Rough Guide to Vietnam - Jan Dodd [230]
The NVA attack came in the early hours of January 21, 1968; rockets raining in on the base added to the terror and confusion by striking an ammunition dump, gasoline tanks and stores of tear gas. There followed a seemingly endless, nerve-grinding NVA artillery barrage, when hundreds of shells fell on the base each day, interspersed with costly US infantry assaults into the surrounding hills. In an operation code-named “Niagara”, General Westmoreland called in the air battalions to silence the enemy guns and break the siege by unleashing the most intense bombing raids of the war: in nine weeks nearly a hundred thousand tonnes of bombs pounded the area round the clock, averaging one airstrike every five minutes, backed up by napalm and defoliants. Unbelievably the NVA were so well dug in and camouflaged that they not only withstood the onslaught but continued to return fire, despite horrendous casualties, estimated at ten thousand. On the US side around five hundred troops died at Khe Sanh (although official figures record only 248 American deaths, of which 43 occurred in a single helicopter accident), before a relief column broke through in early April, seventy-odd days after the siege had begun. NVA forces gradually pulled back and by the middle of March had all but gone, having successfully diverted American resources away from southern cities prior to the Tet Offensive. Three months later the Americans also quietly withdrew, leaving a plateau that resembled a lunar landscape, contaminated for years to come with chemicals and explosives; even the trees left standing were worthless because so much shrapnel was lodged in the timber.
* * *
The central provinces - Part 2 | The DMZ and around |
West along Highway 9
Heading west from Dong Ha on Highway 9, you begin to climb into the foothills of the Truong Son range. Where the highway veers south, a sheer-sided isolated stump 230m high dominates the valley: the Rockpile. For a while American troops, delivered by helicopter, used the peak for directing artillery to targets across the DMZ and into Laos, but the post was abandoned after 1968. The highway continues over a low pass and then follows a picturesque valley past the Dakrong Bridge, which carries a spur of the Ho Chi Minh Highway before climbing among ever-more forested mountains to emerge at KHE SANH (now officially rechristened Huang Hoa), 63km from Dong Ha.
This bleak, one-street settlement, its frontier atmosphere reinforced by the smugglers’ trail across the border to Laos only 19km away (see "Lao Bao border crossing into Laos" for more on crossing the border), sits on the edge of a windswept plateau that was the site of a pivotal battle in the American War (see "The battle of Khe Sanh"). Due to the high concentration of chemical and explosive contamination after the war, it’s only recently that the soil around Khe Sanh has been able to support vegetation again, and the hills are now green with coffee plantations. A few optimistic teenagers still peddle “genuine” dog-tags, and guides point out the red gash of the airstrip, but nothing else remains: when American troops were ordered to abandon Khe Sanh, everything was blown up and bulldozed flat. The only memorial is a small museum (daily 7am–5pm; 20,000đ), 2km north of Khe Sanh Town, commemorating the siege – made even more poignant by the hauntingly beautiful mountains all around.
The central provinces -