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strengthened Giap’s resolve to accomplish the vital work that Ho had entrusted to him. As Giap recalled, “Our Southward March was steadily progressing. It drew in ever greater numbers of cadres and enjoyed an even mightier response from the youth. Hundreds of boys and girls in Cao Bang province left their families and took part in various armed shock-operative groups.” 11
    The growth of the apparatus is all the more impressive when one considers that it occurred during a period of intense oppression. French patrols penetrated deep into the Viet Bac, issuing proclamations of reprisals against families whose members joined the Vietminh and offering handsome rewards to those who turned in guerrillas. “Many villages and hamlets were razed to the ground,” recalled the future commander in chief long after the War of Resistance. “Those arrested who had revolutionary papers on them, were immediately shot, beheaded, or had their arms cut off and exhibited at market places.” 12
    By early 1944, though, it was increasingly clear that the declining fortunes of the Japanese in the Pacific war and the impending fall of the Vichy collaborator government to de Gaulle’s Free French organization would lead inevitably to a Japanese
coup de force
against the French in Vietnam. The long-awaited moment for the revolutionary forces to take up arms and attack the imperialist forces of the French and perhaps the Japanese—though how Japan would react was very much open to debate—seemed to be imminent. But when should the Vietminh take up arms? It would not be an easy decision to make.
    At a conference of the Cao-Bac-Lang interprovincial committee (in effect the governing body of the Viet Bac) in July 1944, Giap was the driving force for a motion that called for taking up arms as soon as possible and fomenting at least a localized uprising in northern Tonkin. This was therare case when Giap seems to have abandoned his penchant for extensive preparation for military action. The committee was generally receptive. After spirited debate, it approved a resolution to initiate the uprising by launching a guerrilla offensive in the Viet Bac within a couple of months.
    Uncle Ho had not been able to attend the meeting. He was still interned in China. When he finally reached Vietminh headquarters in the Viet Bac in late August, he reversed the committee’s decision. He gently but persuasively explained to Giap that his call for a regional uprising was premature. More work needed to be done to build up revolutionary fervor in the liberated zone and elsewhere. Giap recalled Ho’s advice in a memoir: “Now, the period of peaceful development of the revolution is over, but that of the nationwide uprising has not yet begun . . . The present struggle must necessarily proceed from the political form to the military form. But for the time being more importance must be given to the political form.” 13
    Ho went on to say, however, that the time was right to form a regular army of full-time soldiers recruited from across all Vietnam, out of the various guerrilla units that were operating more or less independently throughout the country, but most effectively in Tonkin. He entrusted this great honor to Vo Nguyen Giap. On December 22, 1944, Giap formed a single platoon of thirty-one men and three women, drawing on seasoned personnel from his own guerrilla units and others that had been operating in Cao Bang, Langson, and Bac Kan Provinces. This platoon was a fighting unit, but its primary responsibility was to move among the population, spreading the word, seeking recruits, and on occasion protecting unarmed political cadres in their work.
    Two days after the first Armed Propaganda Unit was formed, the platoon, wielding ancient rifles, pistols, and machetes, successfully attacked two small French outposts manned by French officers and a handful of Vietnamese militia troops. The officers were killed, and the militia troops quickly surrendered to