Life in Vietnam

Vietnam has always had a tradition of women joining the army. When the war is ignited, there will always be many women who put down their responsibility of caring for each other and educating their children and enthusiastically join the war. They are as cold-blooded as men and fight the enemy with their bare hands.

However, in modern wars with great disparity in strength, such as the Vietnam War, due to long-term fighting in tropical jungles, the hard life has damaged the health of Vietnamese female soldiers and made them look old. When they come back from the battlefield, they find that they have not become heroes, and many people have become "yesterday's yellow flowers" that no one wants.

They responded to the call of the country to fight the enemy. However, when peace came, I found that I had been abandoned by my own society. They voluntarily took up arms and joined the largest female soldier team in modern warfare. They fought in the Vietnam War for many years, with a traditional dream in their hearts: when peace comes, they will go home to find a good husband, raise a group of children and enjoy a peaceful life like other ordinary Vietnamese women.

They are forgotten by men. Many Vietnamese female soldiers have not had a good life. 1975 When the Vietnam War ended, they returned to their hometown. However, due to long-term hard life in the tropical jungle and suffering from diseases and malnutrition, they became precocious and unpopular with men. They also want to marry young men who come back from the army, but they seem to ignore the wishes of these female soldiers. The man's parents don't want his son to marry a woman who looks too weak to have children.

60 miles south of Hanoi, there is a small town called Ningping. During the Vietnam War, 500 female soldiers went to the battlefield. Wu is one of them. In an interview with the media, she truthfully said that jungle life made me too old. Finally I found a good man. He wants to marry me, but his parents won't allow it. The man didn't want to leave her, but in the end she persuaded him. She suffered from malaria and ate badly when she was a soldier. After the war, she was too weak to have children for him.

Female soldiers like Wu are now in their fifties. They get together and often talk about the lost youth in the long mountains. They say that life is more difficult after coming back from the battlefield. They are sad that they have been forgotten for many years.

Vietnam has always had a tradition of women joining the army. Sisters who fought on the battlefield were honored as national heroes. There are even female generals who gave birth to children on the battlefield and fought with them on their backs. In the war between the United States and Vietnam, thousands of women, mostly single young women, took part in unarmed combat with the enemy. They operate air defense weapons like men, repair roads that are often bombed by enemy planes, and patrol mixed military camps. Other female soldiers are responsible for organizing intelligence and spy teams, or transporting troops and materials by ship.

A female soldier serving in the 559th Brigade recalled that they lived with male soldiers and slept in the same room, but there was no physical contact with each other because people's ideas were still very conservative. No one in her barracks is pregnant. She said that they also longed for love at that time, but they could only hide it in their hearts. On one occasion, the US military bombed Mei Shiyan's commune farm, killing 100 people, including many of her relatives, so she volunteered to participate in the war. She recalled that at that time, she was only 35 kilograms. Recruiters thought she was so thin and didn't want her, so they threatened to jump off the bridge to commit suicide and finally persuaded them to keep her. In the Vietnam War, she accidentally stepped on a mine and hurt her leg. So far, she walks with a limp.

In the 1980s, in order to reduce the isolation of female soldiers, the Vietnamese government lifted the ban on unmarried children, and announced that single mothers and families with children born out of wedlock would also be regarded as family units and have the right to acquire land. Thousands of Vietnamese women gave birth to children in the form of one-night stands.

Today, Vietnamese women are protected by the Constitution and enjoy equal status with men. One third of the members of the National Assembly are women. The vice president of the country also has a woman. Women enjoy the same salary as men in the government and hold important positions in state-owned and private enterprises. They either farm in farmland or set foot in the market and become the economic pillar of Vietnam.

Sociologists and economists believe that Vietnamese women's achievements, high social status and good treatment are not unrelated to their important role in the war. Although the importance is not enough, Vietnamese women have begun to be universally respected by Vietnamese society for their contributions in the war.

199 1 the mother who lost her son in the war was awarded the title of "heroic mother" and enjoyed special state allowance.