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On Tuesday, 10 September, Australian veterans gave the Vietnamese authorities a database to locate the remains of more than 3,800 Vietnamese soldiers killed during the Vietnam War. A private initiative supported by the Australian army.
From 2007 to 2009, Hanoi repatriated the bodies of the last six Australian soldiers still missing. A gesture that decides two Australian veterans, Derrill de Heer and Bob Hall, to embark on the search for missing Vietnamese soldiers.
From 1962, alongside the American ally, 60,000 Australian soldiers served in Vietnam . At the time, the bodies of the killed enemy soldiers were buried directly on site and reported.
With the help of a small team, the two veterans sift through the declassified combat logs of the Australian or New Zealand military, and report the data on maps. It is these geographic coordinates that were handed over this Tuesday to a Vietnamese delegation.
Hundreds of notebooks, letters and photographs
The Australian channel ABC reports that the two men have also made three trips to Vietnam in recent years. Purpose: to make the hundreds of notebooks, letters and photographs of Vietnamese soldiers that the Australians had brought back home, and which the two pensioners found during their search.
Research that Derrill de Heer is still pursuing. He is now working on declassified US archives. 44 years after the end of the war, 200,000 North Vietnamese fighters are still missing.
► See also: In Vietnam, US launches orange agent clean-up campaign