Uncle came to Pac Bo. The Pac Bo region with its high peaks was not only the starting point of the Cao-Bac-Lang revolutionary base but also the meeting place of the Eighth Enlarged Session of the Central Committee of the Indochinese Communist Party. Held in May 1941 under Uncle’s chairmanship, the plenum decided on May 19, 1941, on the foundation of the Front called Vietnam Independence League and mapped out new Party policies. It was also decided that national liberation was to be the central and immediate task facing the people as a whole and that preparations for an armed uprising should be made.
The Central Committee decided also at that session that the Bac Son and Vu Nhai guerrilla bases should be maintained and expanded together with the consolidation and expansion of the Cao Bang base, and that these two bases should be built into centers for preparation of the armed uprising in Viet Bac.
From China we headed for the Vietnam border and came across a stone landmark after crossing a long stretch of maize and going down a slope. This is the Vietnam-China border, a man-made border, for the people on either side are of the same Nung nationality. Immediately after crossing the border, we set foot in Ha Quang district, Cao Bang province. Pac Bo region bristles with mountains and hills and is thinly inhabited by the Nung people. They were good-natured people, who had for long sympathized with the revolution and been maintaining relations with revolutionaries. That is why we could contact them immediately after we arrived in the region. Though Pac Bo was so remotely situated, it was visited quite often by the French and their troops coming from their posts in Soc Giang village to arrest bootleggers and search for revolutionaries.
We lived in a cave on a mountain. There were a great many such caves on these rocky mountains, the air therein being very cold. These caves were not easily discovered. From the one in which we lived, we could see here and there sheets of limpid water and a stream meandering around the mountain base. Uncle called it the Lenin stream.
Every day he woke very early and stirred up all of us. After physical exercises, he usually bathed in the stream, notwithstanding the cold weather, and then set to work. (This habit of his has not changed a bit, even at present when he is in Hanoi.) He was always very active, always doing something, going to work or holding meetings, studying, gathering firewood, or visiting the old folks as well as his little nephews in the village in the valley. Sometimes he organized a political training course for the old or taught the children to read and write. If he did not get out, he worked all day long at his desk, a flat rock near the stream, and would stop only for meals. At night everybody slept on a bed made of branches put together in a most simple way, a bed which of course was neither soft nor warm! It was very cold by night. We had to make a fire and sit around it to warm ourselves until daybreak. During these hours, uncle would tell us the history of the world’s peoples who since their inception had lived through many wars and revolutions. He foretold that within four or five years, the war in our country would enter its decisive phase, and that would be a very favorable time for our revolution. This he told us again and again, like folk tales while we sat around the fire in our cave by night.
The border areas were often searched by imperialist troops. Whenever we found ourselves no longer secure, we shifted to another place, sometimes even to a place situated in the middle of a waterfall to which access was very difficult. We had to ford the stream and climb rocks and finally reach the top of a steep rock by means of a rope ladder. There our quarters were set up. They were dark and humid, hidden under a canopy of broad-leaved rattan plants. Sometimes feeling that the enemy was on our trail and as our lodgings were not yet laid out, we had to work and live separately in different caves. Once I returned there from work in another region, and as rain had been pouring heavily, I saw snakes and insects creeping into our cave. Uncle seemed to bother little about all this and carried on as if nothing had happened. He used to say, “The struggle between the enemy and us is one of life and death; we must courageously endure all hardships, overcome all difficulties and carry on the fight to the end.”
However difficult the situation might be, his simple way of life never changed. His meals were frugal; he ate rice with a slice of salted meat or a fish that had just been caught in the stream. For him, revolutionary work must be above everything else. He never cared a bit about where he had to live or the meals he was served with.
After his arrival in Cao Bang, what he did first and foremost was to publish the paper Viet Lap, the abbreviated form of Vietnam Doc Lap (Independent Vietnam), a task of prime importance closely connected with that of consolidating Cao Bang as a base. Just a flat piece of stone, a bottle of ink, and some paper constituted all the printing materials. Though it was of small size, its effect was very great. The Viet Lap was like a cadre who most effectively and rapidly carried out propaganda and organizational work, who fought for, and enhanced the revolution’s influence. After I had been back from Tsingsi and during the time I stayed at the office, I was entrusted with writing news for the paper or treatises on self-defense work, women’s work, or writing on the crimes committed by the French and Japanese. Uncle gave me the limit for each of these articles: fifty words, a hundred words, and no more. Of course, it was not easy to achieve this. More than once I was at a loss. During the time we were in Tsingsi, we also published a lithographed paper. The print was small but the paper was large. When I returned to Cao Bang for work, he smiled and said, “We have received your articles but I didn’t read them, nor did the other comrades. Usually they were long and unintelligible. The Viet Lap, though written in simple terms, was legible and could be understood easily.” Later when I came to various localities for work I saw myself that the Viet Lap was welcomed by the broad masses. Uncle decided that the paper should be sold instead of being distributed free. “He who pays for it will love it,” he said. Gradually, the Viet Lap became a very effective propagandist, agitator, and organizer. It was regularly read in every village, in every national salvation group.
The growth of the Viet Lap meant also the growth of the revolution. The Vietminh movement had already spread to many districts in the mountain region as well as the delta. Associations for national salvation sprang up in every village. Party cells were organized where the movement developed. There existed whole villages, whole cantons, and whole districts in the mountain region where every person was a member of an organization for national salvation. A duality of power came into being in nearly all the localities where the Party had its branches. Village authorities sided with the revolution, became members of organizations for national salvation and in whatever they did, Vietminh committees were consulted before-hand. In reality our own administration already dealt with nearly all the people’s affairs. The inhabitants came to us for marriage registration, for settling their land disputes. Orders were given by French provincial and district military authorities to set up guard posts in every village as defense measures against revolutionary activities. But unfortunately for them, there existed right in the village revolutionaries for whom both militiamen and villagers had sympathy. As a result, the majority of these guard posts did not yield their authors the expected results. In many localities they were turned into our own communication links or guard posts.
Together with the expansion of our organization for national salvation, we organized self-defense units, and sought to give them arms. At the end of 1941, within little more than half a year following the Eighth Session of the Central Committee, and the setting up of the Vietminh Front, there were in Cao Bang province many bases for self-defense armed units. The first one set up in Cao Bang was of the size of a section.
Many pamphlets such as Guerrilla Tactics, Experience in Guerrilla Warfare in Russia, Experience in Guerrilla Warfare in China were written by Uncle and lithographed with the aim of propagating military knowledge among the people. They were much appreciated and avidly read by members of self-defense units and associations for national salvation.
The movement spread. Our headquarters gradually shifted toward the delta together with the southward expansion of the movement, according to the decision of the Eighth Session of the Central Committee.
We moved to Lam Son.
Lam Son is a region covered by laterite mountains. It was in this red-blockhouse region, as we called it, that our first Party Inter-Provincial Committee set up its headquarters. The provinces of Cao Bang, Lang Son, and Bac Can had had their leading