Willpower, the secret weapon of the Vietnamese during the war

The Hindu

01-05-2025

In Satyajit Ray's classic Pratidwandi, set in the late 1960s in Kolkata, the protagonist Siddhartha, played by Dhritiman Chatterjee, goes for a job interview. The panel asks, 'What would you regard as the most outstanding and significant event in the last decade?'
With little hesitation, Siddhartha responds: 'The war in Vietnam'.
'More significant than the landing on the moon?'
'Yes,' he says. 'We were not unprepared for the moon landing. We knew about advances in space technology. It was remarkable but not unpredictable. On the other hand, the Vietnam War revealed the extraordinary power of resistance of the Vietnamese people... the ordinary people... peasants... nobody knew they had it in them. This isn't just technology, it's about plain human courage, and it takes your breath away.'
Prompt comes the question: 'Are you a communist?'
Siddhartha replies, 'I don't think one needs to be one to admire the Vietnamese'.
This may be a dialogue from a film, but it is still a powerful reflection of how thinking and informed people across the world, especially among the poor and developing countries, perceived the Vietnamese struggle for reunification of their partitioned country. Faced with the onslaught of a much superior and heavily armed superpower, the Vietnamese relied on their collective spirit and ingenious ability to use their terrain and peasant knowledge. While they did get help from other countries of the former Socialist bloc, their success was largely owed to the implementation of their own ideas and their hunger for freedom.
I got an opportunity to study the thought process of that generation recently. I was one of the many journalists who was invited to cover the 50th anniversary of Vietnam's reunification, celebrated with pomp on April 30. Vietnam is today among the fastest-growing and upper-middle-income economies in the world. Ho Chi Minh City — the present-day name of Saigon, the outpost and capital of South Vietnam, and the fall of which signalled the end of the Vietnam War — betrays little about the war-torn city that it was five decades ago. However, a few miles away from the city, the Cu Chi tunnels showcase how the Vietnamese managed to outwit their opponents through sheer willpower.
Using just shovels and wicker baskets, the Vietnamese resistance forces built a 250-km-long, three storey tunnel complex. This consisted of simple ventilation provisions, water wells, resting rooms, kitchens (with carefully designed chimneys to avoid smoke detection), military bunkers, medicinal facilities, and camouflaged areas facilitating shooters to attack the enemy. Most of the implements used to build this complex were as old as the Iron Age, but they were still enough to cause terror among the Americans and the South Vietnamese infantry.
The Vietnamese also retold stories of guerrilla fighters in the Can Gio mangrove forest, located about 70 km from Ho Chi Minh City. Here, the Viet Cong guerrillas, many wearing simple loincloths to wade and swim across crocodile-infested waters, used harsh terrain such as mangrove forests and the Lòng Tàu River, to plan raids and ambushes on U.S. vessels and South Vietnamese facilities. When firebombs, including the use of the notorious napalm bombs, and heavy artillery were dropped on them, the survivors used the remains of the unexploded ones to be repurposed for their own artillery. The remarkable feature of the armed resistance was the steadfast emphasis on collectivism and the avoidance of a personality cult, except for the strong reverence for the tallest leader of the Vietnamese liberation movement, Ho Chi Minh. On this anniversary of re-unification, it is worth remembering how forceful ideas and willpower in fighting for a just cause can triumph over brute force.
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