“They Were Full of Strength, Plans and Ideas”

On that day in 1973 at 11:45, a UH-1H helicopter came under a missile attack in Lao Bao, South Vietnam. All nine men aboard were killed – Aurél Dylski, Csaba Cziboly, a Canadian and an Indonesian officer, two liaison officers of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam and the three-man crew of the aircraft.

The Hungarian People’s Army joined a peacekeeping mission for the first time in South Vietnam between January 1973 and April 1975. At the request formulated by the Americans and the Vietnamese, as members of the staff manning 45 checkpoints in South Vietnam and the Saigon Headquarters, the Hungarians served together with Indonesian, Polish, Canadian and later with Iranian soldiers in the International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS) set up to implement the Paris Peace Accords, the agreement signed in January 1973 on ending the Vietnam War.

In his commemorative speech, Col. (Ret.) Lajos Imre stated that “the personnel requested to carry out the assignment undertook to participate in the ICCS mission, and so we travelled to the Far East in the hope of getting to know a world previously unknown to us, and of being able to provide assistance to the people of Vietnam". The one-time member of the third rotation of the ICCS added that merely two months after the start of their tour, two Hungarian officers – Border Guard Major Aurél Dylski and Reserve Captain Csaba Cziboly – lost their lives alongside several soldiers of other nationalities on a helicopter flight in South Vietnam.

The retired colonel pointed out that of course it was the family members who felt the greatest pain, but the soldiers themselves were also deeply shocked by the death of their two comrades. “Both of them were young, full of strength, plans and ideas", Lajos Imre emphasized.

The commemoration in Farkasrét cemetery at the grave of the soldier heroes ended with a wreathing. On behalf of the Ministry of Defence, Col. Dr. Ferenc Papp, Acting Head of Department, MoD Public Relations Coordination Department laid the flowers of remembrance.

Photo: Judith Füzes