by Neil Sheehan
Herb Prevost’s acquaintances referred to their squadron by its unofficial code name, Jungle Jim. (The official code name was Farm Gate, a play of gallows humor on the World War II expression for the passage into eternity: “He bought the farm.”) The squadron was equipped with propeller-driven planes of World War II and the Korean War—twin-engine A-26 Invaders designed for low-level bombing and strafing with six to ten .50 caliber machine guns in the nose, and T-28 Trojan trainers converted into fighter-bombers by fitting .50 caliber machine guns and racks for bombs, rockets, and napalm canisters into the wings. Although the planes belonged to the U.S. Air Force, they had been repainted with the markings of the Vietnamese Air Force, called the Veenaf, from the abbreviation VNAF, by the Americans. The repainting was not difficult, because the VNAF had, in deference to its more recently acquired patron, done away with its original French-inspired system of marking military aircraft with roundels in the national colors on the sides of the fuselage. The Saigon aviators had adopted the U.S. insignia of a white star in a blue circle, and where American military aircraft had bars in red, white, and blue going off to each side of the circle, the VNAF had bars in red and yellow, the colors of the Saigon government. With a bit of red and yellow paint, the planes of the air commando squadron became Vietnamese. The pilots also never flew without a junior officer or noncom from the VNAF in the backseat. If one of these planes with VNAF markings and a Vietnamese in the backseat was shot down or crashed, the Kennedy administration could claim, as it did on occasion, that the American pilots were merely “conducting training in a combat environment.” Other American aviators were assigned directly to the VNAF with the mission of training and advising the Saigon airmen in the employment of their fighter-bombers—T-28S and AD-6 (also designated A-1) Skyraiders, a Navy plane of the Korean era. These American trainers functioned as extra pilots for air strikes against the guerrillas, again with a Vietnamese in the backseat. The small foreign press corps in Saigon was not permitted into the Bien Hoa base to describe at first hand how the system worked.
Except at critical times during operations when he was tied to the command post summoning air support for the division, Prevost was eager to take Vann, or Ziegler, or Jim Drummond, the intelligence advisor, out on reconnaissance missions in his miniature fighter-bomber. Army observation pilots who flew ordinary, unarmed L-19S out of Tan Son Nhut were on call to the detachment for reconnaissance work, but Prevost was the ready alternate and, if available, the preferred choice. Vann liked to fly low to study the countryside as much as possible. Prevost preferred to stay lower still, practically shearing the tops off the rice stalks until he had to hop over a tree line. The Air Force liaison officer who replaced him when Prevost was reassigned many months later was new to the country. He asked Vann if Major Prevost normally flew at 1,500 feet, considered a height of acceptable risk from small-arms fire. “Major Prevost didn’t accumulate fifteen hundred feet of altitude in his entire time with this detachment,” Vann replied.
This mood of the war as an adventure was reinforced by the sentimental attachment many of the advisors developed for the Vietnamese for whose benefit, along with that of their own country, they believed they had come to fight. The captains advising the battalion commanders stayed with their battalions whether in base camps or on the march, eating Vietnamese food and accepting the other conditions of life of the ARVN captains they had been sent to help. So did the sergeants teaching weaponry to the soldiers. The advisors to the Civil Guards and the SDC militia lived near the training centers and accompanied their territorial troops on local day-to-day actions against the guerrillas. These shared circumstances evoked a natural affection from the Americans.
The Vietnamese soldiers would pull at the hair on the forearms of the Americans out of curiosity, because their bodies were smooth. They would cadge cigarettes; giggle when an American recoiled at the strong-smelling fish-oil sauce, called nuoc mam, which the Vietnamese used as seasoning (it added concentrated protein to their diet in the process); and laugh when one of the big foreigners teetered and toppled off one of the palm logs the peasants laid across the canals for bridges.
Vann took a particular liking to the common soldiers, who were peasants like their guerrilla opponents, whether ARVN regulars or territorials. Perhaps the fact that he was also slightly built and did not tower above their average height of about five feet two inches also made them appeal to him. Their American equipment was invariably too big and too heavy. The helmets swamped their heads; the U.S. Army’s semiautomatic M-1 rifle was too heavy for them at nine and a half pounds and its stock was too long for their arms; and the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) the light machine gunners carried was much too hefty at sixteen pounds for men who averaged 105 pounds in weight to tote through a day. What Vann admired most about them was their cheerfulness and their endurance. They were as deceptive in appearance as their country. Their bodies were strong despite their slightness, because their diet was good by Asian standards. One could not see their strength because the American-style fatigues hid their wiry build. Their peasant upbringing had also hardened them psychologically to physical labor, so they did not complain on marches in the heat. They smiled often and joked among themselves, and they did not scream or lose control when wounded. The stoic bearing of pain seemed to be part of their culture. They would lie still and moan or clench their teeth against the hurt. They were potentially good soldiers, Vann concluded, who deserved to win their war and not have their lives wasted.
Because he saw the solution to the conflict primarily in military terms during his first year in Vietnam, Vann focused on the initial priority that he and Porter had agreed upon—the destruction of the main striking forces of the Viet Cong through surprise helicopter assaults. These troops were the Communist equivalent of the ARVN and the Civil Guard. They consisted of the elite guerrilla battalions, called the Main Force by the Communists and the “regulars” or the “hardcore” by the Americans, and the provincial battalions and companies known as the Regionals. The Main Force battalions each ran about 250 to 300 men strong in late May 1962. They ranged over a territory of two to three provinces. The Regionals usually kept to their home province. The advisors tended to group both together, calling them “hard hats” because they wore turtle-shaped sun helmets, an imitation of the colonial sun helmet that one saw in Kiplingesque movies of British India on late-night television, and that the French had worn in Indochina. The Viet Cong made their sun helmets by stretching green canvas or plastic over a frame of bamboo. Both the Main Force and the Regionals were full-time soldiers. Their uniforms, homemade by their families or the women of sympathetic peasant hamlets from cloth that was available in nearby markets, varied in these early years. They usually fought in the black ao baba of the peasants or in a khaki shirt and trousers, but the regulars also sometimes wore a green battle outfit. The Viet Cong dress uniform, which the guerrillas carried in their knapsacks for ceremonial occasions, was fairly standardized—a shirt and trousers of a deep blue cloth that was commonly sold in country towns. The Main Force had the highest level of combat proficiency and political motivation and the best of the captured weapons. All of the officers and most of the noncoms were Party members. They were called “cadres.” (The Vietnamese Communists used the term “cadre” for anyone in a leadership position, whether officer, noncom, or administrative official, and for specialists such as medical personnel.) Several of the provincial battalions approached those of the Main Force in fighting quality.
There were about 2,000 Viet Cong regulars operating within the five provinces of the division zone, as well as Jim Drummond could estimate with the information available to him by the end of May, and about 3,000 Regional guerrillas. The way matters stood, the Communist strategy was succeeding. The guerrillas were capturing more and more weapons, which enabled them to launch more and bigger attacks. The Saigon government’s Civil Guard and SDC militia were in turn becoming more intimidated and keeping closer to their outposts and the district ce
nters, ceding more and more of the peasantry to the guerrillas. The quickest way to halt the momentum of this revolution, Vann believed, was to break the point of the spear. If the regular and provincial guerrillas were killed off or scattered, the Communists would no longer be able to mass a force for big ambushes of road convoys and of Saigon’s territorial troops as they marched through the countryside during the day trying to assert the regime’s authority. The Viet Cong would not be able to overrun outposts at night with quite their current ease. Security would start to return and progress toward an enduring pacification could begin. “Security may be ten percent of the problem, or it may be ninety percent, but whichever it is, it’s the first ten percent or the first ninety percent,” Vann would say. “Without security, nothing else we do will last.”
Once the process of decimating the Main Force and Regional guerrillas was well underway, the cycle of the war would turn against the Viet Cong, Vann thought. This conclusion was based on a conviction he shared with virtually all Americans in Vietnam in this early period—a conviction that the Vietnamese peasants were essentially apolitical. The fact that the majority of the peasants in the division zone appeared to be either sympathetic to the Viet Cong or neutral did not mean they were expressing a political value judgment, according to American thinking: the peasantry lacked the political sophistication to make such a judgment. Except for a minority who had specific grievances against local officials of the regime, the peasants were simply responding to whichever side was stronger where they lived. Vann held this conviction with more than ordinary firmness because he had observed on intelligence-gathering missions with his Ranger company in Korea that the Korean peasants he questioned seemed to have no political values. They had appeared just to respond to the side that was dominant at the moment. What all Asian peasants wanted most, he was certain, was peace and security in which to till their land. They did not care whether those who established the law and order were Communists or capitalists.
When the farmers saw the regular and provincial guerrilla battalions and companies being destroyed one after another, they would realize that the Communists were not going to win. Provided the Saigon side also stopped abusing them, the peasants would begin to lean toward the regime. Intelligence would improve because more and more peasants would be willing to talk. It would become easier to target and decimate the rest of the Viet Cong’s main striking forces. The Communists would also lose the broad base of their armed strength—the local guerrillas on the hamlet and village levels. (The Vietnamese village is not a single population center but rather a cluster of hamlets. The village government has its offices in one of the hamlets. The hamlet chiefs and their assistants are executors who carry out the decisions of the village government.) These local guerrillas were called the Guerrilla Popular Army by the Viet Cong. They were part-time soldiers, farmers during the day, fighters at night, on orders from above or when the spirit moved them. Drummond estimated that there were about 10,000 local guerrillas throughout the division zone. They were of immense value to the Main Force and Regional guerrillas and to the clandestine government of the Viet Cong. The local guerrillas were a pool of manpower in training for the higher forces, an omnipresent intelligence network, a source of scouts and guides who knew the terrain and the attitudes of their neighbors and the militia in the nearest Saigon outpost, a waiting assembly of porters to haul ammunition and to carry away the wounded and the dead during battle, and an ever-present arm to enforce the desires of the hidden Communist administration.
These part-time local guerrillas would “fade back into the woodwork,” Vann reasoned, and become full-time peaceful farmers again. The Saigon authorities, with American assistance, could then start the slow task of identifying and arresting the secret Communist agents who had fomented this insurrection and who directed the clandestine government in its daily activity of marshaling the peasantry to support the guerrilla fighting units. The economic and social aid the United States was providing would further influence the allegiance of the farmers. The gift of drilled wells for clean drinking water and lessons in how to build latrines on solid ground were going to liberate the farmers from the parasites and intestinal diseases that afflicted them. They would be given dispensaries for regular medical care, elementary schools to eliminate illiteracy among their children, fat Yorkshire hogs to replace the lean black native variety, and better rice yields with improved seed and chemical fertilizer. Vann thought that it would probably require ten years to create a healthy rural society of satisfied peasants and effective local government which would be impervious to Communist attempts to renew the insurgency. It should not take him more than six months to smash the Main Force and Regional guerrillas in the northern Delta and start this cycle of returning peace in the most vital part of the country.
Vann had been as fortunate in the assignment of Jim Drummond to the detachment as its intelligence officer as he had been in finding Ziegler available as an operations planner. He had again demonstrated his talent for leadership by recognizing Drummond’s qualities and giving him rein to exercise them, while at the same time directing Drummond so that his work meshed with that of Ziegler. The two were the team Vann needed to conduct his six-month campaign.
Secrecy shielded the Viet Cong fighting forces in the same way that it protected the activities of the Communist administration. As long as their location and movements were secret, the guerrillas could train and prepare undisturbed and strike with surprise. For the first time in this war they were being deprived of this secrecy. Drummond was taking away their shield with the skills of intelligence gathering that the U.S. Army had accumulated through two world wars and the Korean conflict. In Drummond’s case, the skills were fortified by an unusual affinity for his craft.
Drummond displayed a passion for knowledge of his quarry. Everything about the guerrillas interested him. He collected the homemade shotguns the Viet Cong turned out in their thatched-roof arsenals for the local guerrillas along with the crude but functioning copies of sophisticated small arms like the Thompson submachine gun. He even examined the seams and cut of uniforms to see if they differed in one province or region from another. Vann was struck by this fascination. He saw there would be no need to remind Drummond, as he would have had to remind some intelligence officers, that it was not enough to interrogate prisoners and to read translations of captured documents at headquarters, that one had to venture into the field to gain insights about the enemy and to gather the myriad details that could never be obtained from an office. Drummond, who had twice won the Bronze Star for Valor as an infantryman in Korea, had begun marching on operations as soon as he had arrived in late April, and Vann often ran across him in the field after he reached the Seminary in May.
For all their cleverness, the Viet Cong had a weak point. They had fallen into regular patterns of behavior. They had done so, despite a doctrine that said they must never lapse into such dangerous predictability, because they were human and human beings are creatures of habit. These guerrillas had been fighting the same war against the same enemy in the same rice paddies too long not to succumb to their humanity. Drummond had spotted the weakness early, and he and Vann had talked about it in one of their first discussions. Vann’s haste in persuading Cao to let his intelligence officer cooperate with Drummond had been motivated as much by eagerness to exploit this weakness as by the need to gain proxy control over the division. Ever since, Drummond had been organizing a system to produce information for Vann’s six-month campaign of destruction.
He and his assistant, an Army sergeant who was an intelligence specialist, showed Cao’s G-2 and his staff how to compose a “profile” for each regular and provincial guerrilla battalion and company. The sergeant, who was a patient man, taught the Vietnamese to sort the captured Viet Cong reports, messages, diaries, letters, maps, and sundry other material by unit and to extract anything potentially useful. All the available data on a unit were then assembled and broken down into categories with file folders an
d charts and cross-reference cards. The system was designed to permit new material to be added constantly in order to increase knowledge of the unit and ability to predict its behavior. Distinguishing characteristics were carefully noted, because these were like fingerprints that helped Drummond to track a unit with fragmentary reports that would otherwise be worthless.
In this early period, all of the Viet Cong battalions were greatly inferior in firepower to their ARVN opposites, their weaponry an arms bazaar of French and American manufacture captured from the Saigon troops. Some of the battalions had a mortar, while others had none; a couple had two .30 caliber machine guns and the rest were fortunate to have one. The catalogue of weaponry measured the threat the battalion posed and was also a distinguishing characteristic. Drummond and his sergeant started rosters on the personnel strength of each battalion and its components and created biographical files for the officers and noncoms. The Viet Cong cadres used aliases for protection, but because they were local men and not Northern Communists, it was at times possible to learn who they were and to obtain some knowledge of their personalities and attitudes. Their aliases alone were useful as fingerprints of the unit. In some cases Drummond was able to obtain photographs taken from dead guerrillas or seized in raids on camps. The Vietnamese are a sentimental people, and despite the risk of compromise the Viet Cong liked to take souvenir photographs of each other. Whole platoons would line up to have their picture taken, as if they were a high school class. Another separate file was established to delineate the normal operating area of each battalion and company. Their movements were charted to learn the customary routes the guerrillas took and the hamlets in which they stopped while making their assigned rounds to overrun outposts and stage ambushes. Drummond was just as interested in the escape routes they were likely to follow if attacked in a given vicinity.