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This, in summary, is the story of the war as told today by the victors. It is a tale of heroic nationalists who triumphed over American interlopers in a decade-long war that ended 25 years ago on April 30.
America's South Vietnamese allies, who lost, have been virtually written out of history. Indeed they have mostly been forgotten by both the Vietnamese and American governments, who are engaged now in an emerging effort of reconciliation.
But there has been little effort by the Northern victors to embrace their fraternal enemies, who seem to be remembered, at least by the older generation, with less generosity than is accorded to the Americans.
"I think they have all run away to the United States," said a Communist army veteran, echoing the dismissive attitude of many in the north. "Even those who were kept in camps have left. They are all gone."
This willful blind spot is one sign of continuing frictions between the north and south of Vietnam despite the economic and political integration the government has worked hard to foster.
Among some northerners, suspicions persist that they have not truly won the hearts and minds of everyone in the south. Among some older southerners, resentments linger over lost lives, lost homes, lost careers and lost hopes.
The first years of what is officially known as national reunification were harsh for the people who lived in the defeated south.
More than a million southerners fled the country after the war ended. Some 400,000 were interned in camps for "re-education" -- many only briefly, but some for as long as 17 years. Another 1.5 million were forcibly resettled in "new economic zones" in barren areas of southern Vietnam that were ravaged by hunger and extreme poverty.
These postwar scars linger too.
For Vietnam, 1975 was the year of national reunification geographically and 1976 was the year of national