The campaign, fought from October 19 to November 26, 1965, included major engagements at Plei Me in Ia Pia commune and the Ia Drang Valley in Ia Púch commune. These clashes were the first in which Vietnamese forces defeated U.S. troops on a campaign scale, shaping later military strategies and national defence doctrine.
Today, only a handful of those who fought in the Ia Drang Valley still live in the villages where the battles unfolded. For many Jrai families, the victory has become both a historical landmark and a guiding spiritual inheritance.
At the Plei Me Victory Site in Tan Thuy hamlet, veterans Kpă Nang and Rơ Lan Chăm walked along stone steles and forest trails they once defended. Both served in local armed units under the command of Kpă Klơng, a Pia villager later honoured as a Hero of the People’s Armed Forces in 1967.
Nang recalled the diverse forces that joined the campaign, including infantry regiments, commando and artillery battalions, and local troops familiar with the dense, mountainous terrain. “Our guerrilla tactics inflicted heavy losses on the Americans”, he said.
He recounted an operation in which Klơng’s squad tracked U.S. patrols, seized their weapons near the Ia Pia stream, planted bamboo spikes and lured the soldiers into the trap. “None survived”, Nang said, describing Klơng’s emphasis on “eliminating the enemy while conserving ammunition”.
Chăm, now 92, said military discipline shaped the unit as much as the battles. He remembered once being punished for breaking a rule by carrying a thorny kapok tree until his shoulder bled. “Thanks to such strictness, everyone maintained discipline and morale”, he said.
Researchers have noted that tactical lessons from Plei Me, where lightly equipped local troops outmaneuvered modern U.S. forces, influenced later military theory on defeating technologically superior opponents.
The campaign’s victory was recognised with two of the highest military decorations, General Nguyễn Chí Thanh said at the time. Its revolutionary spirit later guided former fighters as they rebuilt their communities in peacetime.
For Nang, who raised six children in deep postwar poverty, education became the centrepiece of recovery. All of his children completed college or university, and five became Party members. His son, Siu Hồng Phát, now vice chairman of the Ia Pia Commune Veterans Association, studied law, served in the military and helped run local martial arts clubs.
Other children of Nang and fellow veterans now work in healthcare, education and commune security. Nang’s daughter, Siu H’Phêl, leads the Ia Pia Commune Health Station.
Phát said the new generation continues the values of their parents. “Our parents defended our land even though they never went to school”, he said. “They encouraged us to study and contribute. That tradition lives on throughout this land”.
Six decades after the final shots were fired, the Plei Me victory endures not only as a military milestone but as a source of identity and resilience carried forward by the Jrai community.
