Customer Reviews

Road of 10,000 Pains: The Destruction of the 2nd NVA Division by the U.S. Marines, 1967

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"Being shot at for the first time is an unforgettable experience. Having holes shot into a helicopterin which one is riding ... really concentrates the mind. There is nowhere to hide, and suddenly one is faced with the prospect of death by gunshot, falling, crashing, or any combination of the above. Adrenaline runs hard and fast, heart rate soars, and one suddenly gets a mouth so dry that spit is almost impossible and no amount of water will ever be enough." Through passages like this, Otto Lehrack captures the raw emotion of the First Marine Division's combat experience in the Que Son valley in 1967.

The Que Son valley was a very strategic corridor for the North Vietnamese Army. The valley provided an corridor from the mountains in the west, to the South China sea on the east. It was populous and fertile, capable of providing both recruits and food for the NVA. In 1967, the Marines made a fateful decision to sweep the valley of the NVA.

The book covers the time period of April through November 1967. Lehrack covers three named operations: Union I & II, and Swift. In each of these operations, US Marines engaged numerically superior NVA and Viet Cong forces. At the end of the year, the second NVA Division was beaten so badly, it could not participate in the Tet offensive of 1968.

In the style of Stephen Ambrose, Lehrack masterfully combines a discussion of the battles with the words and photographs of the men who fought. "Road of 10,000 Pains" is an intense combat narrative that puts the reader in the thick of the fighting. Lehrack wrote that being shot at for the first time is an unforgettable experience -- this book is unforgettable. After reading this, I have a new found respect for the Marines who fought in Vietnam.

In addition to the battle narrative, Lehrack provides the reader with the citations that accompanied the Medals of Honor earned by the Marines and Sailors during these operations. As he writes in the appendix, there are always more heroes than medals. Somehow a few pieces of shiny metal and colorful fabric don't seem to be enough to honor these men.

I highly recommend this book for readers interested in the Vietnam War, and the United States Marine Corps.

ROAD OF 10,000 PAINS: THE DESTRUCTION OF THE 2nd NVA DIVISION BY THE U.S. MARINES, 1967
LT. COLONEL OTTO J. LEHRACK
ZENITH PRESS, 2010
HARDCOVER, $30.00, PHOTOGRAPHS, MAPS, 304 PAGES, GLOSSARY, NOTES, APPENDIX, INDEX


During the DMZ border battles, the 1st Marine Division was heavily engaged in the rice plains and coastal sands of the lower three provinces of I Corps Tactical Zone. The Viet Cong stronghold in that area was between Chu Lai and Da Nang in the densely populated, fertile Phuoc Ha Valley, Nui Loc Son Basin, or Que Son Valley, which by 1967 was an old U.S. Marine battlefield. Isolated South Vietnamese forces had been consistently cut up trying to outpost the area. The U.S. Marines lacked the assets to control the valley and placed a reinforced company (Company F of the 1st Marines) on a critical hill mass overlooking it. On April 21, 1967, this company was moving along a ridgeline when it was hit by concentrated volleys of automatic weapons and grenade fire from the 3rd North Vietnamese Army Regiment outside Binh Son. The division responded by air-assaulting two battalions from Da Nang into action the next morning. One of them was airmobiled into a hornet's nest of North Vietnamese infantry and was forced to fight a major action getting beyond its landing zone. The reinforcements reached Binh Son, but combat was so intense all along the front that another battalion was helicoptered in from Chu Lai that evening. Operation UNION, under direction of the 5th Marines, had commenced. Fighting was heavy through April 25, 1967, and then the North Vietnamese began exfiltrating the battlefield. The U.S. Marines pursued, but contacts were infrequent. Then, on May 8, the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines ran into steadily increasing resistance on the northern side of the valley. Hill 110 was taken on May 10, but NVA troops entrenched in nearby caves and sugar-cane fields chewed up several other U.S. Marine companies coming to assist. In a fierce daylong battle, marred by accidental aerial rocketing of U.S. Marine positions, the battalion pushed the North Vietnamese out of their defensive positions. Three days later, the 5th Marines entered a running battle with NVA companies and platoons in the valley basin. On April 15, 1967, the 3rd Battalion encountered another fortified bunker area. U.S. Marine air strikes and artillery pummeled the complex while the Marine riflemen pushed into assault positions. The fight continued through the evening and then gradually subsided as the U.S. Marines overran the main entrenchments around midnight. Two days later, Operation UNION was terminated. Operation UNION II was designed to trap the 21st North Vietnamese Army Regiment in the same general area, and was initiated with a main heliborne assault on May 26, 1967. Driving south from their landing zone, the U.S. Marines ran into the main trenchworks of the North Vietnamese regiment the first day, located on the hillsides north of Thien Phuoc. The 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines charged up the fire-swept slopes to overrun the North Vietnamese lines at bayonet point. Another large battle developed on June 2, 1967 in the rice fields and hedgerows outside Vinh Huy, and a day after Major General Donn J. Robertson took command of the 1st Marine Division, he was forced to commit an emergency composite battalion into the action. This extra reinforcement tipped the ground firepower scales, and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) broke contact. It was the last engagement of the UNION operations. The U.S. Marines continued the campaign against the 2nd NVA Division through airmobile assaults closely coordinated with amphibious landings conducted by the U.S. Navy's Seventh Fleet's Special Landing Force (SLF). However, at this stage, strong U.S. Army forces were also taking on this same North Vietnamese division in the Chu Lai area, as Task Force OREGON tackled the rugged inland jungle and numerous fortified villages hugging the coast. ROAD OF 10,000 PAINS, which takes its title from a translation of the Iliad, is a detailed and dramatic account of the battles fought within four miles of Route 534 in South Vietnam over seven months in 1967. This book draws extensively on the memories of U.S. Marines who fought in these battles. Students of military history, especially of the Vietnam War, will read this story of brave men persevering against terrible odds. It's an important account, told with compassion and intelligence.


Lt. Colonel Robert A. Lynn, Florida Guard
Orlando, Florida

Road of 10,000 Pains, Otto Lehrack's latest tome, masterfully recounts the seldom heralded successes of the Marines in the strategically significant Que Son Valley in 1967. A retired Lieutenant Colonel (USMC) as well as a Vietnam combat veteran, Lehrack is eminently qualified to chronicle the gripping, months long battlefield theater in the valley and he does so with verve and panache, seamlessly wedding a Stephen Ambrose-like flair for thrusting the reader alongside the "grunts" at the tactical level with an insightful appreciation of what all the bloodshed, heroism, and sacrifice wrought at the strategic level.

Unlike most contemporary contributions to the expansive (and ever expanding) literature on the Vietnam War, Road of 10,000 Pains breaks new ground and adds a long overdue chapter to the War's burgeoning historiography--all in wildly entertaining, page-turning fashion.

A well done book about some true American heros fighting in a little known part of the Viet Nam war. I know its true, I was there.

Have you wondered what it would be like to be a member of the United States Marine Corps (USMC) during the Vietnam War? Have you thought what it would like to get shot at, see the person blown away right next to you, and experience the fear and adrenaline rush of combat? Retired United States Marine Otto J. Lehrack paints a spellbinding, insightful and sobering picture that answers these questions in this spectacular, must read oral history of the bloodiest campaign in Vietnam.

The story involves the actions of the USMC in the Que Son Valley of Vietnam. The action and I do mean action, takes place between April and November of 1967. You experience the frustration of the new M-16 jamming. You are left wondering how many Marines and soldiers died from the jamming and poor performance of that rifle. You marvel at the heroic leadership from the battalion commander all the way down to the FNG who knew enough to get the forward air controller to take out the 82 mm mortar location he identified and sacrifices given by these heroes. Six Medals of Honor were awarded to participants in the campaign. All but one of the citations had as its last sentence "He gallantly gave his life for his country."

This is a significant oral history of Vietnam's bloodiest campaign. Over a period of seven months you will travel along Route 534 for a series of battles against the 2nd North Vietnamese Army Division. The author's storytelling is so riveting you feel like you are there. This book is must reading for any academy cadet or persons in any pre-commissioning program. I strongly recommend ever junior officer and noncommissioned officer read this book. It shows how the NCOs assumed leadership as junior officers and senior NCOs became causalities.

The book is an excellent read and would be a valuable addition to any community library. It gives a realistic insight into combat and the USMC. You will be left spell bound by the descriptions of combat and with deep gratitude and admiration for the USMC.

Read and reviewed by Jimmie A. Kepler April 2010.

Vietnam is routinely considered to have been a guerrilla war. It was that, and far more, in I Corps. Almost from the outset the Marines and the Army units in I Corps slugged it out with regular army units of the People's Army Viet Nam, (PAVN). In this book the author describes the incredible intensity of the fighting in the Que Son Valley southwest of Danang. As one of the North Vietnamese commanders later told the author, North Vietnam killed more Americans in the Que Son Valley than they did anywhere else in South Vietnam. A superb telling of an important story.

Once again the author provides us with a brilliantly written tactical history of the USMC in Vietnam in 1967. Like Keith Nolan, Mr. Lehrack provides detailed and moving accounts of the fighting in Vietnam that would otherwise be lost to history.The clarity of writing gives the reader a sense of "you are there" and almost makes you duck as the bullets fly over head.If you want to know what it was like to be a Marine "in country " in 1967-1968 this is the book.
This book will provide quite an education for those "historians" who feel that combat in the Vietnam war lacked the intensity of World War II.
Five stars for "Road of 10,000 Pains" and hopefully we will see more like this from the author very soon.

I thought the book was excellent. I have read a number of books on Viet Nam since I was a participant in the Fall of 67 and 68. The author did an excellent job of rcounting the various events of early 67. My old outfit was brought in to help out at the near end of the trouble. Good job. This was a great tribute to the Marines who lost their lives in Viet Nam.

In my opinion, more in-depth research should have been included in regard to the 1st Bn/3rd Marines involvement with the 5th Marines in Operation Union I and Operation Beaver Cage.

Overall, I commend the author for a job "well done" and Semper Fidelis to all those great Marines in ROAD OF 10,000 PAINS.

Winfield A. Spear
Capt., USMC (Ret.)

As an Infantry Platoon Commander in First Battalion, First Marines in 1967 I was a direct participant in most of what this book discusses. I found the the book to be a very effective accounting of what life was like for we Marines when the smelly stuff hit the rotating disk. It also put into context for me all the various operations and units involved in this effort to rout out the 2nd NVA Division. Although I was on both Operations Union I and Union II I really had no grasp of the big picture.

My thanks to the author for bringing together a story that needed to be told and doing it so well.