Vietnam lauds its war heroes, so why are so many fighting for recognition?

Tran Thi Dong, 90, first answered her country’s call-to-arms in 1943 as a Viet Minh recruit to fight the Vichy French and Japanese. It was her first taste of wartime service, the first of three victorious fights against foreign powers.

“They called for a movement, a patriotic movement, and the young like me were very eager to join the forces,” recalled Dong at a house in Hanoi.

A veteran of the second world war, the anti-colonial war against France and the war against America, Dong, 90, lost her son and husband as they fought for what they considered a war of liberation from imperialism.

But while Dong carries a medal awarded for her service, she draws no pension. As all her immediate relatives are dead in a country where elder care is the responsibility of the family, she is forced to live in a centre for the indigent elderly.

She said her medical condition, which requires six light meals per day due to a gastrectomy, goes ignored by the staff, who provide her only with the same two daily meals the other residents eat.

“They think it’d be better for me to die so they don’t have to spend time to take care of me,” she said.

While Vietnam frequently lauds war veterans from its bloody mid-20th century conflicts, not all of them feel appreciated as they enter old age.