by Eric Hammel
The Marine infantrymen were as pleased as Charbonneau about their return trip south. They deliberately took their time in loading their gear and themselves aboard trucks. In fact, they had been so slow on the afternoon of January 29 that the convoy had set off after dark. Charbonneau's impatience had raised a few eyebrows among the infantry officers, but Charbonneau was more concerned about what an overnight stay in Camp Evans would do to the schedule than he was about the remote possibility of action along Highway 1.
On January 30, Charbonneau's platoon was joined by a platoon from Alpha Company, 1st Motor Transport Battalion, for yet another quick trip to Camp Evans to pick up another element of the same uncooperative infantry battalion. The plan was to be back in Phu Bai that evening, then on the road back to Camp Evans again on the morning of January 31.
While the January 30 convoy was forming up in Gia Le, the 1st Motor Transport Battalion's camp north of Phu Bai, senior officers explicitly warned of possible Communist attacks along Highway 1 before or possibly even during the Tet festivities. Already the veteran of several ambushes around Hai Van Pass, Terry Charbonneau was as ready as he would ever be to fight for his life if he was attacked while on the road. But he was too busy, too tired, and too harried to give serious thought to all the weird what-if situations a worried mind could conjure up in the middle of a war.
During a brief stop along the road into Hue, Charbonneau allowed an Army Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP, pronounced "lurp") team to hitch a ride to their unit in Camp Evans. He was glad to have the LRRPs along, because no other convoy guards were available. In fact, because of personnel shortages, the convoy lacked assistant drivers, who could have been pressed into a combat role in the event the convoy was ambushed. The LRRPs were a welcome addition, indeed.
As the convoy passed through villages and market areas south of Hue, the usual crowds of Vietnamese kids were out, but there was a big change from the usual roadside scenes. The countryside was celebrating Tet, so, instead of begging from the Marines, the kids were throwing rice candy at them. Though he sensed the special spirit behind the gesture, Terry Charbonneau would not eat the candy out of fear the local VC had poisoned it or laced it with ground glass. Finally, however, the LRRP team's Kit Carson scout—a former NVA soldier who had rallied to the GVN—explained that Tet was a time of giving, and that it was doubtful the candy was booby-trapped. The scout tried a few pieces to prove the point, and then everyone sampled the candy.
Hue was packed with foot traffic and vehicles of every description. In addition to the teeming military traffic involved in moving four U.S. combat divisions, the city was filled with Tet pilgrims, who overfilled the narrow roadways, causing gridlock at bridges and other chokepoints along Highway 1. Terry Charbonneau's convoy was halted, permanently it seemed, right at the southern edge of the city, directly opposite the modernistic Hue Cathedral.
The LRRPs were amazed at what they saw in their first look at Hue. A few had been in Vietnam for several years, but none had ever been in Hue. They told Charbonneau that Hue was less affected by war than any Vietnamese city they had seen. It seemed to be downright prosperous despite the war. They pointed out that most of Hue's houses seemed to have been improved over time, a sight they had not seen in other Vietnamese cities, where it was fortunate if a house was rebuilt after combat. Hue, they all proclaimed, seemed to be leading a charmed existence.
When it looked like the delay was going to last quite a bit longer, the LRRP team leader asked Lieutenant Charbonneau for permission to go buy some beer. Charbonneau was at first reluctant to grant permission; he did not want to leave the soldiers behind if the road was suddenly cleared. But he gave the sergeant fair warning and told him to do what he wanted. The LRRPs were gone in a flash.
Many minutes later, when the beer party re-emerged from the teeming neighborhood, the convoy had advanced only a few yards. The LRRP team leader climbed into Charbonneau's jeep and told the lieutenant that he and his men had not found any stalls open but that they had come upon a courtyard in which several generations of a large Vietnamese family were celebrating the Lunar New Year. The LRRPs had asked if they could buy some of the beer the family had on its food-and-drink-laden tables, but the patriarch had firmly refused to sell it. Instead, he had invited the LRRPs in for a round of good French wine—two large tumblers for each of the soldiers.
Shortly after the LRRPs rejoined the convoy, the traffic jam dissipated and the trucks rolled forward in fits and starts. The trip north out of Hue was as it had been going into Hue: the villagers along the way were outwardly friendly, and the kids tossed rice candy into the passing trucks. The only sour note that registered on Terry Charbonneau was the hate-filled glare of a young man who, in hindsight, was probably counting the trucks and noting their contents as they passed through a large village north of Hue.
The convoy finally arrived in Camp Evans well after noon. Once again, the Marine infantrymen who were to be transported back to Phu Bai were very lax in their outlook, and the entire afternoon was frittered away in desultory loading. Another convoy, from Dong Ha to Phu Bai, passed through Camp Evans late in the afternoon, but, unlike the previous afternoon, Charbonneau was forbidden to return to Phu Bai that evening.
It was good that Charbonneau was ordered to stay off the road. No one in Camp Evans knew it, but after dusk Highway 1 south to Hue was due to close.
*
Jim Bullington, a U.S. foreign service officer on loan to the Agency for International Development (AID), spent most of January 30 at his office in Quang Tri City, tidying up his desk and exchanging a final round of information with his boss, Robert Brewer, the Quang Tri Province senior advisor. Bullington was on his second tour in Vietnam. His first had been in 1965 and 1966, as vice consul in Hue—until the consulate was burned to the ground by rioting Buddhists. This Tet, Jim Bullington was on his way to Hue for family business—to share the holidays with his fiancée and her family. The Than-Trong clan's Tet banquet was set for that evening, and Bullington was going early, to settle in with the friend who had offered to put him up.
Jim Bullington had access to the latest intelligence reports. He knew that an NVA attack in northern Quang Tri or Thua Thien provinces appeared imminent. He had been hearing similar reports for some time, but he did not dream they would reach fruition during Tet. If the NVA and VC did not kick off their attacks before Tet, he felt, then it was certain they would not do so until after Tet's important initial three days. For all that, however, Bullington and his comrades in Quang Tri received early notification of Communist attacks in central South Vietnam, and they had early news that the GVN and MACV had canceled the Tet truce.
Despite the forbidding news, Jim Bullington decided to proceed with his holiday plans. He felt he could not let his fiancée or her family down. He boarded the Air America afternoon shuttle to Hue and, as soon as it landed, checked in with the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) office for the latest intelligence update. An attack was imminent, but, as one CORDS official declared, "We looked for it before Tet, but it didn't come. So now we expect it after Tet. But," the official concluded, "today there seem to be indications that it just might come as early as tonight." Jim Bullington sensed no tinge of urgency in the official's voice and manner, and he noted that no extraordinary preparations were in force. Conditions in Hue appeared to be calmer than they had been in Quang Tri, so he went to his friend's house.
*
Bullington's fiancée, Tuy-Cam, had left work at the United States Consulate in Danang the previous day, January 29, to take the bus home to Hue. There had been no untoward incidents on the 105-kilometer journey, but the trip was typically tense because no one knew what the VC might have in mind from moment to moment. Though Tuy-Cam worked for the consul, she had heard nothing about Communist intentions.
The Than-Trong clan was gathering for the-holidays at their compound in a wealthy suburb south of the Perfume River and west of the Phu Cam Canal.
Late news arrived that Tuy-Cam's middle brother, Long, an Air Force cadet, would be missing the banquet because he was getting ready to attend flight school in Texas. However, Tuy-Cam's older brother, An, an ARVN first lieutenant, would be released from duty at Thua Thien Province Headquarters in time for the evening banquet. In fact, during the day An stopped by the house with a load of beer and whiskey.
As the final preparations for the banquet were getting under way, Long arrived home unexpectedly. He had been able to take a few days' leave after all. Shortly thereafter, Jim Bullington arrived with two other American guests—Steve Haukness, an associate of Tuy-Cam's from Danang, and Steve Miller, a Foreign Service School classmate of Bullington's, now a U.S. Information Service (USIS) official based in Hue. Haukness told Tuy-Cam that another of her American coworkers who had been invited to the banquet had been unable to get out of Danang in the wake of a Communist attack in the city the previous night.
During the meal, Tuy-Cam's elderly uncle asked Jim Bullington if he was afraid because "many people say that the VC will attack tonight." Bullington assured the uncle that he was not afraid because "we hear these reports all the time in Quang Tri, and I've sort of gotten used to them. Besides, where I'm staying, they could never find me." For all that, however, Bullington was feeling nervous.
The party broke up about an hour before midnight. While Tuy-Cam and her sisters retired to a back room to play traditional Tet card games, Steve Miller drove Jim Bullington to the Hue municipal power station, where Albert Istvie, a Franco-Vietnamese who worked for the power company, was putting Bullington up in the company guest house. Miller then drove to his own home with Steve Haukness, who would be staying over with him. The three Americans noted no untoward activity on Hue's streets during the drive, and all turned in without a thought about the dire predictions to which they had become inured.
In the hours after midnight, Hue seemed to be settling down following the day's revelries, but scores of people were still out and about. Many were innocent Tet revelers, but many others were men and women of extremely sinister intent.
***
PART II
Assault on Hue
***
Chapter 4
The first shots of the Hue offensive were fired at 2200 on January 30. The unwitting culprits were members of the South Vietnamese Regional Forces (RF) company defending a pontoon span at Nam Hoa, south of Hue, where the Ta Trach and Huu Trach rivers join to form the Perfume River. It is doubtful the typically jumpy RFs actually saw any Communist troops on their way toward Hue. They probably opened fire on shadows or images from their worst nightmares.
Lieutenant Nguyen Thi Tan's 1st ARVN Division Reconnaissance Company was patrolling an area several kilometers west of Hue. Tan heard the shooting and routinely deployed to search the immediate area. This was fortuitous, because the reconnaissance troops discovered immediately that they were directly in the path of a large-scale military migration. As Lieutenant Tan and his Australian Army advisor crouched in the scrub growth, scores of dark forms filtered silently past them toward the city. Tan instantly warned his thirty-five ARVN soldiers to stay under cover and remain still and silent. Then he radioed the 1st ARVN Division CP and whispered his report of the contact and every detail he could make out. Before long, two enemy battalions had passed the reconnaissance company's position.
*
The Communists' contemplated seizure of Hue was only one part of Resolution 13's nationwide "decisive victory," but it was a major part. Except for the massive assault scheduled to take place in and around Saigon, no attack on any city in South Vietnam would involve more Communist troops than the attack on Hue. Bright jewel of Vietnam's briefly glorious past, Hue bore a symbolic importance greater than its size. The lightning victory the Communists expected to win there would be memorialized by special victory celebrations, including a triumphal parade by crack NVA regiments. They would march and celebrate and receive the accolade of the "risen" masses.
The Communists planned to seize Hue in one blow, a bluntly straightforward coup de main. To this end, they had gathered a force of over 5,000 crack NVA and VC soldiers under the direct leadership of the commanding general of the Communist Tri-Thien-Hue Military Region (encompassing Quang Tri and Thua Thien provinces). The Hue assault and occupation force comprised the elite, independent 4th, 5th, and 6th NVA regiments; the 12th NVA Sapper (engineer assault) Battalion; at least one other unidentified NVA sapper battalion; one NVA rocket battalion; local VC combat units of various types and sizes; and the VC's crack Hue City Sapper Battalion. Elements of all these units were to take part in the initial assault on the city, following a precise tactical plan developed from close study of a scale model of Hue painstakingly constructed from cast-off American ration boxes. The eight-foot-square model was so detailed that even replicas of major radio antennas were included.
By the evening of January 30, VC spearhead companies had already slipped into the city in the guise of civilian pilgrims. They were to re-form at designated meeting sites, and, together with NVA units scheduled to slip into the city en masse during the night, attack and overrun a stunning variety of military and civil objectives. There were 314 immediate objectives in all, from the 1st ARVN Division CP to the home of Hoang Huu Pha, a schoolteacher and member of the Vietnamese Nationalist Party.
The planning, thorough to the last detail, had been the work of many weeks. Hundreds of infantry weapons—including .51-caliber heavy machine guns and perhaps hundreds of tons of ammunition, demolitions, and supplies—had been smuggled into Hue disguised as civilian goods or, at the last minute, in gift-wrapped parcels.
The initial attacks were timed to create maximum confusion and prevent mutual support by city-based GVN National Police and ARVN units. As the military and civil targets fell, VC political cadres supported by NVA infantry units were to fan out through the city, arresting political figures and civil workers and calling on the people of Hue to rally to the Communist cause. Once the city was completely subdued, the victorious VC and NVA units would have their glorious victory parade, after which they would help fortify the entire city to stand off possible counterattacks.
Because the seizure of Hue was to be part of a huge matrix of Communist assaults that same night, outside support was expected to be minimal inasmuch as all ARVN and American military units in the area would be under attack at once. The large U.S. and ARVN bases north and south of Hue would be heavily bombarded, and ARVN and American checkpoints and choke-points along Highway 1, such as passes and bridges, would be directly attacked or bombarded to sow maximum confusion and delay counterattacks.
Each section of Hue was literally an island isolated by the waters of the Perfume River, its complex of feeder streams and canals. Therefore Hue was an ideal military target. Each section could be isolated with great ease by attacking and holding the limited number of bridges. Efforts by surviving ARVN or National Police units inside Hue to reinforce one part of the city from another could be stopped by defensive positions at any of these obligatory crossing points. In the event of outside attack, each of Hue's islands could be separately fortified and, because most of the waterways were narrow, supported by infantry weapons fired from adjacent islands. Moreover, except for in the wartime shantytowns, nearly all the buildings inside the Citadel and in the modern city were of stout concrete or masonry construction. Each building was a potential pillbox or bunker that could be fortified to withstand direct assault by even the most heavily equipped modern infantry.
But the Communists never really expected that they would have to defend Hue against a threat from the outside. Throughout South Vietnam, large components of the ARVN were expected to mutiny—many might even rally to the Communists. In swift course the hated Americans would be herded toward Vietnam's ports, whence they would be free to sail away forever, as had the French in 1954. TCK-TKN would culminate in decisive victory, the reunification of Vietnam under the Communist banner. The Communists had
no doubt about it.
*
Because the Hue City Sapper Battalion had to cross especially rugged terrain, it was the first of the Communist combat units staged on the outskirts of Hue to begin its move into the city. The battalion left its jungle camps on the morning of January 29. The unit had to be broken up into very small groups so it could be safely ferried across the deep Ta Trach River, south of Hue, that night. The crossing went according to plan.
That same night the crack VC sapper unit was followed to the Ta Trach ferries by elements of an NVA sapper battalion and the 4th NVA Regiment's 804th NVA Battalion, which were slated to attack and overrun the MACV Compound. These units also crossed the Ta Trach without incident. They followed the Hue City Sapper Battalion toward the southern outskirts of the city.
The 4th NVA Regiment's plan and timetable came a cropper on the afternoon of January 29, when troops of the NVA sapper battalion and the K4C NVA Battalion were detected on the south bank of the Ta Trach. Though this component was bombarded by artillery for two hours, no ARVN or American infantry force was dispatched to investigate. The NVA dragged their casualties back into the jungle, regrouped, and waited until the next afternoon, January 30, to resume the crossing operation. A full day behind schedule, this major assault force did not have a prayer of attacking its objective in concert with the rest of the Tet assault forces. Thus the main body of the 7th ARVN Armored Cavalry Battalion, south of Hue, would be spared an early disabling blow.
Despite the discovery of one NVA force, ARVN and American units completely missed the next NVA arrival. The K4B NVA Battalion and an NVA sapper battalion, which were charged with seizing the heart of the modern city, moved into a village on the south bank of the Ta Trach and remained there under cover through January 30. They began crossing the Ta Trach and advancing on Hue at dusk.