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The
New York Times
A War Story's Missing Pages:
Vietnam Forgets Those Who Lost
by SETH MYDANS
THU DUC, Vietnam — The eyes of Cpl. Le Van Nao have been gouged out of the enamel portrait on his tombstone in the abandoned South Vietnamese military cemetery where he was buried with honors 31 years ago.
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Wandering cows tear at dry tufts of grass where acres of similar tombstones lean this way and that, many of them smashed and vandalized, some uprooted and lying on the ground beside empty graves.
Just across a nearby highway lies the carefully tended grave of Capt. Nguyen Xuan Truong, who also died in 1969 at the height of the Vietnam War. He is one of thousands of soldiers on the victorious Communist side who are buried in what is known as a "martyrs' cemetery," their tombstones surrounded by raked gravel paths and beds of flowers.
On official holidays formal ceremonies are held to honor these fallen Communist soldiers. But just 10 miles away to the south, many people in Ho Chi Minh City — formerly called Saigon — do not even know of the existence of the abandoned graveyard across the road.
