This page provides a bird's-eye view of the high plateau. The Thuong Duc A-109 Special Forces camp is to the right of the picture -- just out of the camera's view. Note: Until I was preparing this slide for the web site, I never noticed the bird (?) in the picture.
| Points of interest | ||
| The church | The white church, near the bottom-right corner of the photo, was approximately two kilometers from the camp. Since this distance was just about the same as the maximum effective range of our fifty caliber machine gun, the church was often used as the target for our fifty caliber gun tests. | |
| The bare hillside | If you look closely, you will notice that the hillside (center, right-hand edge of picture) is brown when the remainder of the terrain is green. This is because the Vietnamese would intentionally set the foliage on fire... in a sense, start a 'forest fire'. Because it was so wet in Viet Nam, there was little fear that the fire would burn wildly out of control. Eventually, this fire would die out. The Vietnamese would then cross the river and collect the charred wood. They set the fire to produce charcoal for their homes! | |
| Steep terrain | I have pointed out the ruggedness of the terrain several times throughout this web site. This picture, perhaps better than any other, illustrates the severity of the elevation changes. When you couple the rapid changes in height with the dense vegetation and constantly wet conditions, you end up with terrain that is extremely difficult to traverse. | |
| The church | ||
| Steep terrain | ||