The infamous and ingenious Ho Chi Minh Trail - Cameron Paterson

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The Ho Chi Minh Trail not only connected North and South Vietnam during a brutal war but also aided Vietnamese soldiers. The trail shaved nearly five months of time off of the trip and was used as a secret weapon of sorts. Cameron Paterson describes the history and usage of the infamous trail.

Lesson by Cameron Paterson, animation by Maxwell Sørensen.

Deep in the jungles of Vietnam,

soldiers from both sides

battled heat exhaustion and each other

for nearly 20 long years.

But the key to Communist victory

wasn't weapons or stamina,

it was a dirt road.

The Ho Chi Minh Trail,

winding through Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia,

started as a simple network of dirt roads

and blossomed into the centerpiece

of the winning North Vietnamese strategy

during the Vietnam War,

supplying weapons,

troops,

and psychological support to the South.

The trail was a network of tracks,

dirt roads,

and river crossings

that threaded west out of North Vietnam

and south along the Truong Son Mountain Range

between Vietnam and Laos.

The journey to the South originally took six months.

But, with engineering and ingenuity,

the Vietnamese expanded and improved the trail.

Towards the end of war,

as the main roads detoured through Laos,

it only took one week.

Here is how it happened.

In 1959, as relations deteriorated

between the North and the South,

a system of trails was constructed in order to infiltrate

soldiers, weapons, and supplies into South Vietnam.

The first troops moved in single-file

along routes used by local ethnic groups,

and broken tree branches at dusty crossroads

were often all that indicated the direction.

Initially, most of the Communist cadres

who came down the trail

were Southerners by birth who had trained in North Vietnam.

They dressed like civilian peasants

in black, silk pajamas with a checkered scarf.

They wore Ho Chi Minh sandals on their feet,

cut from truck tires,

and carried their ration of cooked rice

in elephants' intestines,

a linen tube hung around the body.

The conditions were harsh

and many deaths were caused by exposure,

malaria,

and amoebic dysentery.

Getting lost,

starving to death,

and the possibility of attacks by wild tigers or bears

were constant threats.

Meals were invariably just rice and salt,

and it was easy to run out.

Fear, boredom, and homesickness

were the dominant emotions.

And soldiers occupied their spare time

by writing letters,

drawing sketches,

and drinking and smoking with local villagers.

The first troops down the trail

did not engage in much fighting.

And after an exhausting six month trip,

arriving in the South was a real highlight,

often celebrated by bursting into song.

By 1965, the trip down the trail could be made by truck.

Thousands of trucks supplied by China and Russia

took up the task amidst ferocious B-52 bombing

and truck drivers became known as pilots of the ground.

As traffic down the trail increased,

so did the U.S. bombing.

They drove at night or in the early morning

to avoid air strikes,

and watchmen were ready

to warn drivers of enemy aircraft.

Villages along the trail organized teams

to guarantee traffic flow

and to help drivers repair damage caused by air attacks.

Their catch cries were,

"Everything for our Southern brothers!"

and, "We will not worry about our houses

if the vehicles have not yet gotten through."

Some families donated their doors

and wooden beds to repair roads.

Vietnamese forces even used deception

to get the U.S. aircraft to bomb mountainsides

in order to make gravel for use

in building and maintaining roads.

The all-pervading red dust seeped into every nook and cranny.

The Ho Chi Minh Trail had a profound impact

on the Vietnam War

and it was the key to Hanoi's success.

North Vietnamese victory was not determined by the battlefields,

but by the trail,

which was the political,

strategic,

and economic lynchpin.

Americans recognized its achievement,

calling the trail,

"One of the great achievements

in military engineering of the 20th century."

The trail is a testimony to the strength of will

of the Vietnamese people,

and the men and women who used the trail

have become folk heros.