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K–12 teaching and learning · from the UNC School of Education

Tray filled with military badges and other artifacts from the Vietnam wars

About this photograph

Creator
Margery H. Freeman
Date created
May 1997
Location
Demilitarized Zone, Vietnam
License
This photograph copyright ©1997. Terms of use

See this photograph in context

  • French colonization and Vietnam wars: Photographs and text tell the story of Vietnam under French colonial rule, its experience during twentieth-century wars with France and the United States, and its recent liberalization. (Page 16)

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A square wooden tray filled with military badges and other artifacts from the Vietnam wars.

Sizes available: 683×1024 | 333×500

A square wooden tray is filled with military badges and other artifacts left from the Vietnam wars. Visible in the tray are metal badges from U.S., French, and Vietnamese soldiers, U.S. “dog tags” used for personal identification, silverware, a pocket knife, a razor, a string of old Chinese coins with holes in the center, and two wild animal tusks.

Most of the metal items were lost by U.S. or French soldiers, but Vietnamese soldiers would have owned the small Vietnamese flag lapel pins, the antique Chinese coins (valued throughout Southeast Asia), and the animal tusks. In many parts of Southeast Asia, crocodile, wild cat, and boar tusks are valued for warrior’s amulets or sometimes for medicinal ingredients.

These items were seen (and probably were for sale) in the former Demilitarized Zone (or DMZ) near central Vietnam’s 17th parallel line.