Awarding prizes for the writing and memorabilia collection contest "Love in War"

Launched in July 2020, the "Love in War" writing and storytelling campaign, organized by the "Soldier's Heart" Club in collaboration with the Vietnam Women's Museum and the "Forever 20" Fund, aims to discover beautiful and touching love stories that helped soldiers overcome hardships and bombs; and to find examples of silent sacrifice by women on the home front in building love and family happiness, thereby empowering those on the front lines to defeat the enemy…

The campaign was originally planned to run for three years and end in 2023, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Organizing Committee adjusted the name, encouraging authors to write and publish books based on real-life stories, with content honoring and paying tribute, combined with collecting memorabilia, and extended it until 2025.

The winning entries of the

The winning entries of the "Love in War" writing and storytelling campaign (2020 - 2025) (photo by the Organizing Committee).

To date, after five years of implementation, the campaign to write and collect memorabilia on "Love in War" has been a great success. Hundreds of works with profound humanistic significance have been licensed for publication and publicly distributed. Hundreds of valuable memorabilia have been donated. Many cultural events honoring and paying tribute have been organized, with the consensus and high appreciation of public opinion.

The organizing committee awarded the first prize to the work "Life Lives On" by martyr Tran Minh Tien (1945 – 1968). The book, comprising 508 pages, was published by the Science, Technology and Communications Publishing House and consists of two parts: "Returning in a Dream" and "Love Letters Through the War".

The Bronze Award went to 7 works: “Soldier,” a battlefield diary by Pham Huu Tham; “Battlefield and Homeland,” a memoir by Phan Van Lai; “Forever a Soldier,” an autobiography by Dang Ngoc Da; “Phuong,” an autobiography by Pham Kieu Phuong; “Southern Campaign, Northern War,” an autobiography by Ha Minh Son; “Runner-up Cinderella,” an autobiography by Le Thy Binh; and “Homeland in the Heart of a Soldier,” a collection of essays by Dang Sy Ngoc.

As part of the program, the organizers introduced a collection of portraits of "Private Soldiers in Wartime".

According to Colonel and writer Dang Vuong Hung, founder of the "Heart of Vietnamese Soldiers" organization, privates and corporals were the most frequently killed in the war. Most of them fell at the age of 18-20, while still possessing the enthusiasm, innocence, and purity of youth…

Some portraits from the

Some portraits from the "Wartime Private Soldiers" collection (photo by the Organizing Committee).

With that in mind, the "Heart of Vietnamese Soldiers" organization, in collaboration with the "Forever 20" Club, is creating a collection of portraits to honor privates and corporals who served in the resistance war, collectively titled "Wartime Privates". Specifically, they are collecting black and white photographs of heroes, martyrs, veterans, and former police officers from the time they first enlisted.

The collection was introduced to coincide with the 10th anniversary (2015 - 2025) and the 5th anniversary (2020 - 2025) of the "Heart of Vietnamese Soldiers" organization.

“In keeping with the spirit of ‘Connecting and Sharing – Honoring and Showing Gratitude,’ we would like to begin by introducing some portraits that have been restored in color from black and white photographs by a group of young artists. Many years ago, when they first enlisted, they were young men and women in their late teens and early twenties, very young, handsome, and beautiful. Today, they are all grandparents, with gray hair and wrinkled skin. But none of them have forgotten the heroic and proud years of their youth when they dedicated themselves to their homeland and country,” Colonel Dang Vuong Hung shared.

Through this activity, the head of the "Heart of Vietnamese Soldiers" organization hopes that the community will show concern, gratitude, and respect for soldiers who silently dedicated their youth to the country and sacrificed themselves in war.

From the pages of books to the reconstructed portraits, the overarching theme of the event is the effort to revive memories and restore the rightful place of the ordinary people who made history.

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