Chicago: The University of Chicago Press [distributed for Asia Ink], 2021. 278 pp. (Maps, coloured photos, illustrations.) US$25.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-9163463-0-7.
Sherry Buchanan’s newest work takes readers on an exhilarating and heart-rending journey along the 10,000-mile “blood road” that decussates Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia: the Hồ Chí Minh Trail. On this journey, Buchanan met and talked with wartime artists, US veterans, and the women who marched, maintained, and defended the legendary Trail as members of the National Liberation Front (NLF), and the North Vietnamese People’s Armed Forces and Youth Volunteer Corps. These women worked as road builders, transporters, and combatants, among other capacities. From this edifying and empathetic account, one learns about the critical roles women played in the North’s war efforts, and the “many truths, memories, and legacies” of a conflict that has yet to fully conclude” (251).
The book begins with a history of the Trail’s construction and destruction as the “single most important strategic target” of the American air war in Indochina: over a million women helped defend the Trail; one million tons of weapons were transported along its roads; and nearly 8 million tons of bombs were deployed against it throughout the war (13). Interpreting the Trail as “a living organism,” Buchanan divides her book into 11 chapters, each corresponding with a leg of her journey along the blood road, beginning from Hà Nội and ending in Hồ Chí Minh City (13). On each leg, she interviewed and connected the historical witnesses’ experiences with their real-time geographical locations and their temporal placement in the war’s chronology. Buchanan’s goal was to trace the Trail’s evolution “as it moved forward, in space and in time” and the humans that aided that evolution (23).
Among her interviewees, eight women who marched and defended the Trail occupy the spotlight. Buchanan’s selection of these witnesses allows her readers to appreciate both the commonalities of their pain and patriotism, and the stunning diversity of their wartime experiences and postwar sentiments. For example, Buchanan’s first witness is Kim Chi, a former actress and member of the NLF’s “cultural troops.” Born in a middle-class family and trained as an actress, Chi volunteered to march South to “liberate” her fellow countrymen in 1964, one year before North Vietnam implemented a universal draft. She endured an arduous journey on the Trail before making critical contributions to the NLF’s propaganda campaign. After the war, Chi became disillusioned with the Communist Party and officially left it in 2018. When she met Buchanan, Chi was living as a political dissident under police surveillance.
By contrast, Nguyễn Thị Kim Huế came from the peasantry and became a “markswoman” who was personally praised by North Vietnamese President Hồ Chí Minh. During the war, Huế commanded an all-female “death platoon” responsible for defending the critical Mụ Giạ Pass (110). She recalled to Buchanan not only the morose details of collecting, by hand, the scattered pieces of her comrades’ remains after deadly B-52 attacks, but also the unique struggles facing women who had to scavenge for medicinal leaves in the jungle to ameoliorate menstrual cramps. Unlike Chi, Huế lived alone and away from national politics. Like Chi, Huế viewed China, not the US, as Vietnam’s current threat and adversary.
While these women’s stories mostly reflect the macabre particularities of war, they are also tales of hope, courage, and female friendships and camaraderie. Their sentiments and interactions with Buchanan further revealed to the author a growing “culture of forgiveness” toward Americans and the past among the Trail’s former dwellers (250). Adding to this sense of hope are the ongoing efforts by US veterans to remedy some of the war’s legacies that their government hesitates to pursue. Project RENEW, co-founded by veteran Chuck Searcy, is one such initiative to clean up US air-dropped munitions and assist victims of Agent Orange. That volunteers continue to be occassionally maimed and killed on these cleanup missions is a poignant reminder that the war’s destruction persists today. Finally, the book concludes with a powerful story of the unusual connection between Huỳnh Thị Kim Tiến, a wartime NLF artist, and Trần Thị Huỳnh Nga, a South Vietnamese resident whose husband remains MIA as a soldier of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. To Buchanan, the women’s decades-long friendship despite ideological differences represents both the tragic divisions engendered by war and the undying hope for national reconciliation required by peace.
On the Ho Chi Minh Trail is a refreshing expansion to John Prados’ The Blood Road (Wiley, 1999). It also constitutes a welcome addition to the modest yet growing historiography of women’s contributions to the Communist-led war effort. In it, Buchanan successfully dismantles the American stereotypical depictions of these women as “vicious Communist snipers” (250). Unlike the other works on this topic by Karen Gottschang Turner and Sandra Taylor, Buchanan’s tale follows an unconventional approach, functioning as a creative hybrid between a travel journal and an oral history with a specific geographical focus. This format and the inclusion of maps depicting the author’s traveling routes offer readers a sense of immediacy and participation in Buchanan’s journey. Effective descriptions and exquisite photographs of the relevant scenery and artistic depictions enliven the reader’s experience, bringing them ever closer to the historic and natural sites that adorn the sacred, if haunted, Trail.
Yet, hers is not the only voyage Buchanan invites her readers on. The book also encapsulates two other interwoven sets of journeys: the evolving journeys of the “moving” Trail and those who defended it and the historical journey of Vietnam itself. It is Buchanan’s ability to deliver that constantly shifting, multilayered narrative that renders her work an accessible, unique, and illuminating gem of history. If one must find an area worthy of improvement, it would be the absence of an index section, or a missed opportunity to explore further the gender dynamics between the male and female defenders of the Trail. Nevertheless, as Buchanan mentions on her journey: “Empathy comes from feeling, not knowing” (75). This book is a rare and empathetic account that, for all the pain and beauty it narrates, makes one feel even more than it helps one know.
An Thuy Nguyen
The University of Maine, Orono