KHE SANH COMBAT BASE AND THE WEST OF QUANG TRI

Heading west from Dong Ha city on Highway 9 or Asia Highway 16 (AH16), beginning to ride to the foothills of the Truong Son range, you will see the hill isolated 230m high dominates the valley, it is the Rockpile. The American troops delivered by helicopter used the directing artillery to targets across the Quang Tri province and into Laos, but the base was abandoned in 1968s.
Along the highway continues follows a picturesque valley past the Dakrong Bridge (a spur of the Ho Chi Minh Trail) before driving among ever more forested mountains to emerge at Khe Sanh Combat Base. In this area, you’ll see a few stilt houses of the ethnic minority Van Kieu and Pa Cô

Khe Sanh Combat Base and the Battle

The battle of Khe Sanh or known as Ta Con airport attracted worldwide news attention and, along with the simultaneous Tet Offensive of 1968, demonstrated the futility of America’s efforts to contain its enemy. In 1962 an American Special Forces team arrived in Khe Sanh town to train local Bru minority people in counter-insurgency, and then four years later the first batch of Marines was sent in to establish a forward base near Laos, to secure Highway 9 and to harass troops on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Skirmishes around Khe Sanh increased as intelligence reports indicate a massive build-up of North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops in late 1967, possibly as many as forty thousand, facing six thousand Marines together with a few hundred South Vietnamese and Bru. Both the Western media and American generals were soon presenting the confrontation as a crucial test of America’s credibility in South Vietnam and drawing parallels with Dien Bien Phu. As US President Johnson famously remarked, he didn’t want “any damn Dinbinfoo

The NVA attack came in the early hours of January 21, 1968; rockets raining in on the base added to the terror and confusion by striking an ammunition dump, gasoline tanks, and stores of tear gas. There followed an endless, nerve-grind NVA artillery barrage, when hundreds of shells on the base each day, inter fell spersed with costly US infantry assaults into the surrounding hills. In an operation code-named “Niagara, General Westmoreland called in the air battalions to silence the enemy guns and break the siege by nearly unleashing the most intense bombing raids of the war: in nine weeks a hundred thousand tonnes of bombs pounded the area around the clock, averaging one airstrike every five minutes, backed up by napalm and defoliants, Unbelievably the NVA were so well dug in and camouflaged that they were not only withstood the onslaught but continued to return fire, despite horrendous casualties, estimated casualties at ten thousand. On the US side around five hundred troops died at Khe Sanh (although official figures record only 248 American deaths, of which 43 occurred in a single helicopter accident), before a relief column broke through in early April, seventy-odd days after the siege had started. NVA forces pulled back and by the middle of March had all but gone, having successfully diverted American resources away from southern cities before the Tet Offensive. ree months later the Americans also quietly, left a plateau that resembles a lunar landscape, contaminated for years to come with chemicals and explosives; even the trees left standing were worthless because so much shrapnel was lodged in the timber.

Khe Sanh Combat Base

The bleak settlement of Khe Sanh Combat Base, it’s frontier atmosphere reinforced by the trail across the border to Laos only 19km away (Lao Bao border gate), sits on the edge of a windswept plateau that was the site of a pivotal battle in the American War. Nothing else remains: when American troops were ordered to abandon Khe Sanh, everything was blown up or bulldozed. Nowadays, the soil around Khe Sanh has been able to support vegetation again, and the hills are now green with coffee plantations and the pepper tree

The museum in Ta Con Airport

This is a small memorial museum in Ta Con airport, the government of Vietnam show the remain of Khe Sanh Combat Base and commemorates the siege – made even more poignant by the hauntingly beautiful mountains all around. In the yard of Ta Con airport, you also see the war paraphernalia, a bunker, a helicopter, military vehicles such as tanks, bombs, some weapons, a canal of the base, and the contorted shapes of exploded bombs. You also see the red gash of the old airstrip.

DMZ Tour from Hue city

Hura Cars also offer a DMZ tour with an overview of the Vinh Moc tunnel, the 17 Paracell (Hien Luong bridge), and the Khe Sanh Combat base. You should book a local guide to have a clear lesson about Viet Nam War and the Delemitazied Zone of Vietnam. Make a reservation here: DMZ TOUR