Tay Tien Veterans Meet

Eighty two Tay Tien Regiment veterans returned to Hoa Binh yesterday to take part in a ceremony to name a city street after their unit.

The Tay Tien (Advance to the West) Regiment was founded during the resistance war against France.

Standing next to the the Tay Tien Memorial at Cun Hill in Hoa Binh, which stands at the start of the new Tay Tien Street, Tran Quang Thuong, 92, the former deputy commander of the Tay Tien Regiment said: “60 years ago, this road was full of trees, and there were tigers hunting prey. The road to the North West was very hard and many of my comrades died so that we could open this road. They sacrificed their lives fighting against the enemy, wild animals, serious illnesses, etc”.

The Tay Tien Regiment was founded in 1947 (and was named the 52 Regiment at the time). The first unit was made up of soldiers from the liberation forces of Viet Bac, Hanoi militants, workers of the former regime, intellectuals and even monks.

In his poem entitled “Tay Tien”, poet Quang Dung said that the Tay Tien Regiment was a unit for whose soldiers “hair doesn’t grow”, due to the difficult conditions in the jungle.

Moreover, the soldiers in the unit at that time did not have uniforms, and just wore what they had brought with them. Most of which was brown in colour. Most of them had only one set of clothes; especially for those who had ran away from their families to join the unit.

They started fires to fight off the freezing cold, and jumped into the river water to wash their clothes and themselves at the same time.

“From commanders to soldiers, we had to use sharp knives to shave our hair because of head lice. Many of us died of diseases carried by the head lice as well as malaria,” said Deputy Commander Thuong.

Thuong recalled that once the unit stopped to rest and wash clothes near a stream, when they were suddenly attacked by the French in an attempt to capture them. One soldier in the unit luckily escaped, as the enemy could not catch him because he was naked and hairless.

After that incident, everyone, from the commander to the common soldiers in the unit preferred having shaved heads.

Professor L Hung Lam, contact officer for Tay Tien veterans, said that if all the members who had ever served in the unit could meet together today, they would number in the thousands.

“60 years have gone by, there only 82 of us left now, living across the country, who can gather here,” said Lam.

Lam added that, in March, 1947, the unit moved from Hoa Binh to the Vietnam-Laos border. After marching over the high mountains and jungles, upon arriving at Sam Nua (Laos), many of the soldiers’ feet had became as hard as rock.

The Tay Tien Regiment’s weapons were a mixture of various different makes and models, but most were very simple. In particular, there was a Muong ethnic minority soldier who used a bow and arrows; the enemy was very afraid of him.

“The Tay Tien Regiment soldiers were also quite good at martial arts and were always ready to sacrifice their lives for the country,” Lam added.

According to Lam, many of the 82 surviving Tay Tien veterans decided to stay and work in the North West, where they used to fight, after the end of the wars.

“Wherever we are, the spirit of the Tay Tien Regiment and their families is still there for the country and the people,” said Lam.

Source: Tuoi Tre