Those days

To tell you the truth, I am very familiar with Highway 7, now it is called Highway 25.

Since college, during the months of military training, we have heard propaganda officers talk about the historic Route 7 campaign, how we and the enemy "tricked" each other, "lured" each other, the fake marches and then the real marches. The fake marches were bustling, drums and flags were raised, the radio called "full throttle", the real marches were secret, moving without traces, cooking without smoke, all radios were turned off, only word of mouth was transmitted... Then we read, and the most "close combat" book of Route 7 was the novel In the Whirlwind by Khuat Quang Thuy.

Những ngày tháng ấy- Ảnh 1. — A corner of Highway 7 (QL25) through Phu Thien District, Gia Lai

There were two soldiers who fought in the Central Highlands since 1975, who later became famous writers and poets. And it is very sad that they passed away at the exact time when 50 years ago they fought in this land, passing away in regret and pride, because of what they did and left behind for the world (writer Khuat Quang Thuy and poet and musician Nguyen Thuy Kha both passed away in March 2025 - TN ).

At that time, Khuat Quang Thuy was a soldier, a real soldier of the famous 320th Division, who, together with his teammates, carried guns and ran all night through the forest to carry out the special mission of blocking Highway 7, preventing the enemy from withdrawing from the Central Highlands along Highway 7 to the Tuy Hoa plain ( Phu Yen ).

In 1985, Khuat Quang Thuy returned to the Central Highlands from Hanoi. He and I wandered around some places where he said he had lived and fought. The two of us slept together on a single bed in the guest house of the Kbang town committee, and he was both fat and... snored loudly. During that trip, he wrote a series of works about the Central Highlands and in the Central Highlands such as Tears of Wood (short story), Sending You the Green Forest Scout, The Sound of the Guitar (poem)...

That same year, 10 years after the restoration of peace, I met Nguyen Thuy Kha in Pleiku. I went to Cu Hanh airport to pick him up. At that time, there were only two flights from Hanoi a week, using Soviet AN24 aircraft. Two days after arriving in Pleiku, Kha played a guitar and sang to me a song he had just composed: Peaceful Flights, with the chorus: Flights to the Central Highlands, peaceful flights, flights to Pleiku, flights without bombs ...

After that, I went with Kha to the northern Central Highlands. He said that during the war, he had laid down communication wires there, and many of his comrades had died there. When he arrived at Dak To airport, he saw people drying rice and wrote a very good poem: Children running on rice , an image that evokes a lot of emotions for people who used to live in the countryside, and he was from Hai Phong.

Writer Bao Ninh, during a cross-country trip, suddenly left the group and went back to Dak To alone, even though the night before, he had stayed at my house in Pleiku, nearly 200 km away from Dak To. Although Nguyen Trong Tao, Van Nhu Cuong, Trung Trung Dinh... all told him to stop following the group, he still decided to return, just to burn incense for his comrades, those who had fought with him, and to vaguely recall his image in the famous novel The Sorrow of War .

One night, as I was getting ready for bed, the phone rang. Veteran Nguyen Trong Luan called, asking where he lived so he could bring a gift. The gift was a jar of dry rock moss, a Ninh Binh rock moss that I often praised as delicious because I remembered the time when I was a child in my maternal hometown, and my writer friend Suong Nguyet Minh indulged me by going to "search" for it to send.

And it turns out that this Mr. Nguyen Trong Luan was also a soldier of the 3rd Corps, also participated in the famous Route 7 battle, now returning to visit the old battlefield. Now he has also become a writer, just participated in a very good documentary that was recently shown on television: Thanh Hoi , looking back to those days in March 1975. The film has sobs, has sad scenes and tears...

Back to Route 7, at that time, in addition to the book In the Whirlwind by Khuat Quang Thuy, the other side had a very good book by CIA intelligence officer Frank Snepp, the book The Panic of Escape .

And the remnants of that flight still remain. There are reunions but not yet reunions, and there are still losses, even after 50 years.

Like the story of Mr. Luc Van Tien and Mrs. Nguyen Thi Khiem, in 1975, in a general panic, the whole family followed Highway 7 to Tuy Hoa. At the foot of To Na Pass, they lost their daughter named Luc Thi Hoa, who was 7 years old at that time. They decided to stay and look for their daughter. They searched in pain, despair, sorrow, and regret. It turned out that Hoa had run away during the night and was picked up and raised by a Jrai family in Ia Rsươm commune, Krong Pa district.

The little girl still remembered her name was Hoa but had become a real Jrai. When her biological parents found her and recognized her by the birthmark on her cheek, Hoa married a young Jrai man. After so many tears and visits..., the adoptive parents finally agreed to let the biological parents take care of their child.

A few years later, this Jrai woman of Kinh origin brought her husband and children back to visit her parents in Pleiku. Mr. and Mrs. Tien bought Hoa and her husband a house next to theirs. When I came to find her, Hoa already had 3 children: Rlan Luc Ma Chinh, Rlan Luc My Hanh and Rlan Luc Lai Duc. The oldest child was in college, the second was in 11th grade and the third was in 9th grade.

And Hoa still prefers to live in the village, not in the city...

There are many more, stories from the past, still full of anxiety today...

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/nhung-ngay-thang-ay-185250429155817582.htm