietnam: The suffering is not just for one person. The book touched millions of readers around the world.

Welcoming Vietnamese writers at the headquarters of the Executive Committee of the Soviet Writers' Association.

I remember that among the Russian writers who came to us, there was a writer who had been a soldier, a wounded veteran with one arm. He was a Red Army artillery colonel named Nikolayev. He lost his arm when he commanded the artillery to pound Hitler’s lair, liberating Berlin. A few days after arriving in Quang Binh, Nikolayev asked me to take him home to visit his family, to see how the wives and children of Vietnamese writers lived under the fierce bombardment of the American invaders. First, he went to see Bich An, my wife, who was teaching an underground class. Then he followed my eight-year-old son, Tran Ngoc Phong, to my family’s underground house. Nikolayev had difficulty getting into the underground house because he was tall and bulky.

He was curious and asked a lot about our life underground: my children's study corner, the board on my lap that was my wife's desk for preparing lessons, and the empty artillery shell box that served as a desk where every night, when American bombs exploded above ground, I still wrote in the basement. Seven books were printed thanks to writing for four years on that ammunition box. Coming out of the ground, Nikolayev shook his head in disappointment because he thought the basement was too fragile compared to American bombs and blockbusters, and he could not hold back his tears. In the hope of reducing Nikolayev's emotions, I asked Ngoc Phong to read the poem My Bunker:

… My cellar, the cellar is seven rows diagonally.
Its body is long and its pillars are tall.
Every night when the sky is full of stars
American enemy planes flew over
You have Thunder God, Ghost
Well we have guns and we have bunkers…

Phong's poem seemed to have caused some "optimism" and made Nikolayev laugh and he asked me to write it down for him. Later, when I went to Moscow with a group of Vietnamese writers, I visited Nikolayev's house. Hearing that we were coming to Russia, he was working in Paris and quickly flew back to welcome us. After the reunion dinner, he gave me a newly printed collection of poems. In it was Ngoc Phong's poem The Tunnel, which had been translated into Russian, and his very respectful introduction.

I remember the days in Quang Binh, Nikolayev asked to visit the Ngu Thuy female artillery company. Although it could be dangerous because at that time, American warships were always lurking offshore, ready to fire at the mainland, Nikolayev begged so much that the Provincial Party Committee agreed to let him go. When they arrived, they saw the women on alert, ready to fight with four long-barreled 130mm cannons. Nikolayev stood at attention in front of the company commander, Miss The, saluted and reported according to military regulations: "I, Nikolayev, a Red Army artillery soldier, request to join the battle." After listening to my translation and introduction, Miss The said in a serious voice: "You are assigned as gunner Nikolayev to the 3rd battery."

Although he had only one arm, Nikolayev still operated very skillfully. But the enemy ship had gone far away and was out of sight. The company commander rang the gong to signal peace and let the women go have lunch. Nikolayev and us sat under the shade of the casuarina forest, eating rice with sea fish and sweet potato soup. After dinner, the women sat around and listened to Nikolayev tell us about the Russian artillery he commanded fighting the German fascists. And they told him about their experience using the Russian 130mm cannon to burn two American warships.

When we were leaving, Nikolayev said in tears: “If I have permission from both governments, I will volunteer to return to Ngu Thuy to fight the Americans with my sisters. Nikolayev reluctantly said goodbye to the Ngu Thuy artillery sisters and all the way home, he sat silently in the car with very sad eyes. Suddenly he patted my shoulder and encouraged me: “My friend, try to write about those heroic fisherman girls. If we cannot write anything about them, it will be a great sin.”

Remembering Nikolayev’s words, I wrote. When I visited his house in the suburbs of Moscow, I gave Nikolayev the book The Lightning of the Sea and the script for the film The Sun Grasses written about the girls of the Ngu Thuy artillery. He hugged me and said: “So we have not forgotten the girls of the artillery militia in Quang Binh”…

Decades have passed, but memories of Soviet Russian writers are still imprinted in my heart.

According to SGGP