The miraculous return of the Martyr's Diary and the message "A peaceful homeland, a happy family"
These days in December, the small house with its lush green vegetable garden and fragrant rose bushes – where Mrs. Bui Thi Loi (wife of martyr Ho Van Chuong) lives with her eldest son's family – is filled with joy. Because after 60 years of being lost on the other side of the globe, the battlefield diary – a priceless memento of her beloved husband and father who fell on the Quang Tri battlefield – has miraculously returned to his family…
These days in December, the small house with its lush green vegetable garden and fragrant rose bushes – where Mrs. Bui Thi Loi (wife of martyr Ho Van Chuong) lives with her eldest son's family – is filled with joy. Because after 60 years of being lost on the other side of the globe, the battlefield diary – a priceless memento of her beloved husband and father who fell on the Quang Tri battlefield – has miraculously returned to his family…
Although she is now at a very old age, Mrs. Bui Thi Loi (born in 1939), residing in Thai Hoa town, remains very active and sharp-minded. While chatting with us, cradling the diary of her beloved husband, which the Office of the National Steering Committee 515 had handed over to the family at the end of the year, Mrs. Loi fondly recalled memories of her younger days.
Born and raised in Trung Tam hamlet, Dien Bich commune, Dien Chau district, Bui Thi Loi, a girl from the coastal region, and Ho Van Chuong, a fisherman, met and got married in 1960. At that time, she was only 20 years old and he was 21.
Life, though still full of hardships, became complete and happy with the birth of their son, Ho Van Hung. In April 1963, when their second son, Ho Van Quang, was three months old, Mr. Ho Van Chuong enlisted in Company 4, Battalion 7, Regiment 90, Division 324 in Do Luong district.
"I was so naive back then. My husband was in the army, and all I could do was stand at the bedroom door with my child, too embarrassed to say anything…," Mrs. Loi recalled with a heavy heart.
During the time his unit was stationed in Do Luong, even though it was about 50km from home, he strictly adhered to military discipline and never went home to visit. Out of love for her husband, and knowing that Mr. Chuong didn't like eating meat, Mrs. Loi quietly cooked sea fish and sent it to her husband at his unit through an acquaintance.
In 1964, Mr. Chuong was wounded and transferred to Vinh City for treatment. Before returning to his unit, he asked to take one last visit home. Before leaving, he hesitantly told his wife, "If I am killed, please don't marry someone else; it would be a sin against our children." At that time, she dismissed his concerns, encouraging him not to worry too much.
Later, his unit marched into Quang Tri, and amidst the life-or-death situation, he sent many letters to his wife, but Mrs. Loi was illiterate and could only rely on her nephew to read to her, as she couldn't write back to her husband.
Each letter her husband sent home brought news of peace and reassurance to Mrs. Loi. "Despite our difficult family circumstances, being the eldest of nine children and only finishing secondary school, he wrote beautifully and everyone praised his handwriting," Mrs. Loi shared proudly.
In 1967, Mrs. Loi received news that her husband had been killed in action in Quang Tri. The death certificate stated that martyr Ho Van Chuong had died on October 19, 1966, a year earlier. The grief overwhelmed the young wife, but out of love for her two young children, she persevered, shouldering the burden of raising them in place of her husband.
Those years were incredibly difficult, with heavy loads on her shoulders, rushing around selling fish from dawn till dusk, yet this woman from the coastal village remained strong, fulfilling her duties as a daughter-in-law, wife, and mother. “During the war and bombings, there were times when my children and I had to evacuate with relatives, carrying the younger child on one end and rice, clothes, and blankets on the other, while holding the older child’s hand…,” Mrs. Loi recalled.
The hardships and worries of life could not obscure the charming and attractive appearance of the woman from the coastal village. Many people proposed marriage to Mrs. Loi, but out of love for her children and unwavering loyalty to her husband who had fallen on the battlefield, she steadfastly refused, overcoming all obstacles to remain a widow, raising her two sons to adulthood.
While chatting with us, Mrs. Loi hummed some deeply moving, reflective verses of poetry."My heart aches so much, my child/ I can't leave to sit with you/ For so many years, through nine cycles of life/ I have resigned myself to raising you and honoring my husband... I will live and die as I always have, just once..."
Mrs. Loi's greatest regret and remorse is that, due to the circumstances of war, evacuation, and floods, all of her husband's letters, certificates of merit, and mementos have been lost.
Therefore, upon receiving back the battlefield diary of martyr Ho Van Chuong, which had been lost for over 60 years on the other side of the world, Mrs. Loi and her children were deeply moved, considering it a priceless memento; a miracle.
Because before that, neither she nor her relatives knew of the diary's existence. "His sacred soul wants to return to reunite with me and our children and grandchildren…," Mrs. Loi said, her eyes welling up with tears, her wrinkled hands turning the pages of the diary, faded by time…
Sitting quietly beside his mother, Mr. Ho Van Hung - the eldest son of martyr Ho Van Chuong - emotionally shared: "My mother raised us all alone, dedicating her entire life to compensating for the lack of affection we experienced in the absence of our father."
In 1989, after leaving his hometown of Dien Chau to work in Thai Hoa town, getting married, and settling down, Mr. Hung brought his mother from Dien Chau to live with him, while his younger brother, Ho Van Quang, established his career in Da Nang.
Speaking about the miraculous return of his father's diary, Mr. Hung said that one day in September 2024, he unexpectedly received a phone call from someone claiming to be from the ASH Center at Harvard University (USA), who was in possession of a diary belonging to Ho Van Chuong and wanted to gather more information to accurately identify the person before handing it over to his relatives.
This diary was seized by a unit of the U.S. 3rd Marine Command on October 18, 1966, after a clash with the Vietnamese Liberation Army at a battleground in Gio An commune, Gio Linh district, Quang Tri province. Through Zalo, the other party provided Mr. Hung with some pages from the diary.
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Upon receiving the information, Mr. Hung felt a mixture of joy, worry, and anticipation, because "if it's truly my father's diary, it's a priceless memento with special significance; a great source of encouragement and comfort for the family, especially for our mother who is at a very advanced age. But if it's a mistake, it will only bring disappointment and sorrow..." Therefore, until he could confirm it accurately, he didn't dare tell his mother immediately, but instead spoke to his daughter to verify it.
The information provided indicated that the diary's owner was Ho Van Chuong, who enlisted on April 10, 1963, and whose hometown was Trung Tam hamlet, Dien Binh or Dien Bich commune, Dien Chau district, Nghe An province. However, the family's investigation revealed that Dien Binh commune has never had a hamlet named Trung Tam. The Trung Tam hamlet, located in Dien Bich commune, is where the martyr Ho Van Chuong, Mr. Hung's father, resides, and his name and enlistment date match the information in the diary. "They also sent my family more than 10 pages of the diary via Zalo, mostly pages my father wrote to his wife," Mr. Hung said.
Combining multiple reliable verification sources from the Ministry of National Defence, the Nghe An Provincial Military Command, etc., the ASH Center (Harvard University) confirmed that the aforementioned diary belongs to martyr Ho Van Chuong - Mr. Hung's father.
After a four-month wait, on the morning of December 11, 2024, Mr. Hung and his younger brother, Ho Van Quang, arrived in Vinh City to receive the restored diary of their fallen father from representatives of the U.S. Embassy in Vietnam, the ASH Center, and the Steering Committee for the Search, Collection, and Identification of the Remains of Fallen Soldiers in Nghe An Province.
Holding their father's diary in their hands, even though it was just a restored copy, the two brothers were overcome with emotion. Because when their beloved father enlisted and died, they were both too young to have any memories of him.
“I only heard about it from my uncles. Once, my father took me to the Bung Bridge intersection to take a photo, but I’ve never actually seen that picture. My father’s diary is a priceless gift, helping us to imagine him, his ideals, his years of fighting, and the love he had for his wife, children, family, homeland, and country,” Mr. Hung confided.
Mr. Ho Van Hung also shared that when his mother brought the diary home, she held it close to her chest, flipping through it many times. Many pages of the diary were faded and blurred because they were printed from photocopies taken more than 60 years ago, forcing Mr. Hung and his siblings to translate each word, passing the diary around to read their father's diary aloud to their mother.
In the early pages, the diary of martyr Ho Van Chuong expresses his deep affection and longing for his young wife back home, mainly through poems, which he may have composed himself or copied from someone else, with simple, sincere, and unpretentious language.
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Sometimes it's a deep longing during cold winter nights:I love you so much, I miss you deeply / Your image is imprinted in my heart...”;“It’s late at night, I haven’t gone to sleep yet / I hold my pen and confide in you / The cold winter night at the border…”;Sometimes it's also a message from a soldier on the battlefield to his loving wife back home:I send you my deepest love, I advise you not to be sad, my dear, I hope you will cherish our love....";"My love, you swore an oath to love me forever, without ever changing."...".
In some diary entries, the coastal soldier even signed below "Ho Van Chuong - one wife, two children" as a firm affirmation.
Besides recording his own activities, those of his unit, and river crossings from 1963 to 1966, the diary also covers many other topics such as mathematics, geometry, famous quotes of heroes and prominent figures; records of revolutionary poems and songs; and even pages on studying Marxism-Leninism and learning foreign languages like Chinese and Russian…
Through the pages of his diary, Ho Van Chuong, a soldier from the coastal region, is revealed to be a studious, ambitious, idealistic, and responsible person, yet also very warm and affectionate.
In a diary entry, soldier Ho Van Chuong quoted a very famous saying by a writer and hero of Czechoslovakia, as a testament to a noble ideal.“I repeat once more: We have lived life with great love. Because we love life, we fight. And because we love life, we will die…”
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Most moving in the diary entries of soldier Ho Van Chuong from Nghe An province is the image of a white dove soaring in the free sky, along with the neatly written words "Peaceful homeland, happy family." This was perhaps the purpose, the dream, and the driving force behind the determination of soldiers of that era to take up arms and go to war. They lived and fought for a simple yet sacred dream: "Peaceful homeland, happy family."
Among the countless soldiers who took up arms to fight for that noble ideal, there were soldiers like martyr Ho Van Chuong who went to war without a promise of return, falling for "peaceful homeland," leaving behind much sorrow and longing for their loved ones and families. Therefore, returning mementos such as the diary of martyr Ho Van Chuong has immense spiritual significance and value for the family, alleviating some of the pain and loss suffered by the martyr's relatives.
Speaking at the handover ceremony of war relics provided by the United States to the relatives of fallen soldiers, organized by the Office of the National Steering Committee for the Search, Collection and Identification of the Remains of Fallen Soldiers (Steering Committee 515) in Vinh City on December 11, 2024, Colonel Nguyen Ky Hong, Political Commissar of the Provincial Military Command, Deputy Head of the Standing Committee of Steering Committee 515 of Nghe An province, emphasized: The search for and handover of war relics to the relatives and families of fallen soldiers is a sacred sentiment and responsibility of the forces working on policy towards their comrades and the relatives of fallen soldiers.
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“These mementos have traveled halfway around the world, remaining lost for decades before finally returning to the relatives and families of the fallen soldiers… Bringing the mementos of the fallen soldiers back to their hometowns and families allows them to be closer to their loved ones, to the place where they were born and raised, and for these mementos to accompany the relatives of the fallen soldiers in their daily lives,” Colonel Nguyen Ky Hong expressed.
For wives of fallen soldiers like Mrs. Bui Thi Loi, the return of her husband's diary, who died on the battlefield, is a dream come true.
She shared that in the past, she had to rely on others to read her husband's letters because she was illiterate. Therefore, even though she struggled alone to make ends meet and raise her young children, she was determined to learn to read and write. Now, despite her advanced age and failing eyesight, she still carefully examines some of the clear pages and drawings in her husband's diary, touching each page hoping to recapture some of the warmth of the past...
With her unwavering love and the noble sacrifices of a wife and mother, Mrs. Loi became a strong source of emotional support and a shining example for her descendants to follow. She currently has a large family with her sons, daughters-in-law, five grandchildren, and twelve great-grandchildren.
In a conversation with us on a warm late winter day, Mrs. Loi shared that she had discussed with her children the idea of keeping the diary with the family for a while, before handing it over to the Museum of Military Region 4 for better preservation and to spread the message of "A peaceful homeland, a happy family" of martyr Ho Van Chuong for today and tomorrow…
