(VOVworld) – Lo Thi Doi is one of the former young volunteers in Dien Bien province who took part in the Dien Bien Phu campaign in 1954. She was active in encouraging the people to provide soldiers with food during the campaign. 

Doi, who is already 100 years old, still remembers the old days of the resistance against the French. Like other Thai ethnic girls in Muong Phang, Doi learned to work on burnt-over land and to weave when she was little. The turning point in her life was when she joined the local militia. Her unit was tasked with transporting ammunition and wounded soldiers, cooking, repairing roads, and assisting combat soldiers. When French forces reinforced paratroopers to prepare for the Dien Bien Phu campaign by the end of 1953, they erected stations and checkpoints on all the routes leading to the battlefield. Enemy planes scoured the entire area to cut the supply of logistics to Vietnamese soldiers. The battlefield in Xom hamlet near Muong Phang was facing severe food shortages. Doi and her unit donated and collected nearly 9 tonnes of rice from the people. Doi recalls the difficulties they encountered when trying to get enough food for the soldiers: “I told the people that if we did not donate food, the soldiers could not be able to fight and we would be killed all. We gave the collected rice to commander Tieu. We did not cook but fry the rice and distribute it to the soldiers.”

Doi said she has many memories of General Vo Nguyen Giap, Commander of the Dien Bien Phu campaign. General Giap was working at the campaign command in Muong Phang. When the campaign was victorious, the General invited Doi to meet him in Hanoi. He asked her about the life of local people and the revolutionary movement in Muong Phang, Doi says: “General Giap told me to keep working until retirement. I continued to work for another 20 years since I met him. I intended to visit his native village but it was during wartime so I could not do it.”

As the 60^th anniversary of the Dien Bien Phu victory approaches, Doi’s feeling is mixed with both happiness and sadness. She is proud to have contributed to this victory but feels sorry for General Giap not being around.