The Ho Chi Minh Trail

Looking at the terrain of these still sparsely populated valleys of heavy forest with few clearings, the trail must have been in the same series of footpaths the local people use to go through the forests to get wood and food and find their pigs who are free range roamers. We trekked through some of the heavy forest between bamboos and vines and you can get forever get lost without local guides. I don't think the North Vietnamese were thinking of military engineering as some would call the trail now. They were transporting as they had always done whatever they had to on their backs, sometimes in hand carts, on oxen and even sleds. And these paths, though primitive were used often enough then. They were more clear then, although not from the air.

Initially, these paths were really just for North Vietnam military forces infiltration as supplies could easily be transported through the river system until the Americans patrolled these rivers (Apocalypse Now!) and so this trail became the pathway for re-supply as well as the place of R and R for the North Vietnamese forces while their enemy revelled in Pattaya or Pat Pong.

This trail really opened to become a major logistic highway when the Pathet Lao, the Laotion Communists, gave major support to the North Vietnamese army. The Pathet Lao knows the territory the trail uses through Laos.

We must also remember that the North Vietnamese Army was a people's army. Many worked in their fields and took care of their families most of the time but when needed to fight, they acted like the Americans in their 1770's independence struggle against the Brits. Put down the plough, pick up the gun! This included women and children, too. Everyone is a combatant.

At one time, the North Vietnamese, unknown to the Americans patrolling the rivers were transporting supplies by floating half filled drums which were then collected by nets at certain strategic points. Their army were the villagers so it was difficult to track those involved in the transport. Easier to find Columbian drug submarines but the same idea.

Another off and on success was the petroleum fuel pipeline assisted by small pumping stations that run from the port of Vinh in North Vietnam and then through Laos to supply the troops close to the Shau Valley in South Vietnam.

On the side of the Americans then were the Hmongs who went out of their way to get the Americans stranded in the jungles of the Ho Chi Minh trail. They took care of the wounded Americans and protected them from the Pathet Lao and the Vietnamese. The Hmongs saved many of them that afterwards, the United States government repatriated and helped them settle in the United States.

As the surveillance intensified, the North Vietnamese became more creative. They transported in the wee hours of the morning but also man-portered supplies in areas where surveillance was intense. Who would suspect a farmer carrying baskets of vegetables or fruits to the market? Who would suspect women or children carrying baskets of wood for fuel or cane for houses?

Our Vietnamese friend, whose seven brothers were killed in the Vietnam War, described how villages worked to make this happen: men, women and children all fired up by the same cause: to get South Vietnam back into the family. Some North Vietnamese friends were quite vocal about their complete mystification with their South Vietnamese brothers who did not want a united homeland. They have forgiveness for the Americans who they saw just as latter day French and equally bothersome, but they have difficulty giving these to their Southern countrymen.

The trail is still there, remnants of a tragic war. Many areas have already been cleared for development and will soon be erased from the memory of the next generation. But if you walk along, slowly, the Ho Chi Min trail tells its tales of horror and death in the Whispers of the bamboo and the sighing of the breeze in the vines. Perhaps Ho's spirit lives more here than in the cities of the rejoined homeland.