[News] Vo Nguyen Giap - belated happy birthday

[Anti-Imperialist News]

'We were waiting for them'

Vo Nguyen Giap is the Vietnamese general who planned the Ho Chi Minh 
trail and defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu. In a rare interview 
with the author of a book about the trail, he recalls his part in 
defying the might of the US military

Virginia Morris
Friday August 25, 2006
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/>Guardian Unlimited

Vo Nguyen Giap is one of the most influential generals of moder

Vo Nguyen Giap is one of the most influential generals of modern 
times. Photograph: Clive Hills


The teacher turned military genius Vo Nguyen Giap, who celebrated his 
95th birthday today, is one of the last connections with the days of 
Ho Chi Minh and the start of the fight against colonial rule.

Remarkably, his army originally consisted of 34 people. By the time 
of the ultimate battle against the French at Dien Bien Phu in May 
1954, it was a conventional force of thousands with weapons supplied 
by China and the USSR. His army would eventually rise to be over a 
million-strong against the Americans.

General Giap still lives in the former French colonial villa in the 
capital, Hanoi, that has been his home for the past 60 years and 
where key decisions were made throughout the war. In the light and 
airy living room hangs just one photograph of Ho Chi Minh and Gen 
Giap in the early days of their guerrilla campaign against the French.

I was granted an audience with Gen Giap recently to show him our 
book, A History of the Ho Chi Minh Trail: The Road to Freedom, with 
an introduction that included his thoughts from a previous meeting.

He was in good health, sitting upright in military uniform, his voice 
and mind still sharp. His wife, Professor Dang Bich Ha, who is much 
younger, joined us for tea. They have been married since 1946. She is 
his second wife: his first died after being tortured by the French.

Gen Giap planned the Ho Chi Minh trail to run through Vietnam, Laos 
and Cambodia with a total road length of 12,500 miles. It became a 
lifeline that provided his army with everything needed to live and 
fight effectively against the US. In a vain attempt to destroy the 
trail, the US dropped more than 1.6m tonnes of munitions on lower 
Laos alone during its 16-year period of operations, starting in 1959.

Anticipating a fight against the Americans as early as 1959, Gen Giap 
had realised the importance of a secure supply line.

"My army had gained a lot of experience in fighting, particularly 
from the battle of Dien Bien Phu. It was also from this battle that I 
knew the army was important, but our logistics were also a key factor 
among many," he told us.

"At the beginning, we thought that the Americans, with their strategy 
of 'active flexible response', would escalate the war and that the 
American soldiers would come here. We therefore had to look long-term.

"I knew if we were to win in the south of Vietnam, where there was 
already a guerrilla war, we would have to expand our front lines and 
fight larger battles. Therefore, in May 1959, I directed the opening 
of the Ho Chi Minh trail."

Dien Bien Phu remains the victory for which Gen Giap is best known. 
During this epic battle, he ordered engineers to build roads for 
trucks to carry heavy artillery pieces into the mountains surrounding 
the valley of Dien Bien Phu.

The French never thought it possible for the Vietminh to position 
heavy artillery on the mountainside. The trapped forces eventually 
surrendered, a victory put down to the Vietminh's siege tactics, 
extraordinary logistical build-up and well protected artillery. The 
defeat led France to give up its colonies in Indochina.

When the French left, the country was temporarily divided at the 17th 
parallel with elections promised in 1956 to unite North and South 
Vietnam. The southern government cancelled the elections as it was 
generally believed that Ho Chi Minh would win, meaning Vietnam would 
come under communist rule.

I asked if making Vietnam a communist state had been a higher 
priority than nationalism for Ho Chi Minh.

Gen Giap said: "In August 1945, while Ho Chi Minh was seriously ill, 
he personally told me: 'We have to win independence at any cost, even 
if the Truong Son mountains burn.' Our army and our people are 
determined to unite Vietnam."

After Vietnam was reunified in 1975, rumours spread that Gen Giap had 
fallen from grace. Political differences and jealousy might explain 
this: with the death of Ho Chi Minh in 1969, others in power cited 
communism as the only reason for the war, whereas Gen Giap maintained 
his nationalist beliefs.

But the Vietnamese public has always held Gen Giap in high esteem and 
remembered the Ho Chi Minh trail as crucial in ending foreign rule.

Gen Giap lived through more than 50 years of war against the 
Japanese, French, Americans, Cambodians and Chinese. Despite this, he 
and his wife still had time to raise five children, all of whom are 
highly educated, and they have seven grandchildren.

Before leaving the room and declining my offer of help, Gen Giap 
stood up and kissed me on both cheeks. Then, looking me in the eye, 
he said that his last wish was to live long enough so that he could 
enjoy the Vietnam he fought so long to build.

Virginia Morris is the author with Clive Hills of A History of the Ho 
Chi Minh Trail The Road to Freedom to be published in September 2006 
by Orchid Press.



The Freedom Archives
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