Thursday, May 4, 1972
The Long, Lonesome Road Out Of Quang Tri
ON HIGHWAY 1, Vietnam (AP) --Retreat. They came out of Quang Tri City in thousands, long weary columns of men on foot, in tanks and commandeered civilian vehicles.Quang Tri City had fallen and so had the province.Men wept to see the battered remnants of once proud units -the elite Rangers, South Vietnamese Marines, tankers and the mauled 3rd Inf. Div.Many of the men were angry and bitter. Tanks tried to run down newsmen's vehicles. Soldiers waving M16 rifles piled onto every car going southward.Some of the fleeing troops said they were pursued by North Vietnamese amphibious tanks. Others had to fight their way through a North Vietnamese regiment as they came down the coastal strip called the Street Without Joy east of Highway 1.Capt. John Guernsey, 25, of Washington, D.C., a tank adviser, was among the last to leave the shattered province capital."I can't account for everybody," he said. "There are some American advisers missing. The city itself is on fire. There were some PT76 tanks in the streets when we left late yesterday afternoon."We stayed off the road to the east when we left. We tried to make it out through the sand dunes. We took a lot of fire coming out, I guess it was the enemy tanks, but you could say my unit came out in an orderly fashion."Guernsey said his unit, the 11th Armored Cav. Sq., came out with the 20th Tank Sq. and remnants of the 1,500-man 147th Marine Brigade.He said they were accompanied by their advisers when they left, but some advisers were missing by the time they linked up on Highway 1 about 10 miles south of Quang Tri.Many of the retreating soldiers had thrown away their rifles. Many were wounded, their legs stained with mud from crossing rivers. No dead were aboard the vehicles, indicating they were left behind.Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Bowen, deputy senior adviser for the 1st Military Region, brought several U.S. advisers out in his helicopter and landed them beside the highway at Camp Evans, 16 miles north of Hue.Maj. Gen. Nguyen Van Toan, deputy commander of the 1st Military Region headquarters, stood beside the highway at Camp Evans and questioned the returning men. Asked where they would regroup he replied: "I don't know. I just don't know."An American colonel said the front lines now were at the My Chanh River just north of Camp Evans, but retreating soldiers said there were no troops there."We were beaten at Fuller, we were beaten at Dong Ha and we have been beaten at Quang Tri," said one Vietnamese soldier. "I am finished. I have had enough."Officers gave conflicting accounts of the casualties in Quang Tri City. Guernsey said there were very few. But a Vietnamese colonel said more than 900 wounded had been left at the Quang Tri hospital with no chance of getting out.The retreat from Quang Tri threw Hue in a panic. Many civilians began packing their household possessions on trucks and jeeps and fled southward to Da Nang. The highway was choked with traffic."The Long, Lonesome Road Out of Quang Tri", by (AP), published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes on Thursday, May 4, 1972 by (AP), and reprinted from European and Pacific Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense publication copyright, 2002 European and Pacific Stars and Stripes.