The KheSanh Combat Base

Khttp://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/creativeapps/slideShow/Main.jsp?token=259276896115:990635227heSanh Combat Base Video

We’re traveling north up the AShau Valley on the Yellow Brick Road. The Valley parallels the Laotian border and was the main conduit for supplies moving from North to South Vietnam – and so became the scene of much of the heaviest combat of the war. The place was so bad that our GIs named the road made mostly of yellow dust for the mythical road from Oz. When a unit got orders for the AShau, there was no doubt that there was some major misery in the near future and maybe a death sentence. But today, the large valley road is lined with new houses and fields where once it looked like the moon from all the bomb craters. The Communist government repopulated the region after the war with immigrants from all over Vietnam. Every house has a TV dish and the restaurant where we have lunch has a large flat screen TV with the BBC World News piped in. BTW, the 2d language of Vietnam is English. There are large hydroelectric projects that provide power to the region and a modern lifestyle where there was desolation 40 years ago.

The KheSanh combat base – once home to a large airstrip and thousands of US Marines – is now a coffee plantation. When KheSanh was occupied, the hope for both sides was that it would be the final battle of the conflict, similar to the Battle of DienBienPhu in the 1st Indochinese War. It didn’t turn out that way for either side. It was a large tactical defeat for the North Vietnamese but they didn’t quit and 3 years later our 101st troopers were back there. Today there is little to be seen and most of that is in a museum to the glorious soldiers of the Peoples’ Army of Vietnam. There’s some American junk laying around but otherwise the place is unrecognizable. And we’re not going to walk around looking for the old mines that are still out there everywhere. My legs are as valuable now as they were 40 years ago. On the way out, we stop at a scrap metal dealer where the locals make a good living scrounging the plentiful pieces of metal that still litter the landscape. Thanks to the American taxpayer, these folks are making a fine living selling free American steel.

There’s not much to be seen here – and even more ghosts – so we head back for Hue past The Rockpile, Camp Carroll and DongHa, all locations for Marine logistics bases. Nothing there either. On to DaNang and HoiAnh tomorrow.