Chapter 20 - DMZ @ Hue, Vietnam

I'm not going to give a thorough history lesson about the Vietnam War, or as they call it here the "American War." I'll just show a little of what I saw while in Central Vietnam.

I read that the best city to get to the DMZ was from Hue. When I got off the train the weather was miserable. I found it hard to find anything worth taking pictures of.

This is the view across the Perfume River. On the other side is an old 19th century fortress called the Citadel. During the American War it was the scene of very intense (and rare) urban combat. The Vietcong had occupied Hue and held it for about three weeks until they were run out of town by our guys. During those three weeks the Vietcong executed about 3000 civilians such as teachers, scientists, and politicians. They were killed because they didn't fit the communist plan. Educated people are harder to control.

Despite the rain I walked around the Citadel. It has many high walls and moats which would have been a nightmare for marines who took over the city in house to house fighting. I was reading a very intense book called "Dispatches" which had firsthand accounts of the battle. It described bodies floating in these moats. Pretty grim. I'd have more pictures for you all but my camera ran out of battery power.

Fortunately it didn't rain on the day I took the DMZ tour. It was a two hour drive north, passing rice fields and little houses such as this one.

Our guide was a Vietnamese woman who was informative and surprisingly fair. Her message wasn't that "Americans are Evil" (as I was prepared for) but rather that "War is Evil". She described how the landscape was very different during the war. In order to see and kill the enemy from the air, U.S. forces used napalm and chemicals such as Agent Orange to kill all of the vegetation. The area resembled the surface of the moon. Agent Orange was a particularly nasty chemical that was used to kill the plants. Long after the war it has been causing horrible birth defects in the children of people exposed to it. I've seen a few of these adults and kids sitting on street corners. They have terrible disfigurement that would make anyone angry. The concept of Communist containment means nothing to a kid born in 2006 who will spend his life crawling on the ground begging for change. I doubt this was an intended outcome of Agent Orange, but somebody should have done some research before coating Vietnam with the stuff.

This mountain is known by the U.S. military folks as "The Rockpile". It served as a lookout point for our troops.

The tour took us to Khe Sanh, which was a major military base for our troops. It sits high up in the mountains on a plateau and was very highly fortified. I read that General Westmoreland dreamed that huge decisive battle would take place here and win the war for the Americans. He misunderstood the guerilla tactics of the communists. When the communists finally attacked it was intended only as a diversion from the larger Tet Offensive, in which the Vietcong attacked all across South Vietnam. There isn't much to see now except for a small museum and these captured helicopters and guns.

Inside the museum there were these photos on the wall. Check out how happy these communist soldiers are.

"War is a blast"

Check out the caption on this photo. "The Americans are in their panic at Ta Con base."

The most impressive part of the tour was definitely the Vinh Moc tunnels. As you can see on the map, Vinh Moc is on the coast. It had major strategic importance because supplies for the Vietcong were smuggled into South Vietnam at Vinh Moc. They were then brought west and then south down the Ho Chi Minh trail. The U.S. bombed the hell out of the area. Here are some craters from those bombs.

Those communists can build one hell of a strong bunker. These tunnels took all of the bombing and still stayed intact. There are three levels of tunnels where families lived and worked for the Vietcong. They definitely did NOT look like comfortable accommodations.

These are the only tunnels available to tourists that haven't been widened for our fat western butts. Obviously it feels very tight and claustrophobic.

So that was just a peek at Hue and the DMZ area. I'm glad I got to see it, but the second I was done my butt was on a train south in search of nicer weather.

Next stop: Nha Trang

- As always, thanks for reading -