Street Without Joy or ''La Rue Sans Joie'' was the name given by troops of the

French Far East Expeditionary Corps The French Far East Expeditionary Corps (, CEFEO) was a colonial expeditionary force of the French Union Army that was initially formed in French Indochina in 1945 during the Pacific War. The CEFEO later fought and lost in the First Indochina Wa ...

to the stretch of Route 1 from

Huế Huế (formerly Thừa Thiên Huế province) is the southernmost coastal Municipalities of Vietnam, city in the North Central Coast region, the Central Vietnam, Central of Vietnam, approximately in the center of the country. It borders Quảng ...

to Quảng Trị during the

First Indochina War The First Indochina War (generally known as the Indochina War in France, and as the Anti-French Resistance War in Vietnam, and alternatively internationally as the French-Indochina War) was fought between French Fourth Republic, France and Việ ...

Situation

The

Viet Minh The Việt Minh (, ) is the common and abbreviated name of the League for Independence of Vietnam ( or , ; ), which was a Communist Party of Vietnam, communist-led national independence coalition formed at Pác Bó by Hồ Chí Minh on 19 May 1 ...

had fortified a string of villages along a line of sand dunes and salt marshes between Route 1 and the South China Sea and used these bases to launch ambushes on convoys passing on Route 1 and on the adjacent Hanoi-Saigon railway line which together formed the principal lines of communication between northern and southern Vietnam. French colonial forces carried out a major attack on the Street Without Joy in Operation Camargue in July–August 1953.

The book

The area was made known to an English-speaking audience in the book ''Street Without Joy''Referenced by by Bernard B. Fall, first published in 1961. He described the terrain encountered by the French in Operation Camargue as follows:

Surroundings

On the land side, the "Street Without Joy" was preceded by another, less well-defined line of villages, the centre of which was Van Trinh. This was protected in turn by a vast zone of swamps, sand holes and quicksand bogs, extending all the way to Route 1. With an average width of about eight kilometers, it constitutes an almost impassable barrier to tanks and other motorized vehicles of the French Army, except on the few roads crossing it, which were, of course, heavily mined and sabotaged." During the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...

, the Street Without Joy again became a stronghold and base area for the

Vietcong The Viet Cong (VC) was an epithet and umbrella term to refer to the Communism, communist-driven armed movement and united front organization in South Vietnam. It was formally organized as and led by the National Liberation Front of South Vi ...

Deaths

In February 1967, the 9th Marine Regiment was conducting Operation Chinook II on the Street Without Joy. Bernard Fall was observing the operation when he was killed by a mine explosion. During the

First Battle of Quảng Trị First most commonly refers to: * First, the ordinal form of the number 1 First or 1st may also refer to: Acronyms * Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters, an astronomical survey carried out by the Very Large Array * Far Infrared a ...

in the

Easter Offensive The Easter Offensive, also known as the 1972 spring–summer offensive (') by North Vietnam, or the Red Fiery Summer (') as romanticized in South Vietnamese literature, was a military campaign conducted by the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN, t ...

of 1972,

People's Army of Vietnam The People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), officially the Vietnam People's Army (VPA; , , ), also recognized as the Vietnamese Army (), the People's Army () or colloquially the Troops ( ), is the national Military, military force of the Vietnam, S ...

forces fired indiscriminately on the intermingled South Vietnamese military and refugee columns fleeing south from Quảng Trị killing approximately 2,000 civilians in the Shelling of Highway 1.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Map of the Street Without Joy (copyrighted)
Vietnam War sites First Indochina War Roads in Vietnam History of Huế History of Quảng Trị province