A Shau ValleyA Shau Valley ( Then ) No battle ground in Vietnam defined "war of attrition" better than A Shau Valley in the the northwestern-most part of former South Vietnam. The 35 km long valley running north - south along the Laotian border was a conduit for the Ho Chi Minh Trail as it bypassed the Demilitarized Zone ( the DMZ ).
Containing an estimated 20,000 North Vietnamese Army troops by 1967 and a massive store of war supplies, A Shau valley was a paintful thorn in the side of South Vietnam. The NVA used the steep mountainous terrain surrounding the valley to launch battles against every major American and South Vietnamese Army position in the south during Tet Offensive in 1968.
In march 1966 the NVA had seiged the A Shau valley and overrun the isolated A Shau Special Forces Camp there. The sparsely populated valley, bisected lengthwise by Route 548, had been fortified by the NVA with underground bunkers and tunnels and defended by heavy anti-aicraft guns and even tanks.
A Shau valley today
After Tet Offensive 1968, The U.S forces returned to the valley, and the mission was given the the Army 101st Airborne Divsion, which established a series of firebases along Route 547, then launched Search And Destroy operations in the valley. One of them was Operation Apeche Snow which resulted in the battle for Hamburger Hill in May 1969.
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