• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1276 0

to walking round the world. By 1975, however, the trail – comprising at least three main arteries plus several feeder roads leading to various battlefronts and totalling over 15,000km – was wide enough to take tanks and heavy trucks, and could be driven in just one week. It was protected by sophisticated anti-aircraft emplacements and supported by regular service stations (fuel and maintenance depots, ammunition dumps, food stores and hospitals), often located underground or in caves and all connected by field telephone. Eventually there was even an oil pipeline constructed alongside the trail to take fuel south from Vinh to a depot at Loc Ninh. All this absorbed thousands of men and women in maintenance work, as engineers, gunners and medical staff, while as many as fifty thousand Youth Volunteers repaired bridges and filled in bomb craters under cover of darkness.

The trail was conceived in early 1959 when General Giap ordered the newly created Logistical Group 559 to reconnoitre a safe route by which to direct men and equipment down the length of Vietnam in support of Communist groups in the south. Political cadres blazed the trail, followed in 1964 by the first deployment of ten thousand regular troops, and culminating in the trek south of 150,000 men in preparation for the 1968 Tet Offensive. It was a logistical feat that rivalled Dien Bien Phu (See "The Battle of Dien Bien Phu") in both scale and determination: this time it was sustained over fifteen years and became a symbol to the Vietnamese of both their victory and their sacrifice. For much of its southerly route the trail ran through Laos and Cambodia, sometimes on paths forged during the war against the French, sometimes along riverbeds and always through the most difficult, mountainous terrain plagued with leeches, snakes, malaria and dysentery.

On top of all this, people on the trail had to contend with almost constant bombing. By early 1965, aerial bombardment had begun in earnest, using napalm and defoliants as well as conventional bombs, to be joined later by carpet-bombing B-52s. Every day in the spring of 1965 the US Air Force flew an estimated three hundred bombing raids over the trail and in eight years dropped over two million tonnes of bombs, mostly over Laos, in an effort to cut the flow. Later they experimented with seismic and acoustic sensors to eavesdrop on troop movements and pinpoint targets, but the trail was never completely severed and supplies continued to roll south in sufficient quantities to sustain the war.

* * *

The central provinces - Part 2 |

Dong Hoi to Ninh Binh

North of the DMZ, Vietnam shrinks to a mere 50km wide and is edged with sand dunes up to 80m high, marching inland at a rate of 10m per year despite efforts to stabilize them with screw-pine and cactus. The narrow coastal plain is walled in by the jagged Truong Son Mountains and drained by short, flood-prone rivers; one of these, the Son, has created an extensive underground drainage system that constitutes one of the few sights of any note in the region. Phong Nha Cave, where the river emerges, attracts a steady stream of visitors, mostly on excursions from Hué or the nearby town of Dong Hoi.

There’s little to tempt the tourist on the route north from Dong Hoi, and most people push straight on through to Ninh Binh or Hanoi. The road passes through Ha Tinh and Nghe An, two of Vietnam’s poorest provinces, each with areas of exceptionally dense highland forests on the Lao border, harbouring rare species such as the Asian elephant and tiger. Since 1992 scientists have identified two new species of mammal (previously known only to local hunters) in these hills: the elusive saola ox and the more numerous giant muntjac deer.

Those travelling by road usually overnight in Vinh, where there’s the opportunity to visit Ho Chi Minh’s birthplace in the nearby village of Kim Lien. For motorcyclists and others in need of accommodation en route, both Ha Tinh and Thanh Hoa furnish the basic requirements.

The central provinces - Part 2 | Dong Hoi to Ninh Binh |

Dong