Vietnam has repelled invaders for centuries, and during much of the 20th century, they were embroiled in battles of liberation.
CONTENTS
Brief History
The Communists proved to be the most effective anti-colonialists during the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, giving grief to their French rulers, and then attacking the occupying Japanese during World War Two (ironically, at that stage, Ho Chi Minh’s guerillas were supplied by the USA).
Following wars end in 1945 and while controlling much of North Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh declared independence.
But the French didn’t want to lose their colony.
So began the French-Vietnamese war from 1946 to 1954, until Viet Minh forces defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu.
Following the Geneva Accords, two independent Vietnams were created in the North and South, divided by the Ben Hai River, near the 17th Parallel.
Division of Vietnam was meant to be temporary, but with the northern half under Communist rule, it was in US interests to support the Southern Government (despite it being corrupt, brutal, and unpopular).
In 1960, the North’s ‘political struggle’ became an ‘armed struggle’ with the formation of a National Liberation Army (later known as the Viet Cong or the VC) to unite the country.
Soon Viet Cong guerrillas infiltrated and attacked the South, followed by regular North Vietnamese troops, and by early 1965 the Saigon Government was in deep shit.
So enter the USA.
Movies such as Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Hamburger Hill, and Apocalypse Now, often provide the footage that westerners still associate with Vietnam.
Vietnam War DMZ Tour
The Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing the Communist North from the Capitalist South, was an area of many bloody battles.
But the only workable way to visit the area was on an organized tour, (in 1994) as the area lacked public transport and was monitored by police.
A guide proved essential for finding battlefields in the hilly, forested terrain.
Khe Sanh Combat Base
Following National Highway 9, on the southern side of American military camps and fire bases, our tour stopped to gawk at a 230-meter-high hill nicknamed “The Rockpile”, serving as a US Marine look-out post across the valley.
We drove part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the secret VC supply line that began in the far north. And 70 km down this road was Hamburger Hill, site of an infamous search-and-destroy operation in 1969.
In early 1968, came the bloodiest battle of the war, with 500 US dead, 10,000 North Vietnamese casualties, and uncounted civilians.
It started with a series of ‘Hill Fights’ around the US Marine combat base of Khe Sanh, and escalated into 75 days of full-on bombs, shells, bullets, and napalm.
Today, Khe Sanh is silent.
Except, for Vietnamese selling rusted bullet casings or US Army spoons, which they’ve dug from the rutted red earth where trenches, bunkers, and dug-outs had once been. The base perimeter and airstrip is hardly traceable today. Scattered across the earth remain live rounds of rusting shells (which no sane person would touch).
War vibes aside, it was the landscape that struck me. The soil – very red, with bright-green vegetation across the plateau, surrounded by sharp, dark hills in a gloomy sky.
The DMZ
The Ben Hai River marked the DMZ between North and South Vietnam, and concrete bunkers guard both sides of the river.
The original bridge was destroyed, replaced by a steel structure after the Communist victory. Apart from a few buses and trucks today, virtually no traffic crosses the river, as if it still divides two lands.
Viet Cong Tunnels
Vinh Moc was the last stop on this DMZ Vietnam War itinerary.
The tunnels stretched 2.8 km, dug by villagers to escape American shelling in a designated “Free-Fire Zone”. Later this underground tunnel network became an important VC supply line.
Today the tunnels remain close to how they looked in 1966. Mazes of narrow earth passageways with small chambers to house families on three levels, water drawn from wells, a central hall capable of seating 150 people, and seven of the twelve entrances exiting onto the beach.
The Americans pounded the Vinh Moc area (but most tunnels remained unscathed). Eucalyptus trees now reforest cratered countryside.
Unlike the relative comfort of the Vinh Moc, several weeks earlier at the Cu Chi tunnels, 40 km north-west of Saigon, the passageways were claustrophobic.
Had to crouch and crawl in the airless intense heat. Tunnel entrances were camouflaged with leaves and earth, trap-doors were tiny, barely wide enough to squeeze into.
Yet, specialized American soldiers – known as “Tunnel Rats” – went into these frightening hidden spaces.
And our guide highlighted the dangers awaiting any trespassers in the area. Booby traps in the jungle – blocks of nails detonated by mines, or hidden pits of sharpened stakes.
The Cu Chi tunnels stretched over 200 km, from which VC guerillas launched surprise attacks on US and South Vietnamese targets.
Subsequently, the Cu Chi area became “the most bombed, shelled, gassed, defoliated and devastated area in the history of warfare”.
The guide at Cu Chi had been a captain in the South Vietnamese Army. He’d served with Special Operations and commanded 110 men, and spoke about their helicopter missions and the casualties; of the Communist victory and then his 7 years in a re-education camp.
Like many Southern Vietnamese, he’d wanted to emigrate to the USA, and had felt let down by the Americans when they left the South to fend for itself. But now he held no grudge, no bitterness.
There seemed an irony in Vietnam’s recent past: Vietnam now encourages capitalist tourists. Here was a South Vietnamese officer running a private business venture, making profits from Westerners visiting sites of Communist victory.
Vietnam is now a market economy, hungry for imported consumer goods. And I ask: Was the war necessary? (Are any wars necessary?)
During 2 months, I encountered no bitterness, no hostilities towards a New Zealander – whose countrymen fought in Vietnam; and surprisingly, not a single anti-American sentiment.
In Vietnam there is an air of reconciliation.
The US lifted its 20-year trade embargo with Vietnam, and appointed an ambassador to Hanoi in 1996.
*
Vietnamese Account of the War
The following is from a brochure given free at the Atrocities Museum in Saigon.
“In 1965, with a gigantic force involving 6 million turns of soldiers, the United States began launching a war of aggression against Vietnam. In early 1969, US military forces in South Vietnam amounted to 543,400 men, not counting 70,000 soldiers of contingents coming from some US “Allies” plus nearly a million troops of the Saigon regime.
For years, US planes dropped 7,850,000 tons of bombs, and sprayed 75 million liters of lethal chemicals on villages, rice fields, and the forests of Vietnam. The above-mentioned figures did not include huge amounts of gun shells and other kinds of bullets shot by US troops and “Allies” soldiers.
Atrocious crimes were committed against the Vietnamese, particularly the 1968 Son My (My Lai) massacre. B-52’s carried out carpet bombing on densely populated areas, including Hanoi and major cities and towns of North Vietnam. World public opinion condemned the US for making full use of sophisticated weapons against Vietnam.
It was known that the US Government spent 352 billion dollars on the Vietnam war ending in 1975, and that Vietnam has been suffering tremendous consequences from it. Uncountable invalids for life, fetus malformations, body deformities specially in babies have been observed by scientists. Until now, orchards and forests heavily damaged by chemicals during the long war have hardly recovered. Vietnam has suffered from countless losses in economic, cultural and social activities.
The Americans were deeply shocked at the war in Vietnam. In consecutive years protests against the war were staged by different walks of life in the US as well as in other parts of the globe. The Vietnamese have been grateful to the people around the world, especially to the Americans for having helped them struggle for independence, freedom and happiness in Vietnam.”
Travels in Vietnam – 1994
