Job in Vietnam
Based on the NSA's official history of the Vietnam War, the Ho Chi Minh Trail was "one of the great achievements of military engineering of the Twentieth century." Called the "Truong Son strategic supply route" through the Vietnamese, the Trail took the type of a nerve cell's dendrites and extended from North Vietnam, passing through Laos before selecting South Vietnam where the war's fighting took place. The Trail was key from the military perspective since it allowed for Hanoi to transmit down NVA troops as well as transport tons of materiel to the Vietcong forces. It's amazing that despite the efforts of the American troops, who made the region in northeastern Laos through which the Trail passed the most heavily bombed section of all time, the Trail was never fully cut. The battle of the Ho Chi Minh Trail may have been one of the most significant military encounters in American history; it was a battle that people couldn't win no matter how many a lot of bombs were dropped. Strategically, it had been the most important battle of the Second Indochina War, and it was also a battle than never finished until the war's end. Some have speculated that cutting the Trail would have ensured American victory. But alas, the Ho Chi Minh Trail's beginnings go as far back long before the Americans stepped foot in Vietnam.
Well before civilization, the Ho Chi Minh Trail had been carved out by geological phenomena; an upswing of mighty mountain ranges and also the birth of fast flowing rivers as well as the movement of land masses and alterations in temperature all positioned and fortified the natural passages that will later be used by the inhabitants of what is now called Vietnam. Mountains such as the Truong Son mountain range, after which the Vietnamese named the Trail, were the core, sanctuary and home of it. To the mountains were added roaring passages of water; the Salween, Mekong, Yangtze and Red rivers all opened new passageways and extended the Trail's paths. As well as the rivers and mountains, fortification from the trail was ensured through the wide array of green life located on the Indochinese peninsula. Since the trail were "lush tree ferns, smooth-limbed bamboo, wild orchids, giant vines, wild apricots, bananas, figs, berries, hanging moss, lichens clinging to rocks, grasses, fungi, algae, teak, pine and the mysterious poisonous yang nong". A whole ecosystem was forged through the abundance of greenery and flowing water, a couple of the fundamental components of a breeding-ground for life. It's really no surprise the Truong Son Mountains were the habitat of the variety of animals as vast as the array of vegetation. These animals were a crucial part of the trail-blazing as they ate the undergrowth and trampled already made trails, further defining the pathways that would later be utilised by human civilization. Two wild beasts in particular whose weight and appetite made the trail possible were the gaur, a Southeast Asian member of the bovine family, and the Indochinese tiger. Just before man's arrival, the rise of mountain ranges, flow of rivers and activity of animals carved out a proto-Trail, a network of mountains, passes, valleys, rivers, wild beasts like monkeys and tigers and later tons of military personnel and equipment. The trails age was already formidable when people of Southeast Asia inhabited the area, and definitely the Trail wasn't used for the very first time throughout the Second Indochina War.