Letters telling stories of the battlefield

If you have the opportunity to visit the Vietnam Military History Museum or visit Quang Tri Citadel, you can read or listen to extremely touching stories from a letter or diary of the martyrs who have remained on the battlefield. Journalist Dang Vuong Hung, who collected and compiled famous books such as "Vietnam War Diary" and "Vietnam War Letters", shared: "Writing letters or keeping a diary is not writing, but first of all, it is life. No one, when writing those lines, thought that after a few decades they would be published in a book and they would become authors... Therefore, everything is strangely real and vivid".

In the collection “Letters from the Vietnam War” (National Political Publishing House Truth), the authors of the letters come from many different professions and have different levels of education. They can be intellectuals, workers, farmers, artists, or students. There are simple and honest letters, letters imbued with literature, and letters written in poetry; and there are letters whose authors are illiterate and have to ask others to write for them... - that is what makes it difficult for readers to hold back their emotions before the pages written in flesh and blood. It is the feeling of admiration for the feelings of heroic martyr Hoang Kim Giao, martyr Le Van Huynh, martyr Le Trong Dung...; are the sorrowful sympathy for the unfinished beautiful dreams of artillery soldier Nguyen Van Than or student soldiers Nguyen Duy Trung, Dang The Cuong... It is the stirring before the blue sky of Quang Tri land and martyr Phan Sy Doai in the peaceful moment between two battles, or the heart-wrenching moment when seeing Nguyen Dang Ngai "before the departure time, as planned, I got to see my mother", but even though he tried to lean out of the train so that his mother could see him, even though he shouted until his throat was sore, "but the train passed and then my mother saw me. I was very sad when I saw my mother sitting down and rolling on the road, still holding Oanh in her arms...".

Many details of everyday life that young people living in peace today can hardly imagine, as martyr Pham Ngoc Hung once confided in a letter to his parents that he "wanted to become a writer to write about the heroic children of the heroic era. There are many stories that if I had not participated in, I might have considered them fantastic because they were beyond my imagination". The book "The Last Will and Testament of the Ancient Citadel" (Tre Publishing House) collects 10 last wills and testaments written or read in the smoke and fire of the battlefield during 81 days and nights of fire, including letters that soldiers could only write a paragraph of during the suffocating moments of the war, or a few lines of letters that were hastily sent to wounded comrades who were sent back to the rear and were fortunately delivered to their relatives in the rear, and there were letters that had not been sent yet, excavated after decades along with the bodies of martyrs.

The soldiers' letters were always filled with love, blood and sweat. Living amidst bombs and smoke, the soldiers forgot themselves and only remembered to comfort and encourage their relatives, sometimes worrying that the bomb shelter at home was not strong enough, sometimes telling their younger sister far away to study hard, and even thoughtfully telling their family to remember to return to the neighbors for him two blocks of tofu and a lemon that the night he came home unexpectedly on leave, the family did not have time to buy food, and had to borrow from the neighbors.

And especially the letters of couples always make young readers today admire the beautiful love stories that overcome the fire of war. Those are the letters of martyr Nguyen Van Troi written to his lover, the letters of artillery soldier Do Sam sent to his wife, the unsent love letter of soldier Nguyen Sy Que written to his fiancee, or the letter full of love sent to his wife of soldier Nguyen Tri Phuoc - the prototype in the short story "Ivory Comb" by writer Nguyen Quang Sang... Recently, the book "Letter for you" about the love story of General Hoang Dan and his wife - Mrs. Nguyen Thi An Vinh, a female National Assembly delegate in the early terms, received much attention from the public, especially young readers. After just over a month since its official release, the book "Letter for you" by author Hoang Nam Tien, son of General Hoang Dan and his wife, has been "sold out" continuously and has been reprinted 4 times. And now, after a year of its release, the book has been reprinted for the 9th time, and an audiobook version has also been released.

Besides the letters sent back and forth to relatives, there are many very special wartime letters. Such as the letter from President Ho Chi Minh to Doctor Vu Dinh Tung - a father whose son was a martyr, in which there is a passage: "You have brought your most precious gift, your son, ready to sacrifice for the Fatherland. From now on, you will surely make more efforts to help the resistance to protect the country, then my son's soul in heaven will also be satisfied and happy. On behalf of the Government, I thank you, and send you my warmest greetings and determination to win." For Doctor Vu Dinh Tung's family, "this personal letter carries the sentiments of the whole country, of history." Or the letters from Chairman of the Hanoi Administrative Committee Tran Duy Hung asking for his two sons to join the army to fight the enemy, the letter from female general Nguyen Thi Dinh to her comrades, the letters to the leaders in the southern battlefields of General Secretary Le Duan. About 400 pages thick, the book "Letter to the South" by General Secretary Le Duan is a valuable document, contributing to summarizing the experience of the resistance war against the US to save the country of our army and people.

Source: https://hanoimoi.vn/nhung-canh-thu-ke-chuyen-chien-truong-700570.html