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As I stand on the dike, I look in all directions. I see no visible military targets, no industry, no communication lines--just rice fields. Then I suddenly see the bomb craters on both sides of the dike--gaping holes, some 10 meters across and eight meters deep. The crater bottoms, I am told, are two meters below sea level. The crater that had severed the dike is almost filled in again, but the main worry is the bombs that have fallen on the sides of the dike. They cause earthquakes that shatter the dike's foundation and make deep cracks that zigzag up the sides. Antipersonnel bombs have also been used; they enter the dike on an angle, lodging underneath and exploding later. This damage does not show up on aerial reconnaissance photographs. I am told that if these cracks aren't repaired in time, the pressure from the water--which will soon reach six or seven meters above the level of the fields--will cause the weakened dikes to give way and endanger the entire eastern region of the Red River Delta.
I am taken to another major dike in Nam Sach on the Kinh Thay River that was completely severed a few days before. Repair work is dangerous because of unexploded bombs. People in the province are preparing for the worst. I'm told everyone has a boat, that the top floors and roofs of homes have been reinforced and that research is being done on crops that grow underwater.A sulfur butterfly is resting on the lip of a bomb crater. Little things.
When I get back to Hanoi I make a radio broadcast about what I saw ...
I am driven south to the village of Nam Dinh, which had 50 bombs dropped on it on June 18, a raid that destroyed about 60% of the hamlet. People are hard at work rebuilding their homes, but [her guide and interpreter] Quoc says that the area is bombed almost daily. The Cuban ambassador in Hanoi told me the other day that a dozen or more Cubans, accustomed to working in the fields with the Vietnamese, collapsed after three hours of packing the earth into a dike. Maybe they should have drunk some chrysanthemum-root tea ...
It is my last full day in North Vietnam. In spite of having made it clear to my hosts that I was not interested in visiting a military installation, I am going--and today is the day.
It is not unusual for Americans who visit North Vietnam to be taken to see Vietnamese military installations, and when they do they are always required to wear a helmet like the kind I have been given to wear during the air raids. I am driven to the site of the antiaircraft installation, somewhere on the outskirts of the city. There is a group of about a dozen young Vietnamese soldiers in uniform who greet me. There is also a horde of photographers and journalists--many more than I have seen all in one place in Hanoi. (I later learn some of them were Japanese.)
This should have been a red flag.