Vietnam (10 page)

Soon afterwards, the man on point – the advance guard of the group – tripped over a bamboo pole that triggered a claymore mine and several hand grenades. In the confusion, the Marines were raked with machine-gun fire and hit with mortars.

'I got a feeling they don't like us,' said one Marine during a lull.

'Personality conflict,' was his buddy's laconic reply.

Captain James 'Jay Jay' Carroll called in an air strike. Soon after, two Phantom fighter-bombers came roaring over at tree-top level, dropping 500-pound high explosive bombs and napalm 200 yards ahead of the Marines' position. A second strike came in at 90 yards. But the NVA were already familiar with the American tactics. Knowing that US ground forces always directed artillery and air strikes on enemy positions, they moved in close, into what was known as the 'safety zone,' as soon as the planes turned up. Although the Phantoms pounded the area for 30 minutes, as soon as the Marines tried to move out they were cut down by the crossfire from automatic weapons.

After two hours, the NVA broke off contact, though they left a couple of snipers to keep the Marines busy. A quick head count told Carroll that he had seven dead and twenty-five wounded. The problem was that, at their altitude, the air was too thin for medevac choppers to hover as they winched up the wounded. K Company had to retreat down the trail towards their battalion headquarters, where an LZ was being blasted out of the rock. On the way, they were ambushed from positions that the NVA had dug in the hillside. Pinned down 400 yards from their headquarters without food or water, Carroll and his men dug in for the night.

In the morning, the NVA began lobbing mortars at the Marines from fortified bunkers. Artillery fire and air strikes appeared to pulverise the NVA positions, but did not shift them. A frontal assault by K Company faltered until they were reinforced by I and M Companies. While satchel bombs were being used to clear the bunkers, the NVA regrouped and launched a savage counter-attack in the rear, cutting off their supply of ammunition. But further air strikes coming in every thirty seconds and helicopter gunships won the day. The Marines claimed an NVA body count of fifty for the loss of a further six American dead and nine wounded.

When the wounded had been medevaced out, the skies opened and the hillsides turned into a sea of mud. In these conditions, on 4 October, M Company led an assault on Hill 484, 500 yards to the north. They struggled up the waterlogged slope, being fired on by the NVA who were concealed in well-hidden bunkers and finally had to pull back. Throughout the night of the 4th, Hill 484 was bombed and shelled. But when the advance on Hill 484 began again, it took two hours to reach the crest and still the NVA would not retreat. Only at 1330 did they turn and flee into the jungle, leaving just ten dead, though trails of blood indicated they had many wounded. During the engagement, Captain Carroll had been killed when a salvo of shells from Marine tanks mistakenly hit Hill 400. The artillery platform there was named Camp Carroll in his honour. He had been in country less than a month. The hills became known as 'Mutter's Ridge' after the 3rd Battalion's call sign, in honour of the men who had died there. The Marines had won another costly victory, but with all their firepower, the enemy had still got away.

But the DMZ and the Ho Chi Minh trail were not the only infiltration routes. Although the ARVN always denied that supplies were reaching the Vietcong by sea, the Americans discovered that sampans and larger fishing vessels were bringing arms and ammunition from North Vietnam to the VC stronghold in the Mekong Delta, south of Saigon. This was not entirely the ARVN's fault. From November through to February, South Vietnam's thousand-mile South China Sea coast was buffeted by the northeast monsoon, and from May through to October, the 200 miles of coast along the Gulf of Thailand was hit by the southwest monsoon, so it was hard to intercept shipping. However, the ARVN did not relish the firefights that ensued when they stopped the gun runners and did not dare venture into Vung Ro Bay where the guns were landed as it was Charlie country. If patrol boats did come across a fisherman smuggling a few guns or mortars under the fish in their hold, it was easier to take a bribe. When the Pacific Fleet arrived in the South China Sea, it did not have the right ships to stage a naval blockade, but by 1966, they had deployed nearly 100 fast patrol boats and some 500 armed junks, backed by thirty US Coast Guard cutters. Directed by reconnaissance planes flying from Tan Son Nhut air base in Saigon or the Philippines, these boats were equipped with metal detectors to make searching under the heaps of stinking fish in the hold more palatable, though it was still a job best done on an empty stomach. It was not without its dangers. On the night of 14 February 1966, a cutter made a high-speed interception of a sampan that was within a hundred yards of a VC stronghold when a huge explosion suddenly tore through its aluminum hull, sinking the boat and killing four of its crew.

The US Mobile Riverine Force, or Brown Water Navy, carried soldiers, helicopters, artillery, defoliants and flame-throwers up the Mekong Delta, though they did little more than clear the banks of VC. However, on 25 October 1966, anti-shipping operations off the coast of North Vietnam intensified and US destroyers started a gunnery duel with shore batteries. Over the next four weeks, 230 Communist vessels were sunk and 35 junks were sunk in the Mekong Delta. Even a Chinese fishing fleet was hit in international waters by mistake, sinking five boats and killing fourteen sailors. Later the USS
Ingersoll
was damaged by fire from a shore battery. Eventually the Navy closed down large-scale sea-borne infiltration which simply meant that the VC extended the Ho Chi Minh trail down through Cambodia so that supplies could be brought directly into their stronghold from the north.

In late August 1966 the 196th Light Infantry Brigade arrived in Vietnam and set up camp near Tay Ninh City, north of Saigon. In October, they began operations in this crucial area between the South Vietnamese capital city and the Communist sanctuaries over the Cambodian border just 30 miles away. American troops had not been in action in this area before, though it was known to be home to the formidable VC 9th Division. A single untried boot battalion headed out into the boondocks. Soon their rifle companies hit pay dirt. Between 29 and 31 October, they unearthed supply depots containing more than 25 tons of salt and 1,000 tons of rice. They also found a VC field hospital, ammunition caches, tunnel complexes, and, more importantly, documents that showed that other VC and NVA formations were in the area. Operation Attleboro, named after Attleboro, Massachusetts near Fort Devens, birthplace of the 196th, was immediately instigated to search out the enemy. Brigadier General E.H. deSaussure was ordered to commit all three battalions to the operation. He also sent for an infantry division from the 25th Division and more reinforcements from the 27th. This was to be the first multi-battalioned operation of the war.

When C Company of the 1st Battalion of the 27th Infantry ventured deep into the jungle, they were attacked by the VC. A battalion of the 196th went in on 3 November to help them. B Company hit the LZ at 0922 and reported it cold – no enemy contact – and began to spread out. The helicopters went back to pick up C Company, but when they hit the LZ again at 1029 all hell broke loose. Heavy automatic fire from the tree line wounded six and C Company found themselves trapped under the hot sun in open ground. Within half an hour six more were dead and still more wounded. Twenty minutes later the count was up to ten KIA (killed in action) and fourteen WIA (wounded in action). C Company's commander was wasted and the battalion commander Major Guy S. Meloy flew in to take charge. He was followed by A Company, whose PFC Thomas Conners managed to keep the VC back with his M60 machine-gun, known to those in Vietnam as the 'pig'. The remains of the battalion fell back into a tight perimeter for the night and it was only the occasional burst from Conners' M60 that kept them alive.

Two clicks (kilometres) to the south, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles E. Weddle's battalion received orders to speed up their push northwards to relieve Meloy. To make better time, instead of hacking through the virgin jungle, Lieutenant Perkin's platoon took to the jungle trails. This was a bad move. They were bunched up when a Chinese claymore mine went off. Thousands of steel shards cut through Perkins and twenty-four of his men. Soon the entire battalion was pinned down in the searing afternoon heat and rapidly dehydrating. The following day a battalion of the 25th tried to get through to Meloy, but found themselves cut off by the VC who were well dug in.

Weddle's C Company under Captain James P. Thompson made another attempt to break through that night but, in the darkness, ran into elements of the 273rd NVA in the darkness. They too found themselves pinned down by murderous fire and surrounded, just 150 yards from Meloy's men. The following morning, Meloy's main force resisted three mass attacks on their position by the NVA in as many hours. Meanwhile the remaining battalions of the 196th fought their way towards the stranded men. The lead platoon ran up against a VC machine-gun bunker, while six VC poured semi-automatic fire against its flanks. Their M60 gunner got caught up in vines and was unable to help. Platoon leader Sergeant Lester Armstrong seized the M60 and killed the six VC, while PFC Conners managed to hold off repeated VC attacks with his M60, though he was injured in the shoulder and the spine.

Eventually, air strikes and artillery drove the VC and NVA away and the supply and medevac helicopters swooped in. On 6 November, conduct of the battle was handed over to the 1st Infantry Division under Major-General William E. DePuy and the 196th were withdrawn. DeSaussure was relieved of duty, but the next time the men of the 196th went into action they would no longer be cherries. Over the next two weeks, more than 22,000 US and ARVN troops joined in the battle in Tay Ninh province. US forces lost 155 dead and over 800 wounded, but claimed a VC body count of 1,106. However, the enemy melted away again, with the VC 9th Division escaping over the Cambodian border.

'We hit more dry holes than I thought we were going to hit,' said General DePuy. 'They were more elusive. They controlled the battle better. They were the ones who decided whether there would be a fight'.

Once again, the VC lived to fight again another day. Nevertheless the body count pleased Westmoreland.

'We'll just go on bleeding them until Hanoi wakes up to the fact that they have bled their country to the point of national disaster for generations,' he said.

Unfortunately the body counts were wrong. As the Communist forces dragged their dead from the battlefield when they could, the body counts were estimates – inflated estimates, often bumped up by the inclusion of civilian dead. But in 1967, the idea that US forces were taking on and killing large formations of the enemy persuaded Westmoreland to change strategy. Until then, US troops had concentrated on searching out and destroying the enemy while the ARVN policed the pacified areas. The problem was that the South Vietnamese forces were not much good at their job. When the Americans had cleared an area, the VC rapidly reoccupied it. Even though there were 380,000 Americans in Vietnam by the end of 1967, they still had too few troops to conduct both offensive operations and holding operations simultaneously. So they took more drastic action. They would clear vast tracts of the countryside to make 'free-fire zones'.

In January 1967, US forces went into the Iron Triangle, the Communist stronghold just forty miles from Saigon. Their first objective was the village of Ben Suc which, like other villages in outlying districts supplied and paid taxes to the Vietcong. Loud hailers mounted on helicopters announced in Vietnamese, 'Attention people of Ben Suc. You are surrounded by the Republic of Vietnam and Allied forces. Do not run away or you will be shot as VC. Stay in your homes and wait for further instructions'.

Within two hours the 6,000 inhabitants of Ben Suc and neighbouring hamlets were rounded up, while the surrounding jungle was bombed and napalmed. The people were ruthlessly interrogated in the schoolhouse and 28 VC suspects were taken away. Then all the men between 15 and 45 were separated out, and taken to police headquarters for further interrogation. Those without Communist affiliations were inducted into the South Vietnamese army. The women, children, and old men were put on trucks and taken to a hastily erected camp at Phu Loi. Above its entranceway hung a sign that read, 'Welcome to the reception center for refugees fleeing Communism'. The camp had no proper toilets or water supply, or even an adequate supply of firewood. Villagers were allocated a cramped living space, of just ten foot square per family. They would never see their homes again.

Once the last villagers had left Ben Suc, the buildings were doused with petrol and zippoed. The charred remains were then flattened by M48 'tankdozers'. A trench was then dug in the town's centre and filled with a thousand gallons of napalm and 10,000 tons of explosive and the whole lot was detonated with a chemical fuse. The centuries-long history of Ben Suc ended that day. Meanwhile huge bulldozers flattened the surrounding area. The idea was to rob the Vietcong of the tree cover that sheltered them from American bombers. In this free-fire zone, anything that moved could be bombed or shot. Infantry, airborne troops and armoured cavalry then swept through the area in an hammer-andanvil operation, killing anyone who remained behind, on the grounds that, as the civilians had been removed, anyone still in the area must be VC or NVA. Although this operation – Operation Cedar Falls – was planned in such secrecy that even the commanding general of the ARVN in III CTZ did not know about it until two days beforehand, the Communists knew exactly what was happening and pulled their forces out. The American search and destroy operation found no-one.