Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap Remembers
INTRODUCTION
I made my first trip to Viet Nam in 1988 and was fortunate enough to secure an interview with
Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap. I had been teaching Viet Nam for some ten years before I
received permission to go to that land. General Giap kindly let me interview him and later we
corresponded. I told him on my second visit to Viet Nam a few months later that I planned to
write his biography and he replied that he remembered me from our earlier meeting and
expressed his pleasure that I planned to write about him for, he said, he wanted any book
written in the West on his life to be done "with the honesty and seriousness of a good
historian." I hope I fulfilled his desire.
It quickly became apparent that almost everything written in the West about Giap was riddled
with errors. No one knew the name of his mother or father or the year of his birth or when he
went off to school in Hue or why he was expelled or why he was sent to Lao Bao prison or
how long he was an inmate there or how important journalism was to him or the name of his
wife or who her family was or how many children Giap had or what happened to his eldest
child or what happened to him after he fled north into China at the outbreak of World War II or
how he organized the hill people into an anti-French cadre or what was the name of his first
armed group or the name and occupation of his second wife-on and on and on.
There was little written on Giap in the West in any case. If one consults the Reader's Guide to
Periodical Literature, one finds very little about Giap. Dissertations in Progress is no more
rewarding. University Microfilms lists 520 studies on Vietnamese topics from 1940 to the
present but only one focused to any extent on Giap. The Frenchman who fought with the Viet
Minh, George Boudarel, has published a book entitled Giap!, but it has little text and is
primarily a picture book. Robert J. O'Neill, an Australian, has given us two books: General
Giap: Politician and Strategist and The Strategy of General Giap Since 1964, but their content
is similar and they leave many questions unanswered. French speakers can peruse Gerard
Le Quang, Giap: ou, la guerre du peuple and readers of Vietnamese can work through the
pages of Huy Phong and Yen Anh, Nhan then huyen thoai Vo Nguyen Giap: hoa quang vay
muon cho cuoc chien tuong tan. Yet most of us read neither French nor Vietnamese and the
works of all these authors are now generally unavailable.
A retired British army brigadier general Peter MacDonald, published Giap: the Victor in
Vietnam in 1993. It may well be the sorriest book I have ever read and I reviewed it as a work
without redeeming historical, literary or biographical merit, riddled with errors, lacking
understanding, and misleading in its text.
The late Douglas Pike, long a fixture at the University of California, Berkeley, and later at
Texas Tech University in Lubbock, maintained an immense collection of documentary
materials relating to Indochina, and in his writings, he occasionally focused on Giap. Time
after time he supplied incorrect information about the man, which was then picked up by
others and perpetuated in their writings.
That was the state of publications on Giap when my own Victory at any Cost: The Genius of
Viet Nam's Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap was published by Brassey's in 1997. It would
have been published several years earlier save for the wrath of the estimable Douglas Pike. I
had submitted the manuscript to the University of Kansas Press and the acquisitions editor
was impressed, but, as is normal, sent it out for review. One of those to whom he sent it was
Douglas Pike who did not like the fact that I had repeatedly corrected his writings. His reaction
was to write that "this manuscript should not be published. If boiled down to article length it
might have some small utility for high school students." So, of course, the University of
Kansas refused to consider publishing my Giap manuscript.
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Several years later it was picked up by Frank Margiotta, editor and publisher at Brassey's. It
was published in hardback and paper. It was an AUSA book, and chosen by History Book
Club. Published simultaneously in England, the London Times called it one of the two best
books to appear there that year. It was nominated for a Pulitzer and won the President's Prize
of the estimable Association of Third World Studies. It was widely and favorably reviewed. It
was translated into Chinese, French, and Portuguese. I wonder if Doug Pike's reaction might
possibly have been unprofessional?
My questions to Giap covered two legal sized sheets, and his answers filled twenty-three
single-spaced legal sized pages. He answered my questions about his early life up to about
the time of the battle of Dien Bien Phu. His wife, Dang Bich Ha, sent photographs of the
general, of the both of them posing, of his children, of Giap with Ho Chi Minh. She also wrote
me valuable information. Then there came a day when, in response to additional questions I
posed to him, Giap refused to respond, despite his earlier willingness to do so. He inevitably
had an excuse. He was "traveling," or attending "numerous ceremonies," or "celebrating
historic anniversaries," or in mourning after the death of a brother. Giap finally gave only the
terse explanation that he had already given me enough material and, in any case, the new
questions had been "inspired by nonserious, even false and reactionary documents." The
honeymoon was over. He never again responded to my efforts to contact him. Yet what he
did tell me was enough to correct all previous efforts of authors who produced flawed books.
His answers to my questions follow:
Question: What is your name?
Answer: My name is Giap. Vo Nguyen Giap.
Question: Tell me when and where you were born.
Answer: I was born August 25 of 1911 at An Xa, a small village of Quang-Binh province,
situated alongside the pretty Kien-Giang River. The village was based on agriculture, the
culture of rice. There were only three or four landed proprietors in the village.
Question: Tell me about your father.
Answer: My father was named Vo quang Nghiem. He was literate and was a teacher of Sino-
Vietnamese [writing] and of Quoc Nhu [the Romanized Vietnamese language developed by
Alexandre de Rhodes, the Jesuit missionary priest]. He also treated diseases with traditional
medicines, but when his daughter died from dysentery, he gave up this profession.
Question: Tell me about your mother.
Answer: My mother's name was Nguyen thi Kien. She was the daughter of a member of the
Can Vuong [Save the King] Resistance movement, a patriotic effort at the end of the
nineteenth century to support the emperor against French colonialism. Although illiterate, she
was able to recite poems by heart such as Kim van Kieu, Nhi Do Mai, Tong Chan Cue Hoa,
and others. Passionately fond of Vietnamese history, she was delighted to tell the stories of
the Can Vuong Resistance movement with all the vicissitudes it brought upon our people. She
told these stories first to her children, and then to her grandchildren.
She was a housekeeper, and in charge of the familial farm. (His father was often away.) She
stayed active until her death at age 84. She was passionately fond of plants, most happy
when she could cultivate [something green] on her small piece of ground. Later, when I was
away, she raised my daughter Hong Anh, after my wife Quang Thai died in Hoa Lo [literally
"the oven", many years later called by US POWs, the Ha Noi Hilton] prison.
Question: Did you have any brothers and sisters?
Answer: Yes. the first child was a boy dead at tender years (precocious intelligence).
The second was a boy dead at tender years.
The third was a girl, also dead at tender years.
The fourth was Vo thi Diem, a sister who is now dead but who married and who had children.
The fifth was Vo thi Lien, a sister who is now dead but who married and who had children.
The sixth? I was the sixth. And [obviously] I am alive, am married, and have five children.
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The seventh was Vo Thuan Nho, still alive, married, the father of children, and who has
served as Vice Minister of National Education.
The eighth child is Vo Thi Lai, a sister who is alive, who got married, and who is the mother of
children. She retired from public service.
Question: What was life like when you were a child?
Answer: At that time most children had no shoes to wear and so went barefoot. For everyday
events they dressed in a short shirt and light cotton pantaloons. For more important events at
age of about 12, children of rich families dressed by wearing a black tunic, white long
pantaloons, black skinned slippers and a black turban.
Question: What was life like as a young boy in An Xa?
Answer: Young boys were fond of many games but a favorite was battling, of playing warfare.
The most popular game in this time was called "da kieu" and sometimes called "da cau." It
was a game of skill and endurance played by keeping a flying coin (a kind of shuttlecock
made of a holed coin balanced with a piece of paper used as a rudder) in the air as long as
possible, by hitting it with the knee or the ankle. In this time coins had a small square hole in
the center. When the coin fell onto the ground, the player must leave the game and turn the
coin over to another boy.
Question: Tell about your early education.
Answer: Children of An-Xa village learned to write the sinoVietnamese [characters] and the
romanized Vietnamese called Quoc Ngu. They studied with a school master (Thay do). After
school duty, they participated, like Giap, in daily family jobs. Some served as watchboys of
the family water buffalo. Also in certain evenings they replaced their parents for pounding the
rice (gin gao). In Quang Binh county, people used to give the rythmn [of harvesting rice by] by
singing alternating songs and bumping up and down to the words and music of the song
called "Ho gia gao", a typical regional song in Quang Binh province.
Question: What was your childhood like, General?
Answer: My father, a school teacher, taught me to write Sino Vietnamese very early at age of
four or five. My first reading book was Au hoc tan thu (New Manual for Beginners). It was
written with a patriotic spirit and was published under the ephemeral reign of the
progressionist emperor Duy-Tan. I also learned how to write the romanized alphabet of quoc
ngu. Even as a little child I was very fond of studying. So every day my father kept a glass jar
in which were my favorite sweets and delicacies to use to reward me when I did things right.
Then, when I was eight, I attended Tong classes of the canton, corresponding to fourth or fifth
grade primary classes in the schools today. At age nine, I went to the Huyen classes of my
district. And when I was eleven I went to Tinh provincial classes.
Children in An Xa learned how to take part in their family tasks, as I did, such as looking after
buffaloes, or pounding rice, and so forth.
Question: Now tell me about your adolescent years, General.
Answer: In 1923, aged twelve, I obtained my certificat d'etudes elementaires, called in
Vietnamese so hoc yeu luoc, which was not easy to get by this time. I got the first place in the
graduate list. In 1924, as a candidate taking the entrance examination to the Quoc Hoc school
in Hue, I failed. In 1925 I tried the same examination again and achieved second place in the
rankings. I was fourteen.
I left An Xa for Hue, got a room at a private house and attended classes at the Quoc Hoc
school. Professors there included both French and Vietnamese people. In this lycee were
taught all matters concerning the general knowledge of culture, such as mathematics,
chemistry, physics, literature, history, and so forth. During my two years at the Quoc Hoc, I
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constantly kept first place at monthly grade results, except for one month when I placed
second.
The Quoc Hoc school in Hue was indeed the cradle of the student patriotic movement of
central Viet Nam. Students there used to share with one another texts and poems written
patriotically. To this day, I remember one Vietnamese professor at the Quoc Hoc. He was a
teacher of the quoc ngu and he liked to communicate progressive, patriotic opinions to his
students.
Serious and hard-working, students at Quoc Hoc were very interested in politics. This main
stream of feeling blew up at the least incident-on the occasion of the request for Phan boi
Chau's liberation [Chau was a famous national patriot and leader of an independence
movement] or the funeral of Phan chu Trinh {1872-1926. a leading anti-French reformer].
One of my school mates, Hai Trieu, gave me a copy of the article Proces del a colonisation
francaise written by Nguyen Ai Quoc [an early pseudonym of ho Chi Minh]. Later I discovered
[patriotic] newspapers such as Le Paria and Viet Nam hon.
Since arriving at the Quoc Hoc school my awareness of politics strengthened. Very often, with
some of my friends, we visited Phan boi Chau, who was sentenced to house arrest in Hue
after he returned from exile. Phan boi Chau spoke about problems of Viet Nam to us, of
colonialist malpractice, of democracy, and so forth. I also liked to organize meetings in my
student room with my friends. Together we used to discuss about youth, about the school
program, about colonialism and the world problems. I fluently read {in French] texts by Marx,
by Lenin, by Nguyen Ai Quoc written in French.
The French headmaster chief and the supervisors were hard, even inquisitorial with the
students. On one occasion I protested against an injustice committed by the headmaster chief
concerning a student, Nguyen chi Dieu, a close friend of mine. During an examination, Dieu,
well known for his anti-colonialist opinions, was charged arbitrarily with cheating. Another
friend and I organized a student strike. This movement succeeded to an unthought-of extent
and spread widely throughout central Viet Nam, from Quoc Hoc school to Dong Khanh, the
associated school for girls. Then it spread even to Catholic high schools. Of course, because
of my role in these events, I was expelled from the Quoc Hoc. I was not surprised by this
decision. I acted in full consciousness of the consequences.
Despite the fact that I expected to be expelled, I still raged with anger and decided to write an
article, in French, entitled "Down with the tyrant of Quoc Hoc." This article was published by
L'Annam, a French language newspaper, published in Saigon, run by Phan van Truong. It
was the only newspaper at that time which ventured to criticize French colonialism. The paper
was successful not only in Hue, but in other towns of the country.
Question: Those were exciting times for you, General. But tell me, since you had now
been expelled from school, what did you do then?
Answer: My friend Nguyen Chi Dieu [who had been accused of cheating] joined the Tan Viet
party. His function within that party was to foment and spread ideological propaganda. I
continued to live in Hue and organized an underground library. A great part of the documents
were supplied by the French communist organizations.
Dieu persuaded me to join the Tan Viet party also [but we found it to be too conservative for
our tastes and so] we laid the foundation of the first communist cell within that party.
Question: It sounds as if you were interested in journalism. Was that the case?
Answer: Yes. I soon found a job at the Tieng Dan newspaper. The editor in chief was Huynh
Thuc Khang. Tieng Dan was the first important progressist newspaper in central Viet Nam.
When I wrote articles, I signed them with different names, such as Van Dinh and Hai Thanh. It
was self protection because I was constantly spied upon by the French Deuxieme Bureau
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(equivalent to your F.B.I.) Still, at Tieng Dan I had opportunity to learn all aspects and
problems of journalism, from world situations to commentaries to social analyses by way of
investigations and reports. I wrote my articles with great care in choosing the best words as in
the veracity of the facts. Most of my articles were published. Meanwhile, it happened that
some of them were carefully censored, such as my article on "Trading firms with capital over
one million dong." This article unveiled the French capitalist exploitation of Viet Nam.
Question: What was the next important phase of your life, General?
Answer: It began after the failure of the Nghe-Tinh Soviets. French administrators increased
their terrorist policies. By the end of 1930 I and a certain number of other militants were
arrested. The sort of person included employees, peasants, workers, brain workers, and so
forth. Among them was Professor Dang Thai Mai, my brother Vo thuan Nho, a young girl
named Nguyen thi Quang Thai, and Lai, one of Quang Thai's friends. Quang Thai was 15
years old, a school girl from the Lycee DongKhanh. When sent to Hoa Lo, she did not yet
know me.
Punishments were severe. Even teachers at the Quop Hoc were arrested and many of them
received sentences of six or seven years. At first, I got a suspended sentence of two years
because there were as yet no proofs against me, but at last I did get two years. Quang Thai
and Lai got three years, Professor Dang Thai Mai received four years. We were all sent to the
penitentiary of Lao Bao, in the mountains, next to the Laotian border. Many prisoners died
there in the prison because the climate was so insalubrious.
Thirteen months later, a governmental order decided to reduce all sentences under four
years. Vo Nguyen Giap, Nguyen thi Quang Thai, Lai, and other people were released from
Lao Bao, one after the other. The court determined that I would have to go back to a forced
residence in An Xa. Shortly afterwards, however, I came back to Hue, in the hope of
reengaging myself with the Tieng Dan newspaper. But on the second day of my arrival, the
French resident in Hue forbad me to stay there. So I returned to An Xa.
But life in a small village was not for me. I decided to go to Vinh to look for a job. I met again
Professor Dang Thai Mai. I had known him formerly as a member of the Tan Viet. I lived in his
house, close to the residence of the sisters Nguyen thi Minh Khai and Nguyen thi Quang Thai.
In Vinh, I got a job as an accountant on Marechal Foch street and also gave private lessons
in mathematics and French. Quang Thai was among my students. Then Professor Dang Thai
Mai and his family decided to move to Ha Noi, and I chose to go with them.
Question: What happened after your arrival in Ha Noi?
Answer: Once settled in the city, I continued to read, to study by myself and to do different
small jobs in order to survive. I obtained the first part of the French baccalaureat. When I
knew classes for free lance candidates were open in the Lycee Albert Sarraut, I applied. I was
a bright student, and gained a first in philosophy. I rapidly obtained the second part of the
baccalaureat.
Question: What happened then?
Answer: I found a job at the private Lycee Thang Long where I taught history and literature. At
the same time I applied to take courses at the Faculte de Droit at the University of Ha Noi. I
was very interested in political economy and sought to learn that subject. Every day, in order
to get to the Lycee Thang Long I had to walk down Trang Tien Street and at one of the
intersections pass by a news bulletin board.
One afternoon in May 1936, while on my way to school, I saw on the news bulletin board a
notice concerning French politics. In France, the "Front Populaire" composed of ten political
organizations or so, among them the communist and socialist parties, forming the nucleus of
the Front, had won at general elections. Immediately I decided to take advantage of these
propitious circumstances for our anticolonialist movement, by publishing a newspaper. It
would be a political tool for me and my group.
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On 6th of June 1936, two days after Leon Blum, the new French prime minister, took his oath
of office, I began the newspaper Hon tre tap moi (Soul of Youth, new edition). This was only
possible with the help of friends. Some teachers at Thang Long put their savings together to
purchase the publishing rights of Hon Tre (Soul of Youth) and nearly went bankrupt doing so.
This transaction saved us from a great deal of time, preventing us from the colonial
administrative fuss connected with seeking a license for a newspaper to be published in the
Vietnamese language.
Hon tre tap moi was practically the first newspaper in Viet Nam to promote democracy, to
claim amnesty for political prisoners and to approve of the French Front Populaire. The
newspaper was a success. There were not even enough copies printed to satisfy the number
of readers. But, on the fifth issue, French authorities insisted on closing down our newspaper.
To get around these colonial administrative difficulties, I and my group decided to publish a
newspaper in the French language. Thus on 16th of September 1936, Le Travail was born. I
was its editor in chief. In late 1936, just released from jail, Truong Chinh joined me [Chinh was
a longtime member of the Politburo and a communist functionary]. Soon thereafter Pham van
Dong also came to work at Le Travail [Dong was also a Politburo member and long time
communist functionary].
Question: General Giap, it sounds as if you were making real progress in your efforts
to undermine French colonial government. Am I correct?
Answer: Yes and no. On 16th April 1937 I received orders from the French Resident stopping
all publication of Le Travail. I had published thirty issues of the paper. That was its whole life
over its seven months of existence. They were exciting and productive for me. On one
occasion, for example, I made a three hundred kilometer rough trip ride on my bicycle from
Ha Noi to Cam Pha in order to write a report on some striking miners.
Closing down Le Travail didn't stop us. Under the leadership of Truong Chinh, I and the party
committee published successively many newspapers both in French and in Vietnamese, such
as Rassemblement, En avant, Notre voix, Thoi the, Ha thanh thai bao, The gioi, Doi nay, Tin
tuc, Ngay moi, Ban dan, and lastly Giai Phong, another underground paper that was stopped
after three issues when the authorities discovered the whereabouts of its press and seized it.
Sometimes, in Notre Voix, a column appeared under the title Lettre de Chine (Letter from
China), articles that were signed P. C. Lin, a pseudonym of Ho chi Minh. For all these papers
I wrote mainly all my articles in French although I also took part in writing articles in
Vietnamese for almost all the newspapers mentioned a moment ago. On 23 March 1937, as a
delegate from the newspaper Rassemblement, I participated in the Congress of Newspapers
of central Viet Nam.
Then on 24th of April 1937, I was chairman of the first Congress of newspapers of North Viet
Nam, organized by the committee of the communist party. Tran Huy Lieu was vice chairman.
I was busy. During this period, I taught at Thang Long, attended courses at the University's
Faculte de Droit, and still succeeded in passing the examination obtaining for me the license
en droit. But the greater part of my time was indeed for writing in the papers. I knew all the
process by now: writing a leading article, current events, news in brief, varied subjects,
making investigations, reports, making up and composing, being a sub-editor, looking after
the brush proof and very often being a newspaper man.
Sometimes the party would order Pham van Dong, Truong Chinh and Ho huu Nam to go on
some special mission. I had to stay alone in front of a desk from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. the next
morning, to write, to make up an entire issue of Notre Voix. After that, I had just enough time
to run bringing to the press forty-eight typewritten pages, then to swallow down my breakfast,
before rushing headlong to Lycee Thang Long. I still take pride in my journalism. In 1991 the
Vietnamese journalists association awarded a medal to me reserved to journalists having
been more than twenty-five years in this activity. I was very pleased.
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Question: It seems you have always had a passion for creating and for orchestrating
events through your journalistic efforts.
Answer: Yes. Later, when I served with the military, I used comparing the preparation of a
battle with combined operations to the production of a newspaper. For me, the least detail has
its importance: the choice of type, the appropriate use of a word, the page make-up in
composition, the balance of articles, their place on the pages, how to take advantage from a
newsworthy event, and so forth. I spared no pains in writing in my papers and was very happy
when readers took an interest in my publications.
My activities as a journalist will never leave me. In even the worst of times [as we struggled
against the French], when I was with the Maquis, I kept up my work. In 1941 I contributed to
the newspaper Viet Nam doc lap, an underground publication intended for the population of
Cao Bang, Bac Kan, Lang Son. This paper had a circulation of only a few hundred and was
printed on bad paper using bad ink. But it was successful because its articles were written in
a style anyone could comprehend and, more especially, they were printed in easily legible
large type. Then in 1944, I brought out Tieng sung reo (The Guns Rumble) a manuscript
paper, for internal use only by members of the Army of liberation. Later, with Ho Chi Minh's
agreement, I prepared Nuoc Nam moi (Nam, the new country). After publishing only seven
issues, the August Revolution came. In the heat of the movement in those days, I continued
writing articles for Co giai phong (The flag of the liberation), Cuu quoc (National welfare), and
Sao yang (Golden Star).
Question: Tell me about your marriage.
Answer: I was married in 1939 to Nguyen Thi Quang Thai. Both of us were animated by the
same [communist] faith and were dedicated to the same cause. Our elder friend, Professor
Dang Thai Mai, totally approved of this union. Then on 4 January 1940 our child was born, a
girl, whom I named Hong Anh (Red Queen of Flowers).
Only a few months later, in mid-June, I had to leave my young wife and our baby to go to
China with Pham van Dong. The reason? In November 1939 the Indochinese Communist
Party had decided to form a united anti-imperialist front and to make national liberation the
order of the day. Direct contact had been renewed with Nguyen Ai Quoc who was living in the
province of Kouang Si in China. In April 1940 the [communist] Central Committee decided to
send me and Pham van Dong to China. The secretary general of the Tonkin Committee,
Hoang van Thu, personally met with me before my departure to talk about launching a
guerrilla movement.
Quang Thai also wanted to go [to China] with me but first had to find a safe place for the
baby. Quang Thai and I said goodbye on the bank of West Lake, better known as Large Lake,
one Friday evening in June after my classes at Thang Long school. With the baby in our
arms, we walked along among the strollers at the lake like any young, contented, loving
couple. We never saw one another again.
Quang Thai never had the time to find a safe place for Hong Anh. She was arrested and died
in 1941 in Hoa Lo prison in Ha Noi. [Other evidence indicates that she was tortured to the
point of insanity and then hung herself with her cloth belt.] Luckily, Quang Thai's younger
sister was able to take the baby to the home of its paternal grandfather, Vo Quang Nghiem,
and grandmother, Nguyen thi Kien, [at An Xa] in Quang Binh province. [Most writers claim the
baby died at about the same time as her mother. They have been wrong. Hong Anh grew to
adulthood and became one of Viet Nam's leading physicists!]
It was only while I served in the Maquis, in April 1945, a little before the meeting of the military
commission of the Central Committee at Bac Giang that I accidentally learned of the death of
Quang Thai. Truong Chinh told me. He had no idea at all that I had had no news of my family
since my departure for China [in 1940]. The brutal shock [of this news] left me speechless,
deathly pale, for long minutes. Then I left the gathering to be alone.
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Before that terrible news, at Cao Bang in 1942, I had other shocks. I learned of the execution
of my sister-in-law, Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, Quang Thai's older sister. Minh Khai was shot,
April 25, 1941 at Hooc Mon, near Saigon. [Some believe Minh Khai was the wife of Ho Chi
Minh.]
At this point in the interview Giap's daughter, Hong Anh, volunteered helpful information.
Question: What are your memories of those terrible days?
Hong Anh: During the period of resistance to the French, in 1947, during the debarkation of
French troops in Quang Binh, my grandfather did not want to leave his home in An Xa and
flee with us. He said he risked nothing at all for he was an old man without special or
compromising activities. He also said he had so many things to do. Thus we children,
transported like luggage in cai thung, those baskets like half spheres made of thin woven
bamboo slats, hooked to each end of a pole, resting on the shoulders [of those who carried
us], which never ceased to swing to the rhythm of their steps.
I never saw my grandfather again. People later told us that he was captured and taken off to
Hue to suffer questioning and to be put to the torture. One torture consisted of fastening
Grandfather to the bumper of a car with a long rope and then dragging him. We do not know
the precise date of his death, perhaps in 1947 or 1948. Thanks to the goodwill of nice people
along while later we were able to find his remains. At present he reposes in the cemetery for
those who died in service to our country located at our home village.
About the same time, the French also arrested my Aunt Vo thi Diem and her two children, my
cousins. She was not imprisoned at the same time as my grandfather and she was put in
charge of cooking food for the prison. She was not tortured to death [as were so many
others]. During the time of these events, my father was with the Maquis in the Viet Bac. So
our family paid with their blood for their aspiration that Viet Nam might be independent. My
father, the old fighter soldier, is still very erect and alert. He carries in his soul wounds that
even time cannot heal.
Question: Tell me about your trip into China in 1940, General.
Answer: After leaving Quang Thai and Hong Anh on the road to Co Ngu (present day Thanh
Nien), I rejoined Pham van Dong and a comrade who served as our liaison and made
arrangements for us. So we wouldn't attract attention, we traveled separately and without
luggage. We bought a train ticket for Cao Cai, a border town, but left the train one station
before it reached Lao Cai and we made the rest of the trip on foot. Then we crossed the
border in a rowboat in a deserted area. We then took the train again, this time to Kunming.
Someone met us outside the train station there and drove us to the house of Phung chi Kien,
a militant who had gone to China in 1924 where he attended the training course at Whampo
Military Academy.
Later Dong and I found Nguyen Ai Quoc who had been criss-crossing the south of China
since the end of 1939. After sending Dong and me to attend classes in Yenan-recommending
me to learn quickly so I would have time later for an internship in military training-Nguyen Ai
Quoc left to visit the Vietnamese communities located along the railroad tracks of Hunnan.
So Dong and I left for Kouei Yang, capital of Kwei Chow, aboard a Kuomintang Red Cross
truck driven by a Chinese communist. We made this difficult trip in the back of the truck,
jammed in among the cargo which was covered with a tarpaulin, in sweltering heat on a
horrible road marked by potholes and ruts, around switchbacks and hairpin curves above
sheer drop-offs.
Finally we were left at the headquarters of the 8th Army (a former unit of the Red Chinese
Army) now integrated into the Kuomintang Army forces. We were forced to wait for another
vehicle to go on to Yenan. But the capitulation [of the French government to the Germans] in
Paris changed everything. Phung chi Kien arrived from Kunming. We thought about going
back to Viet Nam to begin fighting [the French]. But instead, our group stopped at Douang Si
Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap Remembers
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and settled in the suburb to work at the party hall of the local [communist] committee with the
name of Viet Nam giai phong long minh, or League for the Liberation of Viet Nam. Then our
group started its propaganda work with the permission of the Kuomintang, discreetly
supported by the Chinese communists.
We were content with the idea that soon we would return to Viet Nam to begin the revolution.
Thai co da den! (The good prospect is here) we said to one another.
Question: Before long, Ho Chi Minh sent you and others down into Viet Nam and you
lived in the mountains along the Chinese border. What was life in those crude base
camps like from 1941 to 1944?
Answer: During that whole time we of the Viet Minh lived clandestinely. Our activities and our
movements were done in the most secretive way possible. Around population centers and in
certain other situations, we had to observe the four following rules: (1) forbidden to move
during daylight, (2) forbidden to wear shoes because they leave prints (3) forbidden to use
walking sticks or canes to climb mountain paths for they left marks on stones and moss, (4)
forbidden to sleep in villages. As I recall them, these are the chronological order of important
events that marked those years.
In December 1940 the first group of Viet Minh cadre was formed six months before the official
Congress which founded the Viet Minh party. It was done in a little Nung village close to the
Chinese border at the bottom of a quiet valley.
Composed of ethnic minorities, this first group of forty young men full of enthusiasm and
courage, spent ten days in accelerated training. Eating corn, sleeping under the stars, each
morning they picked up firewood in order to help people of that Nung village. This task of
helping people was a fundamental aspect of their political training. The end of their training
was celebrated in front of a red flag emblazoned with a five-pointed yellow star.
In this way we began to strengthen and enlarge the existing clandestine area, by organizing
communities all along the frontier. We called them Hoan toan or "total villages" because they
were totally converted to the Viet Minh cause. Total villages became total cantons and then
total districts. By 1942, out of nine districts in Cao Bang province, three were totally converted
to the Viet Minh. Although we were still operating clandestinely, the Movement grew. The
result was that the Viet Minh came to exercise administrative power first in villages, then in
districts.
One of the important elements which allowed this growth was the psychological impact
brought by the propaganda of my newspaper, Viet Lap, an abbreviation for Viet Nam doc lap.
Published clandestinely for the exclusive use of the Cao-Bac-Lang population, it had a
restricted circulation. Nevertheless, it worked well thanks to its appearance and style and the
way it was written, clearly and concisely, enabling us to bring our message to all levels of the
population.
Question: Is it true General that you and other Viet Minh cadre lived in caves in the
northern mountains?
Answer: Yes. On 8 February 1941, Ho Chi Minh moved into the grotto of a cave we called
Pac Bo. He later became a legend in the history of Viet Nam's revolution. [Others of us also
lived in nearby caves.]
Question: How was the Viet Minh organized?
Answer: In May 1941, the full assembly of the [communist] Central Committee met at Pac Bo.
The agenda was (1) preparation for insurrection, (2) to reinforce the maquis of Bac Son in
order to make it the second base of resistance, (3) the election of a general secretary of the
[communist] party to replace Nguyen van Cu, who had been arrested in June 1940. (The poor
man was shot on May 25, 1941 in Saigon.) Truong Chinh was elected.
Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap Remembers
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During these early years, other than Phung chi Kien, trained at Whampoa, no Vietnamese
communist had practical battle/combat experience. But starting in May 1941, the campaign to
prepare for an army of liberation took shape. This "insurrection army" began to take form
because of people's changing consciousness-to feel themselves as a people, as a nationaccomplished
by our organization of the masses. As I wrote in Nguon suoi, "Men first, and
then rifles."
I had to face an enormous problem. The population of the region's mountains and high places
was composed of many non-Vietnamese ethnic minorities. Their number approached a
million. They had never been in contact with revolutionary propaganda. They had always lived
within the orbit of colonial domination. Their dialects were different from one group to another
and even sometimes within the same ethnic group. I learned to speak fluently the ethnic
languages of Tay and Zao and H'mong. I also had much success with a [propaganda] saga
poem which I wrote, with a meter of five feet, which I called Viet Minh ngu tu kinh. It was easy
to memorize and remember it.
The strategy of the Viet Minh therefore was (1) to reorganize the political base at Cao Bang,
Bac Son, and Dinh Ca, (2) to organize a tight liaison between the two centers, and (3) to
spread the movement starting from this revolutionary hub.
Question: Tell me about the Viet Minh's "March toward the South." I believe you called
it by the French words, "Marche vers le sud."
Answer: Yes. I could see that there was an urgency to establish other ways of communication
between Cao Bang and the [Red River] Delta in addition to the usual methods. This would
enable me to extend the ties between different groups in case of danger or of [French]
repression which would facilitate the movement of [our] armed guerrillas. Ho decided that we
would call this movement the March to the South and he assigned me that responsibility.
I organized the masses to open three paths: to Cao Bang, to Lang Son toward Thai Nguyen,
and to the Delta. Some "specialists" of both sexes were used for this operation. One hundred
volunteers were divided into nineteen groups. In concert with local party members they went
forth in many itineraries. That begun by the first contingent was consolidated by later groups.
Together these people traveled through innumerable passes, mountains and fields to put
together a complete grouping of Tho, Man, and Kinh ethnic tribes. It was August 1943 before
much progress was made. One would have to march twenty days to cross the lands we now
controlled.
With this operation successful, I was finally able to return north to Cao Bang to celebrate the
eve of Bac Kan (Tet] with my volunteer teams. The year of the goat made way for the year of
the monkey. For this occasion I offered in the name of everyone aq flag embroidered with the
words Xung Phong Thang Loi (Victory to the Volunteers).
Both the French and the Japanese were our enemies and since 1941 they had bloodied our
ranks, and we had to mourn those who had died, yet our Viet Minh movement progressed in
spite of them. Simultaneously with our political preparation, the armed preparation was
forging its own path. As early as 1941 a certain number of instructors already had crisscrossed
the areas where the revolutionary cause had been well implanted. They organized
and prepared self defense teams. This was well advanced by the end of 1942. The next step
was to form a military cadre and we taught such people one month to prepare them.
The hub of these formations were located deep within the forest, pole houses with roofs of
leaves. Those temporary buildings could hold some hundreds of people. They had a
conference room, a dormitory, a dining room, and an armory. There was even a stadium next
to the building for exercises. Houses had to be built on several levels, sometimes fifty to sixty
steps separated the lower from the upper. They had to be solidly anchored on the sides of
those steep mountains. For this clandestine building, the shanties were very well conceived.
Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap Remembers
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By the end of 1943 we became strong enough to organize military inspections and exercises
even in the daytime, in the middle of fields, with simulated combat, which mobilized up to four
to five hundred men at a time. To do this we used cadre from several districts. Such activities
could not possibly stay secret [from the French] indefinitely. Their repression against us fell
right after the September harvest that year. It was bloody.
Question: General, tell me more about those early problems with the French colonial
administration and its troops.
Answer: [They reacted too late.] The infrastructure for an effective war and a resistance zone
was already in place in this region of Cao-Bac-Lang. During the terror sewn by the colonial
administration, one had at all costs to maintain organization, maintain the sympathy and
confidence of the population. The Viet Minh applied the solution of clandestine cells. A
clandestine cell was composed of secret members belonging to one or two communes who
left their families to live hidden in the forest.
Each one of those cells had to establish one point of contact. That could even be a little hut
covered with tree leaves, built on a mountain or deep in the forest. They also had to gather
enough provisions to last six months-the time necessary between the rice and maize
harvests. On top of this, each cell had to obey the rules, very strict orders, adhere to a
draconian schedule, divide their frantic activities teaching the population from those times
reserved for study.
At dusk, according to agreed upon signals, members of those secret cells left their refuges,
went on foot across three or four kilometers of mountains and forest to arrive at twilight for a
rendezvous meeting at an agreed upon gathering spot. In this way they could communicate
with "faithful" members living in the "village below" who, ignoring the police menace, brought
them provisions and information.
Their mission accomplished, those fighters of the shadows/ghosts/phantom fighters, in all
senses of the word (guerrilla fighters and fighters in the shadows), slept precariously
alongside a river, or at the edge of a rice paddy. Before the morning fog disappeared they had
gone back to their mountain refuges. Because of these clandestine cells, the popular
movement was able to resist the savage persecution and activities of the "white terror"
inflicted on the population by the colonial administration.
Question: I have been told that the winter of 1943-1944 was a hard one for you,
General.
Answer: Yes, it was harsh for me and my men. The [French] repression often forced us to be
satisfied with only a bag of dry cereal grain and a tube of toasted salt. One time I and two of
my men were entrapped during three days on a mountain near The Rue. We had to use tubes
of bamboo and water extracted from forest vines to cook our rice. Other times we had to feed
ourselves with the lack of food, we faced danger from artillery and from forest fires lit [by the
French military] during days of long sunlight to force us out of hiding.
Question: When did you begin to believe you actually had a chance to rid your land of
the French colonial masters?
Answer: It was perhaps in July 1944. At that time the inter-provincial committee of Cao-Bac-
Lang organized a great meeting of cadre to discuss the problems of insurrection. It took place
in a huge cave in the heart of a dense forest. We erected a triumphal arch, flew our national
flag, set out tables of food for all participants, and had for them dormitories and a dining room.
Three security groups were posted all around at each sensitive point. They were composed of
local Man plus some armed detachments from the three districts.
At that meeting we changed the term "insurrection" to "declenchement de la guerrilla" [an
untranslatable phrase that means something like "launching the guerrilla war (against the
French)]. The date for this war to begin was set for two months later. But in the month of
September following the harvest, after some serious analysis, Ho Chi Minh chose not to
continue this project. Regrouping all our military potentials would give us a stronger and more
effective weapon.
Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap Remembers
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The primary application of this strength/force/weapon would be political rather than military.
Its goal was to lean upon military action as a way to organize the masses, produce a military
effect beneficial toward revolution thus developing and reinforcing the political stand of the
Viet Minh. In this way the Armed Propaganda and Liberation Brigade was created.
That happened on December 22, 1944 in a forest which spread over parts of two districts,
Tran Hung Dao and Hoang Hoa Tham, near Cao Bang. Thirty-four men in mixed uniforms of
clothing were sworn in. I wore a soft hat. It was 5 p.m. and very cold. The ceremony closed
with a very frugal meal. The food was given by the [local] people for the event. Lifted up by
the spirit of sacrifice, the participants in that moment were filled with inexpressible and
unforgettable sentiments.
Forty-eight hours later, my new army won two successive victories. The first was against the
[French] post Phai Khat, the second was at Na Ngan, thirty-five kilometers from Phai Khat.
The elements forming this [small] brigade were all expert people, hardened and extremely
devoted to the cause. The Brigade relied upon its surveillance system of spies who gave us
intelligence data. Hoang, the first intelligence agent of the brigade was a very young
adolescent of thirteen years. One could not separate the victory at Phai Khat from this young
boy's activity. Nor the one at Ha Ngan from the work of Duc Long, a man of the region.
Then on March 9th 1945 the Japanese [occupation] forces triumphed over the French forces
in Indochina [arresting many, including most officers, and disarming the troops]. [That was the
Viet Minh's signal to organize themselves even more fully.] At the end of May Ho Chi Minh
arrived from Pac Bo to Tran Thao. On June 4th 1945 a very large meeting took place
between different heads at Tan Trao. They decided to declare the region of Cao Bang, Bac
Kan, Lang Son, Ha Giang, Tuyen Quang, Thai Nguyen, Bac Giang, Phu Tho, Vinh Yen, Phuc
Yen and Yen Bai a zone of liberation.
Tran Thao was to be the capital of this zone. The administration of this liberated zone was
placed under the responsibility of a provisionary executive committee formed of five persons.
The five nominees supervised the sections of politics, population and administration,
economy and finance, transport and culture and society. This newly freed area would serve
as a rallying point for the whole country of Viet Nam during the period of resistance against
the Japanese [and the French]. A chapter of Viet Nam's history was on the point of
achievement.
© Cecil B Currey http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3821/is_200310/ai_n9337860/
INTRODUCTION
I made my first trip to Viet Nam in 1988 and was fortunate enough to secure an interview with
Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap. I had been teaching Viet Nam for some ten years before I
received permission to go to that land. General Giap kindly let me interview him and later we
corresponded. I told him on my second visit to Viet Nam a few months later that I planned to
write his biography and he replied that he remembered me from our earlier meeting and
expressed his pleasure that I planned to write about him for, he said, he wanted any book
written in the West on his life to be done "with the honesty and seriousness of a good
historian." I hope I fulfilled his desire.
It quickly became apparent that almost everything written in the West about Giap was riddled
with errors. No one knew the name of his mother or father or the year of his birth or when he
went off to school in Hue or why he was expelled or why he was sent to Lao Bao prison or
how long he was an inmate there or how important journalism was to him or the name of his
wife or who her family was or how many children Giap had or what happened to his eldest
child or what happened to him after he fled north into China at the outbreak of World War II or
how he organized the hill people into an anti-French cadre or what was the name of his first
armed group or the name and occupation of his second wife-on and on and on.
There was little written on Giap in the West in any case. If one consults the Reader's Guide to
Periodical Literature, one finds very little about Giap. Dissertations in Progress is no more
rewarding. University Microfilms lists 520 studies on Vietnamese topics from 1940 to the
present but only one focused to any extent on Giap. The Frenchman who fought with the Viet
Minh, George Boudarel, has published a book entitled Giap!, but it has little text and is
primarily a picture book. Robert J. O'Neill, an Australian, has given us two books: General
Giap: Politician and Strategist and The Strategy of General Giap Since 1964, but their content
is similar and they leave many questions unanswered. French speakers can peruse Gerard
Le Quang, Giap: ou, la guerre du peuple and readers of Vietnamese can work through the
pages of Huy Phong and Yen Anh, Nhan then huyen thoai Vo Nguyen Giap: hoa quang vay
muon cho cuoc chien tuong tan. Yet most of us read neither French nor Vietnamese and the
works of all these authors are now generally unavailable.
A retired British army brigadier general Peter MacDonald, published Giap: the Victor in
Vietnam in 1993. It may well be the sorriest book I have ever read and I reviewed it as a work
without redeeming historical, literary or biographical merit, riddled with errors, lacking
understanding, and misleading in its text.
The late Douglas Pike, long a fixture at the University of California, Berkeley, and later at
Texas Tech University in Lubbock, maintained an immense collection of documentary
materials relating to Indochina, and in his writings, he occasionally focused on Giap. Time
after time he supplied incorrect information about the man, which was then picked up by
others and perpetuated in their writings.
That was the state of publications on Giap when my own Victory at any Cost: The Genius of
Viet Nam's Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap was published by Brassey's in 1997. It would
have been published several years earlier save for the wrath of the estimable Douglas Pike. I
had submitted the manuscript to the University of Kansas Press and the acquisitions editor
was impressed, but, as is normal, sent it out for review. One of those to whom he sent it was
Douglas Pike who did not like the fact that I had repeatedly corrected his writings. His reaction
was to write that "this manuscript should not be published. If boiled down to article length it
might have some small utility for high school students." So, of course, the University of
Kansas refused to consider publishing my Giap manuscript.
Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap Remembers
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Several years later it was picked up by Frank Margiotta, editor and publisher at Brassey's. It
was published in hardback and paper. It was an AUSA book, and chosen by History Book
Club. Published simultaneously in England, the London Times called it one of the two best
books to appear there that year. It was nominated for a Pulitzer and won the President's Prize
of the estimable Association of Third World Studies. It was widely and favorably reviewed. It
was translated into Chinese, French, and Portuguese. I wonder if Doug Pike's reaction might
possibly have been unprofessional?
My questions to Giap covered two legal sized sheets, and his answers filled twenty-three
single-spaced legal sized pages. He answered my questions about his early life up to about
the time of the battle of Dien Bien Phu. His wife, Dang Bich Ha, sent photographs of the
general, of the both of them posing, of his children, of Giap with Ho Chi Minh. She also wrote
me valuable information. Then there came a day when, in response to additional questions I
posed to him, Giap refused to respond, despite his earlier willingness to do so. He inevitably
had an excuse. He was "traveling," or attending "numerous ceremonies," or "celebrating
historic anniversaries," or in mourning after the death of a brother. Giap finally gave only the
terse explanation that he had already given me enough material and, in any case, the new
questions had been "inspired by nonserious, even false and reactionary documents." The
honeymoon was over. He never again responded to my efforts to contact him. Yet what he
did tell me was enough to correct all previous efforts of authors who produced flawed books.
His answers to my questions follow:
Question: What is your name?
Answer: My name is Giap. Vo Nguyen Giap.
Question: Tell me when and where you were born.
Answer: I was born August 25 of 1911 at An Xa, a small village of Quang-Binh province,
situated alongside the pretty Kien-Giang River. The village was based on agriculture, the
culture of rice. There were only three or four landed proprietors in the village.
Question: Tell me about your father.
Answer: My father was named Vo quang Nghiem. He was literate and was a teacher of Sino-
Vietnamese [writing] and of Quoc Nhu [the Romanized Vietnamese language developed by
Alexandre de Rhodes, the Jesuit missionary priest]. He also treated diseases with traditional
medicines, but when his daughter died from dysentery, he gave up this profession.
Question: Tell me about your mother.
Answer: My mother's name was Nguyen thi Kien. She was the daughter of a member of the
Can Vuong [Save the King] Resistance movement, a patriotic effort at the end of the
nineteenth century to support the emperor against French colonialism. Although illiterate, she
was able to recite poems by heart such as Kim van Kieu, Nhi Do Mai, Tong Chan Cue Hoa,
and others. Passionately fond of Vietnamese history, she was delighted to tell the stories of
the Can Vuong Resistance movement with all the vicissitudes it brought upon our people. She
told these stories first to her children, and then to her grandchildren.
She was a housekeeper, and in charge of the familial farm. (His father was often away.) She
stayed active until her death at age 84. She was passionately fond of plants, most happy
when she could cultivate [something green] on her small piece of ground. Later, when I was
away, she raised my daughter Hong Anh, after my wife Quang Thai died in Hoa Lo [literally
"the oven", many years later called by US POWs, the Ha Noi Hilton] prison.
Question: Did you have any brothers and sisters?
Answer: Yes. the first child was a boy dead at tender years (precocious intelligence).
The second was a boy dead at tender years.
The third was a girl, also dead at tender years.
The fourth was Vo thi Diem, a sister who is now dead but who married and who had children.
The fifth was Vo thi Lien, a sister who is now dead but who married and who had children.
The sixth? I was the sixth. And [obviously] I am alive, am married, and have five children.
Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap Remembers
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The seventh was Vo Thuan Nho, still alive, married, the father of children, and who has
served as Vice Minister of National Education.
The eighth child is Vo Thi Lai, a sister who is alive, who got married, and who is the mother of
children. She retired from public service.
Question: What was life like when you were a child?
Answer: At that time most children had no shoes to wear and so went barefoot. For everyday
events they dressed in a short shirt and light cotton pantaloons. For more important events at
age of about 12, children of rich families dressed by wearing a black tunic, white long
pantaloons, black skinned slippers and a black turban.
Question: What was life like as a young boy in An Xa?
Answer: Young boys were fond of many games but a favorite was battling, of playing warfare.
The most popular game in this time was called "da kieu" and sometimes called "da cau." It
was a game of skill and endurance played by keeping a flying coin (a kind of shuttlecock
made of a holed coin balanced with a piece of paper used as a rudder) in the air as long as
possible, by hitting it with the knee or the ankle. In this time coins had a small square hole in
the center. When the coin fell onto the ground, the player must leave the game and turn the
coin over to another boy.
Question: Tell about your early education.
Answer: Children of An-Xa village learned to write the sinoVietnamese [characters] and the
romanized Vietnamese called Quoc Ngu. They studied with a school master (Thay do). After
school duty, they participated, like Giap, in daily family jobs. Some served as watchboys of
the family water buffalo. Also in certain evenings they replaced their parents for pounding the
rice (gin gao). In Quang Binh county, people used to give the rythmn [of harvesting rice by] by
singing alternating songs and bumping up and down to the words and music of the song
called "Ho gia gao", a typical regional song in Quang Binh province.
Question: What was your childhood like, General?
Answer: My father, a school teacher, taught me to write Sino Vietnamese very early at age of
four or five. My first reading book was Au hoc tan thu (New Manual for Beginners). It was
written with a patriotic spirit and was published under the ephemeral reign of the
progressionist emperor Duy-Tan. I also learned how to write the romanized alphabet of quoc
ngu. Even as a little child I was very fond of studying. So every day my father kept a glass jar
in which were my favorite sweets and delicacies to use to reward me when I did things right.
Then, when I was eight, I attended Tong classes of the canton, corresponding to fourth or fifth
grade primary classes in the schools today. At age nine, I went to the Huyen classes of my
district. And when I was eleven I went to Tinh provincial classes.
Children in An Xa learned how to take part in their family tasks, as I did, such as looking after
buffaloes, or pounding rice, and so forth.
Question: Now tell me about your adolescent years, General.
Answer: In 1923, aged twelve, I obtained my certificat d'etudes elementaires, called in
Vietnamese so hoc yeu luoc, which was not easy to get by this time. I got the first place in the
graduate list. In 1924, as a candidate taking the entrance examination to the Quoc Hoc school
in Hue, I failed. In 1925 I tried the same examination again and achieved second place in the
rankings. I was fourteen.
I left An Xa for Hue, got a room at a private house and attended classes at the Quoc Hoc
school. Professors there included both French and Vietnamese people. In this lycee were
taught all matters concerning the general knowledge of culture, such as mathematics,
chemistry, physics, literature, history, and so forth. During my two years at the Quoc Hoc, I
Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap Remembers
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constantly kept first place at monthly grade results, except for one month when I placed
second.
The Quoc Hoc school in Hue was indeed the cradle of the student patriotic movement of
central Viet Nam. Students there used to share with one another texts and poems written
patriotically. To this day, I remember one Vietnamese professor at the Quoc Hoc. He was a
teacher of the quoc ngu and he liked to communicate progressive, patriotic opinions to his
students.
Serious and hard-working, students at Quoc Hoc were very interested in politics. This main
stream of feeling blew up at the least incident-on the occasion of the request for Phan boi
Chau's liberation [Chau was a famous national patriot and leader of an independence
movement] or the funeral of Phan chu Trinh {1872-1926. a leading anti-French reformer].
One of my school mates, Hai Trieu, gave me a copy of the article Proces del a colonisation
francaise written by Nguyen Ai Quoc [an early pseudonym of ho Chi Minh]. Later I discovered
[patriotic] newspapers such as Le Paria and Viet Nam hon.
Since arriving at the Quoc Hoc school my awareness of politics strengthened. Very often, with
some of my friends, we visited Phan boi Chau, who was sentenced to house arrest in Hue
after he returned from exile. Phan boi Chau spoke about problems of Viet Nam to us, of
colonialist malpractice, of democracy, and so forth. I also liked to organize meetings in my
student room with my friends. Together we used to discuss about youth, about the school
program, about colonialism and the world problems. I fluently read {in French] texts by Marx,
by Lenin, by Nguyen Ai Quoc written in French.
The French headmaster chief and the supervisors were hard, even inquisitorial with the
students. On one occasion I protested against an injustice committed by the headmaster chief
concerning a student, Nguyen chi Dieu, a close friend of mine. During an examination, Dieu,
well known for his anti-colonialist opinions, was charged arbitrarily with cheating. Another
friend and I organized a student strike. This movement succeeded to an unthought-of extent
and spread widely throughout central Viet Nam, from Quoc Hoc school to Dong Khanh, the
associated school for girls. Then it spread even to Catholic high schools. Of course, because
of my role in these events, I was expelled from the Quoc Hoc. I was not surprised by this
decision. I acted in full consciousness of the consequences.
Despite the fact that I expected to be expelled, I still raged with anger and decided to write an
article, in French, entitled "Down with the tyrant of Quoc Hoc." This article was published by
L'Annam, a French language newspaper, published in Saigon, run by Phan van Truong. It
was the only newspaper at that time which ventured to criticize French colonialism. The paper
was successful not only in Hue, but in other towns of the country.
Question: Those were exciting times for you, General. But tell me, since you had now
been expelled from school, what did you do then?
Answer: My friend Nguyen Chi Dieu [who had been accused of cheating] joined the Tan Viet
party. His function within that party was to foment and spread ideological propaganda. I
continued to live in Hue and organized an underground library. A great part of the documents
were supplied by the French communist organizations.
Dieu persuaded me to join the Tan Viet party also [but we found it to be too conservative for
our tastes and so] we laid the foundation of the first communist cell within that party.
Question: It sounds as if you were interested in journalism. Was that the case?
Answer: Yes. I soon found a job at the Tieng Dan newspaper. The editor in chief was Huynh
Thuc Khang. Tieng Dan was the first important progressist newspaper in central Viet Nam.
When I wrote articles, I signed them with different names, such as Van Dinh and Hai Thanh. It
was self protection because I was constantly spied upon by the French Deuxieme Bureau
Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap Remembers
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(equivalent to your F.B.I.) Still, at Tieng Dan I had opportunity to learn all aspects and
problems of journalism, from world situations to commentaries to social analyses by way of
investigations and reports. I wrote my articles with great care in choosing the best words as in
the veracity of the facts. Most of my articles were published. Meanwhile, it happened that
some of them were carefully censored, such as my article on "Trading firms with capital over
one million dong." This article unveiled the French capitalist exploitation of Viet Nam.
Question: What was the next important phase of your life, General?
Answer: It began after the failure of the Nghe-Tinh Soviets. French administrators increased
their terrorist policies. By the end of 1930 I and a certain number of other militants were
arrested. The sort of person included employees, peasants, workers, brain workers, and so
forth. Among them was Professor Dang Thai Mai, my brother Vo thuan Nho, a young girl
named Nguyen thi Quang Thai, and Lai, one of Quang Thai's friends. Quang Thai was 15
years old, a school girl from the Lycee DongKhanh. When sent to Hoa Lo, she did not yet
know me.
Punishments were severe. Even teachers at the Quop Hoc were arrested and many of them
received sentences of six or seven years. At first, I got a suspended sentence of two years
because there were as yet no proofs against me, but at last I did get two years. Quang Thai
and Lai got three years, Professor Dang Thai Mai received four years. We were all sent to the
penitentiary of Lao Bao, in the mountains, next to the Laotian border. Many prisoners died
there in the prison because the climate was so insalubrious.
Thirteen months later, a governmental order decided to reduce all sentences under four
years. Vo Nguyen Giap, Nguyen thi Quang Thai, Lai, and other people were released from
Lao Bao, one after the other. The court determined that I would have to go back to a forced
residence in An Xa. Shortly afterwards, however, I came back to Hue, in the hope of
reengaging myself with the Tieng Dan newspaper. But on the second day of my arrival, the
French resident in Hue forbad me to stay there. So I returned to An Xa.
But life in a small village was not for me. I decided to go to Vinh to look for a job. I met again
Professor Dang Thai Mai. I had known him formerly as a member of the Tan Viet. I lived in his
house, close to the residence of the sisters Nguyen thi Minh Khai and Nguyen thi Quang Thai.
In Vinh, I got a job as an accountant on Marechal Foch street and also gave private lessons
in mathematics and French. Quang Thai was among my students. Then Professor Dang Thai
Mai and his family decided to move to Ha Noi, and I chose to go with them.
Question: What happened after your arrival in Ha Noi?
Answer: Once settled in the city, I continued to read, to study by myself and to do different
small jobs in order to survive. I obtained the first part of the French baccalaureat. When I
knew classes for free lance candidates were open in the Lycee Albert Sarraut, I applied. I was
a bright student, and gained a first in philosophy. I rapidly obtained the second part of the
baccalaureat.
Question: What happened then?
Answer: I found a job at the private Lycee Thang Long where I taught history and literature. At
the same time I applied to take courses at the Faculte de Droit at the University of Ha Noi. I
was very interested in political economy and sought to learn that subject. Every day, in order
to get to the Lycee Thang Long I had to walk down Trang Tien Street and at one of the
intersections pass by a news bulletin board.
One afternoon in May 1936, while on my way to school, I saw on the news bulletin board a
notice concerning French politics. In France, the "Front Populaire" composed of ten political
organizations or so, among them the communist and socialist parties, forming the nucleus of
the Front, had won at general elections. Immediately I decided to take advantage of these
propitious circumstances for our anticolonialist movement, by publishing a newspaper. It
would be a political tool for me and my group.
Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap Remembers
© Cecil B Currey
6
On 6th of June 1936, two days after Leon Blum, the new French prime minister, took his oath
of office, I began the newspaper Hon tre tap moi (Soul of Youth, new edition). This was only
possible with the help of friends. Some teachers at Thang Long put their savings together to
purchase the publishing rights of Hon Tre (Soul of Youth) and nearly went bankrupt doing so.
This transaction saved us from a great deal of time, preventing us from the colonial
administrative fuss connected with seeking a license for a newspaper to be published in the
Vietnamese language.
Hon tre tap moi was practically the first newspaper in Viet Nam to promote democracy, to
claim amnesty for political prisoners and to approve of the French Front Populaire. The
newspaper was a success. There were not even enough copies printed to satisfy the number
of readers. But, on the fifth issue, French authorities insisted on closing down our newspaper.
To get around these colonial administrative difficulties, I and my group decided to publish a
newspaper in the French language. Thus on 16th of September 1936, Le Travail was born. I
was its editor in chief. In late 1936, just released from jail, Truong Chinh joined me [Chinh was
a longtime member of the Politburo and a communist functionary]. Soon thereafter Pham van
Dong also came to work at Le Travail [Dong was also a Politburo member and long time
communist functionary].
Question: General Giap, it sounds as if you were making real progress in your efforts
to undermine French colonial government. Am I correct?
Answer: Yes and no. On 16th April 1937 I received orders from the French Resident stopping
all publication of Le Travail. I had published thirty issues of the paper. That was its whole life
over its seven months of existence. They were exciting and productive for me. On one
occasion, for example, I made a three hundred kilometer rough trip ride on my bicycle from
Ha Noi to Cam Pha in order to write a report on some striking miners.
Closing down Le Travail didn't stop us. Under the leadership of Truong Chinh, I and the party
committee published successively many newspapers both in French and in Vietnamese, such
as Rassemblement, En avant, Notre voix, Thoi the, Ha thanh thai bao, The gioi, Doi nay, Tin
tuc, Ngay moi, Ban dan, and lastly Giai Phong, another underground paper that was stopped
after three issues when the authorities discovered the whereabouts of its press and seized it.
Sometimes, in Notre Voix, a column appeared under the title Lettre de Chine (Letter from
China), articles that were signed P. C. Lin, a pseudonym of Ho chi Minh. For all these papers
I wrote mainly all my articles in French although I also took part in writing articles in
Vietnamese for almost all the newspapers mentioned a moment ago. On 23 March 1937, as a
delegate from the newspaper Rassemblement, I participated in the Congress of Newspapers
of central Viet Nam.
Then on 24th of April 1937, I was chairman of the first Congress of newspapers of North Viet
Nam, organized by the committee of the communist party. Tran Huy Lieu was vice chairman.
I was busy. During this period, I taught at Thang Long, attended courses at the University's
Faculte de Droit, and still succeeded in passing the examination obtaining for me the license
en droit. But the greater part of my time was indeed for writing in the papers. I knew all the
process by now: writing a leading article, current events, news in brief, varied subjects,
making investigations, reports, making up and composing, being a sub-editor, looking after
the brush proof and very often being a newspaper man.
Sometimes the party would order Pham van Dong, Truong Chinh and Ho huu Nam to go on
some special mission. I had to stay alone in front of a desk from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. the next
morning, to write, to make up an entire issue of Notre Voix. After that, I had just enough time
to run bringing to the press forty-eight typewritten pages, then to swallow down my breakfast,
before rushing headlong to Lycee Thang Long. I still take pride in my journalism. In 1991 the
Vietnamese journalists association awarded a medal to me reserved to journalists having
been more than twenty-five years in this activity. I was very pleased.
Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap Remembers
© Cecil B Currey
7
Question: It seems you have always had a passion for creating and for orchestrating
events through your journalistic efforts.
Answer: Yes. Later, when I served with the military, I used comparing the preparation of a
battle with combined operations to the production of a newspaper. For me, the least detail has
its importance: the choice of type, the appropriate use of a word, the page make-up in
composition, the balance of articles, their place on the pages, how to take advantage from a
newsworthy event, and so forth. I spared no pains in writing in my papers and was very happy
when readers took an interest in my publications.
My activities as a journalist will never leave me. In even the worst of times [as we struggled
against the French], when I was with the Maquis, I kept up my work. In 1941 I contributed to
the newspaper Viet Nam doc lap, an underground publication intended for the population of
Cao Bang, Bac Kan, Lang Son. This paper had a circulation of only a few hundred and was
printed on bad paper using bad ink. But it was successful because its articles were written in
a style anyone could comprehend and, more especially, they were printed in easily legible
large type. Then in 1944, I brought out Tieng sung reo (The Guns Rumble) a manuscript
paper, for internal use only by members of the Army of liberation. Later, with Ho Chi Minh's
agreement, I prepared Nuoc Nam moi (Nam, the new country). After publishing only seven
issues, the August Revolution came. In the heat of the movement in those days, I continued
writing articles for Co giai phong (The flag of the liberation), Cuu quoc (National welfare), and
Sao yang (Golden Star).
Question: Tell me about your marriage.
Answer: I was married in 1939 to Nguyen Thi Quang Thai. Both of us were animated by the
same [communist] faith and were dedicated to the same cause. Our elder friend, Professor
Dang Thai Mai, totally approved of this union. Then on 4 January 1940 our child was born, a
girl, whom I named Hong Anh (Red Queen of Flowers).
Only a few months later, in mid-June, I had to leave my young wife and our baby to go to
China with Pham van Dong. The reason? In November 1939 the Indochinese Communist
Party had decided to form a united anti-imperialist front and to make national liberation the
order of the day. Direct contact had been renewed with Nguyen Ai Quoc who was living in the
province of Kouang Si in China. In April 1940 the [communist] Central Committee decided to
send me and Pham van Dong to China. The secretary general of the Tonkin Committee,
Hoang van Thu, personally met with me before my departure to talk about launching a
guerrilla movement.
Quang Thai also wanted to go [to China] with me but first had to find a safe place for the
baby. Quang Thai and I said goodbye on the bank of West Lake, better known as Large Lake,
one Friday evening in June after my classes at Thang Long school. With the baby in our
arms, we walked along among the strollers at the lake like any young, contented, loving
couple. We never saw one another again.
Quang Thai never had the time to find a safe place for Hong Anh. She was arrested and died
in 1941 in Hoa Lo prison in Ha Noi. [Other evidence indicates that she was tortured to the
point of insanity and then hung herself with her cloth belt.] Luckily, Quang Thai's younger
sister was able to take the baby to the home of its paternal grandfather, Vo Quang Nghiem,
and grandmother, Nguyen thi Kien, [at An Xa] in Quang Binh province. [Most writers claim the
baby died at about the same time as her mother. They have been wrong. Hong Anh grew to
adulthood and became one of Viet Nam's leading physicists!]
It was only while I served in the Maquis, in April 1945, a little before the meeting of the military
commission of the Central Committee at Bac Giang that I accidentally learned of the death of
Quang Thai. Truong Chinh told me. He had no idea at all that I had had no news of my family
since my departure for China [in 1940]. The brutal shock [of this news] left me speechless,
deathly pale, for long minutes. Then I left the gathering to be alone.
Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap Remembers
© Cecil B Currey
8
Before that terrible news, at Cao Bang in 1942, I had other shocks. I learned of the execution
of my sister-in-law, Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, Quang Thai's older sister. Minh Khai was shot,
April 25, 1941 at Hooc Mon, near Saigon. [Some believe Minh Khai was the wife of Ho Chi
Minh.]
At this point in the interview Giap's daughter, Hong Anh, volunteered helpful information.
Question: What are your memories of those terrible days?
Hong Anh: During the period of resistance to the French, in 1947, during the debarkation of
French troops in Quang Binh, my grandfather did not want to leave his home in An Xa and
flee with us. He said he risked nothing at all for he was an old man without special or
compromising activities. He also said he had so many things to do. Thus we children,
transported like luggage in cai thung, those baskets like half spheres made of thin woven
bamboo slats, hooked to each end of a pole, resting on the shoulders [of those who carried
us], which never ceased to swing to the rhythm of their steps.
I never saw my grandfather again. People later told us that he was captured and taken off to
Hue to suffer questioning and to be put to the torture. One torture consisted of fastening
Grandfather to the bumper of a car with a long rope and then dragging him. We do not know
the precise date of his death, perhaps in 1947 or 1948. Thanks to the goodwill of nice people
along while later we were able to find his remains. At present he reposes in the cemetery for
those who died in service to our country located at our home village.
About the same time, the French also arrested my Aunt Vo thi Diem and her two children, my
cousins. She was not imprisoned at the same time as my grandfather and she was put in
charge of cooking food for the prison. She was not tortured to death [as were so many
others]. During the time of these events, my father was with the Maquis in the Viet Bac. So
our family paid with their blood for their aspiration that Viet Nam might be independent. My
father, the old fighter soldier, is still very erect and alert. He carries in his soul wounds that
even time cannot heal.
Question: Tell me about your trip into China in 1940, General.
Answer: After leaving Quang Thai and Hong Anh on the road to Co Ngu (present day Thanh
Nien), I rejoined Pham van Dong and a comrade who served as our liaison and made
arrangements for us. So we wouldn't attract attention, we traveled separately and without
luggage. We bought a train ticket for Cao Cai, a border town, but left the train one station
before it reached Lao Cai and we made the rest of the trip on foot. Then we crossed the
border in a rowboat in a deserted area. We then took the train again, this time to Kunming.
Someone met us outside the train station there and drove us to the house of Phung chi Kien,
a militant who had gone to China in 1924 where he attended the training course at Whampo
Military Academy.
Later Dong and I found Nguyen Ai Quoc who had been criss-crossing the south of China
since the end of 1939. After sending Dong and me to attend classes in Yenan-recommending
me to learn quickly so I would have time later for an internship in military training-Nguyen Ai
Quoc left to visit the Vietnamese communities located along the railroad tracks of Hunnan.
So Dong and I left for Kouei Yang, capital of Kwei Chow, aboard a Kuomintang Red Cross
truck driven by a Chinese communist. We made this difficult trip in the back of the truck,
jammed in among the cargo which was covered with a tarpaulin, in sweltering heat on a
horrible road marked by potholes and ruts, around switchbacks and hairpin curves above
sheer drop-offs.
Finally we were left at the headquarters of the 8th Army (a former unit of the Red Chinese
Army) now integrated into the Kuomintang Army forces. We were forced to wait for another
vehicle to go on to Yenan. But the capitulation [of the French government to the Germans] in
Paris changed everything. Phung chi Kien arrived from Kunming. We thought about going
back to Viet Nam to begin fighting [the French]. But instead, our group stopped at Douang Si
Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap Remembers
© Cecil B Currey
9
and settled in the suburb to work at the party hall of the local [communist] committee with the
name of Viet Nam giai phong long minh, or League for the Liberation of Viet Nam. Then our
group started its propaganda work with the permission of the Kuomintang, discreetly
supported by the Chinese communists.
We were content with the idea that soon we would return to Viet Nam to begin the revolution.
Thai co da den! (The good prospect is here) we said to one another.
Question: Before long, Ho Chi Minh sent you and others down into Viet Nam and you
lived in the mountains along the Chinese border. What was life in those crude base
camps like from 1941 to 1944?
Answer: During that whole time we of the Viet Minh lived clandestinely. Our activities and our
movements were done in the most secretive way possible. Around population centers and in
certain other situations, we had to observe the four following rules: (1) forbidden to move
during daylight, (2) forbidden to wear shoes because they leave prints (3) forbidden to use
walking sticks or canes to climb mountain paths for they left marks on stones and moss, (4)
forbidden to sleep in villages. As I recall them, these are the chronological order of important
events that marked those years.
In December 1940 the first group of Viet Minh cadre was formed six months before the official
Congress which founded the Viet Minh party. It was done in a little Nung village close to the
Chinese border at the bottom of a quiet valley.
Composed of ethnic minorities, this first group of forty young men full of enthusiasm and
courage, spent ten days in accelerated training. Eating corn, sleeping under the stars, each
morning they picked up firewood in order to help people of that Nung village. This task of
helping people was a fundamental aspect of their political training. The end of their training
was celebrated in front of a red flag emblazoned with a five-pointed yellow star.
In this way we began to strengthen and enlarge the existing clandestine area, by organizing
communities all along the frontier. We called them Hoan toan or "total villages" because they
were totally converted to the Viet Minh cause. Total villages became total cantons and then
total districts. By 1942, out of nine districts in Cao Bang province, three were totally converted
to the Viet Minh. Although we were still operating clandestinely, the Movement grew. The
result was that the Viet Minh came to exercise administrative power first in villages, then in
districts.
One of the important elements which allowed this growth was the psychological impact
brought by the propaganda of my newspaper, Viet Lap, an abbreviation for Viet Nam doc lap.
Published clandestinely for the exclusive use of the Cao-Bac-Lang population, it had a
restricted circulation. Nevertheless, it worked well thanks to its appearance and style and the
way it was written, clearly and concisely, enabling us to bring our message to all levels of the
population.
Question: Is it true General that you and other Viet Minh cadre lived in caves in the
northern mountains?
Answer: Yes. On 8 February 1941, Ho Chi Minh moved into the grotto of a cave we called
Pac Bo. He later became a legend in the history of Viet Nam's revolution. [Others of us also
lived in nearby caves.]
Question: How was the Viet Minh organized?
Answer: In May 1941, the full assembly of the [communist] Central Committee met at Pac Bo.
The agenda was (1) preparation for insurrection, (2) to reinforce the maquis of Bac Son in
order to make it the second base of resistance, (3) the election of a general secretary of the
[communist] party to replace Nguyen van Cu, who had been arrested in June 1940. (The poor
man was shot on May 25, 1941 in Saigon.) Truong Chinh was elected.
Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap Remembers
© Cecil B Currey
10
During these early years, other than Phung chi Kien, trained at Whampoa, no Vietnamese
communist had practical battle/combat experience. But starting in May 1941, the campaign to
prepare for an army of liberation took shape. This "insurrection army" began to take form
because of people's changing consciousness-to feel themselves as a people, as a nationaccomplished
by our organization of the masses. As I wrote in Nguon suoi, "Men first, and
then rifles."
I had to face an enormous problem. The population of the region's mountains and high places
was composed of many non-Vietnamese ethnic minorities. Their number approached a
million. They had never been in contact with revolutionary propaganda. They had always lived
within the orbit of colonial domination. Their dialects were different from one group to another
and even sometimes within the same ethnic group. I learned to speak fluently the ethnic
languages of Tay and Zao and H'mong. I also had much success with a [propaganda] saga
poem which I wrote, with a meter of five feet, which I called Viet Minh ngu tu kinh. It was easy
to memorize and remember it.
The strategy of the Viet Minh therefore was (1) to reorganize the political base at Cao Bang,
Bac Son, and Dinh Ca, (2) to organize a tight liaison between the two centers, and (3) to
spread the movement starting from this revolutionary hub.
Question: Tell me about the Viet Minh's "March toward the South." I believe you called
it by the French words, "Marche vers le sud."
Answer: Yes. I could see that there was an urgency to establish other ways of communication
between Cao Bang and the [Red River] Delta in addition to the usual methods. This would
enable me to extend the ties between different groups in case of danger or of [French]
repression which would facilitate the movement of [our] armed guerrillas. Ho decided that we
would call this movement the March to the South and he assigned me that responsibility.
I organized the masses to open three paths: to Cao Bang, to Lang Son toward Thai Nguyen,
and to the Delta. Some "specialists" of both sexes were used for this operation. One hundred
volunteers were divided into nineteen groups. In concert with local party members they went
forth in many itineraries. That begun by the first contingent was consolidated by later groups.
Together these people traveled through innumerable passes, mountains and fields to put
together a complete grouping of Tho, Man, and Kinh ethnic tribes. It was August 1943 before
much progress was made. One would have to march twenty days to cross the lands we now
controlled.
With this operation successful, I was finally able to return north to Cao Bang to celebrate the
eve of Bac Kan (Tet] with my volunteer teams. The year of the goat made way for the year of
the monkey. For this occasion I offered in the name of everyone aq flag embroidered with the
words Xung Phong Thang Loi (Victory to the Volunteers).
Both the French and the Japanese were our enemies and since 1941 they had bloodied our
ranks, and we had to mourn those who had died, yet our Viet Minh movement progressed in
spite of them. Simultaneously with our political preparation, the armed preparation was
forging its own path. As early as 1941 a certain number of instructors already had crisscrossed
the areas where the revolutionary cause had been well implanted. They organized
and prepared self defense teams. This was well advanced by the end of 1942. The next step
was to form a military cadre and we taught such people one month to prepare them.
The hub of these formations were located deep within the forest, pole houses with roofs of
leaves. Those temporary buildings could hold some hundreds of people. They had a
conference room, a dormitory, a dining room, and an armory. There was even a stadium next
to the building for exercises. Houses had to be built on several levels, sometimes fifty to sixty
steps separated the lower from the upper. They had to be solidly anchored on the sides of
those steep mountains. For this clandestine building, the shanties were very well conceived.
Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap Remembers
© Cecil B Currey
11
By the end of 1943 we became strong enough to organize military inspections and exercises
even in the daytime, in the middle of fields, with simulated combat, which mobilized up to four
to five hundred men at a time. To do this we used cadre from several districts. Such activities
could not possibly stay secret [from the French] indefinitely. Their repression against us fell
right after the September harvest that year. It was bloody.
Question: General, tell me more about those early problems with the French colonial
administration and its troops.
Answer: [They reacted too late.] The infrastructure for an effective war and a resistance zone
was already in place in this region of Cao-Bac-Lang. During the terror sewn by the colonial
administration, one had at all costs to maintain organization, maintain the sympathy and
confidence of the population. The Viet Minh applied the solution of clandestine cells. A
clandestine cell was composed of secret members belonging to one or two communes who
left their families to live hidden in the forest.
Each one of those cells had to establish one point of contact. That could even be a little hut
covered with tree leaves, built on a mountain or deep in the forest. They also had to gather
enough provisions to last six months-the time necessary between the rice and maize
harvests. On top of this, each cell had to obey the rules, very strict orders, adhere to a
draconian schedule, divide their frantic activities teaching the population from those times
reserved for study.
At dusk, according to agreed upon signals, members of those secret cells left their refuges,
went on foot across three or four kilometers of mountains and forest to arrive at twilight for a
rendezvous meeting at an agreed upon gathering spot. In this way they could communicate
with "faithful" members living in the "village below" who, ignoring the police menace, brought
them provisions and information.
Their mission accomplished, those fighters of the shadows/ghosts/phantom fighters, in all
senses of the word (guerrilla fighters and fighters in the shadows), slept precariously
alongside a river, or at the edge of a rice paddy. Before the morning fog disappeared they had
gone back to their mountain refuges. Because of these clandestine cells, the popular
movement was able to resist the savage persecution and activities of the "white terror"
inflicted on the population by the colonial administration.
Question: I have been told that the winter of 1943-1944 was a hard one for you,
General.
Answer: Yes, it was harsh for me and my men. The [French] repression often forced us to be
satisfied with only a bag of dry cereal grain and a tube of toasted salt. One time I and two of
my men were entrapped during three days on a mountain near The Rue. We had to use tubes
of bamboo and water extracted from forest vines to cook our rice. Other times we had to feed
ourselves with the lack of food, we faced danger from artillery and from forest fires lit [by the
French military] during days of long sunlight to force us out of hiding.
Question: When did you begin to believe you actually had a chance to rid your land of
the French colonial masters?
Answer: It was perhaps in July 1944. At that time the inter-provincial committee of Cao-Bac-
Lang organized a great meeting of cadre to discuss the problems of insurrection. It took place
in a huge cave in the heart of a dense forest. We erected a triumphal arch, flew our national
flag, set out tables of food for all participants, and had for them dormitories and a dining room.
Three security groups were posted all around at each sensitive point. They were composed of
local Man plus some armed detachments from the three districts.
At that meeting we changed the term "insurrection" to "declenchement de la guerrilla" [an
untranslatable phrase that means something like "launching the guerrilla war (against the
French)]. The date for this war to begin was set for two months later. But in the month of
September following the harvest, after some serious analysis, Ho Chi Minh chose not to
continue this project. Regrouping all our military potentials would give us a stronger and more
effective weapon.
Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap Remembers
© Cecil B Currey
12
The primary application of this strength/force/weapon would be political rather than military.
Its goal was to lean upon military action as a way to organize the masses, produce a military
effect beneficial toward revolution thus developing and reinforcing the political stand of the
Viet Minh. In this way the Armed Propaganda and Liberation Brigade was created.
That happened on December 22, 1944 in a forest which spread over parts of two districts,
Tran Hung Dao and Hoang Hoa Tham, near Cao Bang. Thirty-four men in mixed uniforms of
clothing were sworn in. I wore a soft hat. It was 5 p.m. and very cold. The ceremony closed
with a very frugal meal. The food was given by the [local] people for the event. Lifted up by
the spirit of sacrifice, the participants in that moment were filled with inexpressible and
unforgettable sentiments.
Forty-eight hours later, my new army won two successive victories. The first was against the
[French] post Phai Khat, the second was at Na Ngan, thirty-five kilometers from Phai Khat.
The elements forming this [small] brigade were all expert people, hardened and extremely
devoted to the cause. The Brigade relied upon its surveillance system of spies who gave us
intelligence data. Hoang, the first intelligence agent of the brigade was a very young
adolescent of thirteen years. One could not separate the victory at Phai Khat from this young
boy's activity. Nor the one at Ha Ngan from the work of Duc Long, a man of the region.
Then on March 9th 1945 the Japanese [occupation] forces triumphed over the French forces
in Indochina [arresting many, including most officers, and disarming the troops]. [That was the
Viet Minh's signal to organize themselves even more fully.] At the end of May Ho Chi Minh
arrived from Pac Bo to Tran Thao. On June 4th 1945 a very large meeting took place
between different heads at Tan Trao. They decided to declare the region of Cao Bang, Bac
Kan, Lang Son, Ha Giang, Tuyen Quang, Thai Nguyen, Bac Giang, Phu Tho, Vinh Yen, Phuc
Yen and Yen Bai a zone of liberation.
Tran Thao was to be the capital of this zone. The administration of this liberated zone was
placed under the responsibility of a provisionary executive committee formed of five persons.
The five nominees supervised the sections of politics, population and administration,
economy and finance, transport and culture and society. This newly freed area would serve
as a rallying point for the whole country of Viet Nam during the period of resistance against
the Japanese [and the French]. A chapter of Viet Nam's history was on the point of
achievement.
© Cecil B Currey http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3821/is_200310/ai_n9337860/
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