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 People's Committee of Luong Son district coordinated with the Information and Education Committee of the district's Party Committee to organise a popularisation competition themed "Uncle Ho with Luong Son, Luong Son learns and follows Uncle Ho". The competition attracted 11 teams with nearly 200 contestants.
The official session of the 16th Vietnam Fatherland Front (VFF) Congress of Hoa Binh province for the 2024 - 2029 tenure took place at the province’s Cultural Palace on August 1.
A delegation of the Hoa Binh provincial Party Committee, People’s Council, People’s Committee, and Vietnam Fatherland Front Committee led by Nguyen Phi Long, alternate member of the Party Central Committee and Secretary of the provincial Party Committee, paid tribute to Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong at the National Funeral Hall in Hanoi on July 25.
Permanent Deputy Secretary of the Hoa Binh provincial Party Committee and Chairman of the provincial People's Council Bui Duc Hinh has written an article affirming that in the 2019-2024 tenure, adhering to the direction of the Vietnam Fatherland Front (VFF) Central Committee, under the leadership and guidance of the provincial Party Committees and party committees at all levels, and the close and effective coordination of the administrations, departments, agencies, and organisations, the VFF Committees at all levels in Hoa Binh province have been determined, innovative and flexible in fulfilling its roles and missions, thus achieving many significant results.
The communist youth unions at all levels organised various activities in tribute to war martyrs and sick soldiers who sacrificed and devoted themselves to the national liberation and unification cause.
The passing of Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong has left boundless sadness for people nationwide. Hoa Binh Newspaper talked with some officials, soldiers and people of Hoa Binh about their sentiments for the late leader.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
