In-depth
Australian vet returns Vietnamese soldier's personal effects
  • By Trung Kien – Van Son | dtinews.vn | April 03, 2012 05:30 PM
 >>  Poem to go home in spirit of peace

Australian war veteran Laurens Wildeboer, has returned to Vietnam and handed over poetry he looted from a dead Vietnamese soldier that he had held for 40 years.

 

Wildeboer handed over the poetry and other personal effects to dead soldier’s mother

He arrived in Long An Commune, in the southern province of Dong Nai’s Long Thanh District, hometown of the deceased Phan Van Ban, on the morning of April 3.

He handed over the poetry and other personal effects to the dead soldier’s mother.

Wildeboer apologised to Phan’s family and said that he felt regrets for what had happened in the past.

“Ban and many other Vietnamese soldiers devoted their lives to their nation’s liberty,” the Australian veteran said.

Laurens Wildeboer was 20 when he arrived in South Vietnam in January 1968 to fight against the growing National Liberation Front movement. Phan Van Ban, the soldier poet, was one of the guerrillas.

Wildeboer had no idea who Phan was, but had often wondered whether he had surviving relatives.

For four decades he kept the Vietnamese soldier's handwritten poetry, another notebook with details of his life, and a scarf, which he looted from a battlefield where Phan was killed in March, 1969.

Wildeboer, now 64, lives in Kyneton with his wife, but the memories of the war have never left him.

This is his first visit to Vietnam in 43 years.

Wildeboer’s return to Vietnam:

Tears at the meeting

Phan’s mother places her son’s objects on the altar



Phan’s mother reads her son’s writings

Leave your comment on this story