"Whoever controls Highway 19 controls the Highlands,
        and whoever controls the Highlands controls Vietnam."

The French learned this lesson when Groupement Mobile 100, a brigade-sized mobile security column was slaughtered by the Viet Minh in an epic fight (pdf) on this road in 1954. Thirteen years later, with the Americans deploying deeper and deeper into the Central Highlands to flush out the NVA from their remote upland base camps, the 100 miles of road between the coastal port of Qui Nhon and the US cantonments near Pleiku became "Ambush Alley", until the Guntruck was devised to counter the ambush parties head-on. (more inside)
posted by Heywood Mogroot on May 14, 2005 - 22 comments