Girls’ wartime sacrifice inspires new play

HÀ NỘI — The play Khoảng Trời Con Gái (Girl’s Sky) will be performed at Đồng Lộc T-junction on July 12th to commemorate 10 young female volunteers as part of the 50th anniversary of the Đồng Lộc Victory.

The play aims to offer a high-end war-themed performance to local people, according to organiser Nguyễn Văn Ngà, head of the Ethnic Culture and Communication Research Institute.

“This will be a chance to recall a glorious time of the nation,” said Ngà. “Through the performance, we want people, including the youth, to get to know more about the sacrifice of 10 volunteers at Đồng Lộc T-junction to be proud of our history.”

The Đồng Lộc T-junction at Đồng Lộc Commune, Can Lộc District in the central province of Hà Tĩnh and located on the Hồ Chí Minh Trail, is dedicated to the 10 female volunteers who sacrificed their lives to ensure the safe operation of the war supplies transport route linking to the southern front on July 24, 1968.

At that time, in order to keep traffic flowing to the southern front, all human resources were mobilised. At noon on the 15th day of bombing, a bomb fell very close to the mouth of the cave where the 10 transport volunteers, aged from 17 to 24, were while trying to level bomb craters to reopen the intersection. The bomb killed them all.

The play was penned by Nguyễn Sỹ Đại, who has a doctorate in literature. It consists of two acts and nine scenes about the girls who devoted their youth to the cause of national liberation and reunification.

The title of the play was inspired by the poem Khoảng Trời – Hố Bom (The Sky – Bomb Crater) by Lâm Thị Mỹ Dạ.

“When I passed craters and looked at the puddles I thought about the sky in the girls’ eyes,” said author Đại. “I wished that the sky in their eyes is blue forever and that these images will make people remember them always.”