Plei Me Special Forces Camp--photos + map scan | place with historical importance, interesting place

Vietnam / Thai Nguyen / Play Cu /
 place with historical importance, interesting place
Marking the site of Plei Me Special Forces camp, A-255, now overgrown and abandoned, a constellation of trails converges in the center of this box.

Mlle. Nguyen Le Hoang Anh (shown with driver), my splendid guide from Gia Lai Tourist, Pleiku, accompanied me to the camp (elevation 376 meters, 1234 feet) on 25 September 2007.

In the panoramic photo, Chu Co rises 751 meters, 2463 feet, in the east.

In the far right photo, Chu Prong rises 732 meters, 2401 feet, in the west.

www.bietdongquan.com/article1/rgr82.htm
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Plei_Me
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   13°36'53"N   107°55'9"E

Comments

  • It would be interesting to do an archealogical dig at that place!
  • It's a beautiful area--I never realized that. Sad that it was once an area of violence and death. Thank you for putting out the effort to show this map and photos.
  • Sunset on Ia-Drang Valley | Part 1 by Ha Ky Lam Author's note: This story is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons is entirely by coincidence. WEST OF THE Special Forces camp Plei Me lay flat jungle stretching for tens of kilometers westward to the Vietnam-Cambodia border; in other directions the terrain was hilly. That sea of green leaves seemed to end at the foggy horizon where silhouetted against the skyline were a couple of bluish and far away mountain peaks that a viewer could hardly tell from illusion. At noon, when big curtains of cloud moved over the area, blocking the sun high above and casting moving shades over the far-reaching jungle surface, one tended to think of "spreading sunset" as described in a certain song. That was Ia-Drang valley, located in the westernmost part of Pleiku and drawn on a military map as a zone of light green color with far apart contour lines. The valley reminded many American servicemen of the battle between elements of the First Air Cavalry Division and those of the North Vietnamese Army following their seven-day unsuccessful attack on Plei Me. And it was a valley of death, probably to both sides, although The First Cav. claimed a victory. The unique characteristic of that valley was its strange beauty at sunsets. When at about a hand from the horizon, when that round and crimson sun was casting its golden rays on the immense green foliage beneath, one had the impression that the valley was immersed in a rain of pink dust. Then the glittering color turned gradually into dark brown as the green valley transformed itself to gray, then brown and wound up as a black sea stretching as far as the horizon now lit by a faint light. Thus, there came night, legendary and mysterious night at Plei Me! And I had never seen so dark nights anywhere else. Plei Me soil is of maroon color, and its vegetation is dark, a whole environment that does not reflect any starlight. And because of this, fast-vanishing instants of sunset here become more precious and more cherished as night approaches. Of the four hundred men at that forward operating base the only person to share sunsets on Plei Me with me was my American counterpart, captain Timothy Scott. Just a few days after my arrival, sunsets on the valley west of the camp had already caught my attention, and I would watch them by myself. One day, both of us were standing by the fighting trench to exchange some topics. By some coincidence, we all paused and watched the red horizon with multicolored cloud; then, at a closer range, we looked at Ia-Drang valley under the last sunlight. "Beautiful beyond words," Scott said. I said something in agreement with his remark but didn't think he really enjoyed nature's beauty, that professional soldier who had fought in the Korean War. I needed another incident, not a long time later, to admit that Scott and I did have something in common. I stepped in his team house on another occasion. A young sergeant was looking out of a window and said slowly, "Sunset on Ia-Drang valley" to the amusement of everybody. As I didn't understand why they laughed, sergeant Powers, Scott's team sergeant, explained that captain Scott uttered those words every time he watched sunset on the valley and they had become an anecdote of this A-241 detachment. Upon hearing that, I thought he did like the sunsets on this place. From that moment on I was more friendly with him and was glad to find that he had the response I expected. He talked about the landscapes of the places he had been to, about his wife half the world away, about the things they had in common. He showed me some of her letters, the letters that expressed her romantic tendency. There was a paragraph in which she described a bridge at sunset. "It's odd that sunlight at the end of a day can turn an ugly waterfront into a place of quiet beauty. That's why I like sunsets so well; I can find a special kind of contentment and inner peace which seem to hide from the brightness of day." And the relationship between the two Special Forces A team commanders -- a Vietnamese and an American -- remained at that level of friendship until I was reassigned to another unit. End of Part 1
  • Sunset on Ia-Drang Valley | Part 2a Jennifer brought a family photo album and turned right to the page that had the picture she wanted to show me. "For you to see again a landscape in Vietnam," she said. I looked at a fine color photograph of sunset -- or of sunrise, who could tell? But the picture gave me a sinking feeling. Then I recognized the familiar shape of mount Chu Prong in the distant and foggy background. I uttered subconsciously, "Sunset on Ia- Drang valley." Jennifer leaned forward at an unusual speed and asked, "But how?" Instead of a reply, I asked, "Was it Tim?" Jennifer nodded. I started talking about my time at Plei Me with captain Timothy Scott, whom I used to call Tim. Although the woman listened attentively, her eyes revealed some coldness. Such is life, I thought to myself. As her husband arrived by her side, Jennifer turned to put her arm around his waist and said, "I'm sorry, honey, but it turned out that the picture had something to do with this man. He once lived in this region with Tim." He smiled indulgently and said, "Really? But things like that can happen. Coincidence is part of life." "This is," Jennifer said, "the last picture Tim took in his life. Among his personal belongings handed to me by an officer from his headquarters, I found a camera in which the roll of film had just advanced to the second exposure. I didn't continue using the film and had it processed. The only picture that came out was this. According to a report from his unit, Tim was shot by a sniper while taking pictures." I told Jennifer I also heard about that, because I had been transferred to a unit near Saigon some time before that incident took place. That was all people learned about Tim's death, but I even knew more about this "scenario" than his superiors did. Camp Plei Me's perimeter was triangular. In addition to bunkers along the defense earthen wall, at each of the three corners of the camp there was a main bunker from which firepower could cover a field in front as well as the fields along either side of the camp. The bunkers were numbered. Tim Scott died on the flat roof of that main bunker at the West corner, bunker number six. That spot was the most vulnerable place in the whole camp, being the best target for enemy snipers. Unfortunately, it was the perfect place to watch sunsets over Ia-Drang valley. Tim and I sometimes took risks by climbing to that roof to watch sunsets for a few seconds and to dash back down as fast as we could. Perhaps Tim mentioned sunsets in that region to his wife in his letters from Plei Me. Perhaps he wanted to take some pictures of Ia-Drang sunsets for her because Jennifer had expressed a desire to see them. Now that those things belong to the past -- a past of which one part has gone with the dead, and the one part that remains with me doesn't give me any enthusiasm to recount it to the woman who once was involved in it -- what's the use in digging into those days? I didn't say anything else about the time I spent with Tim Scott, and this couple appeared to be in favor of "letting bygones be bygones." I found myself absorbed in irrelevant thoughts. I wondered if Jennifer still retained her romantic trait, the one that I had a chance to know thanks to portions of her letters that Tim allowed me to read. I wondered what she thought about war, about her first husband's death. I thought of the ghost army in that twilight zone those days. Then I thought of that guerilla man who pointed his rifle at Tim and pulled the trigger to put an end to his life. I wondered if they ever watched sunsets on their valley. End of Part 2a
  • Sunset on Ia-Drang Valley | Part 2b I didn't blame anybody on either side of the conflict for what they were doing. In war, people would kill each other amidst the beauty of sunsets or dawns. It was just that I remembered dreaming at Plei Me that I could come back some day after the war to be able to watch sunsets without fear of death. And how about now? The war was over long ago, although it didn't end in the way I had anticipated. I thought, Nature is always the same, provided man doesn't seek to change her, and provided man has an inner peace when contemplating her. I thanked the American couple for the dinner On my way home I was still preoccupied by Tim's picture. Suddenly it dawned on me the idea of making its copy. But what for? To see again a scenery I liked so well, to revive a long forgotten obsession, or merely to reminisce about my youthful days? It could be all that, but I was certain of one thing: Tim's sunset picture meant so much to me. I didn't know his camera's aperture, nor the speed of the film he was using, but then who needed those things? I recalled the story a private told me some time after Tim's death. "No sooner had the American captain," he said, "pointed his camera to the valley than he was brought down." And now I was shown the unique photograph coming out of that tragic incident. Piecing together the two aspects of the story, I found a sad answer. I didn't believe Tim had taken the picture some time before his mishap, because he wouldn't have taken risks to climb back to that death spot if he had succeeded in taking one. And I didn't believe he had been lingering on to take a second snapshot when he was shot at. I visualized a man looking at a sunset scenery through a rectangular frame on his camera, a landscape in which a sniper was pointing a gun at him, and the gunner was aiming at a figure at the other end of an imaginary line running through the center of his weapons' eyesight to the aiming point on the muzzle, a figure clearly visible from the West in the sun rays! Tim could have depressed on his camera first. But it was equally probable that the guerrilla man had pulled the trigger some fraction of a second prior to Tim's action, an interval too short to offset the bullet/light speed inequality. By some unaccountable reason, I would rather think both actions took place at exactly the same instant. End of Part 2b This short story can be found at: http://www.vietquoc.com/
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