Searching for the truth about my mother
When I was 16 months old my mother
went to war. Duong Thi Xuan Quy became North Vietnam's first female war
correspondent, but - and it's a familiar story in a country where three
million died - she never came home. We are still searching for her
remains.
My mother was 27 when she decided it was time to prove herself as a
journalist. She sought approval from the family, pleading with her
father to sign the papers and let her cover the Vietnam War. She told
him this was the opportunity of a lifetime, a chance to witness history
unfolding.
She chose to go to central Vietnam which had the reputation of being
the fiercest battlefield in the conflict. Full of energy and
determination, she left Hanoi and went on foot along the Ho Chi Minh
trail - a network of jungle and mountain paths used by North Vietnam to
send supplies and troops to the South.
She was the only woman in a group of more than 100 writers, artists,
musicians and photographers on the trail at that time.
Quy carried her own food, a hammock to sleep in at night and the rest
of her belongings on her back - her pack weighed as much as she did.
It
took her two months to reach a camp for writers at a Vietcong holdout in
the mountains west of Da Nang. Here she was reunited with my father,
also a journalist, who had left to cover the war a year earlier. They
didn't have long together, though - they were embedded with different
units and involved in different operations.
Disappeared
Then, on a spring night in 1969, Quy disappeared. The group of
Vietcong guerrillas she was accompanying was caught in an operation by
South Korean marines, who fought alongside US troops.
The marines opened fire and Quy fell at the foot of a guerrilla, who
then lobbed a grenade at the attackers to hold them off. The guerrillas
successfully escaped but left Quy behind assuming she was dead. She was
never seen again.
It's 40 years since the war ended but her remains still have not been
found. My mother's story, and the search for the facts about what
happened to her as well as for her physical remains, is still a cause of
great anguish for my family.
We have visited the area many times over the years.
A trip back to Vietnam this year was part of my continuing search. I
have contacted US and Korean veterans' groups for information and they
have promised to try to help us. We have even employed clairvoyants in
the hope that they could tell us something.
We excavated the entire area by hand, helped by local farmers. All
that has been found are a single button and a hair clip, both possibly
hers but possibly not.
In Quy's memory
On the spot where Quy was last seen, we erected a stone in her memory
with the help of local villagers. We took it from Da Nang's Marble
Mountains - a wartime holdout for communist fighters, and today a
tourist destination. It comforts us to know that her soul now has
somewhere to rest. But we still have many questions.
We talk about her almost every time I call home.
There is barely a family in this country who wasn't touched by the
"American War", and that doesn't still grieve for someone who was lost
in the conflict.
In Vietnam, we venerate our ancestors. Almost every home in this
country of 90 million people has an altar where prayers are offered to
parents, grandparents and others who have died. The past is never truly
gone.
Many years after she died, my family handed me a copy of my mother's
diary - she left it with my father before accompanying the guerrillas
into the battlefield. I was shocked to realise that she wrote to me
every single day.
In one entry, while describing how she had escaped an American
bombardment that killed units of North Vietnamese soldiers ahead of her
and behind her on the Ho Chi Minh trail, she wrote that leaving me to
cover the war was the hardest decision she ever made.
She spoke of her fear of dying and not being able to bring me up.
This thought was on her mind so much that she promised to return home
after covering the operation, the very one in which she lost her life.
To my dearest daughter
In another one, she detailed how she marked my second birthday in the
jungle. She wrote, ''To my dearest daughter, little Ly. My little one,
today is a beautiful day where I am. The sunlight is blooming, so fresh
and strong after days of rain. Your birthday has to be beautiful. But my
poor little one, you don't get a birthday present, sweets and new
clothes from me on your special day. My heart breaks when I think of
you.''
Six years after she wrote those words, on 30 April 1975, the day that
South Vietnam finally fell to the communist forces of the North, my
family experienced both jubilation and grief.
In the North, as a member of the Child Pioneer Brigade, I was
marching through the streets of Hanoi, head held high, waving a
home-made communist flag and singing revolutionary songs.
A few days earlier, and after years away, my father had returned from
the war, finally confirming the news of my mother's death.
Although her death had been suspected, my grandmother trembled and
quickly grasped the side of a cupboard, the nearest support she could
find. She stood like that, in silence, for a long time.
I was at her side. I clutched my grandmother's hands, feeling lost.
It was the first time I had seen my father since I was a baby.
Sorrow or happiness
The whole family didn't know how we should feel - sorrow or
happiness. At night we mourned my mother's death. In sunlight we
laughed, in darkness we cried. That's the way it was.
In the following days, we set aside our grief to celebrate the return
of my father and the end to war.
There was proud talk of a family member who had been part of the
North Vietnamese delegation that negotiated the 1973 Paris Peace Accords
on ending the conflict.
1954 - Geneva Accords signed dividing Vietnam in two - the communist
North helps guerrillas in the South fight US backed Southern troops
1964 - US bombs targets in North Vietnam
1965 - The first US combat troops arrive in Vietnam
1973 - The Paris Peace Accords on "Ending the War and Restoring Peace
in Vietnam" are signed, officially ending direct US involvement - but
fighting between North and South continues
30 April 1975 - North Vietnamese troops enter Saigon - South Vietnam
is controlled by communist forces and the country is reunited ending the
war It's estimated that more than three million people were killed in
the conflict We were also excited about a reunion with the half of the
family that lived in the South.
But 1,500km away in Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, a member of our
family, a lieutenant colonel in the South Vietnamese army, was taken
away by North Vietnamese forces. He spent the next 13 years in a
re-education camp. Another member, who worked as a doctor in a military
hospital, also served four years in a camp for having treated soldiers
who fought against the North.
But one relative managed to get through a sea of frantic civilians,
on to a US ship and left Vietnam.
Many more members of the family in the South took to the sea or left
by air fearing reprisals from the North. They later resettled in the US,
Canada, France and Belgium. Forty years on, some still refuse to return
home to Vietnam. "We don't want to open an old wound and to be hurt,"
they say.
Family gatherings
Today, my family avoids mentioning the conflict at family gatherings.
We remain deeply aware that good memories from some could cause pain to
others.
We still refer to each other as "the Down-South half" and "the
Up-North lot".
One half talks of the conflict as the Vietnam War and the other as
the Resistance War against the US.
Yet we survived. And my mother is remembered. Not long ago, I found a
street named after her in the city of Da Nang, near roads named after my
grandfather and three other members of the family.
Quy's family were well known. During the days of French rule, in the
late 1930s, her father was a member of Parliament.
He was also the founder and editor of several newspapers and
magazines, some of which were later closed by the French for being vocal
in their opposition to colonial rule.
Her elder sister had been part of the national independence movement
against the French.
In 1945 when Ho Chi Minh publicly proclaimed Vietnam's independence
in a square in central Hanoi, a member of the family hoisted the
national flag. Another was the first female radio announcer on Voice of
Vietnam.
We think of my mother almost every day. I have not given up hope that
one day we will find her final resting place, her remains, and discover
what happened to her.
As for me, my mother was the reason why I became a journalist. Now I
work for the BBC and have been to conflict zones in Afghanistan, Iraq,
Yemen, North Africa and the Middle East. By following in her footsteps,
I feel close to her. I live for the life that she lost too soon.
- BBC World Service |