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We ventured into Hue where we saw beautiful temples and a bustling city—it would later be reduced to rubble near the end of the War in one of the bloodiest battles of the War. We conducted mostly battalion sized sweeps at this time since the intelligence reports indicated regimental sized enemy units infiltrating across the DMZ. On one such patrol we came upon an old French Fort where we stopped for the night to rest and regroup. The fort was smaller than I would have anticipated—made entirely of concrete it resembled a bunker inside—with shooting slots in the sides of the walls. Sure enough, it was in the middle of a valley surrounded on all sides by hilly terrain . This was one of the strategic ‘failings’ of the French that we had learned in Basic School—they suffered defeat after defeat at their forts due to the fact they were all built in valleys, surrounded by mountainous or hilly terrain where the Viet Minh and the PAVN would simply rain artillery and mortars down on them —like the battle at Dien Binh Phu. @ 58 Moving as a Battalion we experienced very few contacts with the enemy—they liked to attack platoon size or smaller targets and always when they had superior numbers—in a surprise—heavily fortified location with exit routes pre planned. Everywhere we went we saw the evidence of the French-Indo China War fought a decade earlier. As we moved among the villages we could see the French influence in the people who had a mixture of French-Vietnamese in their heritage —Many were beautiful/handsome , taller than the average Vietnamese with softer facial features and lighter colored hair. As usual we were often met with a variety of attitudes—some friendly—some openly hostile—some suspicious. It
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