Some US veterans recently came to Vietnam to present special keepsakes of an American veteran, Henry Prunier, to the Hanoi-based Vietnam Military Museum.

A keepsake presented to the Vietnam Military History Museum by Mr. Prunier.

Prunier was a member of the Deer Team, who parachuted into Tan Trao to provide small arms and training to the Viet Minh and then marched with General Vo Nguyen Giap to the Central Highlands. His keepsakes commemorate a special period in the Vietnam-US relationship before 1945.

The keepsakes of Henry Prunier comprise diary pages and black-and-white photos taken in Tuyen Quang; a uniform issued by the US army in 1946, after he returned home from Vietnam; a name card in Vietnamese and Chinese language of the chief of the Viet My (Vietnam-US) company Dam Quang Trung (who was Senior Lieutenant General and Commander of the Military Zone 1 after that) that Trung presented him before he left Vietnam; a map drawn in pencil of the area where the Deer Team stayed in Tueyn Quang in 1945; and tapes with interviews and images of President Ho Chi Minh that he collected from many foreign news agencies.

These objects show that Vietnam and the US were friends and the one that enabled that relationship was President Ho Chi Minh. Members of the Office Strategic Services (OSS) and President Ho Chi Minh together established the Vietnam-US Company (led by Dam Quang Trung and major A. K Thomas, the leader of the Deer Team as advisor) to fight against the Japanese.

In 1944, Prunier attended a nine-month Vietnamese language course and earned a certificate from Berkeley University, which marked a turning-point in his life. In July 1945, at the age of 24, he and the Deer Team parachuted into Tan Trao, Tuyen Quang province and he worked as a translator.

The six-member Deer Team helped the Viet Minh train Vietnamese soldiers to use some kinds of weapons and to build temporary airports. The team also attended the launching ceremony of the insurrection against the Japanese and surrounded Japanese soldiers in Thai Nguyen. In his seven weeks in Vietnam, Prunier took careful note of events and acquired many keepsakes.

After the Japanese surrendered and Vietnam declared its independence, the Deer Team returned home on September 9, 1945. President Ho Chi Minh asked the team to convey a letter to the US government, asking President Truman to recognise Vietnam’s independence.

During the Vietnam War, Prunier participated in the antiwar movement in the US with American students.

Before giving the keepsakes to some American veterans to bring to Vietnam, Prunier said: “If the Truman administration had accepted President Ho Chi Minh’s goodwill and friendly proposal, the relations between Vietnam and the US would have gone another way, without war and without the current Vietnamese Agent Orange victims.”

Lindsey Kiang, a former US marine colonel who is in Vietnam to collect materials and write a book about the Dien Bien Phu victory, agreed to classify and verify Henry Prunier’s keepsakes.

He said Prunier refused many museums in order to give his keepsakes to the Vietnam Military Museum. He felt that these keepsakes must be preserved at this museum.

The keepsakes were presented to the Vietnam Military Museum under the museum’s campaign to collect war keepsakes, which was launched in February 2009.

VietNamNet/TP