I left my heart to the sappers 'round Khe Sahn...
Trip Start
Jan 01, 2012
1
10
14
Trip End
Jan 25, 2012
What I did
Khe Sanh and DMZ
Khe Sanh, Cao Bang, Vietnam
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Eventually we left and made the trip out to visit Khe Sahn. Unfortunately as the weather was rather crappy a great deal of the LZs (Landing Zones) and Firebases in the area located on the high ground were unable to be seen due to the mist and fog. All of the surrounding high ground around the Firebase was occupied by US forces, this gave both artillery support as well as observation across the whole region. The main road that runs to Khe Sahn is known as Route 9 and the Viet Cong would employ ambushes and guerilla tactics but with US forces occupying all the high ground this was dramatically reduced. In the height of the conflict there was 6000 US and South Vietnamese in the Khe Sahn area with 3500 in the firebase and 2500 in the outlying supporting areas. The siege of Khe Sahn lasted for 72 days and US and South Vietnamese had 702 killed, 2642 wounded with the North having an estimated 10 000 to 15 000 dead and wounded. Even though eventually the North pulled out of the area and the US managed to repel all the major attacks, the siege of Khe Sahn was to be a decisive point in the war for both opposing forces. During this period Khe Sahn was said to take up as much as 25 percent of all news/ media coverage in the US which changed a great deal of public perception of the war and highlighted the sweeping protests and rally's for troops to be bought home.
So we arrived at Khe Sahn and were shown around the area. The firebase when opened was 2km in length by 1 km in width which by todays standards is not that big. There was a thick layer of mist and fog, which lay rather low, which gave a very eerie feeling about the place. Considering it was 21 Jan when the siege started and the probing and small scale attacks at Khe Sahn were occuring we were able to see what weather conditions the forces would have had to deal with. In these sort of conditions you would not be able to use air support for resup or to provide air fire support nor would you be able to casevac wounded. Inside the boundaires of the base, there is alittle museum that has an assortment of photos and weapons, which were left over. There is also a Chinook, Huey helicopter, a couple of old tanks and a Hercules aircraft. They even had an assortment of unexploded US rounds that had been deemed safe and placed in a stockpile for all to see. The bunker system that the US had in place had a little segment rebuilt to show people the sort of conditions they lived in. All in all it was very interesting, there were even ruminant’s of old burnt out aircraft and choppers. Maureen was told by our tour guide not to pick any produce up as on one of his other trips a lady had picked up a projectile of a M72. For those of you unfamiliar with weapons if it had gone off in that car it would have blown them all to kingdom come. She had put it in her bag and got in the vehicle before anybody realized she had it. When asked what she was thinking she said she thought it was just old metal and was going to take it back to the US. Our poor guide had somewhat underestimated Maureen’s knowledge on Military matters and had explained every single bit of detail to her of which obviously she already knew. He later told her in the tour that he understood if she had no interest, as it was more of a male’s tour anyway. While explaining all the other support bases around he told us about the US special forces base located forward of Khe Sahn which had about 500 troops in it that was overrun. The US had placed sensors forward of all of the bases to pick up mass troop movement or any vehicle movement however the North Vietnamese had disassembled tanks and carried them to a position in front of the location reassembled and attacked the position, all without US and South Vietnamese troops being aware that they were there. The tanks were support by 1200 North Vietnamese troops and only 74 of the 500 US troops survived after their camp was overrun. Once we had finished looking around and talking we loaded back into the vehicle and hit the road again. We stopped not to far down the road at a road junction where the No 9 highway met with the Hoi Chi Minh highway, also known as the Ho Chi Minh trail. This also ran over the Laos border where North Vietnamese troops would fire artillery and mount major attacks as US and South Vietnamese troops could not go there, as it was another country and may draw more countries into the war. All complete we loaded back up and headed to Quang Tri for a lunch break before starting the next part of our trip.
