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A Great Hero Turns 97!
Vietnam's National Hero Vo Nguyen Giap Turns 97
Hanoi, May 29 (Prensa Latina) Vietnam's General Vo Nguyen Giap 97th birthday is honored by the local media as military strategist winner of the battles for independence from French and US colonial rule.
The national hero was presented the bronze drum and sword from Thanh Hoa, two reproductions that embody regional cultural heritage.
The drum is 60 cm wide, equivalent to Giap's years of active duty while the sword is 48 cm high and stands for 1948, the date President Ho Chi Minh signed his promotion to general.
The four-star general was born in 1911 in An Xa, Quang Binh, to a family of farmers who owed no land but he learned to read and write and fought colonial rule his entire life.
Giap began political life in the student movement in 1926, and in September 1939, after the Communist Party was declared illegal, Giap went to China where he met and worked with Ho Chi Minh for national independence.
The French Police detained his wife and sister in law and used them as hostages to make in turn in yet repression was brutal: his sister in law was guillotine and his wife merely survived three years of her life sentence for the tortures killed her.
The French executioners also murdered his new-born son, his father, two brothers and other relatives.
Once the colonialists were defeated, Giap became minister of defense at the newly founded Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
In the late 50s, the US sent thousands of troops plus 60,000 advisors to south Vietnam and their numbers exceeded 500,000 by 1969. From Da Nang base, around Saigon, in the central highlands, they also bombed the north.
Giap organized national defense and led operations against south Vietnamese and US troops. His victory on the then most powerful army of the world made him a hero in Vietnam and at many other countries.
William Westmoreland, commander of the US Army in Vietnam and Giap's adversary, said "a great military chief must have decision-making power, morale strength and resolute, and an intelligence summarizing all of the above. Giap has them all."
Hanoi, May 29 (Prensa Latina) Vietnam's General Vo Nguyen Giap 97th birthday is honored by the local media as military strategist winner of the battles for independence from French and US colonial rule.
The national hero was presented the bronze drum and sword from Thanh Hoa, two reproductions that embody regional cultural heritage.
The drum is 60 cm wide, equivalent to Giap's years of active duty while the sword is 48 cm high and stands for 1948, the date President Ho Chi Minh signed his promotion to general.
The four-star general was born in 1911 in An Xa, Quang Binh, to a family of farmers who owed no land but he learned to read and write and fought colonial rule his entire life.
Giap began political life in the student movement in 1926, and in September 1939, after the Communist Party was declared illegal, Giap went to China where he met and worked with Ho Chi Minh for national independence.
The French Police detained his wife and sister in law and used them as hostages to make in turn in yet repression was brutal: his sister in law was guillotine and his wife merely survived three years of her life sentence for the tortures killed her.
The French executioners also murdered his new-born son, his father, two brothers and other relatives.
Once the colonialists were defeated, Giap became minister of defense at the newly founded Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
In the late 50s, the US sent thousands of troops plus 60,000 advisors to south Vietnam and their numbers exceeded 500,000 by 1969. From Da Nang base, around Saigon, in the central highlands, they also bombed the north.
Giap organized national defense and led operations against south Vietnamese and US troops. His victory on the then most powerful army of the world made him a hero in Vietnam and at many other countries.
William Westmoreland, commander of the US Army in Vietnam and Giap's adversary, said "a great military chief must have decision-making power, morale strength and resolute, and an intelligence summarizing all of the above. Giap has them all."
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