Mrs. Dang Bich Ha (1928 – 2024), wife of General Vo Nguyen Giap, was the first daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Dang Thai Mai. Mrs. Ha’s younger sister, Associate Professor, Dr. Dang Thi Hanh, once explained that her sister’s name means “blue clouds”.
This is different from the other sisters in the family who all have flower names such as Dang Thi Hanh, Dang Thanh Le, Dang Anh Dao. “Maybe because my sister was born in my father’s hometown and when my father named her, he must have thought of the beautiful sunsets he often saw in the morning sky of his hometown,” Ms. Hanh recalled in 2019.
General Vo Nguyen Giap and Mrs. Dang Bich Ha when they were young
The love affair between Ms. Dang Bich Ha and General Vo Nguyen Giap was considered peaceful. Writer Thanh Huong, a childhood friend of Ms. Bich Ha, said: “Mr. Van sometimes stayed at Mr. Dang Thai Mai’s house (Mr. Dang Thai Mai and the General were lifelong friends – NV) for several days in a row. He taught Ha and guided her in reading. At night, when the children had all gone to bed, Mr. Van and Ha would still sit at the table reading books and chatting.”
Their wedding was held just three weeks before the National Resistance Day in 1946. It was a simple wedding in a house on Hang Bai Street. According to Mrs. Vo Hoa Binh (daughter of General Vo Nguyen Giap), the wedding took place at The living room of the house reserved for the Principal, in the current Trung Vuong Secondary School campus. At that time, Mr. Dang Thai Mai lived and worked in this house . Attending the wedding ceremony were Dr. Tran Duy Hung - Chairman of the Hanoi Administrative Committee, as the master of ceremonies and Mrs. Nguyen Thi Thuc Vien (the first female National Assembly member of the capital), a relative of the family.
After peace was restored in the North, Ms. Dang Bich Ha continued her university studies, then went to the Soviet Union to do research. While Ms. Ha's younger sisters were all famous literary researchers, she was a researcher, a teacher of hidden history at Hanoi Pedagogical University and then worked as a researcher at the Southeast Asia Institute.
The mindset of a historical researcher also helps Ms. Dang Bich Ha manage documents about the General. This supports Lieutenant General Pham Hong Cu, former Deputy Director of the General Department of Politics ( Ministry of National Defense ), a lot when Mr. Cu participates in writing memoirs of General Vo Nguyen Giap.
General Vo Nguyen Giap and his wife
Lieutenant General Pham Hong Cu once shared that military writer Huu Mai expressed the General's memories from when he met Uncle Ho until the Dien Bien Phu campaign. Colonel Pham Chi Nhan, former Deputy Director of the Propaganda Department of the Ministry of National Defense, helped the General express the great victory in the spring of 1975. Mr. Cu wrote the period from when the General was born until he met Uncle Ho. This part of the memory was told directly by the General and had a lot of help from Ms. Dang Bich Ha.
Lieutenant General Pham Hong Cu shared in 2013: “Only I have the conditions to collect the details because Mr. Van told me directly. But the person who helped me the most in the book is Ms. Ha. I visited and asked about Mr. Van and she told me.” Ms. Ha also helped Mr. Cu verify and explain General Giap’s year of birth when the French archives had enough documents proving that General Giap was born in 1910. Meanwhile, there was information that he was born in 1911, while the British encyclopedia recorded him as born in 1912…
The General was always very busy, but he never forgot his wedding day. Every year, on November 27, the General asked his daughters to buy a bouquet of red roses, the flower that Mrs. Bich Ha loved, to give to his wife.
Associate Professor, Dr. Dang Thi Hanh shared when she was still alive: “Once, I visited her when Mr. Van had to go to Hospital 108 to recover. Seeing her sitting and stacking newspapers, I asked her what the greatest happiness in her life was. Ms. Ha immediately replied that she had Mr. Van. I think that was a natural thing because living with a special person like Mr. Van was my sister’s greatest happiness.” Now they have met again.
Source: https://thanhnien.vn/ba-dang-bich-ha-nguoi-hanh-phuc-vi-co-anh-van-185240918125035679.htm
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