July Stories

1.Five years ago, my writer friend Pham Duc Long, from Quynh Luu, who has been my friend for decades in Pleiku, called: Please come over for lunch to entertain guests from my hometown with my wife and I.

Usually these kinds of meetings are warm, fun, affectionate and delicious, because they are all about hometown dishes and stories.

It turned out that Long's hometown guest was also named Long, Nguyen Hong Long, from Quynh Hau commune, former deputy police chief of a district in Nghe An, high school classmate of Pham Duc Long. And it turned out that this guy was not going out to play, but to find his father.

The search was quite arduous, hearing the story made my heart ache. There must be many children who love, respect and long to see their fathers like Long, but listening to Long's story, I respected him very much, and was both nervous and heartbroken, yet information about their father was so far away.

Talking to him, Long knew the Central Highlands better than I did, a person who had lived in the Central Highlands for forty years. He knew it all from the field, from maps, from letters and phone calls.

His father died in the Central Highlands front between 1962 and 1964. He contacted many places, many people, many agencies... then vaguely knew where his father died in H40, searching and finding that address was equivalent to Dak Glei district, Kon Tum today. At that time, his father was the Squad Leader of the Reconnaissance Squad of the 300th Anti-Aircraft Division.

He went to all the provinces of the Central Highlands to find them. Whenever he heard that there were veterans from the same era and the same unit as his father, he would arrange to go find them. The police had the advantage of finding clues and addresses easily, but time was limited. Whenever he took leave, he would go to Kon Tum, Gia Lai, Dak Lak... then all the way to Thanh Hoa when he heard that an old colonel from his father's unit was living there, then he went to Hanoi, Hai Duong to ask psychics... He said, when he heard friends recommend him, he went there as a way to cling to hope, but he had the expertise, he heard a few sentences from those men and women and immediately knew... it was a scam, so he left, not wasting money or time on it.

All hopeless.

This trip was also in the same vein. He was retired so he had more time. It could be said that he had turned this vast land of the Central Highlands upside down to find his father but had not found him yet. He heard that in Chu Prong district (20 km from Pleiku), there were some graves of Quynh Luu martyrs who had sacrificed their lives during the war against the US, so he immediately packed his backpack and set off. He had not seen his father's grave, but he had discovered many graves of martyrs in the same district in the cemetery. He had recorded the information to find a way to inform the martyrs' families.

He told about his mother: She gave birth to two brothers, Long and his younger sister. His father joined the army, and after training in Son Tay, he went straight to the battlefield. When he arrived in Quang Nam, he sent his wife two letters and then lost all news. His mother shouldered the family's responsibilities alone, with a long wait of more than half a century. So he tried to find his father so that his mother could feel at ease.

One thing that is very difficult for cases like Nguyen Hong Long and for many people is that the terrain of the Central Highlands is now very different from the past, if not completely new, so relying on memory alone is difficult. Second, the witnesses are now very old, most of them are confused if they are still alive. And third, the units have changed a lot. As in the case of Nguyen Hong Long's father, he heard that in October 1964, the 300th Anti-Aircraft Regiment of Military Region 5 was disbanded. One Company was reinforced to Binh Dinh province, one Company was reinforced to Dak Lak...

While writing this article, I called writer Pham Duc Long to ask how Nguyen Hong Long's search for his father was going. He sadly replied, still clueless, but not giving up.

2.I have a younger sister, my cousin’s daughter. When my father regrouped to the North, my aunt in the countryside got married and had a bunch of children, including this girl. My younger sister grew up and married a local soldier stationed in the village. One night, he was shot dead. My younger sister became a widow, built a thatched house right behind her parents’ garden, and raised two children. Then the country was unified, the whole country was in trouble, drowning in mixed rice, the widowed mother raising two children and having connections to the “other side” made it even more difficult.

There was a friend of my father, a soldier, who had also regrouped and now returned to his hometown. I don't know why he didn't have a wife or children when he was in the North. Many people gathered around to arrange a marriage, so he married my younger sister. I'm calling him uncle, because he was my father's friend, and now I have the honor of being his older brother. But a pension at that time was too much to support 4 people. The whole family moved to Gia Nghia, which at that time had not yet been divided into Dak Nong but was still part of Dak Lak, and... had 5 more children.

He later passed away, last year I went to Dak Nong, all 7 grandchildren are doing well in business, mainly trading, and now all have shops and cars. I went to burn incense at the altar, my brother's 2 husbands sat there together, I burned 3 incense sticks, the 2 enjoyed them together. I prayed, it's been decades, I'm happy that you guys are united. I saw the incense sticks curling up.

3.In Gia Lai, many friends often ask me to look for information about martyrs who died in the Central Highlands battlefield. The Central Highlands is so vast (of course, even though it is vast, it cannot be compared to Quang Tri), and most of the time I... fail despite being very enthusiastic, and the places I ask are also very enthusiastic. They search through the files, and if they don't find anything, they have to report that they don't see it, don't have it, what else can they do?

But when I saw journalist Pham Tam Hieu in Hanoi and his family find a martyr who is my brother in a martyr cemetery a few dozen kilometers from my house in a very unintentional and unofficial way, because we had previously contacted and asked the authorities to search for him but could not find him, I thought, is it because we are not working scientifically?

Currently, there are many programs to find relatives of martyrs, from the mainstream press to personal websites like the page of Mr. Nguyen Si Ho, a person who diligently searches for information about martyrs and information for relatives, but perhaps we are missing one more thing, which is that the martyrs' cemeteries themselves need to compile information, then post it online, before families go searching, they should go there to research, compare information, see if they match, or are close to matching, have suitable details... then they can search, so as not to have to work so hard and hopelessly like now.

As in the case of Ms. Pham Tam Hieu's family looking for her brother, martyr Pham Hoai, the death certificate stated: Died on June 13, 1979 at the Southwest front, buried in Thang Duc, Chu Krong, Gia Lai, Kon Tum, grave number 63, row 7. There is no such thing here (nor does Chu Krong district), but there is information that in the Ia Grai district martyr cemetery there is a collected grave with the information: Martyr Pham Hoa, from Hanoi, unit C3E1F2, born in 1956, died on June 3, 1979. Asking the management office, we were told: Ia Grai cemetery does not have any Cambodian martyrs collected. Asking another friend, they said the search system was not available yet, in the end, the family searched for him themselves and found out. It is true that Uncle Hoai is located in the Ia Grai district cemetery that the family has passed through many times.

4.The search for martyrs continues. I have witnessed how search teams nicknamed K operate along the Central Highlands provinces bordering Cambodia. They follow the map alone, sneaking through the jungle (the places where martyrs sacrificed are mostly uninhabited now), searching, cherishing each piece of remains, bringing them to the martyrs' cemetery, many of whom have no/no names. Duc Co martyrs' cemetery, Gia Lai province is such a place. Every year, there are very large ceremonies to welcome martyrs back to the country, organized very solemnly and emotionally...