Thursday, May 4, 1972
Red Barrage Turned The Tide
ALONG THE STREET WITHOUT JOY, Vietnam (UPI) --He stumbled along with head bowed, back bent and combat boots scraping dejectedly along the grey (sic) ground. He held a rusty rifle in one hand and used the other to carry a steel helmet twisted by shrapnel into a sculpture of war."What, what did you say?" PFC Phan Quang, 20, said, looking up with glassy eyes. "Scared? Yes, I guess so. Yes, all of us. Scared. Yes. It was awful."Quang, a rifleman with South Vietnam's 3rd Inf. Div., retreated down Highway 1 Tuesday, with thousands of other South Vietnamese soldiers trying hard to forget the shells that exploded around them, the cries of the wounded and the shock of defeat.North Vietnamese troop pushed the last government defenders out of Quang Tri early Tuesday and sent an estimated 10,000 South Vietnamese soldiers reeling down Highway One in a daze."It was hell in Quang Tri," Quang said through an interpreter. "The shells were landing all around us. We started running to get away. It was horrible. We were so scared. We just ran and ran."He said his battalion broke up and the men went their own ways after the Communists unleashed a massive artillery barrage at mid-afternoon."We didn't see any Communist soldiers," he said. "It was just the shells. We were scared and we figured the soldiers would soon be coming. So we got out of there as soon as we could."Quang's infantrymen were the first to pull out of Quang Tri, followed by government Rangers Monday night and Marines early Tuesday.Soldiers walking down Highway 1, the old French "Rue Sans Joie" (Street Without Joy), and only the marines offered serious opposition to the advancing North Vietnamese troops.They said the marines generally stayed together as a unit and were fighting their way south Tuesday afternoon toward Camp Evans about 20 miles to the southeast.Scores of trucks and armored personnel carriers rumbled down the highway Tuesday morning hauling thousands of the beaten government soldiers from Camp Evans to Hue. Hundreds of other soldiers, unable to find room on the stuffed vehicles, walked wearily along the highway.Most of the retreating soldiers walked without packs and many didn't have rifles.Hundreds were wounded, missing eyes and arms and legs. Bloody bandages covered heads and arms and chests.Red Cross trucks roared up the highway empty and down filled with battered men.Allied officers estimate the North Vietnamese threw three divisions (about 30,000 men) against the 15,000 government troops defending Quang Tri. Most of the government soldiers appeared to have lived through the fighting, but U.S. officers say it will be a long time before they will be part of viable fighting units again.Allied officers expect the North Vietnamese to turn their attention now to the former imperial capital of Hue, 35 miles south of Quang Tri. An estimated two North Vietnamese divisions have been pushing toward Hue from the west.Tens of thousands of scared residents of Hue poured out of the city Monday traveling down Highway 1 toward Da Nang, 40 miles to the south. Thousands more trudged along Highway 551 toward the Tan My Naval Base 10 miles to the east to board South Vietnamese landing ships for trips down the coast of the South China Sea to Da Nang.U.S. pacification workers in Hue described the city as "in absolute chaos." Shocked residents were offering to pay up to $50 for a car to make the one hour trip south to Da Nang. A few residents who appeared unwilling to leave, could be seen stoically filling green sandbags bought on the black market.About 50,000 refugees, half of them who had fled Quang Tri moved down the highway Tuesday.The South Vietnamese military police set up a roadblock one mile south of the city to keep government soldiers from fleeing. The MPs tried to pull out of the trucks all soldiers without travel orders. Some of the soldiers, however, brandished rifles and the MPs backed off.Scores of officers could be seen traveling down the road with their families and belongings in polished jeeps."Red Barrage Turned the Tide", by Stewart Kellerman, published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes on Thursday, May 4, 1972 and reprinted from the European and Pacific Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense publication copyright, 2002 European and Pacific Stars and Stripes.