PANO – I was among a delegation of nine reporters from the People Army’s Newspaper to come to the South to cover the developments in the battlefields, which were expected major events in Spring 1975.
As I remembered, after six days traveling by GAT truck, we stopped for a rest at Army Camp 2 at the crossroad of Khe Sanh – Huong Hoa in the west of Quang Tri province on January 28th 1975.
At this place, we had a very nice surprise; that was to meet the admirable female general, Nguyen Thi Dinh, who had been known nationwide as the deputy commander-in-chief of the South Vietnam liberation armed forces and the soul of the extremely fierce but heroic struggle in the South.
Poet Anh Ngoc (first from right) meets with General Nguyen Thi Dinh. File photo
We were impressed by her gentle smile, good sense of humour, and intelligence during talks with her.
She inquired after a lot about our career of journalism, and said that she was so interested in reading the PAN’s publications. This encouraged us a lot. Then she held that the station’s staff should take a good care of us as the job of war reporters was so hard.
Seeing our cameras, she asked to take a joint photo with us and actively formed us into a line just in a twinkling of an eye. Finally, she shook our hands with all of us and quickly disappeared as when she came.
Even when she has gone, we still talked a lot about her and thought that we would never forget the sweet memory with the first female general, who immortally represented for the beauties of Vietnamese women during the national long-lasting war.
Written by Poet Anh Ngoc, PAN’s former reporter Translated by Trung Thanh
Đăng ký: VietNam News