Military Art of People's War. Vo Nguyen Giap

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СКАЧАТЬ work must be above everything else. He never cared a bit about where he had to live or the meals he was served with.

      After his arrival in Cao Bang, what he did first and foremost was to publish the paper Viet Lap, the abbreviated form of Vietnam Doc Lap (Independent Vietnam), a task of prime importance closely connected with that of consolidating Cao Bang as a base. Just a flat piece of stone, a bottle of ink, and some paper constituted all the printing materials. Though it was of small size, its effect was very great. The Viet Lap was like a cadre who most effectively and rapidly carried out propaganda and organizational work, who fought for, and enhanced the revolution’s influence. After I had been back from Tsingsi and during the time I stayed at the office, I was entrusted with writing news for the paper or treatises on self-defense work, women’s work, or writing on the crimes committed by the French and Japanese. Uncle gave me the limit for each of these articles: fifty words, a hundred words, and no more. Of course, it was not easy to achieve this. More than once I was at a loss. During the time we were in Tsingsi, we also published a lithographed paper. The print was small but the paper was large. When I returned to Cao Bang for work, he smiled and said, “We have received your articles but I didn’t read them, nor did the other comrades. Usually they were long and unintelligible. The Viet Lap, though written in simple terms, was legible and could be understood easily.” Later when I came to various localities for work I saw myself that the Viet Lap was welcomed by the broad masses. Uncle decided that the paper should be sold instead of being distributed free. “He who pays for it will love it,” he said. Gradually, the Viet Lap became a very effective propagandist, agitator, and organizer. It was regularly read in every village, in every national salvation group.

      The growth of the Viet Lap meant also the growth of the revolution. The Vietminh movement had already spread to many districts in the mountain region as well as the delta. Associations for national salvation sprang up in every village. Party cells were organized where the movement developed. There existed whole villages, whole cantons, and whole districts in the mountain region where every person was a member of an organization for national salvation. A duality of power came into being in nearly all the localities where the Party had its branches. Village authorities sided with the revolution, became members of organizations for national salvation and in whatever they did, Vietminh committees were consulted before-hand. In reality our own administration already dealt with nearly all the people’s affairs. The inhabitants came to us for marriage registration, for settling their land disputes. Orders were given by French provincial and district military authorities to set up guard posts in every village as defense measures against revolutionary activities. But unfortunately for them, there existed right in the village revolutionaries for whom both militiamen and villagers had sympathy. As a result, the majority of these guard posts did not yield their authors the expected results. In many localities they were turned into our own communication links or guard posts.

      Together with the expansion of our organization for national salvation, we organized self-defense units, and sought to give them arms. At the end of 1941, within little more than half a year following the Eighth Session of the Central Committee, and the setting up of the Vietminh Front, there were in Cao Bang province many bases for self-defense armed units. The first one set up in Cao Bang was of the size of a section.

      Many pamphlets such as Guerrilla Tactics, Experience in Guerrilla Warfare in Russia, Experience in Guerrilla Warfare in China were written by Uncle and lithographed with the aim of propagating military knowledge among the people. They were much appreciated and avidly read by members of self-defense units and associations for national salvation.

      The movement spread. Our headquarters gradually shifted toward the delta together with the southward expansion of the movement, according to the decision of the Eighth Session of the Central Committee.

      We moved to Lam Son.

      Lam Son is a region covered by laterite mountains. It was in this red-blockhouse region, as we called it, that our first Party Inter-Provincial Committee set up its headquarters. The provinces of Cao Bang, Lang Son, and Bac Can had had their leading organ for which we became an advisory committee appointed by the Central Committee with the task of helping the Party Inter-Provincial Committee. We were located in a dense forest on the border between the Hoa An and Nguyen Binh districts. Uncle was also with us. We first stayed in a house built on poles on a mountain slope. This was for us an improvement, much better than Pac Bo.

      But the more the movement grew, the more the imperialists stepped up their terror, especially when we had come close to their top provincial organ. Their patrols came quite close to our place and arrested many people. Many times, we had to shift to the region of the Man Trang people, in a vast and thick forest until then untrodden by man, where now and then centuries-old trees fell from old age and decay. We drank water from the streams. Food supply was very difficult. We ate maize or maize gruel. Once we could spare some rice and decided to give it to Uncle, but he refused. He never thought that he was old and weak and gladly shared hardship with us. Sometimes maize and wild banana trunks were our only food for a whole month.

      The more the enemy intensified their terror, the more Uncle paid minute attention to the movement. This could be seen not only in every idea of his on revolutionary work but also in the special care he gave it. When the cadres came from various regions, he inquired in detail about their work, their living conditions, the difficulties they had to face and together with them discussed ways of solving them, be they more or less important.

      When the movement surged up, all of us were happy, sharing the people’s enthusiasm. He also was gay, but he remained calm, as was his habit, and often at such times, he foresaw the difficulties lying ahead.

      He constantly reminded us: a revolutionary must always be patient, calm, and vigilant.

      I recall once when we were in Kwangsi, we had an appointment in Tsingsi with a liaison man from the Central Committee at home. The meeting took place at Lu Sung market, on a market day. We were dressed like the Nung people. Uncle was 100 percent like an old Nung with his blue clothes, his trousers rolled up above the knees, and a stick in his hand. Hardly had the liaison man seen Uncle than he hurriedly announced, “Comrade T. has been arrested.” But Uncle calmly took us to an inn nearby for a little rest just as the local people usually did. After taking vermicelli soup we leisurely drank tea; then he said, “Now, tell us all that happened at home. Don’t be in a hurry.”

      On another occasion, when we had returned to Cao Bang, after the Eighth Session of the Central Committee, Phung Chi Kien and a number of other comrades were sent by the Central Committee to Bac Son to help consolidate and expand the guerrilla base there. He set up a military training course which had just ended when the imperialists launched a fierce mopping-up operation in the locality. Part of the Bac Son platoon of the National Salvation Army, while fighting their retreat to Cao Bang, was attacked by the enemy at Bac Can, and Phung Chi Kien fell in an enemy ambush in Lung Sao, Ngan Son district. The heartrending news of his death came to us when we were on our way to a conference. Uncle stopped suddenly, and tears streamed down his cheeks. Only after a while could he resume his way.

      Every time we returned to our headquarters and saw him, we felt as if we returned to our own home, a home where revolutionaries lived together like brothers of a family, keeping in mind that they must endure hardships and that revolutionary work must be long. He often said, “In everything we must be prompted by the Party’s interests. The Party is like our own family.” We learned a great deal from his patience, his calmness. The warm feeling of solidarity when we were together gave us confidence in the outcome of the revolution and permeated all our thinking, our words, our deeds.

      We came to Lam Son just when the popular movement was developing strongly. Each monthly military training course organized by the Inter-Provincial Committee drew in from fifty to sixty persons. The third course, held first in Kim Ma district, had to be shifted to another place before it was destroyed by the enemy. The latter, when coming to the place, could СКАЧАТЬ