THE HO CHI MINH TRAIL
______Following a disastrous attempt by the French to keep Indochina in its colonial empire, the country of Vietnam was split into a communist North and a free South. It was soon obvious, however, that the northern end of the country wasn't good enough for the communists, and so they began a campaign to take it through an insurgent movement.
______In the 1960s the United States began providing assistance to South Vietnam's government, forcing the communists to step up their efforts against the Republic of Vietnam's government. Stepped up efforts required increased weapons and ammunition.
______North Vietnam carved out a supply line, called the Ho Chi Minh Trail by the Americans, through the jungles of Thailand and Cambodia, countries that were nominally neutral. They moved hundreds of pounds of supplies on individual cargo bicycles, on pack animals, and on the backs of "volunteers," on a route that was, at first, primitive. But as the war continued and the United States committed field forces to save the RVN government, the Ho Chi Minh Trail became far more sophisticated.
______Thanks to engineers and Soviet advisors the route was widened, bulldozed, and in many places paved. As the U.S. Air Force made more serious attempts to interdict the trail with bombing and gunships the North Vietnamese set up antiaircraft artillery, surface-to-air missile systems, supply depots and truck parks along the trail, all of it on supposedly neutral territory.
______After the failed Tet Offensive of 1968 regular units of the North Vietnamese Army (PAVN) were sent south, some of them equipped with tanks, artillery, and rockets. When South Vietnam fell it fell to a conventional force, and not the guerrillas who were the darling of the U.S. antiwar movement.
HOW DID THE POTATO SAVE PRUSSIA DURING THE SEVEN YEARS WAR?
