The Air Force Museum, 40 years after

I came across a museum that I have not been to before. It was the Air Force Museum and focusses mainly on the American War. The lessons of that war bear repeating. Technological and financial superiority are no guarantee of victory. Led by the genius of General Võ Nguyên Giáp and the tenacity and humility of Hồ Chí Minh, the Vietnamese people did not collapse and give up despite being subjected to the heaviest carpet bombing in history (“The bombing of North Vietnam surpassed the total tonnage of bombs dropped on Germany, Italy, and Japan in World War II“) as well as being sprayed with Agent Orange in what must be history’s severest deliberate poisoning of another country (43 million litres at concentrations of over 20 times the normal agricultural level).

Two quotes that give a flavour of what their enemies (including at various times Japan, France, the US, and China) were up against.

General Võ Nguyên Giáp: “Strike to win, strike only when success is certain, if it is not, then don’t strike.”

Hồ Chí Minh: “You will kill ten of us, we will kill one of you, but in the end, you will tire of it first.”

Today is the 40th anniversary of the desperate, iconic flight from the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon, the end of the war, even though bizarrely it was fully two years after the Nobel Peace Prize had been awarded by a Norwegian committee to Henry Kissinger and Lê Đức Thọ. The latter, uniquely in the prize’s history, declined the award. He was disgusted by the American violation of a truce when they had heavily bombed Hanoi the previous Christmas, and reasonably pointed out that in any case peace had not yet been achieved.

Hồ Chí Minh also said “the great victory of April 30 represents the triumph of the entire nation, of justice over brutality and of humanity over tyranny.”

Getting into the museum captured some of the quixotic, laidback and confusing way of the world around here. I asked the uniformed late-teenage guard where I should park my bike. He said “Over there, but the museum is closed”. I thought, “Well, the gate is open and you have let me in, so let’s see”. I parked and went back to him. He now said “You need to buy a ticket. 40 000 VND”. I ploddingly went to the ticket booth where I saw that indeed it didn’t open for another half hour. I turned to go, and the boy, who hadn’t moved an inch, said “You pay me”. I can’t recall seeing him put my money into a cash till. Anyway, ticket in hand I walked alone amongst the planes and anti-aircraft weaponry up to the grand building with its impressive staircase. Inside the door there were several military personnel, mainly women, testing the PA system. The museum itself was in darkness. They said, “It is closed”. I stood there blankly, adjusted my glasses and looked vaguely around. Eventually one said, “But you can go and look”. So I wandered around in the penumbra while the speakers squealed with the equivalent of “Testing, one-two, one-two”.

There was quite a range of technological complexity. On the one hand, there was body armour… made of something like straw

Even so long afterwards, it is still hard to fully assimilate the idea that people equipped like this could defeat the US. This painting purports to show a man from the H’re ethnic minority who shot down three helicopters with 10 bullets.

On the other hand, there was a photograph that I didn’t understand but that appears to show a Vietnamese astronaut. I have just looked it up and he was in fact (and of course) a cosmonaut. Called Phạm Tuân, he was the first non-Russian Asian in space, was up there for over a week, orbiting Earth 142 times, and if, dear non-Vietnamese reader, you tell me you already knew this, I won’t believe you.

Here was a chair that the legend informs us “many times utilized by Uncle Ho”

And outside was a helicopter that transported Hồ Chí Minh around.

As I got back on my bike, a convoy of non-military SUVs passed through the gate, stuffed with military personnel staring at me. We sized each other up. “This museum ain’t big enough for the both of us”, I telepathised. Their top boy stared back and perhaps he was thinking, “You want trouble, son?”. As imaginary skirmishes go, it was up there with the time I stood up to Millwall. In the end I did what perhaps others should have done, rode away from it, in fact fled to a nearby café.

 

Sixty years since a decisive battle

The French were directly involved in the running of Vietnam for 90 years until the battle at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. This was the first of General Giap’s historical triumphs. He led Vietnamese troops to victory in the city of Dien Bien Phu, 500 km from Hanoi, near the Laos border. There was a long build-up of tension: Both sides knew that if diplomacy failed there would be a battle and both sides were confident of victory. Amongst other factors that tipped it in Vietnam’s favour was their incomprehensible ability to transport heavy artillery across mountains with no roads. There are accounts of armies moving only at night through forests for hundreds of kilometres to reach DBP. This is an enemy that is more determined than you are. By this time the French effort was largely financed by the US. The US had many observers and advisers present, they saw what happened to the militarily superior French and yet they didn’t learn the correct lessons.

The French were in the valley where the town is, and the Vietnamese were in the surrounding mountains. The French knew that the Vietnamese didn’t have much bombing capability up there, except that they did. And they bombarded them from invisible mountain hideouts for just less than two months until the French surrendered, Giap deliberately prolonging the siege because they had a grip on the French supply lines.

So, a while ago I set off to find DBP, to see the lay of the land. I have been through many Bosnian towns that were difficult to defend because they were surrounded by mountains. Sarajevo is one case, not to mention Olovo and Tuzla. More benignly, when driving in Tromsø, and even more so in Grenoble, one navigates by glimpses of the mountains. So it was a bit of a surprise that the mountains around Dien Bien Phu seemed much further away than all of these towns.

The statues commemorating the battle comprised chunky, determined figures.

The museum to celebrate the victory was slightly interesting, it was cheap, but really it was poorly-curated and uninspiring to the non-Vietnamese speaker.

The town itself was pretty unremarkable, but the scenery each way was super. Parts looked like lakes that turned out to be cloud, other parts looked just like Telemark.

I don’t think school attendance is as high as one would wish it to be. On the way one sees plenty of children working with adults on the land, happy to be photographed.

Corn is grown by the tonne.

And this is how you dry it.

So, not the most exciting town to visit but a great relaxing ride, not too many lorries (compared to going North…), a bit hot, mainly blue skies, beer and pho. This was one of those trips where the journey was more important than the destination.