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In my blog posts about Việt Nam I wanted to avoid the American war as much as possible as I think it's a shame that most Westerner's knowledge on the country would be all but non-existent if it wasn't for the war. However, a trip to the 'DMZ' is going to overwhelmingly be about the war, and so I've tried to get it all out at once. The events that led up to what is officially called the Second Indochina War are very complicated and I have tried to explain them as concisely and correctly as to my understanding. My sources are various websites, including Wikipedia, and one book, my Lonely Planet travel guide. This is grim reading so beware.

WARNING: Rant up ahead!

Early doors the next morning we left Huế on a coach and headed back up north for the first and only time. We were driving to the Bến Hải River which flows into Việt Nam from Laos and drains into the South China Sea. The river runs east almost exactly in line with the 17th parallel north, an imaginary line running seventeen degrees north of the equator. Despite the fact that this line circles the entire planet, the 17th Parallel is now almost completely synonymous with the American/Việt Nam War.

It took about an hour for our guided tour to drive just south of the DMZ to a town called Đông Hà. Đông Hà was the northernmost town in South Việt Nam and the location for one of the most important US Marine Combat Bases. We stopped for a quick munch, got back in the coach and drove west towards the Laos Border. As you can imagine there isn't an awful lot left to see thirty years after the end of the war, so it was more of an educational excursion than a sight seeing trip, and our guide had plenty of stories and knowledge to offer.

Our very first stop was the Rockpile, a big hill with a lookout on top, an artillery base at the bottom and a US stronghold in the area. Our guide had a few stories about the area, but I've mostly forgotten them now; I think his father fought in this area, and he himself grew up not far from here. He went on to describe such military policies that this area suffered from, such as the use of Agent Orange.

Between 1962 and 1971 the US Army used 12,000,000 gallons of 'Rainbow Herbicides' on South Việt Nam. The 'Rainbow Herbicides' include such agents as Agent Purple, Agent Pink, Agent Green, Agent Blue and Agent White, but by far the most used was Agent Orange, which alone affected 4.8 million Việts. Of those casualties, there were 400,000 direct deaths, 500,000 children born with major birth defects, and leaving the rest severely disabled. Damage to the environment is immeasurable, but people living in the area have great difficulty growing any crops as the soil is so toxic that only a stubborn form of grass can grow there, nicknamed 'American Grass'. Traces of Agent Orange still crop up in the food chain today, and can cause multiple health problems including cleft palate, mental disabilities, hernias, excruciating deformed faces and extra fingers and toes!

Another legacy of the war is the plight of thousands of 'Amerasians'. When the Americans left, many abandoned their mistresses, leaving them to raise half Việt-half American children. After reunification, these children were often seen as living reminders of the war and many were long mistreated and labelled 'Children of the Dust'. In the 1980's America and other Western countries allowed some of these children amnesty, and before they left Việt Nam were adopted by many Việts eager to emigrate. Unfortunately a lot of these children were dumped once the families arrived in the USA.

In 1787, Nguyễn Ánh and the king of France, Louis XVI signed the Treaty of Alliance, while both countries struggled with bloody revolutions. While France's monarchy lost to the revolutionaries, in 1802 Nguyễn Ánh managed to unite Việt Nam as one country under imperial rule. However in 1847, a certain Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte III, used the Treaty as an excuse to colonise the country and had completely conquered Việt Nam within 40 years. The Nguyễn Dynasty were still allowed to rule however, although only nominally.

In the mid 1940's France was in the grip of WWII and Uncle Ho and his band of merry Commies decided this was their time to step in, and declared independence in 1945. The Second World War finished and France focused their attention back on their Indochina colonies. France and Hồ Chí Minh's Việt Minh, with help from their northerly Communist neighbour China, were at war for ten years (officially

Chopper

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Khe Sanh Combat Base Museum.

the First Indochina War), when in 1955 France finally decided to step down.

Along with the USSR, the US, the UK, and the People's Republic of China, France began negotiations to leave, and drew up peace accords in Geneva which were supposed to 'temporarily' split Việt Nam in two. The Bến Hải River, being pretty much the geographical divide of the country, was destined to be the political divide as well. Five kilometres either side of Sông Bến Hải was declared a demilitarised zone, meaning troops from both governments were barred from the area, with the exception of about four policemen. Even today the area is still referred to as the Demilitarised Zone, or DMZ, for historical reference. The irony of course being that this small plot of land is probably the most concentrated area to see bloody conflict in the history of the world.

Hồ Chí Minh was to rule the North with his socialists, and Emperor Bảo Đại could rule the "free" South. The intention was to, within a single year, hold elections and reunite the country under a new democratically elected government. In the mean time people were allowed free passage to choose which ever

Anti-aircraft Gun

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Khe Sanh Combat Base Museum.

state they wanted to live in. However, it was plainly obvious that Hồ Chí Minh was so popular with the vast majority of the peasant population, that Việt Nam would become a true democratic socialist state. Naturally America were not happy with this imminent outcome.

Our second chance to get off the coach was the Đa Krông Bridge, an important river crossing in the infamous Hồ Chí Minh Trail. The Hồ Chí Minh Trail was not a single road, but rather a complex maze of truck routes, footpaths, river transport systems and elephant mountain passes that started to build up in the late 1950's. It was actually mostly based in neighbouring Laos and despite constant efforts to block it off it was in use up until the very end of the war.

We carried on west to Khe Sanh Combat Base near Khe Sanh town, which since the war has been renamed to Hướng Hoá. The base is now a museum where most of the debris left over from the area has been assembled. In 1968, Khe Sanh was the bloodiest battle in the war so far; about 500 American soldiers, 10,000 Việt Troops and swathes of civilians died in machine gun fire, explosions, napalm and mortars. Inside the museum are numerous war accounts, told from the winning side of course, and displays depicting the local minorities fighting against the Americans. Although in reality the minority groups often aided the US soldiers and after the war very much suffered for it. There is quite a moving visitor's book there, where veterans have written down their war experiences and present feelings towards the war.

In the 1960's U.S. President Eisenhower said about the situation:

"It was generally conceded that had an election been held, Hồ Chí Minh would have been elected Premier. Unhappily, the situation was exacerbated by the almost total lack of leadership displayed by the Vietnamese Chief of State, Bảo Đại, who, while nominally the head of that nation, chose to spend the bulk of his time in the spas of Europe rather than in his own land leading his armies against those of Communism."

While present at the 1954 Geneva Convention, and in agreement to respect the conditions of the split, South Việt Nam and its chief supporter, the United States, did not actually sign the peace accords, and claimed that Hồ Chí

The Rockpile

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The area where Agent Orange was most heavily used.

Minh could not be trusted due to his affiliation with Communism. Because of the agreement however, any declaration of war by the U.S. would be illegal, and so they just simply didn't declare it. Although it would be hard to dismiss the events that took place roughly between 1955 and 1975 as anything but war.

With no election, the communists began a campaign to liberate the south in 1959, and tens of thousands of Southern sympathisers were subsequently executed. In 1960 the National Liberation Front was formed and the North launched attacks on the South in order to reunite the whole country. US soldiers had been stationed in South Việt Nam since 1950, but a turning point for the Americans was in 1964. Unable to actually declare war the US decided to sail two destroyer ships just off the North coast, in the Gulf of Tonkin. It was reported that the ships came under "unprovoked attack", and things officially kicked off the following year. In 2005 it came to light that there was a degree of provocation from the first destroyer, and the attack on the second destroyer didn't actually happen. The Southern President, Ngô Đình Diệm, whose Catholic

Da Krong Bridge

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The bridge over the Da Krong River and a monument to the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail.

name was Jean Baptiste, referred to all of his opponents, communist or not, as "Việt gian cộng sản" (Communist Traitor to Vietnam), and so the NLF came to be known as the Việt Cộng by the American soldiers.

Heading west one more time we drove up to the border with Laos, where we spotted a bunch of teenagers clambering up a hill to the side of the road strapped with cigarettes and the like which they had smuggled past the border. It's blindingly obvious that this must go on all day every day, and with the border control just down the road, they must be in on it. The coach turned around and drove for another couple of hours back east to Đông Hà, and then north, over the Bến Hải River, past the old border, and to the Vĩnh Mốc tunnels, where huge bomb craters are still visible.

Vĩnh Mốc is a series of tunnel complexes built to shelter people from the intense bombing. They originally went 10 metres deep, but after the American's designed bombs that would burrow at least 10 metres, they dug more tunnels going 30 metres deeps. Around 90 families lived in the tunnels which had many rooms, including kitchens, hospital rooms for Việt Cộng, and maternity rooms that 17 children were reported to have been born in during the course of the war. Three levels of tunnel were eventually built and they were so successful that no villagers lost their lives. The only direct hit was from a bomb that failed to explode, and the resulting hole was utilised as a ventilation shaft disguised as a water well.

Việt Nam's sub-strata is almost entirely limestone, which is soft to dig through yet structurally sound, and allowed easy hand digging of the tunnels with no structural supports necessary. The total length of the tunnels is nearly 2,000m with six entrances from the ground and seven entrances from the beach. Before our guide took us around the huge rabbit warren, he took us to the museum near the beach where you can see photos, relics of tunnel life and the whole maze mapped out. As soon as you walk in there is a huge sign philosophising: "TO BE OR NOT TO BE!". The caretaker there is mute and is actually one of the people who lived in the tunnels.

In 1973 the

Going Underground

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The Vinh Moc tunnels.

Paris Peace Accords were signed stipulating an end to all hostilities, but the conflict rumbled on for another two years at least, with America taking more of a back seat. In 1975, the Southern capital, Sài Gòn, fell to the Northern army. They renamed it Hồ Chí Minh City, and the last remaining American soldiers scrambled to leave before a complete communist take over, and the formal reunification in 1976. For America's part, all of these events are considered to be part of the greater Cold War (1947-1991), a war on communism around the world. Although not just a war on Communism alone, it was more simply a war between the two 'super powers', the US and USSR, and any potential allies the USSR could have.

Part of the Paris Peace Accords included a provision for American reparations to Việt Nam totalling $3.5 billion, but it is yet to be coughed up. Of course, the US were not the only nation to join forces with South Việt Nam. Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand also sent military personnel to Việt Nam as part of what the US government called the 'Free World Military Forces'; an attempt

Mind Yer Head

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The myriad labyrinthine crawl spaces.

to legitimise a very unpopular war.

After the Vĩnh Mốc tunnels, it was time to head back to Huế. On the way we stopped at the same restaurant as in the morning for some dinner. On the walls of the restaurant were lots of posters for the Mines Advisory Council. MAG is a humanitarian organisation clearing the remnants of conflict around the world. They're currently working with the People's Army to try to put a stop to the 3,000 or so a year still dying and being injured from left over landmines. There are 3.5 million unexploded mines left in the country, and as much as 20% of Việt Nam remains uncleared.

Please check them out: MAG :)

More photos here.

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