Ho Thi Hien is still haunted by the napalm attack that scarred her family

IT’S the image credited with helping to change attitudes towards the Vietnam War. And while it was taken more than four decades ago, the trauma of that day still haunts the faces in that photo.

In this 08 Jun 1972 file photo, crying children, including 9-year-old Kim Phuc, centre, run down Route 1 near Trang Bang, Vietnam after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places as South Vietnamese forces from the 25th Division walk behind them. A South Vietnamese plane accidentally dropped its flaming napalm on South Vietnamese troops and civilians. From left, the children are Phan Thanh Tam, younger brother of Kim Phuc, who lost an eye, Phan Thanh Phouc, youngest brother of Kim Phuc, Kim Phuc, and Kim's cousins Ho Van Bon, and Ho Thi Ting. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

IT’S the image that has been credited with helping to change attitudes towards the Vietnam War.

And while it has been more than four decades since it was taken, for the terrified faces etched in the photograph, the trauma of that day still haunts them.

Ho Thi Hien was just 10 years old when she, along with her brother, Ho Van Bon, and cousins Kim Phuc, Phan Thanh Tam and Phan Thanh Phouc, ran from the family’s village after a plane dropped napalm in the area.

AP photographer Nick Ut captured the children as they ran screaming and the image — regarded is one of the most iconic of last century — earned him a Pulitzer Prize.

Ho, who is pictured on the right holding her brother’s hand, escaped the physical trauma suffered by her cousin, Kim Phuc, who is running down the street naked after she ripped off her clothes because the seeping poison was burning her skin.

But Ho still suffers from the emotional trauma of that day. “Every time I hear a plane I get scared,” she told The Guardian.

It has been 40 years since North Vietnamese tanks rolled into Saigon — now Ho Chi Minh City — in South Vietnam and laid claim to victory.

They crashed through the gates of the presidential palace and hoisted the communist flag. It was an incredible victory for the revolutionary forces that had waged guerilla warfare for more than a decade against the better equipped US, and before that against the French colonialists.

“The tank crashing the gates ... was a symbol of victory for the Vietnamese nation and the Vietnamese People’s Army, marking the end of the 30 years of national resistance against the French and then the Americans,” said Nguyen Van Tap, 64, who drove Tank 390 through the iron bars that day.

Vietnam was a humiliating defeat for the US and its allies. And a war with too many casualties.

58,000 Americans were killed along with up to 250,000 South Vietnamese and an estimated 3 million communist fighters and civilians.

While 40 years have passed since the fall of Saigon, and the country has undergone numerous political changes, Ho, now 56, still lives and works metres from the napalm attack that changed her family’s life.

Her cousin, who became known as ‘napalm girl’, Kim Phuc, managed to leave Vietnam, moving to Toronto where she raised a family, wrote a book and became a UNESCO ambassador for youth affected by war, Ho remained in the village where they grew up.

Today she runs a roadside cafe in Trang Bang and still lives in their family home with her remaining relatives where traces of the bloody conflict still linger in the shadows.