Vietnamese Women at War: Fighting for Ho Chi Minh and the Revolution

For as long as the Vietnamese people fought against foreign enemies, women were a vital part of that struggle. The victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu is said to have involved hundreds of thousands of women, and many of the names in Viet Cong unit rosters were female. These women were living out the ancient saying of their country, “When war comes, even women have to fight.”

Women from Hanoi and the countryside fought alongside their male counterparts in both the Viet Cong and North Vi...