The DMZ

This past weekend I visited the De-Militarized Zone, more commonly called the DMZ. The DMZ was the border between the Communist North and the anti-Communist South for over twenty years. During the Second Indochina War (what you folks back home call the Vietnam War), the area was anything but demilitarized. The US and its allies had observation posts and artillery scattered throughout the area. The North had dug some 114 tunnels throughout their strip of territory. Bombs fell like rain, mines were everywhere, and the area was ten kilometers of general destruction.

I was perhaps expecting to see some of this destruction. To this day, anti-mining efforts are active, and unexploded bombs are still found from time to time in farmers' fields. Despite all of these remnants of war, I would not have known that I was in the DMZ if I hadn't had a guide with me. Most of the area has apparently been cleared and developed. Indeed, the DMZ is quite lovely. Unlike much of Vietnam, which has its buildings and development packed tightly together, the DMZ has lots of room for farmland and forests. Much of the area destroyed by napalm is now used for farming rubber, and neat lines of rubber trees run throughout the territory. Most of the former US presence is gone. One of the bases was turned into a village, although I didn't have the opportunity to see this. The largest base was bulldozed to make room for a highway. Only a burned out M41 tank stands as a reminder to America's presence forty years ago.

We visited an American observation "tower", which really looked like a bunker. This area is now populated by cows and rubber trees instead of American GIs. Our guide pointed to the remains of what looked like burlap sacks, explaining that they were old sandbags. Maybe, mabye not; I wasn't quite convinced either way. After all, there is a lot of litter in Vietnam, even in faraway areas.

One vestige of the war that still remains are the tunnels. Much of the Northern population went underground once hostilities started. Most of these tunnels are gone now, but one remains. The tunnel opens up to the sea, where supplies from the USSR and China were shipped in by fishing boats. The whole area was covered by a bamboo forest, and would have probably been quite lovely during the war were it not for the constant artillery and aerial barrage from the South. The people of Northern DMZ did as well as they could underground, digging relatively tall tunnels (I could stand up at some points), complete with bedrooms, ammunition storage, maternity wing, and movie theater. Not quite what our boys had back in Saigon, but the Northerners were certainly adept at making the best with what they had.

One other reminder of the war are the bomb craters. Scatterecd throughout the region, some of these holes are massive. One held a cow, who was grazing quite comfortably with room to spare in the crater. Otherwise, the Vietnamese have removed most reminders of the conflict. Life has moved on in the DMZ, and people prefer looking forward rather than back. This sense of forward progresion and avoidance of the painful past seems so common in Vietnam. The DMZ, once the symbol of the nation's division, now seems to be a symbol of Vietnam's hopes for future development amidst the scars of the past.