During the Vietnam War (1965-1975) as well as the earlier First Indochina War, which pitted Vietnamese nationalist troops against French imperial forces, the Truong Son Strategic Supply Route ensured that war material and manpower could flow north/south between different embattled sections of Vietnam. Dubbed the "Ho Chi Minh Trail" by the Americans, after the Viet Minh leader, this trade route through neighboring Laos and Cambodia was key to the communist forces' victory in the Vietnam War (called the American War in Vietnam).
American troops, like those pictured here, attempted to control the flow of material along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, but were unsuccessful. Rather than being a single unified route, the Ho Chi Minh Trail was an interwoven series of paths, even including sections where goods and manpower traveled by air or water.
