Pilgrimage follows in footsteps of wartime diarist Dang Thuy Tram
Heroine Dang Thuy Tram would be happy to know that her historical journal entries are being appreciated by Vietnamese readers and other readers from around the world.
Tram probably never would have guessed, as she sketched down her wartime thoughts, that one day, years after her death, hundreds of thousands of people would read through these entries, sympathising with her struggles and experiences.
Tram was a doctor during the American War, living on
Tram had moved from Ha Noi to the central
When American soldiers came across Tram’s body, they noticed a backpack lying next to her. Inside the backpack they found two journals. one of the soldiers took the journals home with him after the war and, 35 years later, in 2005, he returned copies of the journals to Tram’s family.
Tram’s family decided to publish these journals into a book, which became an immediate page turner with Vietnamese readers, with more than 400,000 copies selling in less than one year.
Following the rave reviews Tram’s journal entries received from Vietnamese audiences, tours began taking people around
According to Nguyen An, a leader of the Quang Ngai Tourism Company, the tour takes visitors past various locations Tram would have frequently gone to including Rau mountain, the emergency aid centre, Ta Thi Ninh’s house where Tram used to live, the Duc Pho dispensary where Tram was the director and finally to the place where Tram was killed.
Ta Thi Ninh, Nguyen Thi Cho and Tran Van Thuong, friends and colleagues of Tram during the war, began leading the tours, providing visitors with accounts of Tram’s life.
Ninh remembers how many local residents were impressed when Tram moved from Ha Noi to work in the
"We admired her because she had left her own life in Ha Noi to work in a fierce battlefield," said Ninh.
Tram lived with Ninh and her family for three years before she was killed.
"The day Tram died, my mother cried very much," Ninh says.
Friends remember
A former soldier of the Sao Vang Division, who used to pass through Duc Pho during the war, said he met Tram several times on the forest path.
"After 36 years I still see her smiling face in my mind, as if it were just yesterday when I saw her last. She was a very special person," he says.
Poet, Poliburo member and Head of the Party Central Committee’s Ideology and Culture Commission, Nguyen Khoa Diem, visited the Duc Pho District after he read Tram’s diary in an effort to understand the life of one of his acquaintances.
As he read through her journal entries, Diem discovered that Tram and he went to school together in grade ten at Ha Noi’s Chu Van An High School, although they were in different classes.
Diem and Tram did not know about each other and, after high school, they went their separate ways with Diem studying at the Teacher Training University and Tram studing at the Medicine University.
Scenic retreat
Many tourists find the scenery where Tram lived to be spectacular and, as they take the boat across
It is said that Tram passed through the valley many times. The tour takes visitors across the lake and into the high mountains covered in forest. The tour lasts about four hours from start to finish.
"We shall return..."
There was an American closely acquainted with the journals of Dang Thuy Tram, although he was not mentioned in them. His name was Fred Whitehurst. Fred was the soldier who took the journals back to
Fred’s brother, Rob Whitehurst, visited the district last month and said that he will come back soon to the area again with friends.
