Vietnamese Revolutionary Recounts Victories

He is the last of Vietnam’s revolutionary heroes, a white-haired man of 87, barely 5-foot-3, who long ago was removed from the corridors of power and now passes his days talking about past victories and the achievements of communism.

But Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap--the architect of Vietnam’s military victories over France and the United States--has lost neither his drawing power nor his celebrity status. To accommodate a battalion of foreign journalists here for the 25th anniversary of the fall of Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, on April 30, he recently put on his immaculately tailored brown army uniform with four gold stars on each shoulder to hold what was billed as a news conference.

Still mentally sharp, though frail enough to need an aide’s arm to walk down a flight of stairs, Giap held court for 2 1/2 hours. There were no questions and no exchange of dialogue--only Giap, center stage, lecturing on history and war, repeating often-told stories from a generation or two ago, as though his life had gone into slow motion after his troops took Saigon in 1975.

Of the three “golden milestones” in his life--Vietnam’s declaration of independence in 1945, the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and the collapse of the American-backed Saigon regime in 1975--the last was the most joyous, he said.

“Finally, we were rid of the enemy,” he said. “It fulfilled the dreams the Vietnamese people had held for hundreds of years.”

Giap declared Vietnamese to be “the most peace-loving people in the world.”

“The paradox is we had to fight for our freedom, our independence. But the U.S. soldiers did not understand Vietnam. I have read their books. One wrote, ‘I didn’t understand why I was in Vietnam or what I was fighting for.’ That was the common point between the U.S. and French soldiers. Their morale and fighting spirit were low.”

Giap, widely regarded as one of the 20th century’s leading military strategists, hardly mentioned Hanoi’s disastrous post-1975 policies that cast Vietnam into an era of economic ruin and led to the flight of more than 1 million countrymen. Nor did he express remorse that the war claimed more than 3 million lives. Families grieved, but unlike the United States, there was no debate in Vietnam over the price of victory.

Giap said at the height of the Vietnam War in 1969 that he was prepared to fight decades longer for total victory.

Gen. William Westmoreland, the U.S. commander in Vietnam during the bloody 1968 Tet offensive, regarded Giap as callous.

But U.S. commanders still held him in awe during the war. The son of rice farmers and the holder of a Hanoi law degree, Giap started in the jungles with a band of 33 partisan guerrillas carrying knives and flintlock rifles in the 1930s. Within 30 years, he built an army of hundreds of thousands of soldiers. His longevity in leading his country as supreme commander through three decades of war has few, if any, parallels in modern times.

It was Giap who defeated the French at the Dien Bien Phu outpost in a battle that emboldened liberation movements from Africa to Latin America. He created the Ho Chi Minh Trail to move men and supplies into South Vietnam, and, with Moscow’s help, built a sophisticated air defense system in North Vietnam. He was a master logistician and particularly skilled in the use of artillery.

“Confuse your enemy,” he once wrote. “Keep him in the dark about your intentions.”

Except for a 15-minute break for a snack of bananas, cheese and tea, Giap talked nonstop during his presentation, his soft hands gesturing to make points about the pride the Vietnamese have in their culture and national identity. He smiled and paused at times so that his translator would not be rushed.

But at no time did he shed any light on questions that surround his legend: Did he oppose the Tet offensive, believing that it would cost too many lives, only to reluctantly sign on at the eleventh hour? Was it true that he thought Vietnam’s 1978 invasion of Cambodia was unwise? Was he, as he has claimed, the mastermind of the battles that led to Saigon’s fall or, as many have suggested, had he been shunted aside by then?

It still is unclear why Vietnam’s postwar Communist leadership pushed Giap out of the spotlight. Some say it was for ideological reasons. Another theory is that the leadership felt threatened by the depth of his popularity with the Vietnamese people.

Giap was gradually forced to give up his positions as commander in chief, defense minister and Politburo member. Instead, he was made head of Vietnam’s family planning commission in 1984, a post he held until 1991.

Giap lives quietly today in a villa near the mausoleum where the body of Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam’s founding father and Giap’s close comrade in the independence struggle, remains on public display. Giap still greets visitors and on special occasions is showcased by the government.