Southern Cross information
for 196 BDE 23 INF

For date 700703


196 BDE 23 INF was a US Army unit
Primary service involved, US Army
Quang Tin Province, I Corps, South Vietnam
Location, Tam Ky
Description: The following is an edited version of an article titled "Blueprint for development" by SGT Bob Nordyke 196th INF BDE IO. LZ HAWK HILL - Transportation has been known historically as a unifying influence for a nation. Recognizing this, the 196th Infantry Brigade's pacification program includes a blueprint for the development of highways in Vietnam. One of the most recent road building projects in Vietnam has been undertaken by combat engineers attached to the brigade. The project is a dry weather, coastal road from Tam Ky north to Thang Binh with three access roads to Highway 1, South Vietnam's busiest road. The new road will help bring some of the remote, outlying areas under the wing of the Government of Vietnam. "The new road will help realize three facets of the Vietnamese pacification program," said CPT James Adams, Pittsburgh, assistant intelligence officer. "These are security, economic, and political goals." The road, CPT Adams explained will increase the security of the area, allowing easier troop movement should rapid mobilization be necessary. It will also be an economic boost to the country, providing access to markets for the scattered, rural villages along the coast. Work on the new road began the first of June with Company A, 26th Engineer Battalion rafting heavy equipment across the Tam Ky River and improving an existing road from Tam Ky to the coast four miles away. "The road from Tam Ky to the beach doesn't present too much of a problem," said 1LT Ron Grantham, San Francisco, "about all we have to do is fill some holes and grade it." The real work comes when the engineers turn north towards Thang Binh, laying the 20 foot wide avenue that will allow passage of any military vehicle the allies have in Vietnam. The heavy work, done mainly with bulldozers and five ton trucks, covers the flat, coastal area, checkered with soggy, terraced rice paddies, occasionally broken with tree lines, that lie adjacent to Barrier Island and parallel to Highway 1. "Now the transportation routes are no more than 'Honda' trails when they are that much," continued LT Grantham. The road-building in this terrain involves building up these paths on the high ridge of the land, up grading them, widening them, and leveling them. "The surface will be of laterite, like the roads on Hawk Hill. It's a residual soil of decayed rock that gets extremely hard in dry weather and makes a good solid surface," explained LT Grantham. The finished road will complete another phase of pacification, knitting some of the northern provinces of Vietnam closer together with over 36 miles of new highway.

The source for this information was 7007_324_scr supplied by Les Hines 12/23/2000


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Last updated 12/23/2000

Date posted on this site: 05/13/2023