Here's the entrance to An Khe Pass, a particularly dangerous stretch of Highway 19 that cut through taller and taller mountains on the way to Pleiku. Look at all those potential VC hiding places. And steep mountain-face on one side of the road, sheer drop on the other side – if you did run into trouble, where could you go? Nowhere but down.
The scenery didn't help matters much either...
The mountains swallowed
us and we kept climbing. And
climbing. The road was steep and
narrow, the going slow. The
machine-gunners in front and in back of us kept their sights trained on the
treelines above.
I wondered what a rocket
attack felt like, how a mine blast sounded. Would it hurt?
Would I see it? Would I
know?
How does it feel to
die?
Finally, we reached the
summit.
“Mang Yang Pass,” Dirks
said. “’Ambush Alley.’ See over there?” He pointed to a mountainside to the
north. Impossibly green grass
rippled across its face. But there
was something else. White
dots. Hundreds of them. In rows. Like a giant game of checkers.
“What are those?” I
asked.
“Graves. French. The Viets kicked the living crap out of the French up here
in the ‘50s, First Indochina War.
French buried their KIAs right over there, upright and facing west.”
“Damn French, always dramatic,” Sugden
said, huddled into himself.
I fought off a shiver
and hugged my rifle more tightly.
Then we were rolling
downhill, past dust-caked carcasses of burned out vehicles – trucks, jeeps, a
tank. Metal skeletons scattered
across barren cliffs, full of holes.
The land was desolate, pocked and cratered. Shadows settled into the hollows.
It was like driving
through a nightmare.
“Man, they don’t mess
around up here,” Jessen said, then fell silent like the rest of us.
Thank you, Captain,
for weapons.
We heard something from
behind...