Following the witness's memory
At the martyrs' cemeteries, each grave is opened according to the correct procedure, each small bone fragment left is cherished, cleaned, sampled, and carefully sealed. In the sacred, quiet space, everyone understands that in those small glass tubes, there may be the greatest hope of a family that has waited for decades.
Through DNA testing results, functional agencies will compare with biological samples of relatives of martyrs to identify their identities, contributing to restoring the names of the Heroic Martyrs who bravely sacrificed for the cause of national liberation, construction and defense of the Fatherland, meeting the aspirations of relatives of martyrs' families and expressing the morality of "When drinking water, remember the source" of the nation.
Perhaps many people do not yet know that Dien Bien land is not only the resting place of martyrs who sacrificed themselves in the struggles to protect the Fatherland and gain national independence, especially in the Dien Bien Phu Campaign, but also the resting place of Vietnamese volunteer soldiers and experts who sacrificed themselves while performing noble international duties.
Every dry season, officers and soldiers performing the task of searching and gathering again cross mountains and forests, following the memories of witnesses and information from the government and people of friendly countries to bring them back to their motherland. That journey always accompanies the desire to identify the names and homeland of those who have dedicated their whole lives to the Fatherland and international obligations.
When the war ended, time and the harshness of nature erased many traces, causing many martyrs' remains to still be unidentified.
In 2013, when the Prime Minister issued the Project on searching for and repatriating martyrs' remains, the gratitude work in Dien Bien entered a new phase. The Steering Committee of 515 provinces was established, coordinating with military units, police, local authorities and veterans to review each dossier, each combat map, and each memory still preserved of those who directly fought on the battlefield.
That journey has never been easy
The terrain changed after decades, many areas have become residential areas, rice fields or construction sites. There were searches that lasted many days but no more traces were found. However, the soldiers on duty still did not give up, because they understood that under every inch of Dien Bien land there may still be comrades waiting to return.
According to Colonel Duong Quoc Long - Deputy Political Commissar of Dien Bien Provincial Military Command, if previously, identity identification mainly relied on artifacts or archives, today, science and technology are opening a new door.
An important milestone was just recorded in the first days of July 2026, the Steering Committee for searching for and identifying martyrs of Dien Bien province handed over 766 sets of martyrs' remains to the Military Forensic Institute for DNA testing. This is the largest handover of the locality in the 500-day and night campaign to complete the identification of martyrs' remains with missing information using DNA methods. To obtain those biological samples, it was a meticulous and responsible working process. Professional forces exhumed 1,687 graves at 5 martyrs' cemeteries including: A1, Him Lam, Tong Khao, Tuan Giao and Tua Chua; collected 1,299 samples that met the testing conditions. There were 96 graves that did not meet the conditions for DNA testing.
On the land of Dien Bien today, under that peaceful soil, there are still unfinished stories.
