To be honest, by that time I was fully recovered – I had even forgotten about the pain I had been through. I thought it was wrong that because I had been ill years earlier, this should determine my fate today … particularly since I had made a full recovery. I couldn’t help but be furious: tuberculosis had already taken so much from me, I couldn’t let it take more. Fortunately for me, the war had just started, and there was still a chance I could fight. In the autumn of the same year, three military divisions arrived in the village, again in search of recruits. One of the divisions was the same naval unit I had tried to enlist with in the spring. Without hesitating I went off to join up. Having learnt from previous experience, this time, on the enlistment card under the heading ‘medical history’, I didn’t write anything. Leaving this blank, I thought they would accept me. However, the officer dealing with me (not the same man as before) saw me winded after only seven push-ups, so he politely declined my request to enlist. He told me, ‘I think you’d be better suited to the army. They will want you.’

I had no choice. I went in search of the army recruiters. It turned out that the army didn’t require all that much: they just spoke with me for a few minutes then handed me a uniform without any insignia. Of course, the fact that I wouldn’t be wearing blue navy fatigues filled me with regret, but I really didn’t have any other choice. The tuberculosis and the skilled nature of the tailoring business had conspired to make me frail, and the constant steam that billowed out from the irons had left my complexion pale and delicate. I must have appeared very feeble. I knew that if it weren’t for the war, I’d never have been recruited. In a way, that I’d been accepted was just as Chairman Hồ Chí Minh had said in one of his broadcasts: war brings unexpected experiences to many men.

On 26 September in 1972, I and eight other young men hopped into an army transport and left the village of Lạc Sơn.

As the truck pulled away from the village I never once thought that this path I was now on would take me away from Lạc Sơn for ever.

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