Our Southward March was steadily progressing. It drew in ever greater numbers of cadres and enjoyed an ever mightier response from the youth. Hundreds of boys and girls in Cao Bang province left their families and took part in various armed shock-operative groups. The road had by then been fought through from the Phia Biooc Mountain southward to the limits of Cho Chu. We had arrived at Nghia Ta village, Cho Don district. From Nghia Ta we went straight to the foot of the hill named Lang Coc and entered a burned-out clearing deep in the forest where we met Chu Van Tan and a number of combatants of the National Salvation Army from Bac Son. Thus, two roads had been opened, all along which local organizations had been set up, and armed forces organized. We finally met together, linking up a road surrounding the provinces of Cao Bang, Bac Can, and Lang Son, which had been decided upon at the Central Committee Plenum, namely, to open the way for southward expansion, and for communicating with the Central Committee and the nationwide movement. At that historic junction we had a meeting with the Bac Son cadres working in the region and those of the Southward March group to exchange experiences. After the meeting, a small festival was held. We sang for joy. Nghia Ta was thus dubbed “Victory village.”
Later on I returned to Cao Bang. It was Lunar New Year’s Day. Cadres belonging to some twenty Southward March groups who had opened up their way southward also came to enjoy their success. The Central Committee of the Vietminh Front and the Cao-Bac-Lang Party branch presented them with a flag on which was written “Successful shock work.”
While the movement developed steadily and enthusiastically, the enemy began their terrorist raids.
After we had parted with the combatants for national salvation and as we passed by Ra market, the news came that Due Xuan, head of a Southward March of the locality had just been killed in an ambush near Phu Thong. At Cao Bang, the Inter-Provincial Committee headquarters was besieged. Once the printing shop of the Viet Lap was shelled.
In all localities, proclamations and admonitions were issued by the imperialists warning the population not to sympathize with the Vietminh, to continue to carry on their daily work. Those families whose members had gone with the Vietminh must call them back. But there was no response to this appeal. The imperialists’ scheme failed woefully.
Then came terror. Cadres were arrested, whole families whose members had secretly joined the movement were arrested, their houses burned, their property confiscated. Many villages and hamlets were razed to the ground. Those arrested who had revolutionary papers on them, were immediately shot, beheaded, or had their arms cut off and exhibited at market places. Thousands of piasters and tons of salt were promised as rewards to those who could bring in a revolutionary cadre’s head. Then just as they had done in Vu Nhai and Bac Son, the imperialists proceeded to concentrate the population into camps to make their control easier.
Under such circumstances, Anti-Terror Volunteer Committees were set up. The people’s fighting spirit against terror ran high. Secret groups maintained close contact with them, carrying on propaganda and organizational work, exhorting, consolidating, and strengthening their spirit, enabling professional cadres and youths to join the bases in safety. Owing to that, revolutionary bases in certain regions became smaller but consolidated. In many localities which had been subjected to the enemy’s terrorist operation, the movement surged up again and armed struggle began.
Members of secret groups which were the nuclei of the revolutionary movement in every locality took more feverishly to training themselves militarily and to raising their political understanding. Regular armed sections, some of platoon size, were organized in the districts. These local armed platoons carried out propaganda work, annihilated the most reactionary elements, or ambushed enemy patrols. The Southward March group, for their part, re-established the mass road links interrupted by the enemy terrorist operations. Thus the large-scale terrorist campaign launched by the imperialists, though creating difficulties for us, steeled further the fighting spirit of both cadres and people, once we had stood the test. That spirit was the essential condition for our advance toward armed insurrection.
In June 1944 the terrorist campaign still raged.
But the general situation became more and more unfavorable for the fascists. In Europe, the German fascists suffered telling blows at Stalingrad. The Red Army launched repeated offensives. The second front was opened. In the Pacific area, a number of important naval bases around the Japanese territorial waters changed hands. In July 1944, the French reactionary government under Pétain collapsed. General de Gaulle returned to France at the heels of the United States and British troops and set up a new government. This situation sharpened the contradictions between the Japanese fascists and the French colonialists in Indochina. The Party foresaw an inevitable coup d’état staged by the Japanese fascists in order to destroy the French power. Throughout the country the revolutionary movement was spreading, and Vietminh organizations sprang up.
Under these circumstances, the Cao-Bac-Lang Inter-Provincial Committee convened a conference at the end of July 1944, to discuss the question of armed insurrection. Many district groups attended the conference and at the same time carried out guard duty. Boundless was our joy, of all of us, to meet together to discuss a subject which we had so much longed for, after months of arduous struggle against the terrorist campaign. The political report to the conference concluded as follows: “On the basis of the situation in the world and in the country and the revolutionary movement in Cao-Bac-Lang provinces, it can be said that conditions are ripe for starting guerrilla warfare in these provinces.” Seething debate at the conference led directly to the decision that the insurrection be launched to keep pace with the general situation which was favorably developing. That explained why the debate was most animated though the solution could not yet be found for many important and concrete tasks such as how to defend those liberated areas against the enemy’s counterattack. What measures should be adopted, and tasks done, to carry out a drawn-out fight? Nevertheless, the cadres were most enthusiastic, all burning with the desire to bring back this important decision to their respective localities as soon as possible.
The Cao-Bac-Lang Inter-Provincial Committee planned to hold another conference together with us with a view to finding a solution to these pending questions and to decide when to start guerrilla warfare.
In the meantime, we learned that Uncle had just returned to the country.
I was sent to Pac Bo together with Vu Anh and some other comrades to report to him on the situation and to ask for his instructions.
As usual, he let us know his opinion immediately after we had finished our report. He criticized our decision saying that to start guerrilla warfare in Cao-Bac-Lang provinces was only to act on the basis of the local situation and not on the concrete situation of the whole country.
Under present conditions, he said, if guerrilla warfare is to be waged at once throughout the country on the scale and scope mentioned in the decision, great and numerous will be the difficulties we will have to face. They will be greater still than those we had already undergone during the last terror campaign. For not a single locality outside Cao-Bac-Lang is yet sufficiently prepared for armed struggle to be able to rise up in response to the decision even though the movement is mounting throughout the country. The imperialists will rapidly concentrate their forces to cope with the situation. As for the Cao-Bac-Lang area itself, we could not yet, as far as the military viewpoint was concerned, concentrate our forces, while our cadres and arms were still scattered, and we still lacked the nucleus forces.
His analysis was as follows: “Now, the period of peaceful development of the revolution is over, but that of nationwide uprising has not yet begun. To limit ourselves now solely to carrying out our work under political form is not sufficient to speed up the movement. But if we start armed insurrection right now, our forces will be destroyed by the enemy. The present struggle must necessarily proceed from the political form to the military form. But for the time being more importance must still be given to the political form. We must, therefore, adopt a more appropriate form in order to bring the movement forward.”
Also at that meeting, Uncle put forth the question of organizing the National Liberation Army.