Lieutemant-General Dong Si Nguyen (holding  a ruler) presents a strategic plan to prepare for the Route 9-Southern Laos Campaign (1971) at the front Headoffice in Truong Son jungle.   Lieutenant-General Dong Si Nguyen (1st from right on the 1st row), Party General Secretary Le Duan and other military officials visit the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the campaign on liberating Quang Tri in 1972. Lieutenant-General Dong Si Nguyen, Commander of the Truong Son Corp during the Route 9-Southern Laos Campaign.. During the Vietnam War, the words “Ho Chi Minh Trail”, a complex maze of paths through the tropical jungle, struck fear in the hearts of the US armed forces. The man who orchestrated the elusive trail is Lieutenant-General Dong Si Nguyen, who was codenamed 601, Commander of the Truong Son Corps. On a morning in April 2009 I met with the Lieutenant-General at Hospital 108 in Hanoi where he was recovering from a broken leg, suffered while exercising. With a slow, deep voice of an old man from the central region of the country, he opened up about the time when he lived and worked on the legendary Ho Chi Minh Trail. Answering our query about the initial time when he was assigned to work as a commander of the Truong Son Corps by the Politburo and Party Central Military Committee, he said: “In 1967, to cope with the situation of the US air force fiercely shelling the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the Party Central Committee sent me to the Truong Son area. The path was so muddy that in many sections we had to cover it with bunches of bushes to enable the trucks to proceed. This was done at night while the bombing was happening and my heart wept for our brave soldiers who worked so diligently to get the job done.” This was the time when Lieutenant-General Dong Si Nguyen implemented “fighting while clearing the way to travel”. He had the Ho Chi Minh Trail paved with stones and a camouflaged anti-aircraft system built along the trail to protect it and to counter-attack the US air force. In 1967 missiles were secretly deployed in the Truong Son area to fight the B.52 bombers. Lieutenant-General Dong Si Nguyen also talked about the Route 9-Southern Laos Campaign, one of the campaigns that helped defeat the ground force’s warfare and the “Vietnamization” policy of the US army. He said: “The US army was subjective and thought that they could lay down the law with a large and powerful force of helicopters, but on the Truong Son battlefield, it was like a performance of ‘feeding the elephant with sugarcane’.” His comparison caused me to laugh so hard that my side hurt. Lieutenant-General Dong Si Nguyen, Commander of the Truong Son Corp during the 1967-1976 period (photo taken in April 2009).  Mentioning Dong Si Nguyen’s talent, many people call him “the man who can devise a hundred different strategies in his sleep". One of his special achievements that many people still talk about is his neutralization of the McNamara Line, a barbed wire system stretching from Cua Viet in Quang Tri Province to Muong Phin in Laos, which the US thought an ant could not penetrate. Yet, under the “magic” of the Lieutenant-General, corps of trucks of the northern army easily got through and proceeded into the South. The trick the Lieutenant-General used was simple but very intelligent. After discovering the “tropical trees”, a sound-detection system planted by the US along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and the McNamara system of barbed wires, he ordered the soldiers to collect the engines from the disabled trucks scattered over the trail and get them running around the clock, thus neutralizing the detection system. Dong Si Nguyen is well-known not only for having many effective schemes for fighting the enemy but also for being a decisive man with a strategic talent. This was proven with his decision to build and expand the Ho Chi Minh Trail into a complex maze of transportation routes interconnecting one another throughout the Truong Son Range and to upgrade the truck unit of the Truong Son Corps from company and battalion levels to division level. It was a bold decision because never before in world wars had a country deployed a truck unit at division level. Thanks to the establishment of two truck divisions, the unit could transport a great amount of soldiers and supplies simultaneously to provide timely support to the battlefields when there were orders for a quick response. For example, the transportation of divisions and infantry corps to prepare for the Ho Chi Minh Campaign in 1975 was completed over only a short period of time. Talking about troop-commanding ability, Lieutenant-General Dong Si Nguyen said: “A general who commands the troops in the battlefield must have creative leadership, suitable to the real circumstances of each battle. He must be decisive but not dogmatic or conservative. Seeing things are not suitable he must make an adjustment. Only doing so can he turn defeat into victory and switch over from the defensive to the offensive.” At the end of the interview, I asked him something about his biography as a reference for my article. Happening to remember an important thing he said: “Many people know my name but one thing not widely known is that during the time I was in Truong Son I was codenamed 601.” I thanked him and on the way home I thought of the number 601. I wondered if his life is still a mysterious number just like the secret of the existence of the Ho Chi Minh Trail through nearly 6,000 fierce days and nights that the US could not overpower. Lieutenant-General Dong Si Nguyen, whose birth name is Nguyen Huu Vu was born on March 1, 1923 in Quang Trung Commune, Quang Trach District, Quang Binh Province in Central Vietnam. He was commander of the Truong Son Corps from 1967 to 1976. He has been entrusted to hold important positions, including a member of the Politburo, former Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Deputy Minister of National Defence, Minister of Construction, Commander and Political Commissar of the Capital Military Zone… He has been presented many noble awards and titles, such as the Gold Star Medal (the noblest medal of the State), the Ho Chi Minh Medal, the War Medal – First-Class, the  Feat of Arms Medal – First-Class, the Victory Medal – First-Class, the  Resistance War Medal – First Class  and many others.  Story by Thanh Hoa - Photos by Hoang Ha – Files