Lesson time
Trip Start
Jan 20, 2009
1
57
65
Trip End
Jun 2009
Dong Ha,
Vietnam
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
I'm not a big fan of guided tours but given my huge ignorance I thought it would be a good idea to spend a day being taught the real history of the 20 years the Americans were around. To try and find out why it all happened and what went on. The ideal place to do this seemed to be halfway between the north and south in the former demilitarized zone.
I was a bit worried when the bus arrived and it was a huge 52 seater, the idea of traipsing around being horded on and off a bus was horrible but in the end there was only about 10 people on there. Mainly boys and one Vet which made things a lot more interesting.
We mainly drove around the countryside stopping at historically important places such as a hill, a bridge and an American army base. It's so difficult to imagine the carnage that went on in these places, the green rolling hills look so peaceful. It's only when you delve beneath the exterior appearance and realise that while the hills are green, they're only covered in scrub not the dense, thick jungle which was destroyed by the Agent Orange & napalm cocktail a little while ago. I knew that this went on but didn't understand that it was to reveal the Ho Chi Minh trails that the north Vietnamese army used to supply their troops fighting in the south. Also, it takes a trained eye to realise that the mud pits which the water buffalo are bathing in are a little wider and shallower here than in other parts of the countryside, that would be beacuse they're bomb craters. I'm not very good with big numbers but I know that 100,000 tonnes dropped on the area in a period of 2 months is a lot in anyones book. Especially for a country with whom you're not actually at war - America were only ever officially in Vietnam in an advisory capacity, they never actually declared war.
I'd heard of the Tet Offensive but didn't understand the scale, significance or cost of the operation. Likewise, I've seen Platoon & heard of the My Lai massacre but didn't know the scale or that this was the significant tipping point for the press and the American people. I'm not going into it here but it was extremely interesting to hear a Vietnamese perspective, even if she was as unbiased as could be expected.
What made all of this more real was the American Vet in our group. He was so frank and open about his role and gave us his side of the story, which was fascinatingly different from the accepted truth now. He ran air raids over Laos and Cambodia, explaining how they switched off the satellites and cameras so that the press didn't find out that this was going on. He said he never ran Agent Orange but that plenty of his friends did & how it had seemed like the perfect solution at the time. I needn't go into the ongoing effects of the chemical but suffice to say it's not just in the landscape where the effects are evident.
I also learnt about who had a hand in the mess which turned out to be the American War, and most of the Western world has some blame to carry, including the UK of course.
Our last stop of the day was at Vinh Moc tunnels. I'd planned to visit the Cu Chi tunnels on the outskirts of Saigon where the Viet Cong amassed huge numbers of troups, literally right under the Americans noses. With hospitals, training grounds and barracks right underneath an American air base. Vinh Moc is a bit different though, it's basically a village where the indiginous people who were living on the front line chose to dig in and stay to help the North Vietnamese troups with supplying the trails and intelligence, rather than fleeing to the hills. A decison for which they paid heavily. Several villages took to the ground and several were completely destroyed by the constant bombing.
The tunnels are tiny with 2m x 1m rooms for entire families and never wider than a broad pair of shoulders to make them more sturdy in case of a direct hit. The figures here are staggering, 350 people lived underground for 6 years. They sometimes stayed down there for 10 day stretches, all the time with constant shelling pounding the ground above them. I was down there for 20 minutes and it was a huge relief to escape onto the beach, spending years of your life down there is unimaginable.
So sobered and with a deeper respect for the resilliance and ingenuity of the Vietnamese people I got the bus to drop me off in Don Ha where the overnight bus would collect me for my journey to the 'other side'. I waited 5 bloody hours, entertained by some children & unable to drink because of the lack of toilet facilities I stared into space & waited.
