Quang Tri Province, having been located in I Corps, was outside the responsibility of the Snake Platoon. Before the transformation of the 7th Radio Research Unit to the 101st Radio Research Company, it was well within the coverage of the 7th RRU. Some future members of the Snake Platoon worked missions in its largest city and former capital, Quang Tri, and in its current capital, Dong Ha. Later, these places were served by the First Platoon of the 101st. Phil McGibney has shared that the 407th RRD arriived in the area in July 1968 and began setting up at different firebases. Con Thien was as far north as they could go, but from the bunker roofs there they watched the bombing and spraying of the DMZ and could see the North Vietnamese on the other side.
As the prehistoric days ended, the lowlands of what is now Quang Tri Province were populated by Cham peoples, who were culturally distinct from the Vietnamese (Kinh) to their north. The central part of modern-day Vietnam, including Quang Tri, was conquered by the Chinese Qin Dynasty in the late 3rd century BC. The Chams, apparently a very patient people, after 500 years of Chinese rule rose up and overthrew the Qin control and went back to governing themselves in the 2nd century AD. Nothing lasts forever, though, and during the 14th and 15th centuries, the area was invaded and conquered by the Vietnamese armies from the north. The Chams in central Vietnam were gradually either displaced or absorbed by the Vietnamese people, and a distinct dialect of the Vietnamese language and a distinct cultural subgroup developed in the area. Four hundred years later, in 1874, the French moved in and seized the region, and in 1887, Quang Tri Province became a part of Annam “Protectorate” of French Indochina.
With the Viet Minh’s defeat of France in 1954, and the “temporary” division of Vietnam by the Geneva Accords into two separate countries at the 17th parallel, Quang Tri became the northernmost province of the Republic of (South) Vietnam, with the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in the northern part of the province. While the DMZ is said to have been along the 17th parallel (a straight line), it was not a straight line. The northern boundary of Quang Tri Province, also is not a straight line. The DMZ actually ran through the province. A small northwestern corner and a much larger northeastern portion of the province were actually north of the DMZ, making them parts of North Vietnam.
The Americans believed that the villagers in Vinh Moc, in the portion of Quang Tri Province north of the DMZ, were providing food and armaments to the North Vietnamese on the island of Con Co, which was hindering bombers en route to Hanoi. In an effort to persuade these villagers to relocate, the Americans began bombing Vinh Moc. (All told, the 9,000 tons of bombs dropped here averages seven tons per person.) Having nowhere to go, the villagers began to dig in. Initially, they moved their village 10 meters below ground, but Americans devised bombs that could reach that depth. Eventually, they moved to a depth of 30 meters. The Vinh Moc tunnels, dug in limestone by hand over a two-year period, total 2,000 meters and have thirteen entrances. This underground complex included wells, kitchens, rooms for the sixty families who lived in the tunnels, and spaces for medical care. During the period 1966 to 1972, seventeen children were born in the tunnels, where no villagers lost their lives. There was a single direct hit by a bomb which did not explode. The villagers reconfigured the hole it had made for use as a ventilation shaft. The Vinh Moc tunnels have become a tourist attraction in the area, with models of families shown living in their own spaces. The tunnels here are larger than the famed tunnels of Cu Chi and much easier to tour.
The intention was that the DMZ be free of arms and conflict. During the war from 1959 through 1975, however, the area around the DMZ was highly contested, heavily bombed, and well-sprayed with Agent Orange and other defoliants.
In April 1967, Communist forces captured and briefly held the then province capital city of Quang Tri. During the 1968 Tet offensive, Quang Tri became a principal battleground and was again held briefly by the Communists. The north continued their efforts to occupy the whole province. A part of this effort was the Battle of Khe Sanh, which resulted in US and South Vietnamese evacuation in July 1968. In the 1972 Easter Offensive, the north again captured the city of Quang Tri. The South Vietnamese counteroffensive, in June through September 1972, regained much of the lost territory.
By the end of the war in 1975, Quang Tri Province was devastated, with only 11 of the 3,500 previously populated villages able to claim a single building still standing. The United States dropped an estimated 7,500,000 tons of explosive ordnance during the war. Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam certainly received a pounding, but Quang Tri was bombed more than any other province in South Vietnam. After the Easter Offensive, this area was bombed daily by as many as 40 bombers, each carrying several tons of bombs. On top of the US ordnance, during the several battles for the province, particularly in 1972 and 1975, North Vietnamese artillery took its toll as well.
The war, and especially the 81-day battle following the 1972 Easter Offensive, left very little standing in Quang Tri Province. Some of the bombed and bullet-riddled structures have been left in place as reminders of the destruction of the war.
Built in 1824, the Quang Tri Citadel, in the center of Quang Tri City, was a military bastion which also held the province administrative offices of the Nguyen Dynasty through 1945. At each corner of the citadel was a fortress which controlled the single gate on each side of the citadel. Inside the walls were the town palace, used as a place for the king to worship and to hold promotional ceremonies and the occasional festival. Within the citadel, but outside of the palace walls, there were multiple castles and a rice storage facility. The French added facilities for their soldiers and a tax collection agency. It was here in the citadel that the northern army made its last stand in the aftermath of the Easter Offensive. Other than part of a French prison, nothing within the citadel’s walls survived this battle, which saw 80,000 tons of bombs dropped in a forty-day period in an effort to eliminate the North Vietnamese who were holding the citadel. What remains of the citadel’s walls is pockmarked from the impact of shrapnel and small arms fire.
In the center of the citadel, the Vietnamese Government has placed a monument “to the indomitable spirit of the Quang Tri people and the North Vietnamese Army.” Most of the civilian inhabitants of Quang Tri, however, had already left the area due to the intense conflict. The grounds of the citadel have been turned into a tranquil sculpture park with a two-story museum containing artifacts, photos and documents from the battle.
The Bo De School is a few blocks from the citadel. It was built by monks in 1959 as a two-story Buddhist secondary and high school. The school at one point had approximately 1,000 students. During the 1972 Battle of Quang Tri, large sections of the school’s walls were destroyed by rockets, and the surviving portions are covered in bullet holes. What remained of the building at the end of the battle still stands as it was left.
At the edge of Quang Tri City sits a bullet-riddled steeple and tile chapel floor, all that remained of the La Vang Cathedral following the battle in 1972. Adjacent to the steeple are sculptures and a shrine to the Virgin Mary, built during the Ngo Dinh Diem administration. A new church has been built alongside the original site.
The last of the four remaining battle-damaged structures is the Long Hung Church. Located on busy National Highway 1, the church received a lot of small arms and rocket fire during the battle. Its roof is gone, but some of the walls are still standing.
Would that these buildings were all the reminders of the war, but it is not to be so. At least 10% (750,000 tons) of the bombs dropped during the war did not explode on impact, but sat there in the ground awaiting future victims. Flooding brings them to the surface. Farmers plowing their land set them off. Children find the baseball-sized cluster bombs and, thinking they are toys, take them home or to school, where they are reported to have exploded. Most scrap metal hunters, fortunately, have learned to steer clear of some things. Since the end of the war, Quang Tri Province is reported to have suffered in excess of 8,500 casualties from ordnance that failed to explode when it was first dropped. Children account for 31% of that number. Forty percent of the casualties have been fatalities, and a preponderance of the others resulted in loss of limbs or other debilitating injuries.
Farmers in the province are impoverished due to the well-founded fear of setting off a deadly explosion while working their fields. Several organizations have been working here for over twenty years to seek out and remove this hazard. They are finding it and removing it on a regular basis. Their goal is to clear 3,000 hectares each year until the province is free of unexploded ordnance by the year 2025, fifty years after Saigon’s surrender.
Sleeping bombs are not the only peril remaining in Quang Tri from the war. Six hundred thirteen thousand gallons of Agent Orange and other defoliants were sprayed on 17% of the province. A large part of the former triple canopy jungle remains dead, and the residual dioxin in the soil severely limits the land’s productivity. It leaches into the rivers and flows to the sea, killing fish, shrimp, and other aquatic life. And, too, it is still causing severe birth defects and deadly illnesses among the people themselves. American veterans were exposed to these chemicals only briefly compared to the Vietnamese people, whose exposure began sixty years ago with the first spraying in 1961 and continues today. As of 2019, fifteen thousand of the province’s 600,000 residents were suffering from Agent Orange-related deformities and diseases. It has been reported that the Vietnamese government provides these victims with an allowance to assist with their disabilities. The average adult victim receives the equivalent of $2.40 per month. Children can receive up to $3.60. The Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign (VAORRC), an initiative of Vietnam veterans and Vietnamese Americans, is trying to get the US Government to provide proper assistance and compensation to Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange. Their website, if you can handle it, is worth a look.
When I started this page on Quang Tri and Dong Ha, I had no plan to present such a bleak picture. Most of the written word I have found on this area, however, is dismal. I decided to include this information because it is important. Photos of the many children maimed by late-exploding bombs and deformed by the remnants of Agent Orange, though, have been intentionally excluded. As stated above, various organizations are working to rid the area of unexploded ordnance, but that will take at least four more years. Dioxins, the residual from Agent Orange and other herbicides, are classified as ‘persistent organic pollutants,’ which means that they take a long time to break down once they are in the environment. Nobody seems willing to define ‘long time,’ so this problem is not going away any time soon of its own accord. Even the several floods that have occurred in the region seem to spread this poison rather than eliminate it.
Upbeat writings about life in Quang Tri province and its cities are hard to find. If the Vietnamese were not patient, persistent, resourceful and resilient, they likely would not have survived as a people. From available modern-day photographs, the cities of Dong Ha and Quang Tri appear to have fared somewhat better than rural areas of the province. Being major population centers, they would have been given early priority in detection and removal of unexploded ordnance. Also, being urban areas, they would not have been directly sprayed with Agent Orange as was the countryside. With these advantages, they seem to have been able to rebuild to a greater extent than other parts of the province. The cities both include choices of modern hotels. The province of 620,000 people has two economic zones and three industrial parks, which are attracting investment projects.
One of the investment projects involves the mining and processing of minerals and manufacture of building products. Another project involves manufacture of wood products, sold internationally. The government has invested in 100,000 hectares of forest to support this industry, which provides thousands of jobs. Quang Tri Province also grows 5,000 hectares of coffee, providing income to 8,000 households. The coffee grown here is Arabica, while elsewhere in Vietnam, the coffee grown is Robusta.
Quang Tri Province is becoming heavily invested in energy production. A Thai corporation is building both a thermal power plant and a coal-fired plant here. A second coal-fired plant is being constructed by a Korean company. A Russian firm is building a gas operated power plant, and a Japanese company is investing in on-shore wind power in Quang Tri. Finally, an Australian firm has invested in a solar power farm in Quang Tri. Anyone who has been to Vietnam knows that they have plenty of sunshine. Quang Tri Province, which has been described by some in recent decades as a ‘moonscape,’ is on track to become the power center of the region.
