Students go to war

Having just finished their second semester exams, students from universities in the North went for a physical examination, preparing to leave. When entering university, most students are 18 years old enough to join the army, and do not need to “lend their age to the country”. However, many students have to “lend their health”. Many short and light students have to put rocks in their pockets, or ask healthy friends to check their weight and height, “cheating” on their weight and height. There are as many volunteer applications for students joining the army, many of which are written and signed in blood. Writing volunteer applications, but deep down, most students cannot help but regret their studies. The university entrance exams during the war against the US had a very strict selection ratio, almost “one out of ten”. Therefore, after passing the university entrance exam, most students want to study straight through to get a diploma. But because the Fatherland called, "the enemy forced us to take up arms", there was a general mobilization order, all students who passed the military service were ready to "put down their pens and hit the road".

New students enlisted in September 1971

Before the day of enlistment, I went home to tell my mother that “I am going to the South”. I guessed that motherly love would make my mother worry and cry for me. But no, I looked at my mother’s face, waiting, my mother did not shed a single tear. She just said indifferently: “Going to war is the duty of men in troubled times”. That night I lay there crying silently. I thought: my mother had sold her son to the country. I resented my mother, but I did not know that on the other side of the wall, my mother was also crying silently. Later I found out that my mother had known that I had been selected for military service, so she tried to be tough so that her son could confidently go on his journey.

We enlisted in the rainy season. The Red River was rising, threatening to flood the entire capital city. My future comrades and I moved the entire library of the Faculty of Literature at Hanoi University from the first floor to the fourth floor, in case of flooding. As we carried each stack of books up, we held the textbooks we had not yet studied in front of our chests. There were so many books we had not read, so many final year textbooks we had not yet studied. We had the idea of ​​​​taking a shortcut, putting a few books in our chest pockets, and taking them with us to the battlefield. We knew that the librarian had turned a blind eye, turned his back, and created conditions for us to "steal public property". But then, no opportunistic embezzlement happened. We knew that when going to the battlefield, priority should be given to guns and ammunition. The library books at that time were all valuable assets, and we needed to keep them intact for our friends to continue studying.

6971 alumni of Hanoi National University

To reassure those who went to war, universities announced that they would keep their students’ academic results. Final year students were recognized as graduating from university with special distinction, even though they had not defended their thesis and the school had not yet printed their diplomas. Their academic records were kept, waiting for the students to return from war to continue their studies. Of course, the academic results were kept, including the “bad” results. Some students who were naturally “allergic to foreign languages” and failed the Russian exam joked with each other: Going to war was also to postpone the Russian exam. And if they died, they would kill two birds with one stone, and would not have to take the Russian exam again.

Our academic results were preserved and our transcripts were kept intact, but there were some subjects in which we did not know how many points we got. That was the case of Professor Nguyen Van Khoa’s Western Literature course. The school at that time allowed our teacher Khoa to violate the regulations: not letting students who joined the army know their academic results. He was the Platoon Leader of the Military Intelligence Platoon during the Dien Bien Phu campaign. This former soldier against the French was given priority by the school in not returning the exam papers to students who went to war. In front of the students who joined the army to say goodbye, the teacher declared: “I will keep all your test papers, not submit them to the teaching staff, wait until you return victoriously to receive your scores and papers. You can rest assured that you will all be given priority to add extra points. This point is outside the Western Literature point. It is the “point of life”. Because there is a major subject, the major curriculum is the subject of love for the Fatherland, you have studied it, and when you go to war, you deserve a score of Ten. I will keep your test papers in the bookshelf, waiting for you to return victoriously”. We still remember the teacher’s words today. By keeping the test papers and not returning them, he created for us talismans, keeping a belief, a hope to return to the rear, when we held guns on the front lines. We also did not expect that after the complete liberation of the South, when we returned to school, met the teacher, received our papers, it was not enough. Some of the papers with the highest scores, without the need for “priority points,” were not recognized. Teachers and students cried together. Our friends had been left behind on the battlefield forever.

Monument to honor officers and students of Hanoi University who joined the army and participated in the resistance war against America to save the country.

In the army that went to battle that day, we also had teachers accompanying us. They were soldiers who were “older” than us, but were easily recognized by their glasses and the guitars on their shoulders. Leaving the lecture hall, teachers from many universities were organized into a teaching cadre company. That was the company with the highest “brainpower” and was very rich in artistic talent. This teacher company had established a light orchestra, thanks to dozens of non-professional artists but they were talented men who went to battle.

September 6, 1971 has gone down in the history of Vietnamese universities as the largest military launch event of universities in the North. The night of September 5 and the morning of September 6 that year, we knew it was a sleepless autumn night for many universities. The enlisted students received from their girlfriends handkerchiefs embroidered with blue daisies, notebooks with mementos, envelopes and “one and two cents” stamps that they did not know if they would ever use up in their lives as soldiers on the battlefield. To overcome sentimentality, regret, and sadness, everyone focused on talking about the Fatherland. And everyone sympathized with the very new verses of the war poet Pham Tien Duat:

I left today was not early
The country has been on the march for decades.
I came today is not late
The country is still at war.