Ho+Chi+Minh+trailcp

Ho Chi Minh Trail

The Vietnam People’s Army had decided to build a secret road system to carry war supplies to the south for their troops. The network, initially coded 559, eventually became known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The trail ran through Cambodia so the south wouldn't know about it. It was on one of Ho's birthdays, May 9, 1959, that the trail's construction began with the establishment of Military Transport Division 559, hence the name. This job needed four hundred forty young men and women. Over the next sixteen years the trail carried more than one million North Vietnamese soldiers and vast quantities of supplies to battlefields in South Vietnam — despite ferocious American air strikes.