Vo Nguyen Giap - Unforgettable Days

Publisher's Note

From August 1945 to December 1946, from the victory of the General Insurrection to the start of the resistance to French colonial aggression, Viet Nam went through a crucial period, one that was extremely complex and at times critical.

General Vo Nguyen Giap, one of the main organizers and leaders of the Insurrection, recounted here the events of that historic period. From the whole picture there emerges the vivid and fascinating image of President Ho Chi Minh. These "Unforgettable Days" are indispensable to those who wish to go back to the source of present-day Viet Nam.

Back at Hanoi, we lived in Hang Ngang Street. The City Party Committee had arranged for us to take lodgings with the family of a sympathizer. Presently we learned that Uncle Ho was coming. A few days earlier, a Liberation Army platoon of the Quang Trung detachment which was doing combat duty in Thai Nguyen, had been ordered to go back immediately to Tan Trao to escort him. The comrade who brought us the news said that on the way Uncle Ho had sometimes had to be carried on a litter. We guessed that he was still in very poor health, for usually he would refuse to trouble anyone, even when he was tired or sick.

The situation was tense. My comrades were very glad to hear the news. It had been decided that Comrade Tho would go and meet Uncle Ho in the guerilla base, but there was no need now, Comrade Ninh and I were to go and meet him in Phu Gia.

Our car quickly drove out of the city, along the familiar dyke bordered with guava trees. Red flags fluttered in villages around the West Lake. This reminded me of the days when we were on our way to meet Uncle Ho at Deo Gie, as he was coming to Tan Trao from Cao Bang; a few days later Tan Trao became the seat of revolutionary power.

There had been days of great joy in his revolutionary life as he wandered around the world. There was the day when he found the way to national liberation while reading Lenin's Thesis on the National and Colonial Problem. There was the day when the French Communistk Party, of which he was a member, was founded in 1920. And the historic day of February 3, 1930, when the Indochinese Communist Party was founded...

And now another day of great joy was coming to him, to the Vietnamese revolution.

Not long before we had been sitting up all night beside Uncle Ho's bamboo bed in a small bamboo hut, when he was seriously sick in Tan Trao. Only in such moments could we fully realize his ardent longing for the nation's independence and freedom. It not only underlay his advice on the work of cadres, on how to sustain the revolutionary movement, when he said that "we must win back independence and freedom, even if we have to burn down the whole of the Truong Son range". It was clearly apparent also in each of his gestures, in the look in his eyes wherever he recovered between two fits of fever and in his struggle against his grave illness as he fought over every second and minute for the sake of the revolution.

At the call of the Party and Uncle Ho, our whole nation from North to South had been rising up like surging waves during the last few days. In Hanoi, the revolutionary masses had stormed Bac Bo Palace (the Governor's Office) by rushing the iron fence. Crowds of people, old and young, men and women, had demonstrated in closed ranks in front of the civil guards' barracks, braving Japanese tanks and guns. Japanese tanks, machine-guns and bayonets were forced to retreat, and the Japanese had to hand over the munitions stores belonging to the civil guards stationed there. News of victorious uprisings came from various regions...

We came into Ga village.

Uncle Ho was staying in a small but tidy house. As we entered, we saw him sitting and chatting with an old man, his host.

Not long before, when he was living in Viet Bac, he had appeared to ordinary eyes as an old man of the Nung minority. Today, he had become an old peasant of the lowlands, quite at ease in his brown peasant pyjamas. He still looked rather thin, with protruding cheek-bones. Blue veins were clearly visible on his forehead and temples. But with his large forehead, his black beard, and especially his bright eyes, a surprising moral strength seemed to radiate from his slender body. Anyway, he looked much better than he had during the Tan Trao conference.

As we came into the house the host greeted us, then tactfully withdrew.

Uncle Ho smiled at us, saying, "Now, you are looking like real city men."

We eagerly told him about the revolutionary situation in Hanoi and the provinces. He listened to us quietly. It was his manner to remain calm in moments of joy or sadness.

We informed him of the Party Bureau's desire to arrange the Government's inauguration at an early date. According to the decision of the National Conference held at Tan Trao, the National Liberation Committee, of which he was the Chairman, was to become the Provisional Government.

With some amusement, he asked, "And so, I am to be President?"

In fact, a very glorious but also very critical period had begun in the nation's history. Uncle Ho had accepted a difficult mission, that of steering the new boat the newly-established Vietnamese state through dangerous reefs. How he received this task from history and from the people was stated in this answer he was to give foreign pressmen three months later: "I have no desire for either fame or riches. I have to assume the work of President because my people have entrusted it to me. I am like a soldier going to the front at the nation's order."

We returned to Hang Ngang Street for further preparations, while comrade Truong Chinh, who had joined us later, was to stay till the afternoon and accompany Uncle Ho on his journey.

It was the first time for Uncle Ho to come to Hanoi. It has taken him more than thirty-five years to reach Hanoi from the small thatched house in Kim Lien village three hundred kilometres away.

The path he had followed had been different from that of any other Vietnamese patriot before him.

He had wandered alone in various regions of the globe. At that time capitalism, reaching its highest stage of development, had become extremely vicious. It tried to blur the dividing line between the good and the bad. It distorted all the genuine moral values which mankind had achieved so far. It was hiding the lights of justice and freedom.

He had wandered in days of darkness when European and Asian skies were covered with the dark clouds of imperialist wars.

The world was sinking into disorder and sufferings; imperialism was committing crime upon crime. At a time when it was hard to tell the true from the false, he quickly saw the light of the truth. He came to Leninism. He found in Lenin's doctrine "the sun which brings the radiant source of life." He saw in Lenin's banner "the symbol of faith and the torch of hope." Thus, fifty years ago, the great Vietnamese patriot had found in Marxism-Leninism the only way to liberation, the "Revolutionary Way", for our people and their fellow-sufferers the peoples oppressed by imperialism. Now a great change had taken place in national life.

A few days before, Hanoi still looked like a product of the corrupt colonial regime during the war. The whole city was feverish with black-market activities. Life was precarious. There were not enough dust-carts to carry those who had died from starvation to the outskirts of the city where they were thrown into common graves. At the city gates, large numbers of starving people were pouring in from the countryside. They staggered about as lifeless as withered leaves in winter. A light push by a policeman might send someone down never to rise again.