The Vietnam War was contested in ten thousand places, from the U Minh Forest in the Mekong Delta to the Ia Drang Valley in the Central Highlands, from Tay Ninh Province near the Cambodian border to the rugged mountains framing Khe Sanh on the Laotian frontier. And for the millions of combatants—whatever their allegiance—every battle played out differently, each experience proved to be unique. Except for the ubiquitous fighting and dying, the 1964 guerrilla clashes in the rice paddies of the Delta bore little resemblance to a 1969 head-to-head slugfest in the A Shau Valley known as “Hamburger Hill.” Disparate as their experiences were, one constant emerged: Every soldier, every guerrilla, every general was personally affected by the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Originally nothing more than a series of primitive footpaths meandering through the primordial rain forests of the southern panhandle of Laos, what was to become the Ho Chi Minh Trail initially served as a crude conduit for moving Viet Minh troops and supplies against French forces during the early 1950s. But in 1959, North Vietnam’s ruling Lao Dong Party adopted Resolution 15, calling for support of the Viet Cong movement in South Vietnam. With that watershed decision, Colonel Vo Bam of the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) was assigned the task of “organizing a special communication line to send supplies to the revolution in the South.” From that moment on, the crux of the entire Vietnam War hinged on Hanoi’s efforts to sustain the vital logistics supply line down the trail, and American attempts to interdict and cut it.
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