5

p It so happened that I was in Vietnam as TASS eorrespondent when the eountry was fending off the U.S. aggression. The deepest impressions are of my short stay in the southern provinces in June 1965.

p The war was in its third month. Blaek smoke hovered on the hori/on. It rose from burning houses, fields, and jungle. Banana leaves pinned on netting camouflaged our jeep, for it was a rare few minutes that no U.S. bombers roared overhead.

p Bomb craters marred the frontline roads. At river crossings we waited for nightfall. At after-dark markets beside the jetties, in the light offrail oil-lamps, old women sold bananas and coconuts, htchis and huge crabs. Travellers like us examined the wares in the light of torches, bargaining in subdued, somewhat guilty, voices. 1’Yom across the river, a few miles away, came the noise of battle bombs bursting, guns going off, and a red glow colouring the dark sky. Under attack was the provincial capital of Vinli.

p It took us all night to cover the few miles to Vinh. Indeed, an unbearably hot sun was rising when we finally drove into its streets. The almost deserted township met us with wildly shrieking air-raid sirens, which did not stop screaming all day. We had heard in Hanoi about Vinh being a target of fierce raids, but what we saw in those first few hours defied the imagination. Anti-aircraft guns roared continuously. So loudly did they roar that we could not hear ourselves speak. The sky was studded with the whitish bursts of flak shells. The shrill wailing of falling bombs made us want to drop on our bellies. Wave after wave came the U.S. bombers from the direction of Tonkin Bay.

p In the deep of night, completely lagged out by the June heat, we made our way by invisible pathways, across rice paddies, to one of the near-by villages. Here we would sleep the rest of the night. Someone in our party asked the guide, a local militiaman, how people could bear this life. He replied half in jest: "We’re from Nghe-an”. Later, revisiting the place, I often heard people speak the same phrase. "We’re from Nghe-an”, they said when telling us about the latest air-raids, about the good harvest of rice they had grown, about a poem some local poel had 6 written, and the songs young girls hereabouts sang so well at their camouflaged flak emplacements.

p What made Nghe-an, a province that had since been merged with Hatinh and given a new name, Nghelinh what made it unusual and what made it an object of pride? It had none of the haunting beauty of Halong, Bay of the Submerged Dragon, that eighth wonder of the world. It had none of the picturesque landscapes of mountainous northern Vietbac or of the southern Teinguen plateau with its seething waterfalls and deep caves. Nor had it the fine natural bights and beaches of Camranh and Niachang. On the contrary, Nghe-an Province had long since been associated in people’s minds with the yellow forests, the impassable marshy jungle in the Truongson foothills teeming with beasts of prey, vipers and poison insects, and the ominous Lao wind, the torrid wind that came in summertime from the mountains of Laos and scorched the earth until it cracked, that burned the grass and the trees, and made all living things gasp for air. Destructive typhoons did not spare this long-suffering land. The tribal legends of the Moi hillsmen mention hurricanes that bear away people and cattle and that even move mountains. On top of that, Nature had denied Central Vietnam fertile land. People hereabouts had always lived in poverty, and never had enough to eat.

p The province is known not for its natural wealth, but for its people. None but the strong could survive, and come out winners. Local peoplehad unbending willpower, and many left an indelible mark in the 4,000- year history of Vietnam.

p Since time immemorial the land here was peopled by proud, hot-tempered, freedom-loving Vietnamese. In medieval times, they were always the first to respond to the call of legendary generals, the first to take up arms and liberate the country from invaders. Many an emperor and many a peasant chief had picked Nghe-an as their base to block the way south to the invading armies of Chinese feudal lords. Here, too, they recruited armies, which they sent north to free the land from incursors.

p Many of the patriotic movements had their start here during the days of French colonial rule. In 1930, the first people’s Soviets of workers’ and peasants’ deputies were formed here, in the provinces of Nghe-an and Hatinh. That had been the first organised action of the Vietnamese proletariat under the leadership of the Communist Party. It was a dress rehearsal for the August Revolution of 1945 that liberated the Vietnamese from the colonial yoke. On the walls of the Thailao Memorial near Vinh, erected to immortalise the heroes of Vietnam’s Soviet movement, are inscribed the names of the 217 revolutionaries who fell at the hands of the colonialists.

7

p Nghe-an Province has given the country many eminent personalities. This applies especially to Namdanh County north of Vinh. There isn’t a village there that hadn’t given birth to a national hero an ancient general, a great poet, or an outstanding revolutionary. That, indeed, was where Ho Chi Minh, that great Vietnamese, was born on May 19, 1890. There he grew to manhood.

p The future leader came into the world in one of the most difficult periods of Vietnam’s history. In the mid-19th century, in a bid to outdo his uncle Bonaparte, French Emperor Napoleon III set about colonialising Asia. And one of his first targets was Vietnam.

p Until then, its main enemies had been the Chinese feudal dynasties. For nearly ten centuries (from 39 B. C. until 939), they had ruled Vietnam, and later, too, had repeatedly invaded the country, though invariably suffering defeat. In the early 15th century, for example, after a long and fatiguing struggle headed by a fisherman’s son, Le Loi, and scholar Nguyen Trai, the Ming rulers were chased out of the country. Then after three centuries of independence, a new, no less dangerous enemy made an appearance.

p In August 1858, a French squadron, which included a few Spanish warships, attacked the fortress of Danang that covered the road to Hue, the imperial capital. A year later, the squadron captured Saigon. Though their military superiority was undisputable, the invaders failed to force Vietnam to its knees. Vietnamese historians compare the French colonialists to silkworms who consumed the mulberry leaf little by little. Not until 1883, all of 25 years later, did the imperial court of Vietnam sign an unequal treaty, acknowledging French supremacy-

p The colonialists partitioned the country into three regions, each with a different status. South Vietnam became a French colony named Cochin China (Nam-bo in Vietnamese), while North and Central Vietnam were named Tonkin and Annam (Bac-bo and Trung-bo) respectively, and given the status of French protectorates. Formally, they retained a Vietnamese administration, even their emperor. All affairs, however, were run by the French a governor in Cochin China and the chief residents in Tonkin and Annam.

But the Westerners were not able to take real charge until much later. In the reed-grown valleys of the South, the jungles of the North, and the mountains of the Central plateau, guerillas harassed the invaders. In 1885, twelve-year-old Emperor Ham Nghi, enthroned the year before, and his regent, fled to the hills. A fortified base had been built there beforehand, from which he called on his countrymen to take up arms. The liberation movement under the feudal gentry got to be known as Can Vuong, the Royalist Movement. Not until the late 1890s did the French

8 colonialists finally manage to capture the rebel emporor, and thereafter suppress the main guerilla bases.

p The capture of Ham Nghi and the enthronement of his brother Dong Khanh, who swore loyalty to the French, did not. however, end the armed resistance. The Vietnamese continued to resist for nearly twenty years more. In Central Vietnam, the fight was carried on by the feudal gentry under the leadership of the "first scholar" of Hatinh Province, Phan Dinh Phung. In North Vietnam, the colonialists were not given a minute’s respite by a guerilla army under a peasant general, Hoang Hoa Tham, who was assassinated by a traitor in 1913. Still, his main forces continued the resistance until the early 1920s. Poems and songs were composed to extol the bravery of the guerillas and their chiefs.

p But those were the last bursts of a dying gale. While singing the praises of the unbending patriots, the songs also bemoaned the loss of freedom and independence. Vietnam arrived at the turn of the 20th century wearing chains of slavery.

Not that it had resigned itself to its fate. It waited for more propitious times, for the birth of new heroes who would raise the banner of national liberation. And though the hour of victory was still far away, its heralds were already beginning to appear in towns and villages.