According to the Black Thai tradition, every man is a soldier. He lives a life close to the land and to the warfare. Bravery, self-discipline, physical toughness, stoicism, and martial arts are fundamental to his lifestyle. Discipline, loyalty, and frugality are the ethical values of the mountain warriors and have been an active force in the Black Thai community. For a Black Thai man, his integrity and loyalty are based on the protection he can provide to his family and village. It's a collective effort, or a team defense. In the past, Black Thai villages always faced external threats and foreign invasions such as Chinese, French, and Japanese conquests and occupations. Since long, each village organized its men into a “self-defense team” to protect its people and land. The self-defense team trained the men, organized village defense, and also sent volunteers or conscripts to the national armed forces.
My family has a tradition of service. My father joined the nationalist resistance force against the Japanese invaders during World War II. Two of my brothers served in the Viet Minh against the French invading forces and fought at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.5 The Vietnamese Communist Party provided a strong military and political leadership that helped the Black Thai and all the Vietnamese peoples in the North achieve their victory and national independence. My father and my brothers became heroes of our village since they served the country and the people against foreign invasions. Servicemen are respected. Those who were killed in action have their names placed in the village temple next to the ancestors. They are worshipped by younger generations. My childhood dream was to be a soldier when I grew up.
In 1950, I went to a nearby elementary school about three miles from my village. I remember having a one-hour drill every morning, including marching, shooting, bayoneting, and martial arts training. It seemed to us at the time that joining the army and fighting a war would be a lot of fun. I learned for the first time about the Geneva Settlement of 1954 in my elementary school. We were told that the settlement ended French colonization in Vietnam (1876–1954). But a corrupted, dictatorial, and brutal government, the Republic of Vietnam (RVN), controlled the South and was murdering and torturing its people. It made sense to us that the North should liberate the South and achieve national reunification by force.
After elementary school, I returned to my village in 1954 and became a farmer working in rice paddies and coffee plantations. As with all the males between sixteen and fifty-nine, I joined the “Self-defense Force” in 1955. The Self-defense Force was a local militia organization. Based on the rice-rooted, traditional “village self-defense team,” it was well established in the rural areas across North Vietnam. The Self-defense Force in my village was under the command of a self-defense committee chaired by the village chief. He was under the command of the county self-defense committee. The county committee was commanded by the provincial self-defense committee. In my village, each family had two or three militia members. Three families formed a group, three groups became a team, and three teams served as a section. All the section leaders sat on the village self-defense committee. I remember that we drilled regularly with light weapons, and that we provided local security and emergency or rescue services. Women and children under sixteen were encouraged to participate in some of our training and activities. The most dangerous job, as I remembered, was hunting mountain tigers in the winter when they came down from the mountains and attacked villagers and their livestock.
After two years of farming and militia training, I was conscripted by the NVA in 1958 as a reservist, like all the adult males between eighteen and forty-five in the village. I served two months every year in a Black Thai battalion stationed at Lai Chau, a small city in northwestern Vietnam. The reserve was local, ethnic, and based on a rotation system. Our company mainly consisted of Black Thai soldiers who came from my village and several surrounding villages. I knew most of the men in the company. We came to the same company under the same commanding officers and preformed active duties, including border patrol, city security, political study, and intensive training. That was the moment of the year for me since there were so many new things to learn during each active duty service.
I learned more combat skills and new weapons, including automatic rifles, machine guns, antitank and antiaircraft rockets, and group-attack tactics. Every month, half the company rotated while the other half stayed for their second month. In my political education class, the company political instructor told the reserves that the American imperialists had invaded South Vietnam with a large number of their troops. North Vietnam now had two enemies in the South: the corrupt RVN government and aggressive U.S. forces. We should be better prepared for a new war against the Americans. After the “Tonkin Gulf Incident” in August 1964, I knew that the United States had escalated its ground war in South Vietnam, and had shifted its war efforts to North Vietnam by increasing its air strikes and heavy bombing. Ho Chi Minh, chairman of the Vietnamese Communist Party, adopted a new strategy: to defend the North by fighting the war in the South. At that time, we believed that we could win the war as long as we followed Chairman Ho. History has proven he was right.
In the fall of 1964, the NVA sent more infantry troops to the South. In the North, the NVA established five antiaircraft artillery divisions and one radar division for air defense. In 1965, it formed two surface-to-air missile regiments.6 The DRV government launched a massive mobilization to meet the manpower need for its new operations. The NVA divisions began to activate their reserves. Each NVA infantry division formed regionally. For example, most of the soldiers and officers of the 308th Division were from Hanoi, the capital city of North Vietnam. The 308th was also called the “Capital Division,” as one of the first six divisions established in the First Indochina War. Our 316th Division was an ethnic minority division in which many soldiers and officers were Tho, Miao, and Thai minorities from the northwestern mountainous region.
In December 1964, the 316th Division command called up all of its reserves for active duty. At the division assembly point, I was assigned to the Third Company, 174th Regiment. I was excited when I reported to the company. I didn't care what was going to happen next. I was not afraid. Two of my best friends, Tuan and Waong, were in my company. We knew that we would take care of each other. In a “three-three formation,” the 316th Division, about fifteen thousand men, had three regiments, each having three battalions, with each battalion having three companies. The soldiers of the Third Company were mostly the Black Thais from the Lai Chau area. During the intensive training for the Southern guerrilla operation, the Black Thai soldiers impressed the officers and men by our martial arts, shooting, and hand-to-hand combat skills. We earned our nickname, the “mountain tigers,” in the company.
In March 1965, the Third Company departed for the South.7 We traveled southward by truck along the Black River from Son La, a northwestern city, to Linh Cam, a small town in the central region close to the 18th parallel. Then we rode westward on small trucks entering the Annam Cordillera, the Great Mountain Range. I had heard a lot about this forested mountain range. As a mountaineer, I really enjoyed traveling up to the great mountain by day and listening to mountain tigers roaring at night.
One morning, Lieutenant Ngu told us that we were going to pass the border and enter Laos. He also asked everybody to hand over our personal belongings, which might identify our Northern status.8 I surrendered my ID papers, a couple of books, and my wallet. But I hesitated about giving up my girlfriend's picture since all collected items would be burned. If her photo got burned, it would mean bad luck to her, and it could mean I would never see her again. I decided to keep her photo. Back on the mountain road, our trucks got slower and slower. At noon, we crossed the border, where a pine tree separates the two countries with a big bi-lingual sign on it, “Viet Nam-Laos.”
After entering Laos, we began our journey on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The narrow and rocky road was in poor condition through the western side of the Truong Son Range in Laos. We had to get off the truck many times and walk through the sections under expansion or repair. Because of enemy reconnaissance and air raids, we mostly traveled at night and rested by day along the trail. The traffic at night was very heavy and slow. Northern troops, artillery pieces, ammunition, equipment, and supplies were lined up for miles, traveling more than five hundred miles, and passing through Laos from north to south.
In April 1965, the Third Company entered South Vietnam from Laos. I remember that