With primitive, homemade weapons, right after its founding on September 4, 1945, the city's armed forces cleverly and bravely organized many battles to break enemy attacks, besiege the enemy, defeat their plot to fight quickly and win quickly, creating time for the city and the whole country to prepare for a long and arduous resistance war.

The highlight was the battle of the Thu Ngu Flagpole Protection Squad. With rudimentary weapons, facing the enemy's strong firepower, the soldiers fought bravely and fell one by one, sacrificing themselves at the foot of the Thu Ngu Flagpole to protect the national flag. The martyrdom of the soldiers was a symbol of protecting independence, timely encouragement, adding strength to the army and people to fight steadfastly, at the same time laying the foundation for the tradition of "Determination to fight, determination to win" of the city's armed forces and contributing to the outbreak of the Southern Resistance War on September 23, 1945.

Major General Vu Van Dien, Commander of Ho Chi Minh City Command, inspected and encouraged officers and soldiers of Gia Dinh Regiment. Photo: DUY TAN

During the years of resistance against the French colonialists, in places temporarily occupied by the enemy, the city's armed forces fought and built revolutionary bases, developed forces to form self-defense teams, militia, main regiments, special forces, and operated deep in the inner city. The units applied many secret, surprise, quick, and concise fighting methods and combined armed activities with military, enemy, and people's work. Thereby, the people became a solid rear base, sheltering and hiding cadres and soldiers and directly taking up arms to fight the enemy, forming the art of people's warfare in urban areas associated with the combat forms of the main units. These experiences were applied and developed by the city's armed forces to their peak in the resistance war against the US to save the country.

During the resistance war against the US to save the country, Saigon-Cho Lon-Gia Dinh was the place where the fierce and decisive battle of wits and strength took place between us and the enemy in the heart of the city. The city's armed forces were creative and coordinated to build a compact, secret, and flexible force associated with the construction of a network of liaisons, secret tunnels, revolutionary bases, and facilities for hiding cadres and storing weapons; and to turn every inch of land and every citizen into a soldier and a fighting fortress. Under the leadership of party organizations, with creativity in fighting methods, a strong fighting spirit, and the support of the people, these were the decisive conditions that helped the city's armed forces survive, develop, and operate effectively in the heart of the enemy, organizing many battles that left a deep historical mark. The special forces carried out daring battles against the enemy's key targets such as: Saigon Radio Station, Tan Son Nhat Airport, Independence Palace, the US Embassy, ​​the puppet General Staff... In the historic Ho Chi Minh Campaign, the city's armed forces continued to play a spearhead role, coordinating with the main army corps from the suburbs to advance, combining with the rebel forces inside, capturing the headquarters, liberating the South, and unifying the country.

Entering the period of innovation, the city's armed forces are always well-trained, strictly disciplined, highly combat-ready, and complete all tasks well and excellently. Especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, the city's armed forces have affirmed their core and pioneering role on the front line against the epidemic. Officers and soldiers always uphold their sense of responsibility, ready to sacrifice for the safety and peace of the people, contributing to repelling the epidemic.

With its outstanding achievements, over the past 80 years, the city's armed forces have been honored by the Party and State with the title of Hero of the People's Armed Forces three times, building a tradition of "Infinite loyalty, steadfastness, solidarity, discipline, dynamism and creativity, determination to fight and win".

Currently, Ho Chi Minh City, with its characteristics as a mega-city, a major economic, political and cultural center in the South, is a particularly important strategic location in terms of national defense and security. Besides advantages, the city also faces many difficulties and challenges. Promoting the heroic tradition and strengthening national defense potential in the coming time, the City Command focuses on advising the City Party Committee and the City People's Committee to lead and direct many drastic and synchronous solutions.

One of the important solutions is to promote education on national defense and security knowledge, raise awareness and responsibility of the whole society. In particular, the city's armed forces attach importance to coordinating inter-sectoral training with the military-civilian-political-party and promoting patriotic emulation movements "Military forces join hands to build new rural areas", "Repaying gratitude", "All people protect national security"... to create a widespread spread, build a strong national defense associated with a strong people's security, build each commune and ward into a solid fighting fortress. This is the foundation to firmly protect the city in all situations.

Faced with the task of defending the Fatherland in the new era, building a revolutionary, disciplined, elite, and modern city military force is an urgent and strategic requirement. First of all, the city's military force thoroughly grasps and strictly implements directives, resolutions, and plans from superiors, strengthens the leadership of the city's Party Committee, and improves the political mettle, qualifications, and combat readiness of officers and soldiers. Focus on improving the capacity for cyberspace warfare, electronic warfare, and technical reconnaissance; promote training, taking combat practice, urban terrain, and defense zone operations as the center, ensuring close adherence to plans, targets, and combat environments.

Along with that is promoting the modernization of equipment, application of high technology, digital transformation in military and defense work. Units focus on implementing 3 breakthroughs well: Organizing forces, training according to highly urbanized areas; digital transformation, shared data, improving multi-force, multi-sector command and coordination capacity; building a team of cadres, especially grassroots cadres who are "both red and professional", dare to think, dare to do, dare to take responsibility for the common interest.

In addition, the reserve force must be built in a strong and high-quality manner; the militia and self-defense force must be built in a strong and widespread direction. The planning and construction of the city's defense area must be suitable to the characteristics of the mega-city; the construction of combat bases, logistics-technical bases, and the arrangement of military positions in the defense area must be difficult, unexpected, and firmly interconnected. Units must coordinate closely with the police and forces to protect political-economic-cultural targets and events and control bad and toxic information, maintain social stability, and promote local socio-economic development.

With the trend of increasingly deep international integration and cooperation, one of the important tasks that the City Command is interested in is to strengthen defense diplomacy, closely combine defense with socio-economic development, science and technology; promptly advise the City Party Committee and People's Committee on specific mechanisms and policies on defense resources; develop dual-use enterprises to well perform the task of economic development and defense consolidation. Thereby, continue to affirm that it is a loyal and trustworthy fighting force of the Party Committee, government and people of the city, firmly building and protecting the City named after Uncle Ho in the new development period.

VU VAN DIEN

    Source: https://www.qdnd.vn/quoc-phong-an-ninh/xay-dung-quan-doi/phat-huy-truyen-thong-anh-hung-xay-dung-tiem-luc-quan-su-quoc-phong-vung-manh-846115