We were more than a little nervous, as we rode our tandem up to the first security station at the border between Laos and Vietnam. Claire, a Western woman with a passport saying she was born in Saigon, renamed Ho Chi Minh City after the war, was bound to attract attention. But the attention was brief, not at all negative, and we passed through without delay, something of a miracle for our checkered past at Asian borders.

North Vietnamese Tank on Route 9

The countryside changed little from Laos at first, until we topped the border mountains and looked out over a sea of jungle toward Khe Sanh, Dong Ha and the Gulf of Tonkin.  We stopped for a break at a pedestal featuring a war era North Vietnamese tank. A driver and guide translated for an American and his wife, who were visiting to see the places where his brother had fought. He wanted to understand the war that had defined his brother’s life.

Lam Son 719, The Battle to Cut the Hoh Chi Minh Trail

For years, the American military had been trying to cut, disrupt, interdict movement of troops and material from North Vietnam through the web of jungle trails in Laos nicknamed the Ho Chi Minh Trail. For us, managing two days of the worst of it, much of it pushing our tandem bicycle (see photo above), it was a mini-hell of mud, mosquitoes and fear of unexploded ordnance, with the added uncertainty of being lost. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for the troops walking with heavy loads for weeks or months, and the truck drivers fighting the horrific mud path, in constant fear for the B52s dropping huge loads, and platform gunships circling above laying down a hail of large-caliber fire. We had it easy.

Ho Chi Minh Trail Stream Crossing

Hoh Chi Min Trail Troop and Material Movements

From supposedly reliable intelligence, Abrams was able to follow the progress of troops and supplies south, and judge where and when the North planned to attack over the border into Vietnam. To paraphrase from A Better War, Lewis Sorley: Troops advanced south in waves 500 to 600, moving at 12.2 kilometers per day, mostly by foot, the trucks saved for supplies and ammunition. We were able to move perhaps 60 Kilometers on the unimproved section, partly because our load was not on our feet, but on our bicycle, and partly because we had no backup supplies; we had to get out of that jungle in short order.

Losses to North Vietnamese Troops on the Hoh Chi Minh Trail

To further paraphrase Sorley: The trail was so fraught with danger that 22 to 50% of the troops were lost to illness (probably malaria, parasites and injuries) B52 strikes with heavy bombs and cluster bombs (bombies), later the feared gunships/gun platforms. To get material (food, ammunition) down the trail to staging areas near Vietnam, they had to put 10 tons into the northern end of the trail to get one ton to destination.

Along Vietnam Route 9 looking back toward Laos and Sepon

We entered Vietnam via Route 9, the main line of communication and supply for Operation Lam Son 719, the offensive against Tchepone and the Trail, that might have been pivotal, had not the political battle back in the States already had been lost. From our perch with the tank, overlooking the dense jungle and steep, if not high, mountains, I could only wonder that any conceivable battle plan could have results in such a brutal and foreign environment. And yet, this battle, conceived, and timed by General Abrams, could have turned the tide. However, South Vietnamese President Thieu made a political decision, and their troops stalled short of Tchepone. Adding to ARVN (The South Vietnam Army) confusion, U.S. Intelligence had failed to tell Abrams just how poor was the condition of Route 9. Also he North Vietnamese resistance was much stronger than anticipated; they were far more willing to take casualties than ARVN. The North was always more willing to sacrifice troops than ARVN and the U. S. Army, and this was no more evident than the battle for Tchepone (Sepon) and Route 9 in an attempt to cut the Hoh Chi Minh Trail, the supply and troop route we slogged through in Laos.

Cutting the Ho Chi Minh Trail: Fail

B52s had been taking a heavy toll on the battlefield, and on troop and supply movements on the Trail, but the North kept moving to the front via the Hoh Chi Minh Trail. It must have been very frustrating for General Abrams; so close to closing the Trail that he thought it was one of the two most important tactics for, if not winning the war, at least achieving a reasonable  peace with the Demilitarized Zone in tact.

Our Route 9 was nothing like it was for ARVN and American support troops: “Route 9 was at best a narrow twisting, nearly unimproved surface or so it was from the air. The reality was much worse.” Our Route 9 was smooth, mostly downhill and blessedly free of heavy traffic.

Bicycling the Song Quan Tri River to Batong

Batong Villagers Giving Silly Westerners the Bad News

Naturally we could not let such easy conditions last! We decided to take another “short cut”  down the Song Quang Tri river to Quang Tri along the coast. However a typhoon had recently caused epic flooding. After a half-day of pedaling ruined roads and mud, we only made it as far as Batong. There the whole village turned out to laugh at the Western couple on the funny double bicycle who didn’t know that the bridge had been washed away. Sometimes not knowing the language can create issues. However, we saw some beautiful country we would not have seen otherwise. The Song Quang Tri river must have been a constant trap for U.S. gunboats with rice paddy dams and jungle lining both banks, giving cover. Another reminder of just how difficult it is to fight a war on the other guy’s turf. We retraced our route to arrive back at Route 9 just before dark. We easily found accommodation, but it took an hour to find food, all venues booked for a special holiday.

Sobering Reminder in Hue

Our next stops were Dong Ha, Hue and across Hai Van Pass to Danang where we planned a couple of rest days at China Beach, a noted if not notorious, R&R spot for U.S. troops. South on Route 1A, the coast road we encountered many ruins of anti-aircraft installations, particularly along the paralleling railroad tracks leading to the Demilitarized Zone. Hue was the site of brutal fighting and at least one North Vietnamese mass killing of civilians according to Sorley. We spent several days there waiting in vain for the rain to ease, but enjoyed our walks around the walled city, and the good food available everywhere. The feared Hai Van Pass was a non event, in cycling terms; our legs were so strong from Tibet and Laos and the sea level air filled with oxygen.

From Hai Van Pass looking north

Topping Hai Van Pass

For some these posts will seem without passion, neither patriotic flag waving, or screaming anti-war. I was never was either of those camps. Conflicted about the Vietnam War from the time the military rejected me as physically unfit to serve, which seems amazing now. Had the medical community known to give antibiotics for bleeding ulcers, I would have served. I would not have run to Canada, nor gone to jail. It’s not what West Virginia country boys did.

Cycling through Laos and Vietnam gave me a perspective on the war-that-never-was, for me. It also helped me understand the decisions made, and the truly horrific conditions both sides faced. My passion is for understanding people, all kinds of people, the things that are important in their lives, and ways we can better communicate to avoid conflicts of culture, religion and ideology that lead to no win wars.

That’s what, with Lewis Sorley‘s help, we’ll discuss in the final post of this series.

In my lifetime, we’ve gone to war, and won or lost, in a disturbingly recurring pattern: The politicians, responding to world events feel the pressure from former military and patriotic citizens, to do something. A “limited” war seems like a good idea. The military has never seen a war it didn’t like, at least in the beginning; everybody moves up a couple of ranks and the retirement piggy bank grows. The generals always promise a nice clean and short victory. Of course they know better, but are very optimistic. War, no matter how valid, moral, worthwhile, is never as clean and nice as it seems when plotted on maps, satellite images, and stoked by videos from fighter jets and tank turrets.

Citizen Impatience, Politics and Generals at Cross Purposes

The limited war drags on for years, as the enemy adapts to predictable strategies. The cost in both American lives and the economy becomes burdensome to the public and they turn against the war. The politicians, quietly, order the military to scale back the war. Reducing the casualties and saving money are now the main goal, not winning the war. This is about the time the generals figure out that it is not about territory taken or body count, but winning the hearts of the civilians caught in the middle of the war. This is a war that can be won. Of course it’s too late, the play winds painfully down, and the curtain closes on yet another unfortunate outcome for the most powerful military, most powerful country in the world.

Southeast Asian War By Tandem Bicycle

Because of our most recent travels in Asia on our tandem bicycle, I have developed a new interest in the Vietnam War, really the Indochina War of my youth. My draft board called me in 1964. I presented myself, got on a bus and taken for a physical and mental evaluation. I was just out of hospital for a bleeding ulcer. They didn’t know how to cure ulcers in those days, and they knew military food would kill me: 4F. I have always had some survivor’s guilt, partly because I have seen the toll that particular war took on many of the surviving draftees. The vets I have shared this feeling with have said I didn’t miss anything, and to let it go. I think I have. Maybe traveling there, seeing the land and the people involved has had something to do with my coming to terms with those feelings. My appreciation for anyone who fought there is deep. It was one helluva place to have to fight a war.

As Claire and I pedaled, and pushed, our tandem on one of the many branches of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos, lost in the jungle with the unexploded ordnance from our massive bombing of the trail. We pushed through mud in roads cut deep by thousands of trucks bringing supplies from North Vietnam to the various fronts in South Vietnam and Cambodia. Huge bomb craters are now softened by new growth jungle, but still there, mute reminders to anyone crazy enough to go there.

Fellow traveler on a branch of the Hoh Chi MinhTrail,

Ho Chi Minh Trail, Bombies and B-52s

Wondering if you might step on a 40-year-old anti-personal bombie, still live, tends to sharpen the senses of even the most exhausted sojourner. The jungle trembled with light and dark, produced unseen, unknowable, sounds, imaginings of one of the large cats that survive still. Mostly it was a quiet jungle, far different from how it must have been during the round-the-clock bombing sorties of that time. I wondered at the men who had driven the trucks down this awful track and died there. And I wondered about the men in the B-52s overhead, wondering about the men they were killing below. We dropped as much munitions on little Laos, as in all of WWII. What most Americans don’t know is how many unexploded bombies lie still in the jungle, waiting for a rice farmer’s daughter to turn it accidentally with her foot… They severely limit the use Laotians can get from the land that lay along the Ho Chi Minh trail. At least it’s good for the wildlife.

A Better War? A Belated Look at Vietnam

I recently ran across a book that examines the final years of that war: “A Better War, The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam“, by Lewis Sorley. It gives a reasoned, analytical, if at times biased, view of the final years when General Creighton Abrams had command.

After we finally found our way out of the jungle to the main road between populated Laos and Vietnam, we spent our final night in Laos in the town of Tchepone. I wish I had known what strategic importance that it had held, how the overgrown Ho Chi Minh Trail we had traversed, had been the center of the most intensive anti-personnel bombing of the war, and the largest incursion by the South Vietnamese Army, with support of American air power. The only reminder of the war are fence posts made from bombs that didn’t explode, or supplemental fuel tanks dropped for the return to base. We did have a bit of trouble finding food, but our first bed in some days made up for that. As with all Laotians, the people were friendly.

Bombs near Tchepone, Laos

Coming To Khe Sanh

We had some concerns about the border crossing into Vietnam. Claire’s passport lists her place of birth as Saigon, Vietnam. Her father was in the foreign service: security. Her birthplace drew a shocked look from one border guard, and a knowing acknowledgement by a second, no doubt noting the year, 1964, the early stages of America’s ramping up of  involvement. Claire and I could have been there at the same time, she as a baby, me as a grunt or maybe a combat photographer if I’d been lucky.

Boat made from jet fuel tanks in the highlands of Vietnam; nice to see our tax dollars still at work.

Generals Abrams and Petraeus

As we pedaled into Vietnam on the infamous Route 9 toward Khe Sanh, the lush undergrowth and steep mountains of the highlands held a beauty that belied the violence it had seen. The jungle heals the wounds of war quickly. I still can’t imagine how we could have conceived that a war in such a place would not drag us in and strangle us. That we did as well as we did is a tribute to the grunts who did their best in impossible conditions. Abrams deserves credit for finally understanding how such a war might be won, or at least brought into stasis as in Korea. Unfortunately our military seems to find a way to hold the good guys in reserve until it’s too late. I see an amazing parallel between Gen. Abrams and Gen. David Petraeus’ view of their own wars.

I’ll make those parallels in a later post. Stay Tuned.

Maybe we didn’t focus enough on these deadly little guys in our many presentations of our In Search of Shangri-La adventure. We got lost for two days along a little traveled branch of the Hoh Chi Minh trail in Laos, and we probably stepped over some of these, or phosphorus bombs or worse. We knew the risks, many kilometers beyond the last of the bomb clearing units, but had to push through the jungle toward Vietnam or run out of food and water.

Our risk was nothing compared to the average Laotian farmer, wandering children, firewood gathering women, who know every single day of their lives, that their next footstep could mean death, or for some worse, maiming, in a poor country where everyone must contribute.

Some facts: 270 million of these bombies were dropped on a country the size of Utah. Of the more than 50,000 people killed or maimed by the bombings, 20,000 have occurred after the end of the war. An average of one person a day is killed or maimed in Laos now, nearly 40 years later. I could go on, but I suggest you go the the January/February 2011 Issue of Sierra Magazine for Karen Coates’ excellent, if short, story. I want to know more about this chapter of our history, a chapter I might have taken part in except for a bleeding ulcer.

Lost in Laos on a branch of the old Ho Chi Minh trail

Read more about our Laos adventure and more on our In Search of Shangri-La bicycle journey.

A Slice of Lao Life

This woman was selling fresh pineapples at a roadside market in Laos. We bought one, and she expertly peeled and sliced it in finger friendly pieces and put it in a bag so we wouldn’t get our bicycle sticky. It was a pineapple I will remember forever, because it was so perfectly ripe. Our interaction was fun with the few Lao words we know, but smiles go a long way when language is short. The price was a few cents, and sustained us on a long hot day. I hope our small sale helps that bun in the oven get an education one day, something few Lao children get.

Click here for the beginning of just one of our adventures in SW China and SE Asia:Lost in Laos

It’s easy: just go to the right column of this Home page, and scroll down to article subjects, and click on 2009 Asia Adventure and it will take you to the first blog, Shangri-la; Journey into Myth, search for Reality.

When you get tired of reading, looking at picture or videos, you can just bookmark the blog where you are, so you can start where you left off, the next day, or week. At some point, I’ll have the posts on their own Adventures page, when I decide on a format.

Even if you think you’ve seen all of the posts, you will find things you missed the first time around. If you missed checking for a few days, you probably missed something interesting! With my short term memory, I’ll find something interesting! And don’t forget to look for our articles at Just One Opinion; many of them have basis is what we have learned during our travels.

Your comments are still welcome. Enjoy!

Man throwing a net on a backwater of the Mekong in Cambodia

“With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow – I have still joy in the midst of these things. Riches and honors acquired by unrighteousness are to me as a floating cloud.” Confucius

Before we began our Asian tandem bicycle adventure, I read Confucian quotes and often couldn’t relate.  This I chalked up to lack of depth on my part, and perhaps the enigmatic (to us) nature of Eastern thought.

Muddling my way through jet lag on our return, and as one friend opined, postpartum depression at the end of another adventure, I pondered the above Confucianism anew, and discovered I suddenly understood. Oh, I had known the surface meaning, from earlier adventures involving discomfort, danger, but not the full depth of his thought. I suddenly noticed that he says, “…have still joy…”  not “…still have joy…” as I had first read it. His meaning was hidden from me until I had eaten enough coarse rice, drank enough wood smoke infused water and slept sufficient times with my bended arm for a pillow.

To have a still joy, a quiet joy, a joy devoid of external condition, of riches or renown, is to have a profound joy, a lasting joy. I will look back on the past four months for as many years as I have left. I will remember the struggles, the discomforts, the challenge of the unknown, even the moments of  near panic, and I will smile. Confucius traveled China, seeking knowledge, seeking deep understanding. And Claire and I did also.

On this blog we have shared the light moments as well as the challenges and discomforts. I hope in coming months, as we integrate the lessons learned and share them, that you will be enriched through our seeking. And then I hope some of you will open a new path for learning, and seek out the adventure that fits your nature and capabilities. We all have the desire to continue to grow, to explore the previously unknown, no matter our age or condition in life. To suppress that desire is to suffer loss.

Here’s to your adventurous 2010, and beyond.

Happy New Year