No one will be able to understand how we felt on this day.

Lucy Smith writes: 

I find it hard to write about this trip, because I feel nobody will understand. Nobody but us can understand the sadness yet gratefullness and happiness we felt on those 14 days.

The photo I chose was taken by Malcolm and depicts us trekking 13 km up a hill to Camp Carroll. Camp Carroll was a US Marine Corps Artillery Base located 8 km out of Cam Lao. It was the scene of the largest offensive so far in the war in an attack on the base on March 30^th 1972. On this day more than 200 rounds of rockets and artillary shells were fired in the first hour of the attack. It must have been a gruesome and terrifying battle.

 On the day we were there, it was steamy and hot and we could hear the sounds of people moving around in their houses – living their everyday lives in peace. Dogs would bark as we walked past and soldiers on motorbikes were waving and smiling at us. Butterflies fluttered past our faces as we smelt the freshness of the air around us, it was something completely new.

No one will be able to understand how we felt on this day. The sun was hot, beaming down on our backs and the steady incline was burning our feet. Its insane to imagine how the serenity of the world around us could have been marked by such hatred and grief. Every step we took reminded us of how it would have felt to be standing there 40+ years ago. Thinking about how the soldiers had to fight on this landscape made us feel melancholy.

Never will I be able to forget how good it felt to finally reach the top of that hill. We spent a large amount of time at the top recovering from the hot and steamy 3 km walk we had just completed. But, we also sat there admiring the scenery. The monument was so beautiful to see and really forced us to think about the history of where we were standing. The gruesome nature of the fighting that occurred on this hill is crazy to imagine when you are standing there, right where it all happened, in the peacefulness of 2018.