DONG HA AND CAMP CARROLL'S BETRAYAL

Ngoc, my fixer, travel agent & waitress

Dong Ha today, in central Vietnam. This was a strategic crossroads town during the war.

After you’ve been in Asia for a while, you get to learn that through western eyes, most of the people that you meet here are actually older than they appear. Ngoc, my local fixer in Dong Ha, is a good example. This young lady looks fresh out of high school, appearing to be all of 18 years old.

“I am 25,” she tells me. Maybe it’s her petite size that throws me off; she’s barely five feet tall. I’m glad to hear she’s older than she looks, since I need to consult someone with experience. Ngoc is my travel agent for the old De-Militarized Zone (DMZ), the infamous Highway9, and everything else I’m doing in this part of Vietnam.

“I work here two year,” she tells me, in between taking and making phone calls in Dong Ha. Ngoc is a busy woman. In addition to arranging my route and driver, she also takes my lunch order. In this junction town, she works in a combination restaurant and travel office, making her both waitress and travel agent. Speaking passable English, Ngoc has found me good deals, arranging reliable guides during my stay. She’s one of those rare people you find while traveling. A little ball of energy, she has the ability to multi-task. Bright, friendly and energetic, she has enough smarts to get ahead in any corporation, but she’s stuck here in Dong Ha. Still, for this town, she has a well paying job.

I come into the restaurant/office at early and late hours, and she’s almost always there. “I work 12 hour every day,” she tells me. As if that isn’t enough, she only gets one or two days off a month. I’m reminded that despite communism’s promise of helping the workers, in today’s Vietnam there is little done to give laborers sufficient days off, or overtime pay.

“My grandfather VC. He die from Americans,” Ngoc told me. She never knew her grandfather; he was killed before she was born. She says she doesn't have any problem with Americans today; Ngoc has arranged many trips around the DMZ for returning American war veterans. Soon after, Ngoc hands me a plate of chicken fried rice at my table. I wolf it down, just as my driver arrives.

“You go with him,” she tells me, pointing out the door. I look at my vehicle for the day, and groan. There are few taxis in Dong Ha, so I’m stuck hanging onto the back seat of a motorbike, and today it looks like rain. My new guide is Nguyen. His English isn't fluent, but he’s able to get his point across. Nguyen is a former ARVN soldier; he was drafted near the war's end.
 
“I work(ed) in office," he tells me, "I work maps." Rather than a frontline soldier, his job was at a base in Quang Tri. Nguyen was luckier than most. Working inside a base, he was relatively safe from the fighting. “(When) I have 18 year, war finish,” he says. His unit surrendered to the NVA when Quang Tri fell. Like the soldier Duc I knew in Saigon, Nguyen was sent to a ‘reeducation’ camp. But since he had only been a soldier and low ranking private for six months, he was released in less than a year.

Bizarre sight: Vietnamese home built right next to old US built hangar on former Dong Ha Air Base

Nguyen hands me a helmet, and off we drive into Dong Ha’s streets. Located near the coast, Dong Ha is just 12 miles south of the old De-Militarized Zone that formerly divided North and South Vietnam. Trucks barrel through town on Highway 1, the main roadway along the coast. This throughway intersects with the westward reaching Highway 9, and from here the Laotian border is only 33 miles away as the crow flies. During the war, that proximity to the borders of North Vietnam and Laos made Dong Ha a very strategic place.

Nguyen winds the scooter through Dong Ha streets, before stopping in a residential neighborhood. I hop off, and I’m puzzled by what I see. I’m right next to one of those old half-cylinder shaped, US built concrete military hangars. These are the exact same kind still in use at Ton Son Nhat airport, but this one is different. It isn’t intact. A large hole has been blown into the side of it, almost big enough to walk through. The concrete on these protective hangars is very thick and strong, this hole must have been created by a massive explosion. 

Vietnamese memorial by ex-Dong Ha Air Base hangar

This was the site of Dong Ha Airfield, once a forward US Marine base. Since Dong Ha was so close to the DMZ, it was well within range of North Vietnamese artillery and it was attacked many times. During one heavy shelling in 1968, the base’s ammunition dump was hit, and the flames and explosions here continued for hours. Most of the aircraft parked here, and much of the base, were destroyed.

I walk around to have a look inside the old hangar. Not surprisingly, there are no traces of aircraft left. Inside I see a couple of workmen doing carpentry in the hangar’s dim light. They don’t even look up, they’re so engrossed in their work. Piles of building materials and other junk are stacked up inside.  Since the damage to the hangar wall wasn’t repaired, that hole in the wall probably occured during the 1972 spring offensive, after the US Marines had already turned the base over to the ARVN. During fighting that year, much of Dong Ha town was destroyed by the advancing North Vietnamese Army (NVA). 

Dong Ha Air Base  was not surrendered back to nature like other bases. Strangely, it was turned into a residential neighborhood. It’s a bizarre sight to see this old military airport hangar closely surrounded by small family homes. One house was built so closely, that it nearly touches the hangar itself. Dong Ha Airfield exists no more, but the town has been rebuilt into a transportation hub. All this areas imports and exports going to and from Laos pass through here, as well as all of Vietnam’s north – south road traffic. There’s a memorial next to the damaged hangar, and at its base, I find a small ceramic bowl, filled with the remains of incense sticks from Buddhists praying here. This used to be an American base. I wonder, who were they praying for?

Decaying memorial on former Camp Carroll

There’s much more to see outside Dong Ha, so we climb onto Nguyen’s scooter, and head out of town. I lean forward as Nguyen tells me about the rural roadways back then. “In the wartime, it was bare. No trees, no houses,” he tells me. The NVA laid mines along the roads, hoping to disable American tanks or trucks. These were sometimes detonated by civilian vehicles. “We had buses, but we afraid of the mine,” Nguyen continues. “Sometimes bus hit the mine, and people die.”

We buzz along Highway 9, and I look at the skies, which have been gloomy all day. They finally open up. Nguyen pulls over, and pops open the seat compartment. I’m relieved to see that he has raingear for both of us. We don ponchos before we get too drenched; soon we’re back on the road. 

He turns south off highway, and his scooter struggles to carry us both up a long hill. Then he pulls to a stop next to some kind of strange, artsy concrete sculpture that appears to be  under construction. I think this is a strange place for a sculpture, out in the middle of nowhere. Then I look at it closer. What this really is, is a war memorial that is falling apart. In recent years, local people came and carted away parts of this memorial to sell for scrap. Most of the surrounding fence is gone, and they’ve cut away all the metal pieces that they that could get. I had already seen this done to old buildings and bunkers on old bases, but this is the first time I’d seen a memorial made by the post-war communists defaced for scrap.

One of the informational plaques has been torn away, but the other is still there, and Nguyen translates it for me as follows, “This Hill 241, had very strong American artillery army base along Highway 9.”

Aerial view of Camp Carroll during the war. (Photo: USACMH)

Hill 241 was the NVA’s name for this post; American troops remember it as Camp Carroll, a heavy artillery base inhabited by US Marine and Army troops. Like many American bases in Vietnam, it was named after an American soldier killed near the base. In this case, it’s named after Marine Corps Captain James Joseph Carroll. During NVA attack, he was mistakenly killed when fired on by an American tank. This type of combat casualty was known as ‘friendly fire’, a really self-contradictory military euphemism. 

Walking around the former base, I see sections of sandbags lying in the dirt, like those I found in the highlands. We encounter one concrete foundation, which is the former foundation for the base mess hall. This strategic base once had 16 heavy cannons, including the feared 175mm artillery guns. These massive cannons could fire 174 pound projectiles as far as 20 miles away. As American troop numbers were reduced towards the war’s end, Camp Carroll was turned over to South Vietnam’s military (ARVN) in 1970. Later, the ARVN colonel in command surrendered the entire base to the NVA, without firing a shot. That same colonel now owns a hotel in Hue today... At the top of the memorial here, the stone lists the year of his surrender, 1972.

Camp Carroll today. It's been reduced to farmland.

On one of the dismantled concrete friezes lying flat on the ground, I can make out the frightened face of an ARVN soldier, with his hands in the air as he surrenders. More than 400 ARVN soldiers were taken prisoner here. After Camp Carroll was taken, Dong Ha, the town I was in earlier, fell soon afterwards.

Nguyen tells me that in the post-war years, the only visitors that bother to come all the way up here were American war veterans that served in Camp Carroll. That explains the dilapidated state of the memorial. The government had no interest in preserving the old base, it is more useful now as a farm. Rubber trees, pepper plants, and cassava grow on a hill that used to be covered with bunkers, tents and artillery. On this gloomy day there aren’t even any farmers present, only a water buffalo chewing on grass.

I ponder the difference that I saw between Dong Ha, and here. Dong Ha is at a major crossroads, so it has been rebuilt. But since Vietnam is now reunited, Camp Carroll’s location is no longer strategic. With the heavy guns long ago captured and carted away, this former military base is now nothing more than a quiet, unimportant hilltop in central Vietnam.

A DEADLY TRAP

A Vietnamese punji trap, designed to trap US foot soldiers

Our group is exploring outside the war tunnels of Cu Chi, when our guide Duc announces, “If you don’t like your wife, let me know, and we can leave her in the tunnel!” A former soldier for South Vietnam during the war, Duc may have had a hard life, but he hasn’t lost his sense of humor.

As I look around, I see another tunnel entrance. This one isn’t for visitors, so I grab a light, and crawl down for a quick look alone. Descending the cramped steps, I get six feet underground, where the tunnel branches out. This tunnel is REALLY cramped; obviously not made for a tall guy like me. It’s only knee high. Squeezing down into the tight space for a better look, my light illuminates the walls of red clay. It gets even tighter further ahead, so I have to stop. If I tried to continue, I would have to shimmy along like a snake, and would probably end up stuck. I don’t really feel like screaming for help, and then being dragged out by my feet.

The war tunnels had many levels, like an underground village

Most of these old war tunnels aren’t safe anymore, and many sections have collapsed from erosion. Although there are no longer Vietnam Cong rebels down here, I recall that certain slithering reptiles still make their homes in these tunnels. With that in mind, I crawl backwards to the entrance and climb out of the tunnel.

Walking on, our group reaches a small clearing in the woods. There are no hiding places here, or so we think. The ground is covered with fallen leaves of the surrounding jungle foliage, and a Vietnamese soldier joins us. He steps towards the center, and reaches down into the leaves. I’m taken aback when he lifts a perfectly camouflaged wooden cover, the size of a shoe box, revealing a dark cavity in the earth beneath. He puts his feet in, drops into the small hole, and pulls the cover closed again, all in less than 10 seconds. His hiding place is virtually undetectable.

This tiny hideout is what was known as a spider hole. Viet Cong would emerge from these holes frequently to fire on patrolling American soldiers. When charging GI’s advanced on the VC’s position, the VC would quickly disappear in seconds back into the spider hole. This left the puzzled, frustrated American soldiers wondering how the lone VC had disappeared.

Feeling brave, I hop into the hole to check it out, but like the tunnels, these small holes were tailor made for the smaller, thinner VC. It takes me longer than the small soldier, but I manage to squeeze in. The lid comes on, and it’s pitch black, tight, but a very effective hiding place. Someone could step on the door itself, and never know I’m down here.

A soldier's hiding place, for thin people only

I climb out, and Duc says that a few days previously, a large Canadian woman got stuck in this very same spider hole. It was a struggle to get her back out. “It took us twenty minutes,” he says. “We needed five people to pull her out.” Duc smirked, added a few vulgarities, and said, “She lost her trousers, her panties, everything.”

As we make our way around the old battlefield, we pass many depressions in the surrounding jungle. These are old bomb craters, of many different sizes. Since the VC tunnel system was never destroyed, this whole region was continuously bombed by aircraft and artillery for years. Duc witnessed a bombing himself. One day he left nearby Dong Du base in a helicopter. “I was riding in Huey,” he said. “We look down, we see smoke come out of ground.”

Their chopper was over tunnel territory, and the smoke they saw was from a hidden chimney. Someone was cooking in an underground Viet Cong kitchen. The co-pilot called in the coordinates, and soon an artillery strike rained down on the surrounding landscape. When the dust cleared, the smoke had stopped.

With so much artillery and aerial bombing, by 1972 Cu Chi’s not all of them exploded. The VC found some of them, and carefully brought them down to the tunnels. Duc brings us to a workshop area of the tunnel network, where a dud 250 pound airborne bomb was left partially opened.

“Here they cut open the bomb, take out explosive,” Duc says. Fighting an enemy that was much better armed then they were, the VC scrounged for weapons and explosives wherever they could. Using simple tools, VC tried to carefully removed the explosives, a very dangerous process. Think of The Hurt Locker, with no body armor. Sometimes as they worked, the bomb went off, killing all the VC near it. When the explosive was successfully removed, it was remanufactured into primitive hand grenades and landmines.

Cu Chi was once well known for fruit trees, but those are long gone now, since it wasn’t just bombs that were dropped on the surrounding woods. “All the tree die, everything dead,” Duc says. “They drop Agent Orange.”

In the early years of the war, Agent Orange was sprayed over rural areas where the enemy was thought to hide. Used as an herbicide to remove brush and trees, nobody knew how toxic the chemical really was in the early years. When the military eventually learned that exposure to Agent Orange was causing health problems, they stopped using it, but by that time it was too late. Millions had already been exposed to the dangerous chemical including soldiers from both sides, and numerous civilians. Many developed health problems later from their exposure, including many types of cancer, Parkinson’s disease, miscarriages, and birth defects in their children.

Decades later trees are growing back now, but few edible crops are grown here, due to the fear of chemicals still present. Much of the land has been switched over to government rubber tree farms.

Arriving at another section of the old battlefield, we reach another clearing, or so it seems. Duc steps into the center and kicks at the grass on the ground. The grassy floor swoops downward like a swinging door, revealing a four foot fall down onto sharpened steel spikes in a pit beneath. This is a punji trap, the kind the VC dug out in the jungle earth, hoping to kill or wound unsuspecting American troops patrolling on foot.

Duc shows us a few more traps here. There are the deep tiger pit-like traps, spiked balls that swung down from trees, and wooden boards that swung down laden with spikes. The most common punji traps were smaller, shallow holes dug out along footpaths. If a GI stepped into one, the bamboo or steel spikes were sharp enough to penetrate through his boot into his foot. The VC sometimes urinated on the spikes before they hid them, to increase the likelihood of infection.

The skeleton of an American M-41 tank, stripped after it was abandoned

We reach another clearing, and come across an old American M-41 tank. It ran over a mine here in 1970, and has been here ever since. Duc says, “One American died here. After tank hit mine, the tank cannot move. He got out, and got shot.”

Some bullet marks are still visible on the outside of the tank. Just steps away, old trenches and a tunnel entrance show where the VC could have taken cover.

Looking at the tank now, it has been stripped of most of its parts. The treads are gone, and the engine’s gone. I remember when I worked in Afghanistan, where I saw old tank engines converted into small village generators. Here, the rest was probably sold for scrap metal by locals. Now it’s just an old shell, for the curious to climb on.

I remember well a tank story from Don, a Vietnam war veteran from my hometown in America. He was an army mechanic based here in Cu Chi. The story went that they had an M-41 tank like this one on their base, and as sometimes happens in any military bureaucracy, all the paperwork for it had been lost. One of the oddities about the US Army, was that it was an extremely difficult, nearly impossible task to re-register a tank without any paperwork. Re-doing the paperwork was such a difficult, time consuming process, that it would have been much easier for them to just take the tank, put it into a hole, and bury it. And that’s exactly what they did.

They found an out of the way corner of the base, and used earth movers to excavate a deep hole. After removing the engine for spare parts, they pushed the tank right into the giant hole, and buried it. That wasn’t quite the end of it. A couple days later, the tank’s radio antenna popped up out of the loose dirt. This worried Don and his buddies. If their base commander found out that they had buried a tank, they would have been in a great deal of trouble. So Don’s Sargeant told him and another GI to grab a couple shovels, go out to the offending antenna, dig down a couple feet, chop it off, and rebury the hole. And that’s exactly what they did.

It almost seems like I should ask Don exactly where that old tank was buried. After all, it could be dug up and all that steel could be recycled. But if that tank was found, it may be more valuable to the Vietnamese government for propaganda purposes. They just might dig it up, repaint it like new, and stick it up on a monument somewhere with a plaque saying how it was captured in battle. The war may be over, but there is still propaganda. 

It would be great for me to get into the old Dong Du base for a look around at Don's old haunts, but I learn that going inside is out of the question. It’s still a military base today, only now it’s occupied by a few thousand troops of the Vietnamese Army. They’re not about to let an American back in.