General Le Trong Tan was a brilliant commander of the Vietnam People’s Army (VPA). Holding various commanding positions from tactical and operational to strategic levels, commanding almost all campaigns and decisive strategic operations in the two resistance wars against the US and the French as well as in the war to defend the Southwestern border, he made significant contributions to the development of Vietnam’s unique, creative military art and our nation’s victory against the most powerful imperialists of the 20^th century.

General Le Trong Tan (second from the left), General Vo Nguyen Giap, and some cadres of our VPA (file photo)

General Le Trong Tan, former member of the Party Central Committee (4^th and 5^th tenure), former Deputy to the 7^th National Assembly, former Chief of the General Staff of the VPA, former Deputy Minister of National Defence had a firm grasp of Ho Chi Minh’s military thought and the Party’s viewpoints on Vietnam’s military art - the people’s war art which is built on the people’s patriotism and developed by promoting the strength of national great unity, encouraging all people’s strength and intellect, mobilising all people against the enemy, and taking the three-category people’s armed forces as the core. Vietnam’s military art is characterised by directions over not only military operations, but also the armed masses’ activities in the fight against the enemy, combining military and political struggle with enemy agitation and diplomacy, dispersed combat with concentrated combat, and small- and medium-scale operations with large-scale operations, incorporating the three-category armed forces’ operations, conducting wars of attrition to win victory step by step, sap the enemy of their will of invasion, and advance to complete victory.

Based on guerrilla warfare, local and regular forces were developed to form the three-category armed forces in the Vietnamese people’s war; operations by guerrilla forces, or by armed propaganda groups, independent companies, concentrated battalions, or mainly by the infantry were developed into interoperability of powerful main corps. Typical example was the Dien Bien Phu Campaign (1954) during which our VPA's corps-to-corps interoperability first appeared; despite limitations of our artillery and anti-aircraft guns as well as a lack of tanks and aircraft, we managed to creatively apply corps-to-corps interoperability to win a magnificent victory in the first battle. Comrade Le Trong Tan, Commander of Division 312 at that time, was entrusted with the first battle of the Campaign, conducting an offensive against the enemy’s heavily fortified base on mountainous terrain - Him Lam Hill. To win victory, Division Commander Le Trong Tan defined the tactics of grasping the enemy situation, preparing heavy firepower, quickly establishing a foothold throughout enemy barricades, rapidly penetrating deep into the enemy’s defensive system, and defeating enemy counterattacks. The enemy’s artillery, for the first time on the Vietnamese battlefield, was suppressed and paralysed; the enemy’s aircraft had to fly above 3,000 metres high to avoid our firepower, leading to their low operational efficiency; as a result, after only 5 and a half hours of combat (from 5 p.m. to 10.30 p.m. on 13 March 1954), we completely took control of the battlefield. That success marked a new development of Vietnam’s military art in the resistance war against French colonialists. In his article published on Military Thought Journal of the Ministry of Defence of the Soviet Union in 1984, under the title “1953 - 1954 Winter Spring Offensive and Dien Bien Phu Campaign - a creative development of Vietnam’s military art”, on the occasion of the 30^th anniversary of the Victory of the 1953 - 1954 Winter Spring Offensive and Dien Bien Phu Campaign, comrade Le Trong Tan wrote: “one of the tactical issues playing a decisive role in fostering the development of the campaign was joint operations between the newly-founded corps of the VPA at that time, namely infantry, artillery, air defence, and engineering, aimed at launching attacks to destroy enemy troops on the mountainous battlefield and within enemy centres of resistance and large-scale fortifications, defeating the enemy’s counter-offensives to impose an air blockade on the enemy and defend the occupied areas. It was the first time the VPA’s corps succeeded in settling this issue on operational scale. The victory of the first battle in the Dien Bien Phu Campaign triggered our VPA’s corps-to-corps interoperability, proving the scientific nature, soundness, and creativity of our offensive method to destroy a heavily fortified base of the French Army; the enemy themselves admitted: “Successfully taking control of Him Lam, you can attack anywhere in Dien Bien Phu”. After being arrested, Christian de Castries, French commander of the heavily fortified base of Dien Bien Phu confessed: “we were impressed by your first fighting unit in Dien Bien Phu, and it was also the unit that captured us alive in the last days”.

In the resistance war against the US for national salvation, in 1964, comrade Le Trong Tan was dispatched to the South as Deputy Commander of the Liberation Army of South Vietnam and Member of the Regional Military Commission. It was a difficult period of the South Revolution when the US implemented the two strategies of “Special War” (1961 - 1965) and “Local War” (1965 - 1968), deploying their expeditionary forces to South Vietnam on a large scale. Comrade Le Trong Tan made valuable contributions to building strong main units (divisional level) as “iron fists” to battles and campaigns against our new object of combat - US Army with modern technical equipment and high mobility. He emphasised the importance of applying experiences learnt from corps-to-corps interoperability in the resistance war against the French at a higher level; at the same time, it was necessary to build powerful main ground units for annihilating a large number of enemy troops. In practice, our main ground units initially organised small-scale battles and campaigns, defeating the enemy’s heli-borne and armour-borne tactics, quickly destroying several enemy combat groups, achieving a strategic transformation, forcing the US to fall into strategic passivity and shift from special war to local war. While highlighting the necessity of large-scale joint operations conducted by main corps to win victory in the war, comrade Le Trong Tan stressed the importance of developing corps-to-corps interoperability to service-to-corps interoperability on strategic scale. The Route 9 - Southern Laos counter-offensive campaign of 1971 was a robust development of joint operations conducted by infantry divisions, long-range ground artillery regiments, anti-aircraft artillery units, and a number of missile and tank units. It was the first time we destroyed every enemy brigade and regiment. In the final period of the resistance war against the US, we established army corps as the core force in the victory of the 1975 Spring General Offensive and Uprising, marking a massive development of joint operations between our VPA’s corps and services.

In his direction over operational and strategic combat, General Le Trong Tan always placed emphasis on making preparations, grasping the enemy situation, promoting corps-to-corps interoperability as the main solution, applying and combining small-, medium-, and large-scale combat, besieging, isolating, and rapidly destroying enemy troops, creatively promoting tactical forms and combat methods, closely aligning operations by main corps with local people’s warfare, commencing and ending campaigns and strategic operations when the time was ripe. During the Dien Bien Phu Campaign, to guarantee the motto of steady fight, steady advance, “we must carefully make all preparations again, gradually form a firm offensive posture, besiege and isolate the enemy’s heavily fortified base, systematically, continually organise battles with a high concentration of manpower and means in each battle, destroy every enemy centre of resistance and fortification, restrict and eliminate the enemy’s supply and reinforcement, and step by step annihilate all enemy troops. As Commander of the 1972 Tri - Thien Campaign, comrade Le Trong Tan paid due attention to creating advantages (namely force, posture, and combat method). In the final review of the Campaign, comrade Le Trong Tan pointed out shortcomings of the Campaign and attributed them to himself: “the Tri - Thien Campaign made a slow transformation from offensive into temporary defence due to the improper assessment of changes in the balance of power between us and the enemy. The Campaign Commander must be directly responsible for this drawback”. He came to the conclusion that: “Combat methods will appear and closely interrelate with one another. In a large-scale campaign, it is impossible to adopt only one combat method to win victory; offensive and counter-offensive definitely act as the main method, but there can’t be a lack of defensive method; in some certain cases, without defence, there will be no offensive or counter-offensive. All these three or two combat forms could appear in a campaign, and it is possible that all these three forms will be integrated with one another. Therefore, strategic directions and campaign commands should be flexible; without favourable conditions, offensive efforts must be quickly transformed into temporary defence for the sake of upcoming offensive; in the defensive process, if position and strength are created, then defence could be quickly shifted towards offensive”. Comrade Le Trong Tan’s military thought remains valuable nowadays and could be applied to campaigns and strategic operations during a (potential) war to defend the Fatherland.

Regarding strategic planning, during the Dien Bien Phu Campaign, after researching into the enemy situation on the battlefield, Division Commander Le Trong Tan reported difficulties and his worries to General Vo Nguyen Giap: “we had to break into three defensive lines to get to the inside of the enemy’s battlefield”; his report reinforced General Vo Nguyen Giap’s determination to shift from “rapid fight, rapid victory” to “steady fight, steady advance”. That demonstrated General Le Trong Tan’s acumen and sharp military thinking as it was the first time our VPA attacked such a heavily fortified base in the Indochina.

In 1973, the Politburo tasked the Central Military Commission (CMC) and the Ministry of National Defence with designing a strategic plan to liberate the South within 2 years; General Le Trong Tan was appointed as head of the Central Team of the General Staff in charge of this work. Under the direction of the Politburo and the CMC, the strategic plan was elaborately amended (8 times), and at the Politburo’s Meeting (from 8 December 1974 to 8 January 1975), the plan was officially approved. General Le Trong Tan made considerable intellectual contributions to developing this strategic plan, and in practice, we realised the plan to liberate the South within nearly 2 months only, which demonstrated the greatest efforts of the entire Party, VPA, and people as well as the superiority of the Vietnamese military art.

In the 1975 Spring General Offensive and Uprising, General Le Trong Tan (at that time, he was Lieutenant General and Deputy Chief of the General Staff) was appointed as Commander of the Hue - Da Nang Campaign. He proactively worked with the General Staff, Military Region 5’s Party Committee Standing Board and Command, and Army Corps 2’s Party Committee Standing Board and Command, while recommending the CMC to establish the Eastern wing (including Southeastern direction) in preparation for the historic Ho Chi Minh Campaign. Realities of the Ho Chi Minh Campaign proved that comrade Le Trong Tan’s proposal was entirely correct; at the same time, Lieutenant General Le Trong Tan was designated as Deputy Commander of the Ho Chi Minh Campaign, directly commanding the Eastern wing to penetrate deep into the Independence Palace, capture the entire cabinet of the Saigon puppet regime, force them to surrender unconditionally, thereby contributing to the final victory of the Ho Chi Minh Campaign.

General Le Trong Tan’s remarkable contributions to Vietnam’s military art could be described as follows. First, it is necessary to correctly define the role performed by main units in a war and joint operations between corps and services in battles, campaigns, and decisive strategic campaigns. Second, there should be accurate assessments of our situation and the enemy situation; preparations for operations must be carefully made to ensure victory as a principle of combat, in accordance with President Ho Chi Minh’s teachings on the importance of “knowledge” of a military general. Third, the quality of combat of main corps must be “a close combination of political, spiritual, and organisational factors”. In detail, there must be proper, close, synchronous organisational structures as the basis for meeting the requirements set by new forms of warfare which are decided by military strategies and technical equipment. Fourth, the roles of offensive, counter-offensive, and defence and the relationship between these forms in a war must be properly defined; while offensive and counter-offensive play a key role, defence is an indispensable part of warfare. Fifth, combat methods at tactical, operational, and strategic levels must be creatively applied; operations by main corps must be closely combined with local people’s warfare in every scale; military operations must be also combined with political struggle, enemy agitation, and diplomacy. Sixth, operational direction and command must be assertive, creative, and meticulous, while combat coordination must be close, comprehensive, and synchronous.

General Le Trong Tan’s great contributions to Vietnam’s military art in the two resistance wars against the French and the US remain valuable and should be creatively developed in today’s Fatherland construction and protection cause.

Lt. Gen., Prof. NGUYEN NGOC THANH, PhD

Former Deputy Director of National Defence Academy