Silent sentries on constant alert protect their neighbors from wartime ordnance
With help from Ve and his father who pinpointed the location, a CST member fences off dangerous UXO for disposal by the EOD team.
On a rainy day in early September 2012, Nguyen Quoc Ve stopped RENEW’s Community Support Team (CST) as they were moving through his neighborhood. The 15-year-old boy in Tan Quang Village, Cam Tuyen Commune, had noticed the team while he was tending his family’s water buffalo, and he was anxious to report a wartime bomb he had seen the day before. Ve was particularly aware of the danger from this ordnance because his father had lost both hands and one eye in an accident years ago. Once Ve explained the situation to the team, they didn’t hesitate, slogging through the rain to the exact location where Ve and his father pointed to the unexploded ordnance lying by the roadside.
It was an unexploded mortar round. Once the team had identified it, they fenced it off with marking tape and called RENEW’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team for technical response. An hour later, the EOD arrived at the scene and safely moved the ordnance to RENEW’s central demolition site for later destruction. Everyone knew that Tan Quang, the furthest village of Cam Tuyen Commune, had suffered some of the bloodiest fighting during the Vietnam War.
