For 25 years, the shame of losing the last battle has silenced the tens of thousands of Vietnamese veterans who fled to the United States.

But the daredevil leaflet raid on Havana last week flown by former South Vietnamese fighter pilot Ly Tong has stirred the conscience, and the long-stifled pride, of this community of aging soldiers.

Many of them who have spent the last quarter-century quietly working hard to build a new life in America are dusting off the yellow and red flag of their lost republic. In South Florida, where 15,000 Vietnamese live, groups of once-youthful warriors are preparing to fly that flag again today in Little Havana as they join in the Cuban-American salute to Ly Tong at the Three Kings Parade.

This Cuban-Vietnamese alliance is a natural thing, Vietnamese say.

They are both dispossessed, cut off by bitter politics from their families and their homeland. Hard-line communist regimes run both countries. Vietnamese who flee their country by sea are called boat people, and Cubans are called rafters. Both exile groups dream of returning in triumph someday. The older generation longs for the past, but the younger people are fixated on things American.

``We will go to Little Havana with the flag,'' said former ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) Lt. Col. Thien Le of Tamarac, who, like Ly Tong and many other members of South Vietnam's officer corps, spent time in communist-run ``reeducation camps.''

``I am very proud of Ly Tong,'' he added.

Deals worked out between Washington and Hanoi in the last few years won many of these political prisoners the right to resettle in the United States. Le, a former Second Infantry Division regimental commander, arrived in 1991 after 10 years in jail.

Nowadays, Le is a building inspector for a construction company and a leader of the 8,000-member Vietnamese-American Community of South Florida. He said he has been struck by how much in common he has with Cuban-American friends.

``We have got so many similarities,'' he said. ``Everything is almost the same for us. The other day, when the Cuban people were [demonstrating against the return of Elian Gonzalez to Cuba], I knew exactly what they were feeling.''

He was not surprised to hear that Ly Tong is going to receive honors at the parade. ``I feel very happy that he is a hero for them, too,'' he said. Tong had to surrender his pilot's license to Federal Aviation Administration officials after flying over Cuba, but he was not arrested.

FORMER PRISONER

Son Nguyen, a former artillery major with the Ninth Infantry Division who runs an Asian food store in Deerfield Beach with his wife, has a personal story almost as dramatic as Ly Tong's tale of escape from a Vietnamese prison camp. Nguyen will be leading his former South Vietnamese veterans group of about 35 people to the parade.

After North Vietnam won the war in 1975, Nguyen spent seven years in a communist prison before escaping by boat to the Philippines. He worked for a while refurbishing yachts in Miami and got to know many Cuban co-workers.

``We would talk about politics and our situation all the time,'' he said. ``I knew exactly what they were talking about. The Cubans were very sympathetic to me.''

Ly Tong's flight to Cuba, he said, ``woke me up.''

``What he did was really a very small thing,'' Nguyen said. ``But it is very good to wake up people, especially in the United States. Cubans and Vietnamese here are living a good life. They are very comfortable. But Ly Tong reminded us of what is important: getting the communists out of our homelands.''

`THE RIGHT THING'

Pham Van Trang, a North Miami Beach television repairman who once wore the camouflage uniform of an elite South Vietnamese Ranger, said he was showering when his wife shouted to him that Ly Tong had dropped leaflets over Havana.

``Yes!'' he said he yelled back. ``He did the right thing!''

Trang, 53, said a Cuban friend telephoned him soon after. ``I always knew you Vietnamese understood what it is like to be Cuban,'' he said his friend told him.

``I am a tough guy,'' he said, choking up. ``My unit had many good fighters. And then I came to the United States and I tried to forget. But when I heard about Ly Tong, my pride exploded. I felt like I was a young soldier.''

Trang, who said he fled Vietnam in a boat with a dozen other Ranger buddies to Malaysia, lived for a while in a trailer in Virginia with the entire group. They were defeated, demoralized, discredited. American veterans would not give them the time of day.

CUBAN CONNECTION

``I was the first lieutenant and they were my unit,'' he said. ``We drank beer. We played cards. We listened to cassette tapes of old Vietnamese love songs. We were very sentimental.

``And then I began meeting Cuban people and I did not feel alone anymore. Just like me, they had such a big pain in their heart.''

Miami resident Linh Huong, an international banking consultant who was an economist for the Vietnam Central Bank in Saigon in 1975, said that even former civilian government employees like himself intend to be on Calle Ocho today.

``I am trying to organize a small group of people to go,'' Huong said.

Ly Tong's exploits nudged South Florida's Vietnamese: the restaurant owners, small business people, trading-company workers.

In neighborhoods near State Road 441 and Commercial Boulevard in Broward County, where there are the beginnings of the county's first Vietnamese-run commercial center, the flight was a wake-up call.

``Cubans are our friends,'' Huong said. ``In the past, many of these friendships have been on an individual basis. But this is an opportunity to make real contact, and to show them who we are.''