The article was published under the headline, “The Trail of the Jungle: Testimony of Colonel (retired) Roberto León González, who led a group of Cubans in one of the great secrets of the Vietnam War.” It is part of a series of features that have appeared in the Cuban press. Trabajadores, the newspaper of the Central Organization of Cuban Workers, for example, has a special website devoted to the 30th anniversary of the Vietnamese victory.

We are publishing the article as part of a series to celebrate the 30th anniversary of this important victory for popular humanity. The first installment was a statement by the Socialist Workers Party National Committee published on May 1, 1975, the day after the last U.S. troops withdrew from Vietnam. The statement, which was reproduced in the May 9 Militant, said: “The Socialist Workers Party hails this victory, which has come after decades of heroic struggle against a succession of imperialist powers. The triumph is a powerful reaffirmation of what May Day itself represents to the workers movement: worldwide solidarity of all the oppressed. This solidarity found powerful expression in the international antiwar movement, the strongest component being right here in the United States, where the American revolutionists played a major role.”

The SWP statement also pointed out that, unlike the example set by the Cuban revolutionaries, “The victory of the Vietnamese people over imperialism was long delayed by the policies of Moscow and Peking…. [which] refused from the beginning of Washington’s escalation to provide adequate material aid for the Vietnamese rebels or to take the initiative in organizing international mass actions in their behalf. This betrayal was condemned in 1967 by Che Guevara, who warned that the Vietnamese were ‘tragically alone’ in their struggle and that in addition to the guilt of U.S. imperialism, ‘they are likewise guilty [those] who at the decisive moment vacillated in making Vietnam an inviolable part of socialist territory.’”

Translation and subheadings are by the Militant.
 

And so it was. It was known only by those who needed to know, including the group of 23 Cubans who now were aboard the flight. And even among them the secret had remained. They were traveling under the pretext of being civilian construction workers, and the only weapon each man was carrying was a machete hidden in his luggage.

In any case, the questions were there, and Commander Pablo Roberto León González must have imagined what they were. These began at the end of September 1973, when León was summoned to the Tenth Directorate of the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces. There Argüelles gave him instructions.

In November they were sent 43 Vietnamese. For six months León's men showed them the mountain roads of Pinares de Mayarí, and, at the La Coca School, in Campo Florido, teaching them all the secrets of building roads. Nevertheless, on the firm orders of León, the Cubans attending them did not ask the questions that were eating away at each one.

Nor did the Asians, with their impenetrable smiles and their silent walk, mention the war. Therefore the unknowns, together with the questions about who they were and why they were in Cuba, kept the Cubans in a limbo of complicity that no one broke.

It was precisely in Hanoi, the capital of North Vietnam, where León felt the first alarm.

The date was August 11, 1974. Right when they landed. León's second in command, Mayor Justo Julián Chacón López, told him about it. Chacón, engineer Enrique Silva Galiano, and spare parts specialist Orlando Prado Ledo had arrived earlier to explore the zones of the South. Everything was going well, but the hotel where they were staying—the Ki Liem—was teeming with Cuban specialists in the most diverse fields.

A group of them asked, "And who are you?"

Chacón smiled. "Us? We're baseball players."

The technicians' mouths dropped. "Baseball players?"

"Yes yes, baseball players."

"And I suppose you've come to teach baseball to the Vietnamese?"

Chacón nodded his head. "Yes yes, of course."

The Cubans remained silent. Finally one of the specialists shrugged his shoulders and said, "Damn! That's real good!!"  
 
The most guarded secret
Never again did they ask. And no one could have imagined that this group of Cubans had come to broaden the Ho Chi Minh Trail, one of the most guarded mysteries of the Vietnamese during the war.

It was started in 1959, and for 15 years they converted it into a system of jungle trails through which platoons of soldiers slipped southward to sustain the struggle for the reunification of the country. The Americans were obsessed with it. They marked its possible route on their maps, carpeted with bombs the forests that hid it, planted thermal sensors in the jungle to detect the movement of men. Nevertheless the Vietnamese continued to pass through.

Fidel learned about it in detail on the night of September 16-17, 1973. He was sleeping, after returning from the Southern Front. He was awoken by Prime Minister Pham Von Dong and the commander of the army, General Giap, and on a map they detailed the Trail's 16,000 kilometers. Later they asked to have their technicians receive training in Cuba, for equipment to broaden it, and for Cuban instructors in the field. To each request the Cuban leader said yes, with a smile.

Two months later 43 soldier-engineers left for Cuba, where they would be attended to by MINFAR in the Campo Florido school. Although they left for Moscow in civilian clothes, at the airport in Rabat, Morocco, U.S. intelligence photographed them and thought they were a group of tank crew members going to Havana to receive courses about the new Soviet tank model that the Vietnamese would be launching into combat.

It was one of so many planted false stories that made those implicated in the secret catch their breath. Nevertheless, the tensions did not take long to surface. These began at the port of Haiphong in North Vietnam on September 24, 1974, when the boat Imías docked, carrying equipment purchased from the Japanese. The captain came ashore, concerned.

"What happened?" León asked.

"In Tokyo we nabbed an intruder in the storage room," the sailor said. And his voice became more serious. "At the very least they sabotaged the shipment."  
 
A specter in the port of Haiphong
And the specter of Le Coubre returned. On the ship and all around it, only the men necessary remained, waiting for the Cuban and Vietnamese sappers who searched every millimeter of the ship and each bulldozer before it was unloaded. By October 11 the cargo was ashore.

Once the last-minute details were solved—among them, requesting that Cuba send the lubricant needed to get the equipment moving, since North Vietnam did not have the type required—the bulldozers, the trucks, the movable cranes, and everything else, in its majority, was put on a train for the district of Vinh. From there it was taken in a caravan of over 100 giant vehicles driven by Vietnamese operators who had crossed the 17th Parallel for Quang Tri province, in the Southern Front.

A Cuban, on learning that they would be moving along 250 kilometers of roads riddled by bombs, lamented that they "would be suffering more" than if they were actually being bombed. But they got there, and immediately classes began, which included the use of the mobile laboratories, which had also been brought from Japan on board the Imías.

To reach the students, León and his 22 men had to travel two kilometers toward the Ben Hai River. They boarded canoes with outboard motors, which negotiated the current by zigzagging between rocks sticking up in the water, or skirting around boulders hidden below the surface. Later they climbed a cliff, and in a peaceful clearing surrounded by the jungle, they came to the school's cabins.

It seemed the most unprotected place in the world, were it not for the squadrons of soldiers who suddenly appeared in single file along the forest trails, almost without making a sound, then disappearing without leaving a trace, and without changing the voice of the translators and the impenetrable expression of the students.

Nevertheless, despite the peaceful haven, the marks of war were close by. These arose from all sides while the practical classes were being done, and while asphalt was being spread along the kilometers indicated by the Vietnamese command.

"From all sides, one collected pieces of metal shrapnel," León recounts. "You could fill trucks with what you dug up. Other times it was huge steel balls, and it was explained to us that these had been parts of cluster bombs. Once we encountered one of these huge bombs that had remained buried, unexploded, and had fins at its point.

"But the biggest fright was one day when one of the bulldozers was expanding a trail prior to laying down the road. The vehicle suddenly lurched forward, and this set off an explosion. The blade and the arms of the bulldozer went flying. The Vietnamese who was driving it got down stunned. He walked a few small steps, as if sleepwalking, and collapsed. First he fell down on one knee, then braced himself with his arm, falling little by little onto the ground, without anyone being able to help him get up again."  
 
Smiles in a void of death
The Ham Rom bridge seemed like an 80 meter arm, half twisted, but reluctant to fall into the river passing below. León saw lines of villagers passing by smiling, carrying supplies. "Here they shot down 116 planes," he heard. And he turned to face the officer who was accompanying them on the tour.

He asked for an explanation, and the uniformed man told him that the Americans had attacked the bridge mercilessly. Nevertheless, to reach it they had to make a nosedive into a canyon formed by three hills, which the Vietnamese filled with antiaircraft batteries to thus form a curtain of fire.

The officer extended his arm: "They made their nose dives and could be seen very clearly, with all the painting on their fuselages. Pointing to the void, he stated: "When they passed through here, they were turned into balls of fire that let off sparks on all sides."

León watched him attentively. He had the same smile as did all his compatriots. It seemed that Vietnam was the country of happiness. He suspected this when he saw the women of the Han Nam district, who were walking down interminable rows, dressed in black, along the sides of the mountain loaded with baskets full of clay to repair by hand the floodgates of a dam destroyed by the bombings. He also felt it when he saw them hanging over the cliffs of the mountains as they carved with hammer and chisel the sides of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

The only thing that changed were their eyes. The eyes of those women, and of the Vietnamese man who was accompanying them to the entrance of the Ham Rom, transmitted a certain serenity, along with satisfaction.

This was different from the expression he noticed in the features of another officer.

Days earlier he was advancing along a road when suddenly the jungle turned into a void. Everything was pure sadness. Not even was there any wind blowing, and the branches of the trees pointed down and had no leaves. What earlier had been an unbreakable wall of vegetation had now become a wasteland of melted and gloomy grass, with a yellow that could not be of this world. León felt the atmosphere of a cemetery there. “This was caused by fire, right?” he commented, and looked at the officer. There was the smile, but the eyelids had become half-closed.

“No, this was not caused by fire.”

“Then what was it?”

The man took a breath, and for the first time—and only for an instant—the sadness of the man's eyes merged with the expression on his lips. He remained with his eyes fixed on the plain of death in front of him, and murmured:

“This was caused by Agent Orange.”  
 
The jungle did not speak
On February 23, 1975, General Don Si Nguyen appeared at the school. Roberto León did not see him, since he was in Hanoi presenting his report. But Major Justo Julián Chacón López became surprised by the energetic features that he saw in the face and in the open and jovial manner shown by the military man in comparison with the usual dryness of the students of the center.

Nevertheless, behind that temperament lay one of the brains of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It was the head of the rear guard of Zone One, where the Trail passed through, and he was one of those who caused the North Americans so many headaches. Often the Rangers took off in helicopters, thinking of surprising the guerrillas, when they discovered that they had fallen into a trap, and that the warnings emitted by the censors did not come from the heat of soldiers, but of the buffalos put in the zone by Don Si Nguyen’s men.

That day, after touring the school and as he was relaxing with the Cuban officers, he said in passing: “If everything goes well, I think that in May you’ll get to know Saigon.”

At best, they didn’t understand him. But a few nights later, in camp, a harsh and heavy cannon sound was heard. Every explosion seemed like a roar, and ended in an echo before dying out. León remained alert for a few seconds and said: “It seems like Americans, and they are firing some 40 kilometers from here.”

Days later, the murmurs of the forest suddenly quieted down, and a constant and dry hammering was heard all night throughout the forest. At dawn León and the troops saw the marks left by tank treads. Sometimes there were columns of trucks advancing full of Vietnamese soldiers along the roads that had just been spread with asphalt. In others, the vehicles appeared in the middle of the jungle covered with tree branches, and they didn’t know how these had arrived.

“It was a large-scale offensive, and the troops never stopped passing by, day and night, day and night. Without rest,” recounts León.

It was even more than that. The attack was being unleashed in five directions simultaneously, and was going to put an end to the game of South Vietnam’s president Nguyen Van Thieu. On January 27, 1973, the Paris Accords had been signed, which set the withdrawal of the United States. But espionage had detected—and this is what Fidel had been told—that in its capital Saigon, Thieu’s faction was preparing a crisis in order to sharpen the war and prevent the total withdrawal of the Yankees. Because of this, it was necessary to repair the roads and asphalt the Ho Chi Minh Trail and its connections with other roads, thus facilitating the passage of the armies of the north.

At the end of April, the Cubans and their Vietnamese students had finished the theoretical part, and were concentrating on practical classes, which led them to pave 2,420 meters of various roads. Of these 1,710 were in the mountains that hid the Ho Chi Minh trail, amidst a 40 degree heat [over 100o F] that forced the men of the Caribbean to walk with damp towels wrapped around their heads, while at night the cold forced them to sleep in their clothes and wrap themselves with two blankets.

Every morning, a Vietnamese colonel or lieutenant colonel arrived at the school and told León how the battles were going. The information was marked down on a map, pinned to the wall, on whose surface the annotations kept growing.  
 
‘Today we took Saigon’
On April 30, when they woke up, the Cubans did everything as usual. They inspected inside their boots and below their beds to check whether snakes were there. They crossed the Ben Hai and began the classes.

León recalls that in his cabin he felt some steps on the wooden floor. In the doorway was the colonel. His smile was different. He no longer seemed so impenetrable as he had at other times, and even less so when he stood in front of the map without uttering a word. He looked at León, marked a point on the southernmost part of the country, and said with glowing eyes:

“Today we took Saigon.”  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home