Vietnam’s military mastermind Vo Nguyen Giap dies in Hanoi
Vo Nguyen Giap led ragtag guerilla army to victory over colonial power at Dien Bien Phu, then defeated America's Saigon puppets 21 years later
Vo Nguyen Giap
1911-2013
Vo Nguyen Giap, the brilliant and ruthless self-taught general who drove the French out of Vietnam to free it from colonial rule and later forced the Americans to abandon their gruelling effort to save the country from communism, has died. At age 102, he was the last of Vietnam's old-guard revolutionaries.
Giap died yesterday evening in a military hospital in the capital, Hanoi, where he had spent close to four years growing weaker and suffering from long illnesses.
Giap was a national hero whose legacy was second only to that of his mentor, founding president Ho Chi Minh, who led the country to independence.
The so-called "red Napoleon" stood out as the leader of a ragtag army of guerillas who wore sandals made of car tyres and lugged their artillery piece by piece over mountains to encircle and crush the French army at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. The unlikely victory led not only to Vietnam's independence but hastened the collapse of colonialism across Indochina and beyond.
Giap went on to defeat the US-backed South Vietnam government in April 1975, reuniting a country that had been split into communist and non-communist states.