Vietnam will mark on Tuesday the 50th anniversary of its “trail of blood,” the Ho Chi Minh Trail that allowed it to defeat the US and is now being turned into a national highway.
Ceremonies, TV shows and other events have, since the beginning of the year, been commemorating the trail and the young soldiers and volunteers who died on it.
“It is a trail of blood. A lot of people were sacrificed,” said retired Lieutenant General Vu Xuan Vinh, who commanded a military base on the route.
PHOTO: AFP
“I don’t know how many people fell during the trail’s construction, but it’s a trail of blood and sweat,” Vu said.
Millions of soldiers and millions of tonnes of weapons and other supplies were moved back and forth on the trail which initially was little more than a network of mountain and jungle paths.
They were later enlarged by military engineers to become roads and some were even paved.
The term “trail” is a something of a misnomer, however, as there were several linked perpendicular and parallel roads.
There is no clear figure for how many people died building and defending the routes. Even the Ho Chi Minh Trail Museum in Hanoi provides no death toll, but the trail “is one of extraordinary sacrifice, particularly of women,” said Carl Thayer, a specialist on Vietnam who teaches at the Australian Defence Force Academy.
“I was not afraid of death. I was ready to sacrifice for the South,” said Trong Khoat, who led an arts and performance troupe that entertained soldiers.
Khoat, 80, said he spent 11 years in the trail’s key Truong Son mountain area.
The trail may have claimed its toll in blood but it was also a lifeline to communist forces trying to liberate then-South Vietnam which was backed by the US.
“This trail played the role of blood, which came from the heart to supply the South — with personnel, medicine, weapons, ammunition, to transport the cadres of the army of the North,” Vinh said.
While parts of the trail network already existed, the all-out effort to expand it began in 1959 after the North Vietnamese leadership decided to use revolutionary warfare to liberate the South.
The defeat of French colonial forces in 1954 at the battle of Dien Bien Phu had led to Vietnam’s division into the communist North and pro-US South, setting the stage for two more decades of war.
“On May 19 we had a small secret ceremony” and construction of the Ho Chi Minh Trail began, Vinh said.
The trail took its name from Vietnam’s founding president, whose birthday was May 19.
Routes were initially improved to allow marching by foot, said retired lieutenant-general Nguyen Dinh Uoc, a former military commander who is also a historian and journalist.
“But that wasn’t enough for our needs. Gradually we had to widen the route for vehicles. This was used to move heavy equipment like trucks and food,” Uoc said.
“It wasn’t just a road but a rear base,” he said.
Vinh described the road network as a cobweb, much of which passed through Laos and Cambodia.
“The trail was finished little by little, year by year,” Vinh said.
US forces heavily bombed the routes and even tried to plant electronic monitors on it but they could not stop the flow of men and supplies.
The museum in Hanoi says the network included a petroleum pipeline 1,400km long, with 113 pumping stations.
The battle against US forces and their surrogate regime cost at least 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 American lives before the war ended on April 30, 1975, when the country was reunified.
The trail had done its job.
“If we had not had this trail it would have been very difficult to liberate the South,” Vinh said.
“Absolutely,” Thayer agreed. Very few guerrilla movements have won without such sanctuaries, he said.
“It’s an epic — and a successful epic.”
Commemoration of the trail’s 50th anniversary follows the 55th commemoration of Vietnam’s victory at Dien Bien Phu on May 7 and the April 30 remembrance of the country’s reunification.
In a country where two-thirds of the population are younger than 35, with no memory of the wars, the commemorations are important, Thayer said.
“It brings home an element of the history that the Communist Party is proud of,” giving the country’s rulers a chance to spread their message that they have brought prosperity through struggle and adversity, he said.
Uoc sees a new strategic role for the trail through its transformation into a national highway linking the country’s far north with the extreme south by 2020.
The first phase between the Hanoi area and central Kon Tum Province is essentially complete, the ministry of transport says, but there is not yet enough funding to finish the second phase.
Completing the 3,167km highway is important economically as well as militarily, Uoc said.
“With the highway, we have the chance to defend the homeland and protect the unified country,” he said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese