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.
Seven years after the 12th Party Central Committee’s Resolution, Tan Lac district has seen considerable progresses.
The Standing Board of the Hoa Binh provincial Party Committee has held a conference to announce decisions regarding the apparatus restructuring of the province’s political system and personnel affairs.
Following the results of the military enlistment examination for 2025, Lac Son district has seen 100 young men and women volunteering to enlist in the military. Among these recruits, there are several families where two siblings have both written voluntary enlistment letters, eager to undertake the sacred task of protecting the nation.
As the Party Organisation and people of Hoa Binh province welcome the arrival of spring, they take pride in the remarkable achievements obtained under the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), which turns 95 this spring. With a shared determination to build a prosperous future, they embrace ambitious aspirations for national development, joining hands with the whole country to prepare to enter a new era-one of national progress and advancement.
In 2023, the relic site where President Ho Chi Minh visited the Chi Hoa Production Group in Lam Son commune, Luong Son district of Hoa Binh province, was officially recognised as a provincial-level revolutionary historical site. Each year, it draws numerous visitors from across Vietnam and abroad, becoming a "red address" for educating young generations on the nation's revolutionary traditions.
According to the Party Charter, Party members who have been active in the revolution for a long time, and have maintained their Party membership for 30 years and more, will be awarded the Party badge. This is a noble reward, not only a source of pride and excitement for the Party members themselves and their families, but also a source of pride for the Party organisation that has such outstanding members who are shining examples for everyone to learn from and follow.
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