A former American soldier and his Vietnamese lover who met during the American war in Vietnam had an emotional reunion - their first in 50 years - in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday. Ken Reesing and Vu Thi Vinh met for the first time in December , when Reesing had just been deployed to Vietnam to work at a logistics data service center inside a U. Army base in the southern city of Bien Hoa. The story of their fateful encounter and how the young couple were struck by love at first sight was first published on Vietnamese new site VnExpress on September 9, As they began their courtship, the love birds would meet every weekend at a location close to the soldier's base.
But their love never got the chance to develop into something more before the American soldier received an order to be repatriated in September , three months earlier than initially scheduled. The day before his departure, Reesing bought a pack of 50 envelopes, numbered each of them from , and gave them to his lover, promising her that he would find his way back to her when the last of the envelopes was sent.
They would keep in touch for years, with Vinh using up the pack of envelopes more quickly than they had expected by sending letters to Ken almost daily, the American soldier told VnExpress. By the end of , Vinh had already begun using her own envelopes to send letters to Ken. Their snail mail exchange only stopped when the U. Reesing said he had considered re-enlisting, but there was no guarantee he would be deployed to Vietnam again when the U. His family was also strongly against the idea.
Failing to keep the final promise he made to his Vietnamese lover was something that haunted Reesing for decades after the war, VnExpress reported. The G. He was able to intensify his search at the start of the 21st century thanks to the growth of the Internet and search engines.
Ken knew he had found his former lover by the fact that Vinh said she never saw Ken in uniform, which is true because he always changed into civilian clothes on their dates. He had learned the phrase by heart for this special occasion. The woman was Vinh. The wait was finally over. The grey-haired Ohio man approached his former Vietnamese lover who was visibly overwhelmed with emotions, and they gave one another a tearful embrace.
