Quoted Text
First; "Welcome Home"
Second: what a wonderful garden spot the Hai Van Pass was!
gary[/quote]
Welcome home to you too, Gary!
Hai Van was indeed a garden spot! I used to love sitting out on the veranda, sipping mint juleps and enjoying the view of DaNang and the bay laid out before me. A bunch of us used to say that when the war was over, we'd go back there and build a hotel on top of that mountain....with a tramway down to the goregous white sand beach at the leper colony below us. Of course, the tramway would have to go over the old French minefield next to our position....but the view was spectacular anyway!
Ahhhh...those were the days!
Semper Fi,
Dave[/quote]
I remember the first time I took the excursion from Tam Key to Thien Phouc just like it was last week. Beautiful sunny day at the end of June. Much nicer than when lifted out of the Que Son Valley a few days prior. Everything was lush and green. Even the rice paddies looked calm. Our column started out with two M48's and three ACAV's (we were armed for bear!). We get about four hundred yards past the old French prision, when these guys from the 6th/11th flag us down. The squad leader asked just where we thought we going to. He said we were flat NUTS! I had a bad feeling as I found out that nobody had been down that road in two years, and several had tried. Nice and strait gravel road with no close cover for an ambush. After about twelve or fifteen miles we come upon a bunch of blown up buildings and a lone LZ out in the middle of nowhere. This place looks like the end of the world! I never saw so much razor wire in one small spot in my life to this very day. They must have had two hundred claymores set out all around that place in layers. My stomach growled as I got a real bad feeling. Two officers walk out and greeted us. Asked where we were headed, and promptly said "you guys are outta your minds!" Everybody test fire their weapons on the old buildings to make sure all is well. We start to head out, when we heard a couple explosions out in front of us.
One of the 48's and two of the ACAVs take off up the road as fast as they can go, and then come back to say they've blown a bridge about four hundred yards up there. The LZ has a company of engineers posted there, and they install a makeshift bridge while we waited. Two hours later we're moving again. All of a sudden the road starts twisting left and right with the jungle right up to the edge. Now it's ugly! As in extremely ugly. Spider holes all over the place. Lead 48 shoots a can round at somebody and we wait again. I say to myself that this place is so damned ugly. We're moving again. middle 48 finds a place to pull off the road while we all pass. Takes up the rear and now I really got a bad feeling about this road. We all off load and walk the rest of the way as it seems smarter than being blown off a track on a sunny afternoon. There is an occassional burst of 50 cal up front, but you can't see a thing and it's starting to get dark with all the shadows moving around. Finally we hit the gravel air strip out an 102, and it's all gravey from there. An SF team crosses the runway in front of us, and they look pretty beat up. Gave them all a ride the rest of the way.
How can a place be so pretty and yet turn out to be so ugly? It'll be July first at midnight, and half of my tour is gone. Rains almost solid for the next two days, but it home
gary
