Subterfuge to carry weapons in East Sea ‘trail’ (Part 2 of the Eas Sea Trail

Ba Dinh was standing at a US tank destroyed by communist soldiers on Truong Son Trail

The portrait of Ba Dinh at her age of 26

Wed, November 2, 2011
Tuoi Tre (Hanoi)

The “trail” in the East Sea by which weapons were transported from northern Vietnam to battlefields in the south was created by a 26-year-old woman in 1946.

In October that year, a month after a group of revolutionaries sailed to Thailand to buy weapons, Nguyen Thi Dinh -- or Ba Dinh, as she was known – organized a trip by sea from Ben Tre to Phu Yen.

She was mourning her husband, a revolutionary soldier who was killed by the French on Con Dao Island, and had vowed to take revenge.

Ben Tre is in the Mekong Delta which was then controlled by the French and later Americans and Phu Yen is a central province which was under the control of the revolutionary forces.

The trip had two missions – to escort top military officials from the South to Hanoi and bring back munitions to the South.

From Phu Yen, Dinh and the officers went by train to Hanoi to receive orders from President Ho Chi Minh.

Dinh went on her own to a military zone in Quang Ngai to collect weapons, money, and some documents.

She later wrote in her memoirs about Quang Ngai: “It was joyful and emotional… to receive weapons.

“Officials in charge took me to their ammunition depot. I kept imploring them to give me more, saying ‘Whether I am caught with one gun or [or more], I will die [anyway]; [besides] it is a long way back, so give me more so that it is worth our effort.’

“Soldiers in the South are waiting for munitions.”

She wrote she had hoped to get just 1,000 guns but got 10 tons of weapons.

She sent the cargo by train to Tuy Hoa in Phu Yen before loading them on the ship to sail back to Ben Tre.

The unloading and loading was done at night. The arms were at the bottom of the 12-ton ship and on top were hundreds of jars of fish sauce, a life boat, and dozens of ripe coconuts to serve as buoys.

Since it was a sailboat, the crew had to wait for a month for the right winds to blow before heading for the open sea.

Dinh later wrote: “It might be best to sail during a storm since it is easier to cope with nature than the enemy. But the small boat looked like being tossed up and down by the huge waves.”

She and the boat faced no harassment from the enemy during the storm. But as soon as it blew over, a French warship approached her boat in international waters as it prepared to turn towards Ben Tre.

After telling the crew to be at the ready with two light machine guns, grenades, and explosives -- to blow up the boat -- she sat with a large basket of rice on the prow pretending to pick out unhusked paddy.

The warship approached the boat, some French soldiers stared at her and the boat for a while, and then left without a word being exchanged.

A few hundred meters from the Ben Tre coast, the boat ran aground on a sand dune. She got into the lifeboat and rowed towards the Thanh Phong coast where she was arrested by some men.

She said nothing and was escorted to an office where she was questioned by a soldier.

But when she glanced at a pad on which he was writing, she saw the legend “The Democratic Republic of Vietnam.” She was overjoyed realizing she had been taken in by her comrades, told them about her mission, and together unloaded the weapons.

Following the successful trip, the Southern Marine Transport Team was set up in 1947 with a fleet of dozens of sailboats to transport rice and food to the North and bring back munitions.