A Shau: Crucible of the Vietnam War

The Battle for Hue City in February 1968 and the bloody combat at Hamburger Hill in May 1969 are regarded as two of the turning points in the Vietnam War.  The former because it brought home to the American public the understanding that we were not, in fact, winning the war and pulled the plug on the “light at the end of the tunnel” illusion.  The latter, as it led directly to LBJ’s order to avoid heavy combat with the North Vietnamese Army, changing the nature of U.S. military operations as the draw-down of American forces got under way.  The NVA in Hue was infiltrated and supplied through the A Shau Valley; Hamburger Hill took place there.  Yet little has been written about the course of the war in that valley from its establishment as the first terminus of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in South Vietnam to its position as a huge enemy supply complex and transshipment center for the entire northern half of the country during the final battles in 1972-1975, following the withdrawal of the Americans from Vietnam.  That evolution was not linear.  Only during the major allied operations from April 1968 through September 1969 did they seriously contest the possession of the A Shau, but elite small ground units and air power were employed continuously, in a never-ending life and death struggle to interdict enemy movement and construction, and to raise the cost of the enemy presence.  In the end, it was a cost the Vietnamese Communists were willing to pay.  It was Vietnam’s Most Valuable Valley.