Commemoration «60 năm Ngày hy sinh của 10 nữ dân quân Lam Hạ» (Lam Hạ ten, 60 years on)

   A provincial-level commemoration with its own staged art programme, held on the ground of the wartime anti-aircraft battery itself. Northern Vietnam calls this place “the second Đồng Lộc”, and an evening performance built on that spot will land on you very differently from the same thing inside a hall.

   The event marks sixty years since ten women of the Lam Hạ anti-aircraft militia were killed (1966–2026). They were Thu, Thi, Tâm, Tuyết, Lan, Phương, Thuận, Thẹp, Chung and Oánh, and they fell at a gun position that was answering heavy US air raids.

   The Lam Hạ memorial complex has been built up since 2009 and holds the provincial Martyrs' Temple, the temple of the ten militiawomen and the Lương Khánh Thiện memorial house. The battery site itself was listed as a national historical relic in August 2016.

   A whole chain of activities surrounds the ceremony: incense offerings at three points of the complex, a chèo opera written about the ten heroines, a requiem with floating lanterns in late September, and a public history contest about the events.

   The organising committee is chaired by Đinh Thị Lụa, deputy secretary of the provincial Party committee and head of the provincial Fatherland Front; the artistic programme is run by the Department of Culture and Sports.

   Lam Hạ sits well off Ninh Bình's usual tourist routes — about an hour north of the karst valleys, in what used to be Phủ Lý. For a visitor, it is a rare chance to understand what the war meant on this flat, unspectacular delta.

   Come while it is still light: read the ten names on the stele and walk the temple grounds before the programme starts.