Up to the DMZ near Hue...

One can never tell if one will get value from the tourist mini-van trips that one purchases. Often much

Unexploded munitions at Khe Sanh

is promised and somewhat less is delivered. This trip had to be purchased, as the destination, the old North /South Vietnam border zone (AKA the DMZ) would be impossible to get to using independent tourist means, except of course by motor bike, for which this happy warrior is NOT a candidate.
Picked up punctually at 7.00 am, I was blessed with an agreeable bunch of Europeans as fellow travellers. The whole DMZ/border area, Hue included, was massively damaged in the war and its evidence is seen at almost every turn. Cemeteries of thousands seem to be every 10 kms up the famous highway #1 that runs the l

Abandoned US transporter......

ength of Vietnam. Our journey today took us up to the highland fortified US fire base at Khe Sanh, famous amongst those of us of a certain age as the name seemed to feature in the nightly news with hyper frequency during the 1968 -73 period. The Khe Sanh base was operated by the US Marines who had to be rescued by the US Army, who in turn were eventually driven out by the north Vietnamese. The Khe Sanh base is a graveyard of US helicopters and transit planes. Apparently the US were unable to supply the fire-base by road as the Vietnamese controlled all the access routes. The only way to supply the marines was with parachute drops from vulnerable

US Marine fire base & defensive trenches....

lumbering transport planes or by large helicopters. Daytime was too dangerous and night time flights or during frequent fogs was famously inaccurate, so that the Viet Cong was a beneficiary of much of the US supplies.
                       Also included on the excursion itinerary today was a visit to the famous tunnels that the Viet Cong constructed deep underground in order to avoid the massive B52 bombs that apparently had the capability to bury themselves 15 metres in the ground before detonating in a futile US effort to destroy the network of tunnels constructed as part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The Trail, built by the communist army of the north was part of its death struggle with the US backed Republic of Vietnam in the south.
                   Our guide pointed out the bare hillsides across the entire region that bear witness the millions of litres of 'agent orange' that were sprayed in a US effort to defoliate the jungle and expose the routes that the Viet Cong had developed to support its military effort in the south.

Tunnel entrance concealed under bamboo trees.....

Apparently 4th generation children in rural Vietnam are still being born deformed due to grandparent exposure to agent orange more than 50 years ago. We viewed clear evidence of the bomb craters that have altered the landscape contours as a result of saturation bombing in the region.
             Interestingly, I was not able to detect any real hatred towards the USA in any of the commentaries I heard today, or in the exhibit interpretations at the various battle-field museums we toured---just regret for a very sad period during a long history of trying to rid itself of foreign oppressors.