Military Art of People's War. Vo Nguyen Giap

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СКАЧАТЬ to wait for Vuong before any decision could be made.

      At that time, our comrades in Kunming maintained secret contacts with the local branch of the Chinese Communist Party. Owing to our Chinese comrades’ help, we could set up our quarters, have books and papers at our disposal, and organize communication links as well, etc. Of course we had to act very secretly to avoid the watchful eyes of the Kuomintang clique lest they should assassinate us. Life in our quarters was very hard. We had to do the marketing and cooking. When my turn came, I cooked so badly that from that day on I was only entrusted with cleaning the dishes. We learned Chinese eagerly while waiting for Vuong.

      I did not ask who Vuong was. Inwardly I vaguely imagined the man as I recalled Thu’s words telling me in Hanoi that I might meet Nguyen Ai Quoc.

At that time, for those youths of our age, Nguyen Ai Quoc had become our ideal, the object of our dreams. In the years 1926–1927, while the student movement in Hue was developing due to the great impact of the Russian and Chinese revolutions, we often called on Phan Boi Chau‡ in Hue where he had been brought from Hanoi and kept under forced residence. Often he told us about world events. On the walls of his house were portraits of Sun Yat-sen, Lenin, and Sakyamuni. We were of those youths so eagerly searching for truth. But what made us most excited were the stories whispered among students about the revolutionary Nguyen Ai Quoc. One day Nguyen Khoa Van got from I don’t know where, a pamphlet entitled Colonialism on Trial written by Nguyen Ai Quoc. We passed it from hand to hand. The pamphlet cover was also printed with Arabic script. To read for the first time a book denouncing colonialism inspired us with so much hatred, and thrilled us. Later, there came to my ears many interesting stories about Nguyen Ai Quoc. Some of my friends told them with as much excitement and enthusiasm as if they themselves had seen Nguyen Ai Quoc publish Le Paria in Paris, or traveling throughout the world. Nguyen Khoa Van even showed us a blurred photograph of Nguyen Ai Quoc wearing a fur hat. But, with our active imagination and our veneration for the man, it was for us the clear-cut image of a devoted and noble-minded revolutionary youth.

Following the quit-school movement staged by the students in Hue in 1927, I was dismissed from school and had to go to my native village. At that time, the student movement in Hue also maintained contacts with revolutionary organizations abroad. Many, including myself, had made up our minds to get out of the country, but difficulties prevented us. However, we continued to hope and waited for a favorable occasion. Meanwhile, I went to my native village. One day, Nguyen Chi Dieu, a very intimate friend of mine in Hue, came to my house, talked about the political situation, and admitted me to membership of the Tan Viet Party whose aim was to carry out “first a national revolution and then a world revolution.” Dieu handed me a book written in French dealing with communism, a pamphlet printed in Brussels by the World League of Oppressed Peoples, and documents on the Canton meeting including a speech delivered by Nguyen Ai Quoc. I went to the fields with these documents, climbed up a tree, and read them. It might be said that through the pages of the book internationalist ideas became clearer and clearer to me and were gradually instilled in me, and each page of the book was a very powerful inspiring force. Some time later I returned to Hue, not to resume study but to carry out underground activities as a member of the Tan Viet Party. Here Phan Dang Luu,* who had just come from Canton, told us many stories about Nguyen Ai Quoc.

      But it was not only in those early days of my revolutionary life that Uncle’s name was to be familiar to me. Later, at the time of the democratic movement in Hanoi, when I wrote for Notre Voix (Our Voice), the Party’s official organ published in French, the editorial board often received articles signed “P. C. Lin” sent from abroad as contributions to the paper. These typed articles were read carefully again and again, for we knew they were written by Comrade Nguyen Ai Quoc. In them, Uncle expressed his opinions about a broad-based democratic front, or his opinions on the international situation, and the experiences provided by the Chinese Revolution. Each of these articles began with sentences which cleverly drew the attention of the readers, such as “If I were a Vietnamese revolutionary I …” or, “If the Yenan experience of the Chinese Communist Party is to be introduced, even a thick book would not be enough to expound it all, here I would like to give only a summary …”

      All these images, ideas, all the tasks I performed at that time, are still fresh in my memory. And till the day when I was to meet Vuong, I hoped and I felt sure that he was Nguyen Ai Quoc himself, especially when I recalled Thu’s words as I was leaving the country. All that made me impatient.

      It was already June, midsummer in Kunming. One day, Phung Chi Kien asked me to accompany him to Tsuy Hu where Vuong was waiting for us. We walked leisurely on the Tsuy Hu bank and came across a thin middle-aged man wearing a European-style suit and a gray fur hat. Kien introduced him to me as “Comrade Vuong.” I immediately recognized the man as Nguyen Ai Quoc. Compared with the photograph I had seen, he was much more active, more alert. And compared with what he was twenty years previously, he was as thin as before, the only difference was that at that time he was young and had had no beard. I still remember that, when I met him, I had no particular feeling as I had expected I would, except that I found in him that simplicity of manner, that lucidity of character which later when I worked by his side, had the same impact on me. Right at that first meeting I found him very close to me as if we were old acquaintances. I thought that a great man like him was always simple, so simple that nothing particular could be found in him. One thing which nevertheless struck me was that he used many words peculiar to central Vietnam. I never expected that a man who had been so long abroad would still speak dialects of his native place with their particular accents.

VIETNAM

      Vuong, Kien, and I talked while walking slowly along the Tsuy Hu bank like the many fresh-air seekers around us. He inquired about our journey, the difficulties we had to face. He asked about the Democratic Front and the movement at home in recent times. About revolutionary work he said, “It is a good thing that you have come; you are badly needed here.” I did not forget to ask him, as Thu had suggested, about the League of Oppressed Peoples. He said, “An important question indeed, but conditions are not ripe enough for its organization.”

      Then we parted. After that, I met him quite often together with Phung Chi Kien, Vu Anh, and Pham Van Dong. He often talked about the world situation, analyzed minutely the situation in China, and the Chinese resistance war against the Japanese. He laid particular stress on the double-faced attitude of the Kuomintang, apparently cooperating with the Chinese Communist Party in the fight against the Japanese but in reality striving to destroy it. The great task of the Chinese Communist Party was to unite all the anti-Japanese forces of the nation. As regards the Kuomintang, it must also unite with it, striving to win over the relatively progressive elements in its rank for the common struggle against the Japanese. But unity must go together with the fight against their wrong ideas and more particularly with vigilance against rightist tendencies among them, vigilance against the pro-Japanese group and those inclined to make concessions and to stop fighting.

      As regards our work, he said, “You will go to Yenan. There you’ll enter the Party school to study politics. Strive to study military technique as well.”

      At subsequent meetings before we went to Yenan, Uncle asked us again and again also to study military technique.

      Thus, three of us, Pham Van Dong, Cao Hong Lanh, and I left Kunming for Kweiyang. The journey took three days in the hot sun. At Kweiyang we had to wait for a bus for Yenan.

At Kweiyang, we stayed at the office of the Eighth Route Army.* Since my coming to China, I had realized all the more clearly to what extent СКАЧАТЬ