National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan addresses a ceremony to confer the title “Hero of the People’s Armed Forces” on the Women’s Liberation Association-Long-Haired Army of Ben Tre on August 6, 2018.

The Long-Haired Army is the name of an all-female armed force during the anti-American war.

“I call on Ben Tre people across Vietnam and abroad to uphold unity and patriotism and the spirit of self-reliance and promote creativity for a more developed province,” said National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan addressed the ceremony, which marked 73 years of the August Revolution and National Day (September 2).

During the war, Ben Tre was one of the fiercest battlefields, where the US and the Saigon regime turned the whole region into prisons and concentration camps under the name of “strategic hamlets”. The Long-Haired Army was established during the resounding General Uprising in 1960 and became one of the key forces in the guerrilla warfare.