Hue and war

The main site to see in Hue is the Imperial City, also called the Citadel.  It has, or rather had, outer courtyards, an inner palace, and a forbidden city only for the emperor.  Unfortunately, it was also the site of a major battle in the Tet offensive in 1968.  The Viet Cong took it early in the offensive, so the US staged a massive counterattack including bombing the hell out of the complex.  During the twenty eight day battle, the Viet Cong massacred over 5,000 South Vietnamese, mostly civilians.  No good guys here and not much to see today at the Imperial City except the outer walls.

On Sunday, I took a one day tour of the sites of Hue on the back of a motorbike.  Besides the Citadel, the tombs of several emperors and a famous pagoda are in the countryside around Hue.  First I visited this covered bridge built in the Japanese style in 1776, a date I can easily remember.  The most interesting thing about the bridge for me was that there was an altar inside to the patron who paid for the bridge.  I still can't wrap my mind around all the temples here dedicated to various people.  Who goes and prays at all of them?  Who still remembers someone who paid for a bridge more than 250 years ago?  But there were offerings and incense at the shrine in the bridge.

The we climbed a hill that had both a French and American bunker.  The hill overlooks the Perfume River and has a view on all sides.

Finally I visited a small military museum outside the Citadel.  We all know that the winners get to write the history books, but ya think this is laying it on a little heavy?

So now I am getting interested in the details of the Vietnamese War, or the American War as it is called here.  Hue is about 50 kilometers south of the DMZ.  There is really not a lot left to see, but there is a tour called the DMZ tour that goes to a few sites of interest and explains the chronology, battles, and strategies.  I hired a driver and private guide today, knowing it would be a lot a driving.  Fortunately my guide, Hung, was very good and I found the day worthwhile.  She not only spoke excellent English, but she answered all of my questions about the war and everything else I had seen in Vietnam but couldn't understand.

My driver took me to Dong Hoi in the Quang Tri province where we picked up Hung.  Then we drove west toward Laos and the Ho Chi Minh Trail.  Vietnam is only eighty kilometers wide here.  We drove through beautiful rolling hills covered in lush green vegetation and trees.  This is the area that was completely defoliated during the war and there are still a few bare spots.  There was a huge Marine base at Khe Sahn including an airfield.  Ten days prior to the Tet Offensive, the Viet Cong attacked Khe Sanh as a diversion to draw US troups from the south.  It worked, as the US began a massive air bombing, artillery, and napalm attack on the surrounding area.  Eventually, Khe Sahn became cut off from all but aerial support.  The US mounted a ground attack that took over five months to break through to the marine base.  Then the US Command decided that Khe Sanh was no longer strategically important, so they dismantled and destroyed everything and just left, the first time the US retreated in the face of enemy pressure.  I never heard of Khe Sahn or Quang Tri until this week, and Quang Tri was the site of some of the heaviest fighting and casualties in the war.

Okay, I know the winners write the books, but the captions at the museum at Khe Sahn were a little over the top.

Next we visited the bridge that was the Checkpoint Charlie of the demilitarized zone from 1954 to 1965 when fighting began.  We walked across the bridge into the North.  There was no ground fighting in the North, but the US bombed the Ho Chi Minh trail and other places suspected of helping the North Vietnamese.  Vinh Moc was a village on the coast.  Fishing boats were bringing supplies from Vinh Moc to an island and from there they were shipped south.  The US destroyed the village with bombs, but rather than leave, the villagers built underground tunnels and lived in them for years.  Unlike the tunnels at Cu Chi outside of Saigon, these tunnels were not disguised to hide soldiers.  Rather, they were underground bunkers with dozens of entrances and rooms.  Babies were born in the tunnels.  The tunnels were built on three levels - twelve, eighteen, and twenty five meters underground.  The lowest levels came out on the beach.

We walked for 300 meters in the original tunnels which had been reinforced only around the entrances.  The most amazing thing to me was that the walls, which looked like stone to me, are clay.  You can scratch it with your fingernail.  I can't believe that tunnels in clay are still solid and safe after fifty years.  In the second picture I am in a family room that holds four people.

When you walk into the museum at Vinh Moc, right in front of you there is a huge metal mural of various scenes of war and life in the tunnels.  The title they gave the sculpture, which I found a little incongruous, is meant to indicate that they did whatever it took to survive.