Exactly 40 years ago this month, Viet Nam ended the American War with an emphatic victory at the Paris Peace Agreements. Lady Borton and participants have teamed up to create a new book providing a behind-the-scenes insight into the historic triumph.

Participants of the Paris conference and other Vietnamese gathered for National Day and celebrated with a Ha Noi Citadel cake.

We didn't start out to make a book.

Instead, the idea popped up about three-quarters through a five-year project.

We began with an archival album with 140 enlargements of professional black-and-white photographs taken during the Paris Conference on Viet Nam (1968-72). Several international friends and Trinh Ngoc Thai were looking through the album.

"The photos are all out of order!" Thai said.

Thai had been at Paris from beginning to end as personal assistant to Xuan Thuy, delegation head from the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam (DRVN or "North Viet Nam"). Thai had participated in the private talks with Henry Kissinger. Turning the pages, he told the Paris story.

The album was a flawed treasure with striking images but no dates, no event identifications, and no participant names. I recognised several Vietnamese friends. But who were the others? What roles did they play? What was the story beneath the photographs? What was the story beneath the Paris story the world already knew? If we did not answer those questions, the "Paris generation" would pass on. We would never know.

Representatives from both sides form the drafting committee which negotiated the historic peace agreement.

With the album owner's permission, Gerry Herman and I copied the photographs. Former Viet Nam ambassadorto France Thai pulled together Paris participants, including Luu Van Loi (personal assistant to Le Duc Tho, the special advisor to the DRVN delegation) and Pham Ngac (English translator and liaison between the DRVN and US delegations). Our goal was to make detailed captions and then burn CDs of the photographs for the Paris participants and their families.

The "Paris Group" began pouring over the images. Before long, the "Paris alumni" were immersed in discussions and explanations for the "American side" – Gerry and me.

One day Nicole Pham, who grew up in Paris and lives in Ha Noi, stopped by.

"Look at how stylish the men look," I said, flipping through prints.

"Yes," Nicole said, "my uncle was the Vietnamese tailor in Paris. I was just a little kid. I remember playing with the ‘uncles from Viet Nam' when they came for their fittings!" Kindness of Nicole, we had the detail about the "Vietnamese tailor at Bagneau, Hauts-de-Seine" and other anecdotes about the exuberant, public support from the Vietnamese community in Paris.

Before long, we had a critical mass of data, with names, dates, and events. By then, we were also engaging in lots of chit-chat, for this was fun. We were all learning. Ambassador Thai was curious to compare the reports Henry Kissinger sent to Washington with the reports he remembered drafting for Ha Noi.

"While you were writing your draft reports for Xuan Thuy," I said, "what was he doing?"

"Playing chess!" Thai said. "Xuan Thuy would relax by playing chess and boules and writing poetry."

"Poetry!" Gerry said. "Paris poetry?"

The next week, Thai brought in Tuyen Tap Xuan Thuy (Selected Works by Xuan Thuy) with the Paris poems marked. Discussions of Xuan Thuy's poetry shifted us away from collecting caption data to exploring the Paris years' deeper level of soul. We said to each other: "We should make a book."

Mme Vu Thi Dat, head of protocol for the DRVN delegation, contributed personal photographs and her ID for Kleber International Conference Centre. She remembered French colleagues' names.

Vietnamese people outside of the summit turned out en masse to show their support for the nation, carrying banners and cheering their delegates.

Xuan Thuy's daughter came by to scan her father's hand-written poetry and family photographs.

Luu Van Loi brought in priceless images of Le Duc Tho before he went to Paris and after 30 April 1975.

Pham Ngac had a photograph of the bi-lateral drafting committee and a "souvenir first edition" of the Paris Agreement signed and stamped by Xuan Thuy.

Thai had a veritable stash of priceless behind-the-scenes shots.

Mme Nguyen Thi Binh, the only living signatory to the Paris Agreement, not only wrote the introduction but helped with names and roles of participants from the National Liberation Front (NLF)/ Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) delegation, providing the "Viet Cong" side of the story. Her personal photographs create pathos beneath the diplomats' composure in the formal photographs.

And so, we had piles – images, lists, documents, and a chronology – but no story arc. Ngac, translator and liaison, provided that focus.

He looked straight at me. "You have to understand President Ho Chi Minh's role in the Paris Conference!" he said. "Ho Chi Minh was behind every part of our effort. You have to understand!! President Ho was the director. We were his actors."

I took Ngac's guidance seriously. I thought about Xuan Thuy and Ho Chi Minh's shared love of poetry. At the same time, I was translating Mme Binh's autobiography, Family, Friends, and Country (Nxb. Tri Thuc – Knowledge Publishers, 2013). Through Mme Binh's writing and Ngac's comments, I came to see the Paris years very differently.

Aligning our caption data with the photographs, I could see how carefully Ho Chi Minh and the Politburo of the Vietnamese Workers' Party (now the Vietnamese Communist Party) had chosen the actors and the order of their appearance on the Paris world stage.

It was clear that for the DRVN and NLF/PRG delegations, the Conference was not just public negotiations and private talks but also the locus and the focus for intensive media work and widespread efforts to mobilise international support for the delegations' shared cause: independence, freedom and unification.

The book took on an organic quality, as if it were leading us. Ecole française d'Extreme-Orient, Ha Noi organised an exhibit about the US bombing of Ha Noi in October 1972, just after Le Duc Tho had introduced the DRVN Draft Agreement. The October bombing and the draft agreement seemed to ask for their own shared spread. I had already found images capturing the sorrow of the "Christmas Bombing" – "Dien Bien Phu in the Air."

I kept asking Ngac, "Who is the man tangled up in telex tape?", "Who is the man handling the radio?", "What is the cook's name?" It was fascinating. First, Ngac couldn't remember. Then, a few days later, he would come up with a given name. And then, after a few more days, he would say, "It's been forty years! I've just remembered the full name of..."

Now, we have names for all the Vietnamese, although we are still missing some Americans' names.

Most of us – Vietnamese and foreigners – have only staid images of the singing of the Paris Agreement.

The "Paris Group" built a different story through documents and photographs. We gave our bundle to editor Bui Huong Giang and designer Hoang Tien Dung at The Gioi (World) Publishers. They created soul and feeling.

With the rush to publish for the 40th anniversary, the others in the Paris Group still haven't seen Dung's design. I had not known how to capture what I imagined to be the Paris "actors'" grief at the passing of their "director", Ho Chi Minh. I had found images in the Vietnam News Agency Photo Archive, but that was all. Dung created the sorrow that must have lain beneath the dignified diplomats' equanimity. His image is haunting.

Starting out, the Paris Group"only wanted to capture the data from those five years for the people who were at Paris and their families. Now, looking back, I realise a larger "family" arose from the book itself, for in Viet Nam, "family" is synonymous with "country". Indeed, President Ho said as much in his 1963 "Tet Greetings", which the Paris Group chose for the book's final poem:

"Our Viet Nam is one country,

"Our Vietnamese people are one nationality.

"Even if our rivers run dry and our mountains crumble,

"Southerners and Northerners are children from one family."

VNSS