Old Soldier Giap in His Twilight Years

Abstract

General Vo Nguyen Giap, the architect of the Vietnamese armed forces, who never attended any formal military academy, became something of a legend both in Vietnam and abroad for his military victory against the French at Dienbienphu in 1954.1 He probably deserves, despite his many tactical blunders in the past, to be rated the master strategist of guerrilla warfare (people's war) along with Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) of China. Besides his well-known role as Defence Minister (up to early February 1980), he has been a member of the all-powerful Politburo of the Vietnamese Communist Party and Deputy Premier. As General Giap nears his twilight, there is no indication whatsoever that old soldier Giap is fading away. Rather he seems to be still very active in politics, if not in military affairs. Vo Nguyen Giap was born (the son of a poor but educated peasant family) in 1912 in the village of An-Xa, Quang Binh Province of Central Vietnam.2 During his youth, Giap studied at a French college in Hue. In 1930, he joined the Indochinese Communist Party (now the Vietnamese Communist Party). In the early 1930s he taught history at Hanoi's Thang Long High School for several years while he was studying law at the French-run University of Hanoi. In 1938, he received a law degree and married a Vietnamese girl, Minh Thai. In the same year he fathered a girl. In 1939, Giap fled to China to escape arrest. During his exile in southern China, his wife was arrested by the French police and died in prison in 1941. The Giaps' only child also died that year. His sister was arrested too and believed to have been decapitated at the French prison in Saigon. These bitter revolutionary harvests left the young Giap with an intense hatred for the French. In May 1941, Giap met Ho Chi Minh in Kwangsi, southern China for the first time, and became a charter member of the Viet Minh.