Journey to the Black Virgin Mountain

HO CHI MINH CITY:  Nearly fifty years ago when the US Marines landed on Red Beach in central Viet Nam, Saigon was a small city. Today renamed Ho Chi Minh City, with a population of 8 million, it extends nearly 20 miles to the northwest to the town of Cu Chi.  This town is best known for the tunnel system that extended from the Cambodian border to beneath the Presidential Palace in Saigon during the Viet Nam War.  It was the base camp the US Army’s 25^th Division. Nothing remains today except the tunnels which are a main tourist attraction. 

Traveling along this highway towards Tay Ninh from Cu Chi are army veterans from the Plattsburg, NY area.   Corky Reinhart, Neil Tallon and Pete Conroy guided by Omar Bui a former interpreter for the US forces are driving towards the Black Virgin Mountain in Tay Ninh province.  The stretch of highway passing through the small town of Trang Bang is the site of one of the most iconic photos of the Viet Nam war.  Shot by AP photographer Nick Ut ‘The Girl in the Picture’ Kim Phuc was fleeing from military action when her group of children were mistaken for enemy forces and napalmed by aircraft from the South Vietnamese Air Force.  Her family runs a small coffee shop and roadside memorial in that town.

Corky Reinhart, Omar Bui, Pete Conroy & Neil Tallon on
the highway where Kim Phuc was struck by napalm.

“You wonder sometimes”, said Neil Tallon, two time candidate for US Congress, “how the US could have used such a horrible weapon through-out this country….and why?  And yet today we’re got the drones bombing in Afghanistan”.

Looming over three thousand feet in the distance shortly past Tay Ninh is ‘Nui Ba Den’, The Black Virgin Mountain, an extinct volcano centered on a plain. Pete Conroy, a soldier with the US Army’s 1^st Cavalry Division was involved in operations in this area during the fall of 1968.

“The word was then,” he said, “that we controlled the top of the mountain, but the VC (National Liberation Front Soldiers) always held the bottom and surrounding plain.  We flew on helicopters many times through this vicinity”.

“There is a theme park and a gondola system that takes people to the top these days” said Omar.  “This is the main tourist attraction here besides the Cao Dai temple in Tay Ninh”

Corky Reinhart, Pete Conroy, Omar Bui & Neil Tallon with
the Black Virgin Mountain in the background..

From Tay Ninh the highway winds back easterly towards the 31,000 acre Michelin Rubber Plantation which was the scene of many battles during the Viet Nam War.  The historic record indicates that while this plantation was a staging area for VC and NVA (North Vietnamese Army) operations they were paid off by Michelin so the company could keep the rubber operation running.  The US government paid the Michelin Company for any damages incurred by US military action.

“The orderly plantings of these rubber trees brings to mind the end of the French Colonial Empire”, said retired college professor Corky Reinhart.

“I was a photo interpreter in Saigon during the war” said Neil Tallon, “and many times I’ve viewed this area looking for evidence of VC or NVA activity from the perspective of an aircraft flying at 10,000 feet.  Whole battalions could operate under this canopy with no one being the wiser when viewed from above”.

Pete Conroy and Corky Reinhart in the Michlin Rubber Plantation.

Along the outskirts of Cu Chi is a large military cemetery for the sons and daughters of this community who died during the conflict.  The entrance monument, a large concrete mosaic somewhat resembling Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ shows men, woman and children with guns and hand tools toiling away for their cause.

“This cemetery’s precisely ordered gravestones reminds me of our own Europe and Asia,” said Neil Tallon.   “These people were their heroes who died driving out the foreign invader.  A little like Iraq and Afghanistan; or for that matter the War of 1812 in our area.  It all depends on the perspective.”

“What impressed me, said Pete Conroy, “was the spread in ages on the gravestones.  From young teenagers to the sixties.  Most of our dead were of draftee age, 18 to 22”.

This secondary route back to Ho Chi Minh City eventually opens up on the new skyline of a modern city.  It no way resembles the Saigon of the Sixties where the Caravelle Hotel at ten stories was the tallest structure in town.

*A version of this article appeared in the Press Republican on March 28, 2014.