Wednesday, May 3, 1972
350,000 Refugees On Move
SAIGON (AP) --More than 350,000 refugees are on the roads of South Vietnam, seeking escape from the thunderous fighting over the weekend in the northern provinces and central highlands.American refugee workers in Saigon reported nearly a quarter of a million refugees are now on the move, trying to get to Hue and then on to Da Nang from Quang Tri, the fallen northernmost province capital.Some 5,000 have boarded boats at Tam My, near Hue, to get to Da Nang by sea. The stream of refugees from Hue to Da Nang was halted for a time Monday when the road was cut by the Communists.In coastal Binh Dinh, the nation's most populous province, welfare officials said there "has been so much fighting the people don't know which way to run." They estimated the flow of refugees on foot, by truck, or rickety province buses and motor bikes at 35,000, mostly from An Nhon and Binh Khe. Perhaps another 37,000 from Hoai An, now in enemy hands, had not made it so far to Qui Nhon City.For the first time in more than two weeks, a rice air drop was made on An Loc, the embattled provincial capital in the rubber plantation country 70miles north of Saigon.War victims trying to flee the Communist columns moving on the highlands capital of Kontum from three directions were bottled up along Highway 14 by sporadic action in the Pleiku Pass, leading to Pleiku City.A welfare worker just back from Kontum reported a trickle of families, carrying everything they had on their backs, were braving the pass and the sniper fire and whoosh of mortar rounds on the road.With all of northern Binh Dinh Province and its recently-harvested rice crop in Communist hands, welfare workers were beginning to worry about the availability of food supplies in the coastal areas to the south. The roads were still open in government-held areas for trucking in food and the Vietnamese Air Force has delivered some rice by helicopter to temporary refugee settlements and stopoff points along the route to Qui Nhon. Not enough families had reached Qui Nhon to create a supply and housing problem so far, but if more refugees from towns falling in the highlands joined the evacuees from the coastal towns, the situation could become as desperate as in Tet, 1968.Tents, cots and blankets were being trucked and flown to the refugee centers from Saigon."In Da Nang," said a welfare adviser, "we don't have that problem. After last October's typhoon, the city overstocked on rice and emergency food supplies. And thanks to the big withdrawal of American troops from Military Region 1, there are plenty of empty military camps to receive them. This means barracks, kitchens, sanitary facilities -even in many places large stocks of food and blankets."The renewed fighting in the Mekong Delta in Chuong Thien Province brought the first big wave of refugees to the Saigon area. Some 5,000 were housed in an ARVN base at Phu Cuong, 15 miles north of the city.The Montagnard Bru tribe, relocated from the Demilitarized Zone where the invasion began on March 30, were being permanently resettled at Buon Jat, near Ban Me Thuot, in the central highlands. For the 2,300 tribesmen, it was their fourth wartime dislocation. They had been moved from Huong Ha, their ancestral lands near the border of North Vietnam."350,000 Refugees On Move", by (AP), published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes on Wednesday, May 3, 1972 and reprinted from European and Pacific Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense publication copyright, 2002 European and Pacific Stars and Stripes.