Sacred journey bringing heroic martyrs back

Sticking to the deep forest, meticulously searching for every inch of land

After more than 3 months of deployment, the campaign has collected 58 sets of martyrs' remains in Quang Tri and Laos. The forces also excavated and took samples of 721 martyrs' graves, collecting 598 samples that met the requirements for DNA testing.

To bring them back after decades of lying in deep forests and mountains, soldiers of the Team for Searching and Repatriating Martyrs' Remains of Economic - National Defense Team 337 have stayed in the border area between Vietnam and Laos.

In June, the border sun is like burning fire. From 6 am, the soldiers have prepared military equipment and tools, marching into the deep forest of Cha Ly mountain to perform their duties.

Arriving at the bank of Cha Ly stream, putting aside their motorbikes, they walked across the jagged rocky fields to climb onto a steep hill. Here, the traces of a temporary cemetery from wartime have been completely erased by time and the old forest. No longer having tombstones, the Repatriation Team must rely on the rules passed down from previous generations: When buried, the graves are usually located in vertical or horizontal rows, heads facing the top of the hill and feet downstream towards the stream, each grave is about 1 to 1.2m apart.

In the middle of a steep hill, for nearly a month, soldiers have been diligently digging long rows of acupuncture points under the scorching forest sun.

Lieutenant Colonel Phan Dinh Phi - Team Leader of the Repatriation Team - shared that the excavation procedure was meticulously carried out from bottom to top. Each grave was in charge of two soldiers, one person carefully using hoes and shovels, and one person above gently rubbed each handful of red soil to carefully search for each button, hammock piece or remaining bone sample.

8 sets of martyrs' remains found in Cha Ly forest, that many times tears of happiness rolled down.

Cherishing each biological sample

According to the Steering Committee for searching, repatriating and identifying martyrs' remains of Quang Tri province, from June 8, the locality has begun to expand the excavation and collection of biological samples of martyrs' remains for DNA testing for more than 1,300 graves that have not been identified at Ba Doc Martyrs' Cemetery (Nam Trach commune).

This is the 3rd cemetery in Quang Tri to deploy biological sample collection, after Truong Son National Martyrs' Cemetery with 93 completed graves and Road 9 National Martyrs' Cemetery with 5,929 graves being sampled from June 5, 2026.

The core force is Team 584 and Team 589 under the Provincial Military Command, in coordination with the Departments of Home Affairs, Health, Public Security and local authorities.

Present at the National Martyrs' Cemetery of Road 9 on this occasion, we witnessed the extremely hard work of taking samples from the graves of martyrs whose identities have not been identified. From 6:30 AM to 5:00 PM every day, dozens of officers and soldiers of Team 584 (Political Department, Quang Tri Provincial Military Command) and doctors and nurses are divided into groups to perform their duties.

Because the graves were built solidly through many periods, soldiers had to use specialized hammers and chisels to remove the concrete blocks before raising the graves. The work requires a lot of effort but must be handled skillfully so as not to affect the remains inside. To reduce the burden, soldiers self-made a field pulley system right at the scene.

The sampling process takes place strictly through 8 steps and takes up to 16 photos from exhumation to completion to digitize data.

Lieutenant Colonel Ngo Thanh Liem - Team Leader of Team 584 - shared that although the work of chiseling concrete under the scorching sun is very strenuous, the unit always encourages officers, soldiers and doctors to promote the highest sense of responsibility, work overtime to ensure progress.

In this peak campaign, the province plans to excavate and collect DNA testing samples for more than 22,000 graves of unidentified martyrs. The forces have been thoroughly trained in the procedures of the Ministry of National Defense...