Slam Cao Forest Historic Site

At the end of 1944, winter was settling over the old-growth forest on the Slam Cao range in Cao Bằng. A group of 34 people gathered there in secret. They came from several ethnic groups, and 25 of them were young people from Cao Bằng itself. They stood beneath the tall old trees, listened to a directive and spoke ten oaths. Then they became the first soldiers of a force that history would later call the Vietnam People's Army.

The date was December 22, 1944. The unit was the Vietnam Propaganda and Liberation Army Unit.

The place where they stood is the Trần Hưng Đạo Forest.

Today it is an old-growth forest of more than 200 hectares in the Nguyên Bình area of Cao Bằng Province. The historic site spreads across two communes, Tam Kim and Hoa Thám, and has five main points. It was recognized as a national monument in 1993, and ranked a Special National Monument in 2013.

The forest bears the name Trần Hưng Đạo, but the Unit's commander in its first days was General Võ Nguyên Giáp.

An exhibition house at the entrance keeps photographs, objects and the story of the first 34 soldiers. From there a path leads to the central stele house, where visiting groups usually stand the longest.

In the stele house stands a four-sided stone column. Three texts are carved on it: the directive founding the Unit, the ten oaths of honor and the list of the 34 soldiers. The column was raised in 1994, exactly 50 years after the Unit was founded. Groups of students, university students and veterans often come here to offer incense and report their achievements.

In front of the stele house is a large relief in green stone, made in one piece, with 34 faces cast without a break. It was built in 2004. It shows no statue of a general and no famous historical figure. It shows 34 ordinary people who set out from villages and from the forests and mountains of Cao Bằng. Together they walked into history from a secret forest.

About 30 meters from the stele house are the rebuilt resting huts and kitchen. This is where the Unit lived, studied and prepared to fight in its first days. There is nothing grand about the scene. There is a small thatched roof in the forest, a simple kitchen, and a natural spring that flows without stopping, about 50 meters downhill from the huts. Yet that plainness, deep in the forest, says what matters most. This was a brand-new army, just formed, with nothing but its will and the shelter that local people gave it.

The guides at the site put it in one very down-to-earth sentence. An army needs four things to survive: food, a place to sleep, water and secrecy. The Trần Hưng Đạo Forest gave the Unit all four.

A further trail of 505 steps climbs to the summit of Slam Cao. From the top, one can look out toward Phai Khắt, Nà Ngần, Benle and Route 3B. From this position, Võ Nguyên Giáp and the Unit's command studied the ground and planned the first two battles after the Unit's founding.

Those two battles came right after the Unit was born. On December 25, 1944, the Unit attacked the post at Phai Khắt. The next day, December 26, it attacked the post at Nà Ngần. Both battles were won. They were the first battles, and they laid the foundation for the story of an army organized from the forest, from the villages, from 34 people.

The site also holds the Thẳm Khẩu cave, once a liaison station and a gathering point before the attack on Phai Khắt. There is also the Vạ Phá area. In February 1944, before the Unit was founded, a training course for revolutionary cadres was held there, led by Võ Nguyên Giáp himself together with Lê Thiết Hùng. Vạ Phá was the preparation, and the Trần Hưng Đạo Forest was the action.

For many decades, the people of Bản Um, the small village right beside the forest, have done one thing: they have kept the forest. They do not cut trees. They do not hunt. They do not gather firewood. They do not pick medicinal plants. This is a community agreement, handed down from one generation to the next. It is kept not as a required duty, but because the local people see it as a responsibility to this special land.

It is a forest that the local people have protected the way they would protect their own memory.

What stays in the mind most is not a number or a date. It is this picture: 34 people, 25 of them from Cao Bằng, standing in the dark forest and reading ten oaths on a winter afternoon. Three days later, they advanced to the battlefield. They set out from a forest like this one.