Dien Bien shirt

(Baonghean) - Dien Bien, those two words are so dear and familiar. Since my school days, “Dien Bien Song” has always echoed in my mind like an epic. The image of a Dien Bien soldier with a carved guard shirt is a simple, unusual symbol.

Sometimes I imagine it as a square explosive block, and the soldier's heart is a bud with more destructive power than dynamite. It is spiritual strength, will, faith, and things as familiar and simple as bamboo banks and rice fields. There is a picture that haunts me forever about the relationship between the army and the people: The plump, youthful face of a soldier is so innocent, next to his mother who is mending his garrison shirt. The thin thread connecting mother and child is strong, loyal, and everlasting, shortening the distance from the battlefield to the rear. The song's lyrics echo in me: "That shirt I have been wearing for so long..." Yes, mother, that simple shirt that the young soldier of Dien Bien wears during the nights of attacking the fort, during the days of marching in the pouring rain, with rice balls. The thread of love has woven the warmth of the rear to the trenches, allowing me to imagine the paths of the village, the countryside, crisscrossing each other on the garrison shirt with 36 seams. Those deep seams were the trenches on the Dien Bien Phu battlefield, encircling and tightening the enemy's stronghold. That shirt carried the shape of a mother's child, neat and sturdy, with simple buttons that tightened more than any armor...

l Parade to celebrate Dien Bien Phu Victory. Photo: PV

The Dien Bien garrison shirt with its undulating forest roads and steep passes with the chant “Ho do ta nao…”, until now the artillery string is still taut and cannot be broken in the face of everyday hardships, when there are still invisible abysses and the soldiers still brace themselves in an attacking position. The Dien Bien garrison shirt is now in a museum glass cabinet, the old bullet holes still look at us painfully. Years will pass, the sewing thread can come apart like pieces of time, but the stitching of the shirt’s seams is still deeply connected to each other, creating squares, diamonds, like an identity of history. The folds of the past completely embrace the figure, posture, and stance of the Dien Bien soldier, which is hard to be carved by any monument. Because that is the form, the soul, the origin, the fulcrum, the launching pad of faith. Because behind those seams crisscrossing like trenches is the soldier’s heart.

I was moved when I held in my hands the mementos of my hometown hero, martyr Phan Dinh Giot, filling the loopholes. That was the submachine gun, the canteen and especially his guard shirt that was left in his backpack. His comrades had given it to his memorial house in his hometown, a poor village in the Central region with Lao wind and burning sand. The shirt was still intact even though his body was burned black with bullet holes when he fell down and used his body to fill the loopholes of the enemy, for the Muong Thanh field, for the Cam Quan field of his hometown today where the rice is growing green and lush with the concrete roads being so open, a face of a new, flourishing countryside. That is the guard shirt with the warm green color woven from the exploits of a glorious past.

The Dien Bien shirt is only a deep green among the many colors of brocade, the dominant green with the endless green forests blooming with white Bauhinia flowers. And sparkling in that endless green, I recognize the winding red of the trenches of the past, a steadfast red color pinning medals on the sturdy hills of Him Lam, Hong Cum, Muong Thanh... like the breast of the beloved motherland. Dien Bien is young again and Dien Bien is forever young with you, the soldiers wearing the garrison shirt, forever raising the flag of victory!

Nguyen Ngoc Phu