Bui Van Thien, 12, and three of his classmates walked to school after a particularly heavy rain storm in central Vietnam. The downpour had been so severe that fields were flooded and part of the ground at the side of the road had been washed away.
But they knew the route from their tiny village of Gio Hai. They had used it daily for more than five years and never ventured too far from the track. This time, the group stumbled, either by accident or out of inquisitiveness, on to a landmine.
Three of the boys died instantly, while Bui survived the initial blast with horrific wounds to his groin, left arm and head. He made it back to the village, a poor coastal fishing community of about 200 people which is in Gio Linh, the most northerly district of former South Vietnam in Quang Tri province, from where he was taken to a nearby hospital.
But as with many young mine victims, his body could not cope with the massive trauma of being blasted with shrapnel at point blank range and he died about a month later.
These deaths added to the 25,000 people, mostly civilians, who are killed or maimed every year in similar explosions in what has become a global disaster. But what makes this incident even more appalling is that the device that killed Bui and his friends was sown more than 20 years ago by retreating American and South Vietnamese soldiers fleeing the advancing communist forces from the North.
'There had been a serious flood and the top soil had been washed away and the landmine had come up,' said Hong Kong based anti-mine campaigner Jim Monan.