When we were in Kweilin, Uncle came and discussed with us preparations for the task ahead when we returned to the country.
Our meetings with him usually took place in the Kweilin outskirts. He used to stay every time he came in a house of the local branch of the Chinese Communist Party. Disguising ourselves as leisurely strollers, we would sit around on the grass, in the shade of a tree. Uncle listened to our report on the work done and gave his opinions and suggestions. Once, when I met him together with Phung Chi Kien and Vu Anh, he said, “In face of the new situation, national unity becomes all the more important, we must think of organizing a broad national united front, with appropriate form and name. Should it be called Vietnam Liberation League? or Vietnam Anti-Imperialist League? or Vietnam Independence League? I think we had better call it Vietnam Independence League. But it is too long for a name, so we will shorten it and call it Vietminh. People will easily keep it in memory.”
That exchange of views was later discussed at the Eighth Session of the Party Central Committee held in Pac Bo where it was decided to found the Vietnam Independence League, or Vietminh for short.
Some days after our arrival at Kweilin, papers were full of news on the Nam Ky insurrection in Vietnam. Having no contact with our country as yet, we felt very impatient.
Just then, Uncle came, assembled us, and told us his views on the event as follows: “The general situation in the world and in Indochina has become more and more favorable for us, but the time has not come yet, the uprising should not have broken out. But as it has, the retreat should be made in a clever way so that the movement can be maintained.” He wrote a message accordingly, but unfortunately our efforts to get it sent home failed.
Stirred by the news of the movement which was taking place in our country, we tried every possible means to get into contact with the Central Committee at home.
Meanwhile, news reached us that the French imperialists had terrorized revolutionary organizations in Cao Bang. Many youths of various nationalities in Cao Bang had crossed the border for safety and had come to Truong Boi Cong’s quarters. Uncle said, “We shall organize a training course for them. When they return to Cao Bang, they will consolidate and develop the movement further and organize communication links with abroad.” His suggestion regarding Cao Bang as a revolutionary base opened up bright prospects for the Vietnamese revolution, inasmuch as Cao Bang had long since had its steady revolutionary movement,* and was situated close to the border and therefore favorable for maintaining relations with foreign countries. But it was also necessary to expand the movement from there to Thai Nguyen and still farther south in order to establish connections with the movement throughout the country. Only after achieving this could we start armed struggle and launch the offensive when conditions were favorable, and hold out in case of the reverse.
These suggestions, made prior to our entering Cao Bang, underlined most strikingly the important character of what was later to be the Viet Bac liberated area.
We succeeded in bringing all those comrades from Cao Bang out of Truong Boi Cong’s control. They were originally Party cadres and partisans who had been at a loss after they had crossed the border and had had temporarily to rely on Truong Boi Cong on being told about his Frontier Work Group. We gathered them together, forty in all, among whom were Le Quang Ba, Hoang Sam, Bang Giang,* and others, and together with them we shifted to Tsingsi. Plans were made to set up a training course in a region of Nung nationality† which had been under the influence of the Chinese Red Army. The Longchow region had once been occupied by Chinese Communist troops, and the local inhabitants of Nung nationality had shown much sympathy toward the Vietnamese revolution. We stayed there, scattered in two villages.
The setting up of a training course brought up two important and difficult problems—food supply and training program—which had to be solved first and foremost. In those border villages, thinly populated and poor, to provide food for fifty at a time and for fifteen days was by no means easy, in spite of the fact that the local inhabitants had both revolutionary spirit and sympathy toward revolutionaries. Comrade Cap was given the job, and every morning we all would carry rice and maize to the quarters, husk rice, grind maize, and gather firewood. Uncle was also very active. He did a great deal of firewood splitting.
Phung Chi Kien, Vu Anh, Pham Van Dong, and I worked out the training program under Uncle’s guidance. Each of us had to elaborate a program: propaganda, organization, training, or struggle. After tracing out the main points, we met together to adopt the plan and then began to write. When we finished writing, we met again for checking. Uncle worked with much patience and care. He paid great attention to the political content as well as to the lucidity, conciseness, and intelligibility of the material. As regards any work, any writing of ours, he asked questions and cross-questions, and paid particular attention to practical work. “Only through being integrated with practical work could the training become effective,” he said. Each item ended with the question: “After study what will you do in your locality?” or “After this first step what should you do next?” If that second step was not clearly defined, it would have to be written out or discussed once again. Since the first time I worked with him, I was deeply impressed by his methods: concrete and cautious to the end. This style of work in that small training course had a great effect on me and guided me in my military work all through the resistance war. It also brought home to me from that training course that only with easily understandable words, only through being in line with the aspirations of the masses, could we rouse the latter’s spirit. It was due to that spirit, to the experience I got from my work at that first training course intended for those forty comrades—and for myself as well—that I later could win success in my practical work in the liberated area.
When the training course was over, all the forty comrades felt highly enthusiastic. It was with much emotion that on the closing day, all of us pressed around Uncle and with great animation proceeded with the ceremony of hoisting our flag.
Immediately after that, all the forty comrades returned to Cao Bang, to their former base. As for us, we stayed to enjoy the Lunar New Year Festival and to make further preparations for the work to come. According to the Nung custom, each of us paid New Year visits to a number of families in the village. As they had already sympathy for the Vietnamese revolution, and we correctly observed the rule governing relations with the masses, they esteemed us all the more when we lived close to them.
Also according to custom, New Year’s Day visitors had to share large meals with the families they visited. Uncle was also one of the New Year’s Day visitors, moving along briskly, stick in hand, clad simply in a blue suit of the Nung people with his trousers rolled up to the knees. I recalled the day when he was in Kunming, wearing European clothes, with a stiff collar, a felt hat on his head, and realized that he easily adapted himself to the local ways of living in a most natural way. At each house he visited he was invited to a meal, and he offered a red paper bearing the traditional “Best wishes for New Year” written by himself.
The festival over, we divided into two groups. The first group, comprising Phung Chi Kien and Vu Anh with Le Quang Ba guiding the way, went to Cao Bang with the mission of contacting revolutionary organizations there and setting up the Party’s quarters. Uncle would join them afterward. That was in Pac Bo region,* Ha Quang district. The second group, which comprised Pham Van Dong, Hoang Van Hoan,