KHE SANH, Vietnam—A flat-topped mountain is an anomaly among jagged peaks in wild country only seven miles from the Laotian border. That’s where 6000 U.S. Marines held off 45,000 hard core NVA, or North Vietnamese Army, starting around Tet of 1968 in January and lasting into April. It’s remarkably level ground about the size of five football fields including the laid out airstrip by combat engineers. With that, C-130s could fly in war materiel and other supplies to sustain the besieged Marines. Oddly, some of the American equipment on display in the museum are mess utensils, such as big aluminum serving spoons. These tripped more emotional response than the large C-130 cargo plane, tanks, and helicopters, strewn about the place. I could imagine marines in raucous banter lining up for some hot chow, no doubt ready to bolt for the nearest sandbagged bunker at the first sound of enemy artillery.

Trip to Ho Chi Minh Trail and Khe Sanh in hired car traversed curvy mountain roads.

Drove through many villages at market time.

The price of admission at the Khe Sanh Memorial was about fifty cents and a trip by hired car that took eleven hours round trip from Da Nang. Half way there we stopped at a walled citadel with a moat that once protected the Nguyen Dynasty in the 15th Century. At its center stands a modern war memorial that dwarfs the ancient site and commemorates the sacrifices of NVA soldiers in the Battle of Quang Tri in 1972. This was a U.S.- backed operation of  the South Vietnamese army which proved disastrous, although many casualties were inflicted on the northern forces by B-52 air strikes. These details were pointed out by two young Vietnamese guys who started a travel agency that attracted adventurous travelers through the internet who didn’t mind riding on the back end of a motorcycle. I chatted with an English-speaking couple from The Netherlands who availed themselves to their services. Khe Sanh was on their next day’s schedule.

A couple from The Netherlands, who spoke perfect English, had signed on for a motorcycle tour of the length of VN by two enterprising bi-lingual Vietnemese travel guides who really knew the history of their country.

North Vietnamese memorial to 1972 Battle of Quang Tri in which B-52 strikes could not save the South VN ground forces fighting on their own without American troop support. It was a rout for the North.

Drove through the old capital city of Hue on the way to Khe Sanh. Here is the walled citadel of Gia Long, the first emperor of a unified Vietnam in 1802. In 1968, Viet Cong guerrillas took over Hue and the imperial city. Upwards of 1000 civilians were killed in blatant war crimes by the VC. Later were disavowed by North VN and VC leaders. It took Marines about a month to retake the citadel in horrendous urban fighting.

In the remote, tiny village of Khe Sanh, stands another of the hundreds of memorials throughout Vietnam. This one commemorates the North's claimed victory in the Battle of Khe Sanh, but it's estimated they lost 6000 to twice that many compared to under 300 for the Americans, although the Americans abandoned the site in June 1968.

The village of Khe Sanh lies about a mile from the battleground and has an air about it that is different than the coastal villages. That’s because, well, the air is thinner and cooler, but also more hard-scrabble and poor. Actually all of Vietnam away from the cities looks impoverished. In this mountainous country, some apparently make a living gathering various forms of wood that the forest has to offer.  A huge concrete sculpture dominates the center of town that celebrates the courageous victory of Vietnam’s patriotic forces over American antirevolutionary invaders, which are about as ubiquitous as a MacDonalds in the USA. Both sides claimed victory at Khe Sanh, but the Americans killed a lot more than they lost—5,550 to 272, another entry on the ledger of an unconventional and controversial war. Americans began to question the loss of our young men for an unclear cause and eventually withdrew from Vietnam, as did General Creighton Abrams decide to abandon this remote outpost in June of ’68. The original strategy had been to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail, but he decided it wasn’t worth the cost and nigh on impossible given the daunting terrain as far as the eye could see. It is interesting to note that Vietnam lost 3.6 million lives in the whole war. That would be equivalent to 27 million American losses (“Robert McNamara and the Ghosts of Vietnam,” by David K. Shipler, NY Times, Aug. 10, 1997).  

Modern A-frame Khe Sanh memorial is beginning to show its age. Remote location precludes a lot of visitors. This traveler had the place to himself except for the one person who operates the ticket office and book shop. The darkened museum lights up when movement is detected. Turns out I wasn't alone. There is a eccentric squatter under the museum.

Mysterious character apparently lived under the museum and had artifacts he found on the site about as large as six football fields. The wind moaned through the pylons like ghosts seeking peace from the savage battle. I moved on.

Display of mess utensils brought more emotional reaction than captured weapons. In the four-month long siege, Marines still got hot chow in between enemy artillery barrages from pieces hidden in mountain slopes just like Dien Bien Phu in 1954.

Traveled part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the most far-flung, wild country this voyager has ever seen. What were our leaders thinking?

The battleground of Khe Sanh was deserted save for a mysterious character who seemed to reside under the modern, raised A-frame museum, but showing its age. He scurried under the building and brought out a tray of artifacts presumably scavenged from the grounds, wanting me to buy something. There were a couple of dog tags, but I didn’t want to read the names—it’s too personal as opposed to reading statistics. He had some spent AK-47 and M-16 rounds but had their identification backwards. I tried a couple of times to convince him otherwise, but who’s to care? A breeze moaned through the pylons like ghosts searching for peace from the savage battle. I moved on.

Hmong home near the wild country known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail which was a network of trails, paths, roads and river crossing, not a single trail as the name suggests.

Was surprised at the elevations of mountains in western Vietnam along the trail and into Laos. A banner across the road in a small upland village is a festive reminder of the upcoming Tet holiday.

We headed to Da Nang via the Ho Chi Minh Highway that generally traverses the trail of the same name, which was a network of paths and byways leading southward for the conveyance of ordnance and supplies to conduct the war from North Vietnam. Its entrance is marked by a modern suspension bridge which provided a brief sense of civilization. Along the way, looking westward from the blacktopped road, lay the wildest, remotest, most far-flung, exotic, inaccessible place I have ever experienced. It seemed like the end of the earth. We passed isolated Montagnard homes. Some of the people walking the road with goats in tow appeared to be of Hmong heritage. I don’t think the border between Vietnam and Laos is monitored very closely, if at all. After some bone-jarring gravel stretches under construction we were back to civilization.