As the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War approaches, Vietnam continues to struggle with a massive problem - an estimated 200,000 of its soldiers remain listed as Missing in Action.
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In Vietnamese culture it is important that surviving family members conduct the necessary rituals over the remains of their deceased relatives. If they fail to perform this function, the soul of the deceased is believed to be condemned to wander the spirit world unable to find rest.
A team of researchers at UNSW Canberra has been working to provide the Vietnamese with the information that may help them to find many of those still listed as missing in action.
Using Australian and United States military data, we have identified the locations of thousands of battles and firefights that resulted in the deaths of one or more Vietnamese.
While the Vietnamese know the locations of major battles, many thousands of minor battles and firefights were in remote, jungle-covered areas, involved only five or six men, and were over and done with in a few minutes.
The bodies of the enemy dead were buried where they fell and the troops resumed their patrol.
Luckily, even during the war, the United States captured battle data, including the location of these incidents and the number of enemy soldiers killed, digitally.
After the war ended, this data found its way to the National Archives and Records Administration. It consists of about 900,000 ground combat incidents, 2.2 million air missions and a further 300,000 naval gunfire missions.
The Australian data is more detailed. It provides the details of more than 1500 combat incidents in which one or more Vietnamese soldiers was killed by Australian or New Zealand troops.
In about 460 cases, the names of the Vietnamese who were killed are also recorded. Australian Army policy was to inter the bodies of enemy soldiers killed in battle at the scene of the incident and this was done in most cases.
The Australian data is held in the paper records of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
Both the US data and the Australian data were handed over to a high-level delegation led by Senior Lieutenant General Le Chiem, Vietnam's Deputy Minister of Defence, earlier in September.
The UNSW Canberra research team hopes the data will help Vietnam find its soldiers still listed as missing in action since the war.
You can read more about the project at vietnam.unsw.adfa.edu.au
Dr Bob Hall is a Vietnam War veteran and he leads the Military Operations Analysis Team at UNSW Canberra