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Chapter 29
‘Street Without Joy’
1/4 received orders to replace 2/4 in their TAOR—which moved us into the Phu Bai— Hue region of Thua Tien Province. The next Province North of us was the Quang Tri Province —it was the Northern most Province in South Viet Nam—it’s Northern Border was the DMZ. This region had always been a ‘hotbed’ of enemy activity by the ‘People’s Army of Viet Nam ‘ ( PAVN ). The A Shau valley would later become the scene of some terrible losses by the U.S Army and the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam ( ARVN ). ‘ A’ Company began running the same operations, sweeps and patrols as before. This was in a region made famous in the book “Street Without Joy “ written by Bernard Fall in 1961 and had been required reading while I attended TBS at Quantico in 1964. @ 33This was not a friendly area. The Vietnamese people there had been thru the French Indochina War and were tired of ‘outsiders’ —be they French or American —stomping thru their rice paddies, bombing their villages and killing their people. Almost every patrol we ran produced some form of enemy contact—we discovered more caves and hidden trails through the mountains—all of which had been constructed and used over decades. Operation Harvest Moon had been fought in this same region—there was no reason to believe the communist forces were willing to exit
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