Vietnam War Pacific Stars and Stripes

Pacific Stars and Stripes information

For date 700502

Primary service involved, US Army
South Vietnam
Location, Chiphu
Description: The following is an edited version of an article titled "New War-It Looks Like the Old One" by SGT PHIL MCCOMBS and SP4 JACK FULLER S&S Staff Correspondents. WITH VIETNAMESE FORCES IN CHIPHU, Cambodia - The young man dressed in faded. Neatly-tailored camouflage fatigues bent over his plastic map and clutched two field telephones, one to each ear. He smiled. The young man was an American Special Forces soldier, and he was working on his map at a dusty intersection in this deserted little town 12 miles inside Cambodia on Highway 1, about 55 miles northwest of Saigon in the so-called "parrot's beak." The town is deserted because there is a big battle raging in this area - somewhere west, north and south of here - and the Cambodians who live here thought It best to get out of town for a while. The little ribbon of highway stretching to the South Vietnamese border to the east is the only way in - or out. As you drive along that little ribbon of highway you can see the battle on both sides - columns of smoke rising from treelines across the flat rice plains and walls of dust sweeping along at great speeds. If you look closely at the speeding walls of dust you can see that they mark the formations of South Vietnamese armored vehicles dashing across the open spaces in formation. In the dust and the smoke you can see helicopters buzzing around - some flown by Vietnamese and some by Americans. The Cobra gunships are all flown by Americans. There are other American advisers here and there among the Vietnamese troops and some of them don't like to have their pictures taken - like the ones clustered around an odd-looking, unmarked helicopter sitting In a field by the road. They were talking with a group of Orientals, some in civilian clothes, and sent a man with a tommy gun rushing over to insure no photos were taken. We drove along that highway - through the strangely deserted little villages with strange names like Bavet, Kno Koki and Prey Phdau - not knowing If there were any Viet Cong checkpoints ahead. There were several Americans who waved goodby to us as we crossed South Vietnamese border into Cambodia In our station wagon. You can go two miles okay but then it's dangerous." One warned. He was wrong. You could go l4 1/2 miles before it got dangerous. Here in Chipu, the tanks roll into the center of town tearing up the asphalt which is in the blazing sun, and kicking up clouds of dust around that American Special Forces adviser. There are trucks loaded with troops - Vietnamese Special Forces, Rangers and Irregular Strike Forces. The troops think they have arrived at the front, and everyone is giving everyone else funny looks. The "front" is probably where you can't drive any further west into Cambodia without getting killed or captured. But the Special Forces adviser won't talk, won't even give his name, and certainly won't tell where the front is. He answered only one question. "How much further can we drive before someone kills us?" He gazed thoughtfully for a few moments into the middle distance and said softly, "eight klicks." Eight klicks - something like five miles - and you come to a bridge destroyed by the Communists. There are tanks waiting to move west again as soon as it is repaired.

The source for this information was 7005pss.avn supplied by Les Hines 05/07/2000

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Last updated 12/26/2000

Date posted on this site: 05/13/2023