How one Vietnamese general got creative as soldiers slogged through the jungle
Creativity comes in many forms. I especially like the tiny, out-of-the-way places where it pops up. On my recent trip to Vietnam, I heard about a small, interesting way in which some long-ago soldiers got creative.
For as long as I’ve been going to Vietnam, I almost never “play tourist” or visit the wonders that the country has to offer. I’ve seen pictures of the mountains north of town. I’ve read about them. I’ve talked to people who’ve gone there. But I had never had the time or chance to go. So, on one day of my trip, I drove with a friend to the mountains northwest of Hanoi.
What an eye-opener.
I went with a man who founded and runs a successful consulting firm. He’s a phenomenal photographer who’s forsaken his big camera for his phone and continues to amaze. He’s also a long-distance driver, not as a profession but as another almost-hobby.
He invited me to Moc Chau, about 120 miles and four hours from Hanoi, in Son La province, near the borders of China and Laos. In his trusty Chevy pickup, we wound our way to Hoa Binh for breakfast pho, and then Moc Chau for a lunch of salmon and sturgeon, before hitting the ultimate destination: the Na Ka Plum Valley.
The valley holds hundreds, maybe thousands, of plum trees that were at their peak of blooming. For Vietnamese Lunar New Year, which had just passed, farmers pluck branches from the trees with spectacular white blossoms and ship them to the city for Hanoians to enjoy. The valley was magical, peaceful, with a cow mooing and a few birds chirping as we walked, sat, and soaked in the beauty.
But I was astounded by the surrounding mountains. Objectively they weren’t especially tall (maybe 3,000 feet) but they were steep, covered in thick, scruffy vegetation close to the ground, and craggy trees.
We both wondered how on earth the French (until 1954) and the Americans (until 1975) maneuvered in these impossible mountains. What were they thinking? He and I agreed there would be no way we could traipse up those mountains (and he’s a lot younger than I am). The energy it would take to lean into a hill with a 45-degree slope would leave me exhausted after 30 minutes.
Then he told me about a tiny act of creativity that made me smile.
During the early 1950s war with the French, one Vietnamese general put his men into units of three people and gave each unit a hammock. Two men would carry the hammock while one slept as they slogged through the forest and jungles. That way, at least one person would be fresh at all times.
In the initial version of this column, I wrote that this was an obvious move, yet one I never would have considered until he mentioned it. The day the column was published, a reader let me know that, in fact, this mode of hammock threesomes can be traced back to 1789, when Vietnamese troops used the hammocks in a battle with the Chinese.
I knew the Vietnamese were resourceful, just hadn’t know for how long.
Creativity in the forest, Vietnamese style.
Nancy Napier is a distinguished professor emerita and coach for the executive MBA program in the College of Business and Economics at Boise State University in Idaho. nnapier@boisestate.edu. She is co-author of “The Bridge Generation of Vietnam: Spanning Wartime to Boomtime.”
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