Vietnam war: Surviving the 'Christmas bombing' campaign

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 27 December 2019

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In December 1972 the US military launched its heaviest bombardment on the Vietnamese city of Hanoi. Around twenty thousand tonnes of explosives were dropped in just a few days. Ha Mi was just ten years old and living in the city with her family when the bombs began to fall. She told Rebecca Kesby what is was like.

(Photo: Ha Mi in the summer of 1972. Credit: Ha Mi's own collection)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
0:06.8	searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the
0:11.8	telly we share what we've been watching
0:14.0	Cladie Aide.
0:16.0	Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:19.0	Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:21.0	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less
0:24.9	searching and a lot more watching listen on BBC sounds.
0:29.2	Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service
0:37.8	with me Rebecca Kesby, first-hand accounts of events that shaped our world.
0:42.8	And today we go back to the Vietnam War in late December 1972.
0:48.0	Efforts to end the American military campaign against communists in the north were stalling.
0:53.4	Peace talks in Paris between the two sides had broken down and the US launched a massive
0:59.2	aerial bombardment on the city of Hanoy.
1:02.4	It was cod named
1:03.2	linebacker too. Ha me was 10 years old at the time and living in the city.
1:08.0	I remember that the siren is...
1:12.0	Oohhoo and then after the siren would be the warning in loudspeaker
1:21.4	where the blend would be.
1:24.0	You hear they saying that the enemy's plane is 10 kilometers away from Hanoi,
1:30.0	then you hear the silence again.
1:33.0	The second time, and the third time when it's quite close,
	...

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