________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
The thought was, let the 84th Engineer Battalion slide south from Qui Nhon to replace the
577th in Phu Yen; then we would finish up the work I've already described south of Tuy
Hoa. Instead of us moving north to take the road north to Qui Nhon, the 84th would slide
south and take that responsibility.
This would free us, then, to deploy down to the Dalat area, where we would move into that
region, and then we would construct QL21 going south and also 21 Alpha. QL21A was a
short cut-off that allowed you to cut from Duc Trong, where there was an airfield, over to
Don Duong, where there was a reservoir, and avoid going up to Dalat. This was a travel
saving in time and also avoided the grades and switchbacks to get up to the elevation of
Dalat.
So, you could avoid going from Duc Trong to Dalat and then Dalat back to Don Duong. That
was 21 Alpha. It was about 20 kilometers of highway through a river valley and very subject
to flooding. In the rainy season, 21A was a big problem.
The idea was to keep 21A open during the year. Move the 577th there and we would have a
mission to keep 21 Alpha open during the upcoming '69 wet season, and then get postured to
start operations to upgrade the highway, 21 Alpha, and then 21 south from Duc Trong. Then
go back down the highway toward Phan Rang, which was a bunch of switchbacks down the
major mountainside to the coastal plain and to Phan Rang. That road from Don Duong to
Phan Rang had been the responsibility of the 589th Engineer Battalion under the command of
Lieutenant Colonel Al Costanzo, who had his headquarters at Phan Rang.
That was the general concept. So, I got into all of this, and I need to come back to those
operations later. You asked if we had a schedule to get out of Phu Yen Province.
All of this thinking at brigade and in the groups was going on, and it really came to a head
about the time Colonel Bill Barnes took over the 35th Group. He was the one that told me,
"We are going to move the 577th south, and therefore you need to finish all of QL1 and the
Ban Thach bridge as soon as possible, and then begin moving your battalion down to the
Dalat area." He asked me to put together a plan that would indicate when all of that would
happen.
We used the critical path method throughout for all of our projects. We then had to come to
grips with a schedule that was going to be hard and fast when we set it.
Now, I should say about this time we had been progressing pretty well through the cuts down
at Vung Ro Bay. During the rainy season we would have a lot of erosion down hillsides and
washing things out because we couldn't keep it stabilized. Once you broke the foliage when
you cut it back, then you had a real problem. We brought in hydroseeders to try to seed the
area, but it was steep and done with great difficulty.
During the rainy season in the rice paddies, road construction also was very difficult. We
went through one hurricane in which QL1 really looked like just a path through water. The
only thing dry was that road. We really labored through some tough construction conditions.
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