Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Tai Ba, chairman of the Truong Son-Ho Chi Minh Trail traditional association in Hoa Binh province, and his comrades have recalled the days of building and protecting the arterial supply route for the southern battlefield as the Traditional Day of Truong Son Army Corps (May 19, 1959) is approaching.
Lieutenant Colonel
Nguyen Tai Ba, chairman of the Truong Son-Ho Chi Minh Trail traditional
association in Hoa Binh province.
Ba volunteered to join the army in 1962 when he
was only 18 years old. After three months of training in the northern province
of Bac Ninh, he and others marched southward.
He said to meet the requirements of the
resistance war against the US, the Politburo, the Party Central Committee and
President Ho Chi Minh on May 19, 1959 decided to open the strategic Truong Son
– Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Corps 559, whose name stood for May 1959 when
the trail was blazed, grew from 500 hand-piked men to a division-level unit on
October 23, 1961. It was tasked with opening the track in the Truong Son
jungle.
Recounting the hard-but-glorious decade-long
task, Ba said Vietnamese soldiers shot down enemy aircraft and used collected
bombs to pay the way through mountains to the South.
Truong Son soldiers and youth volunteers stayed
optimistic and ready to sacrifice their lives to protecting the Ho Chi Minh
Trail, which Ba said, was not only the large-scale supply route but also a big
battlefield spanning 11 Vietnamese provinces, seven southern Lao localities and
four northeastern Cambodia provinces, with a total length of nearly 17,000km.
The US launched more than 150,000 air strikes, with
tens of thousands of B52 sorties, and more than 4 million tonnes of bombs, more
than half of the bomb tonnage they pounded away across Vietnam, along with 120
raids and 1,235 commando operations. The bodies of more than 20,000 Truong Son
officers and soldiers have still remained on the battlefield, and 30,000 others
were injured.
The Ho Chi Minh Trail was considered an
indelible eight trigram formation in the jungle.
The 17th-tenure People’s Council of Hoa Binh province, for the 2021-2026 term, convened its 24th session on January 7, during which Bui Duc Hinh was elected Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee for the tenure.
The Hoa Binh provincial Party Committee’s Standing Board recently held a meeting under the chair of Nguyen Phi Long, alternate member of the Party Central Committee and Secretary of the provincial Party Committee, to look into some important socio-economic development issues.
During the implementation of the Politburo’s Directive 06-CT/TW, dated November 7, 2006, on organising the movement of "studying and following President Ho Chi Minh’s moral example”; Directive 03-CT/TW, dated May 14, 2011, on the continued enhancement of studying and following the late leader’s moral example; Directive 05-CT/TW, dated May 15, 2016 on the promotion of studying and following Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, moral example, and style; and Conclusion 01-KL/TW, dated May 18, 2021, on the continued implementation of Directive 05-CT/TW, it is a fact in Hoa Binh province that all people, from farmers to intellectuals, as well as from senior citizens to the young, any people can study and follow Uncle Ho’s example in a voluntary and natural manner anytime, anywhere, and in everything.
As soon as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (now the Socialist Republic of Vietnam) was founded, to protect and consolidate the revolution’s achievements, under the Party’s leadership, the provisional Government led by President Ho Chi Minh issued a series of decrees to manage and construct the country.
The Party Organisation of Lam Son commune, Luong Son distict has paid much attention to Party building in association with isnpection and supervision, which helps enhance the leadership capacity in fulfilling local political tasks.
The People's Committee of Hoa Binh province has held a conference to review the implementation of its foreign non-governmental aid mobilisation programme in 2024. Vice Chairman of the provincial People's Committee Nguyen Van Chuong attended and delivered a keynote address at the event.
