Wills-Ho+Chi+Minh+Trail

Will Smythe Ho Chi Minh Trial (1959-1975) In 1956 Ngo Dinh Diem had turned on the communist party and by the end of the year he had destroyed ninety percent of the former Viet Minh guerilla bands in the Mekong delta. With the communism in the south almost gone the North Vietnam from political state to a military state. Thus began the “armed revolution” and in mid 1959 the North Vietnam communists established the 15th Plenum. This said that the Central Office in South Vietnam (COSVN) was to run the war in the south. By July, 4,000 communist cadres, picked out by Viet Minh veterans, were to become the main regiment of the south Viet Cong battalions. The 15th Plenum also made groups that were coded, for example; group 579, which controlled supply given by sea routes, group 959, which supported communist forces in Laos, and finally group 559, lead by General Vo Bam, which operated the Truong Trail, better known as the Ho Chi Minh Trial to Americans. The Ho Chi Minh Trial began construction on one of Ho Chi Minh’s birthdays, which was May 9, 1959. Military division 559, composed of 440 men and women, was the first division to be spread along the trail. The trial was used for the next 16 years as a way to supply the South Vietnamese battlefields with troops, weapons, and supplies. The trial was also known as “The Blood Road” because of all the continuous bombings, and the fact that it would take an average soldier 6 months to walk through the jungle parts of the trail. The trail was not just a long dirt road; it had many underground base camps set up the National Liberation Front (NLF) for sick and injured people. In addition to the underground base camps, many Vietnamese people built tunnels that they could hide supplies, weapons, and food from the American troops. Since there was up to 20,000 troops crossing the Ho Chi Minh Trail in one month, the United States thought it would be a particularly good idea to create the McNamara line, a series of barbed fences with strategically placed land mines, on the Ho Chi Minh trail, but the NLF destroyed it before it was set up. On November 15, 1968, Operation Commando Hunt was put into order, releasing 3 million tons of bombs onto the Ho Chi Minh Trial in Laos. The trail, however, was still used, as if nothing had happened. By 1971, the North Vietnamese took the cities Saravane, and Attopeu. These two cities widened the trial to the west, making the trail now have 14 major relay points. On March 31, 1972 Operation Commando Hunt was ended, thus ending the US air strike against the trail, and giving the North Vietnamese the victory over the supply route.