Vietnam

by Nigel Cawthorne

  But even the tunnel rats had underestimated the extent of the tunnel complex. Below the burnt ruins of Ben Suc 1,700 metres of the tunnel network remained intact, as Rogers himself observed. 'It was not long before there was evidence of the enemy's return,' he said. 'Only two days after the termination of Cedar Falls, I was checking out the Iron Triangle by helicopter and saw many persons who appeared to be Vietcong riding bicycles or wandering around on foot'.

  The vegetation quickly grew back. The VC restored their old bunkers and rebuilt their lifeline to Cambodia. By the following year the Iron Triangle was once again a deadly stronghold and the launch pad for the Tet Offensive in Saigon.

  In February 1967, the US staged another large-scale operation – once again the largest to date – in Tay Ninh province. The object was to capture the Central Office of South Vietnam (COSVN). This was the name the US forces gave to the military leadership in the South. Strategists envisaged it as a mini-Pentagon, a slimmed-down version of the US military headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac from Washington, DC. In Operation Junction City, Westmoreland was determined that the Communists would not be able to escape. First B-52s went in to knock out the VC .50-calibre anti-aircraft guns. Then the 503d Airborne made the first and only parachute assault in Vietnam. They were followed by 249 helicopters that deployed the equivalent of eight battalions to close the north end of the giant inverted horseshoe. Again, a hammer-and-anvil strategy would be employed, but this time the anvil would be armour. This resulted in ferocious counter-attacks by the VC, which even intense bombing, artillery support and gunships could not suppress. Some 3,235 tons of bombs and 366,000 artillery rounds were expended during Junction City. Even with the inflated body counts, this worked out at several tons of ordinance for each VC killed.

  Junction City unearthed what was assumed to be COSVN's public affairs office, complete with 120 reels of movie footage and the printing presses of the propaganda and indoctrination sections. However, COSVN itself proved more elusive. It seemed to flit from village to village, eluding the American net and escaping into Cambodia. A subsequent incursion into Cambodia did not locate it there either. Some began to believe that COSVN did not exist at all or, if it did, it was merely some faceless coordinating office in Hanoi.

  More free-fire zones were created. In June 1967, the 8,465 inhabitants of the Song Ve valley were told that they would have to leave the villages that their families had inhabited for centuries. They were moved out with their 1,149 animals while their crops were burned. That year, 12,750 were cleared in the 'Hamlet Evacuation System'. In Binh Dinh Province, the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) moved 129,202 from Binh Dinh province into 85 refugee camps, though an undetermined number ended up squatting along Route 1. Again US troops swept through the area uninhibited by the possibility of that the people they were killing might be civilians. Operations Pershing and Thayer II clocked up a body count of 1,757, though this was only achieved by the expenditure of 5,105 rounds of naval gunfire, 139,769 artillery rounds, and 171 B-52 sorties. Some 3,078 bombs were dropped containing 2.5 million pounds of high explosives, 500,000 pounds of napalm and 35,000 pounds of CS gas.

  This so-called 'Pacification Program' also aimed to move the civilians out from areas where the local population either supported or were intimidated by the guerrillas. Destroying crops was meant to deny supplies to the Vietcong. It also meant that the inhabitants that had been moved out could not return. The villagers were given food and medical attention but, to add insult to injury, the villagers were supposed to build the defences of their new 'defended' hamlets without payment. The move was particularly traumatic for the ancestor-worshipping Vietnamese who had to leave behind their graveyards and ancestral fields. The social institutions that flourished in the villages were destroyed and the villagers became resentful and uncooperative. This was no way to win their hearts and minds – which was the official policy. This mattered little to cynical GIs who remarked in words later attributed to Richard Nixon, 'If you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds soon follow'.

  Robert Komer, director of Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support, reckoned that 60 per cent of the countryside was under VC control. Indeed, an estimated 36,752 village officials and South Vietnamese civil servants were summarily executed by the Vietcong between 1957 and 1972. To counter this, Komer recommended setting up the Phoenix Program, a joint MACV-CIA operation to identify the estimated 70,000 members of the Vietcong infrastructure. Under the programme 17,000 VC sought amnesty and 28,000 were captured. In 1971, 20,000 had been killed, but the number increased sharply after that. Former CIA operative Frank Snepp said that, once the prisons were full, suspects were simply murdered by hit squads. There have been allegations that the Saigon government used the programme to eliminate political enemies. It has also been alleged that the Phoenix Program built up a profile of those likely to join the Vietcong – students, dispossessed peasants, those with VC in the family – and they were sought out and shot. William Colby, who took over the programme from Komer and later became director of the CIA, ordered that, 'If any American sees anyone being assassinated he's to object and he is to report it to me'. But this did little to stop the abuses. The problem was that the information gleaned on suspects came from unreliable sources: paid informants, victims of torture, and those trying to ingratiate themselves in the government. In the end it became an unchecked hit list.

  The indiscriminate use of US firepower drove more peasant farmers off the land. At any one time there were at least 1.2 million refugees within South Vietnam. This peaked at around 3.5 million. Refugees swelled the population of the cities where corruption was rife and broke down the social cohesion that was the best defence against Communist insurgence. Although some men were inducted into the Regional and Provincial Forces, the 'Ruff-Puffs', which formed Combined Action Platoons with the US Marines, the refugee population remained a fertile recruiting ground for the Vietcong.

  Even though it took a massive expenditure of ordinance for each VC killed, the US forces kept upping their firepower. They built fire-bases on the tops of hills, which puzzled the Vietnamese who assumed they were looking for gold. These firebases could rain down shells on the surrounding area. Artillery support could be devastatingly effective when the position of the enemy was known and relayed to the gunnery officers accurately. But the VC and NVA often melted away while this was being done or corrections were being made. If the Communists found themselves in real trouble, they would move in on the US positions so it was impossible to hit them without hitting US troops too. Artillery barrages were called in at the slightest excuse and caused tremendous damage. Shells could not discriminate between insurgents and friendly locals, who suffered a lot of 'collateral damage'. And US forces have traditionally had a problem with 'friendly fire': killing their own troops and those of their allies, rather than the enemy's.

  On 7 September 1967, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara announced that a huge fortified barrier sixty miles long was to be built two miles south of the DMZ in an attempt to stop Communist infiltration. It would be called the McNamara Line. A cratered area 700 yards wide, called the Trace, had already been bombed flat in preparation. This ran along the northern edge of 'Leatherneck Square', the area that the Marines had been told to hold against NVA infiltration from the North. Beyond it the Green Berets and the cidgees had tried to hold a line, but their camps had been overrun. These were retaken by the Marines who began stringing barbed wire, creosoting bunker timbers, and filling sandbags to fortify these forward bases.

  The NVA decided to smash the McNamara Line before it even got started. They attacked at the forward base at Con Thien, which was fourteen miles inland and two miles south of the DMZ at the northwest corner of Leatherneck Square. It overlooked one of the NVA major infiltration routes. If they could take it, the NVA would overlook the major US logistics depot at Dong Ha and the way would be open for Quang Tri province to be overrun by the 35,000 NVA troops massing to
the north of the DMZ.

  Although the DMZ was supposed to be inviolable, neither side respected its demilitarised status. The NVA infiltrated directly across it, and in July 1966, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff authorised the bombardment of the DMZ and limited incursions, provided that no public disclosures were made. It was feared that occupying the DMZ – or indeed, any part of North Vietnam or Laos – would invite the Chinese to intervene as they had done in the Korean War. From December 1966, it was permitted to return fire across the DMZ. Pre-emptive fire, including air strikes, was allowed from February 1967. Then in May, a sweep by the Marines and ARVN through the southern part of the DMZ, up to the Ben Hai river, cleared 13,000 people from the area to permit the unrestricted bombing of NVA positions.

  On 2 July two companies of Marines were sweeping around to the north of the Trace, well outside the DMZ, when A Company tripped two claymore mines, taking heavy casualties. B Company then came under heavy mortar fire, forcing them out into the open where they were hit with artillery and flame-throwers. The NVA swarmed forward to finish them off but were repelled by air attacks using napalm. The Communist artillery bombardment continued, though. Two of the tanks carrying dead Marines off the battlefield were damaged by mines. The LZ where the wounded were being mustered was hit by artillery and mortars, adding stretcher bearers and medics to the casualty list, and fifty of the wounded had to walk back to Con Thien. Meanwhile three more companies were committed to the action, only to be forced back to Con Thien at nightfall. Only twenty-seven of B Company walked out of the action.

  Con Thien then found itself under siege. Enemy mortars zeroed in on the LZs and the relief companies had to go without water for thirty-six hours. Three thousand NVA troops surrounded the firebases, but air strikes and artillery kept them at bay. More NVA troops engaged the Marines to the south of Con Thien and a huge force was spotted crossing the Ben Hai river. Marine positions to the east of Con Thien were hit by 1,500 rounds of artillery fire. The NVA 90th Regiment made costly 'human wave' attacks in an attempt to overrun their positions. Communist soldiers climbed over heaps of their own dead to get close enough to hurl grenades and fused blocks of TNT. An NVA bunker to the southwest of Con Thien was cleared which cut NVA activity to harassing fire and the planting of mines. By this time 159 Marines were dead and 345 wounded. The NVA body count stood at 1,290, though their bodies were so badly mutilated that their casualties had to be estimated from the number of water bottles left on the battlefield.

  The NVA then began lobbing shells over the DMZ using 152mm howitzers, which out-ranged any field artillery the Marines had. The tiny firebase of Con Thien perched on top of the Hill of Angels was only big enough to accommodate one reinforcement battalion. It took at least 200 rounds incoming a day during September: on 25 September alone, it took 1,200 rounds. Under this bombardment, the NVA made repeated attacks in force. On 4 September, Marines just a mile south of Con Thien had to be relieved by tanks. A similar action on 7 September left fourteen Marines dead. The NVA 812th Regiment, reportedly wearing USMC helmets and flak jackets, swept around to the southwest on 10 September, knocking out a Marine flame tank and a gun tank with rocket-propelled grenades. Thirty-four Marines were killed and 192 were wounded.

  The NVA moved against Con Thien itself on 13 September, but were driven back. Anticipating another attack, two more Marine battalions were moved up. For seven days, they suffered a furious pounding with mortars and artillery. When they finally went on the attack, they ran straight into the 90th NVA regiment and called in tanks, but the previous 96 hours of rain meant that the tanks could not reach them. Eventually the weather became so bad that the battle for Con Thien became an artillery battle. From 19 to 27 September, more than 3,000 mortar and artillery rounds hit the hill fort. The American response was one of the greatest concentrations of firepower in support of a single division in the history of warfare. US field units fired 12,577 rounds at enemy positions, with the 7th Fleet contributing 6,148 more. Eventually, NVA activity eased off, but the Marines continued to find new bunkers and trench complexes around the perimeter. The enemy barrage did not cease and the Marines began to call the Hill of Angels 'the meatgrinder'.

  With Con Thien more or less in American hands, the construction of the McNamara Line went ahead. Building a defensive barrier along the DMZ had been the idea of Robert Fischer at the Havard Law School. He had sent a memo outlining the concept to McNamara. General Westmoreland dismissed it. He disliked the idea of static defence on principle, as did Admiral Ulysses Grant Sharp Jr, commander of the Pacific Fleet, who did not like the plan either. But McNamara called together a group of top academic scientists known as the Jasons, after Jason and the Argonauts, who also took a mythological trip into uncharted territory, to assess its feasibility. They met in the summer of 1966 in the cloistered atmosphere of Dana Hall, a secluded prep school for girls in Wellesley, Massachusetts. The initial suggestion was a line 160 miles long and ten miles wide made of stretches of barbed wire and studded with mines, chemical weapons, and sensor devices, interspersed with huge free-fire zones that had been denuded of forest cover.

  The Jasons figured that a sixty-mile long fence could be built within a year. It would be protected by 'gravel mines', three-inches square, that would explode when they were stepped on or run over by a truck. Smaller 'button mines' the size of an aspirin would blow off a finger or a toe. Any explosion would be picked up by acoustic sensors, which would be monitored by patrol aircraft flying overhead who would drop cluster bombs, containing baseball-sized bomblets. The Jasons reckoned that 240 million gravel mines, 300 million button mines, and 120,000 cluster bombs a year would be needed. The cost: $1 billion.

  Unfortunately, no mines could be found that could tell the difference between a human being and a wild animal: Vietnam engagement reports are full of incidents where air strikes were called down on some hapless water-buffalo. But the boffins were not discouraged. They experimented with bed bugs which were known to be inactive until a human body came into the vicinity and they began to move excitedly at the prospect of a meal. Electrodes that would detect movement were to be glued to the backs of bed bugs. It is said that these wired-up bed bugs were actually spread over the DMZ, but either the bugs did not take to the jungle or the glue melted.

  The Jasons also came up with the idea for a pigeon-borne bomb that would explode when it landed on an enemy truck, though no-one had figured out how to train a pigeon to tell the difference between a Communist and a non-Communist truck. Then there was the sensor disguised as a pile of dog excrement, known as Turdsid. But this was quickly dropped after an Air Cav commander pointed out that, while a bear might shit in the woods, there was no evidence of dogs doing so in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Even Q, of James Bond fame, would have balked and the idea was quickly dropped.

  However, some ideas did work. The 'Daisy Cutter', a massive bomb that cut a huge swathe of destruction across a wide area and recently used in Afghanistan, was developed in Vietnam. Some of the acoustic monitors worked too. In 1970, a recording from one device was played for a Congressional Sub-Committee. Representatives heard a conversation in Vietnamese, followed by the sound of axes chopping down the tree on which the device had been snagged. Then there was a crash, followed by screams as the tree fell on the men below. But the McNamara Line as a whole did not work. It proved impossible to construct it properly under the mortar and artillery barrages of the NVA, and increased activity in the DMZ meant that Communist supply lines simply reverted to the Ho Chi Minh trail which ran through Laos, around the end of the McNamara Line. In 1968, when the Marine base at Khe Sanh just south of the McNamara Line came under siege, the idea was finally discredited.

  At Dak To in the Central Highlands, as at Con Thien, the fighting took on many of the characteristics of World War I. Battle raged over the muddy ridge of Hill 875 near the Lao-Cambodian border. On 19 November 1967, the 2nd Battalion of the 503rd Infantry of the 173rd Airborne Brigade headed up the western slope to annihilation. Of
their sixteen officers, eight were killed. The other eight were wounded. And of the battalion's thirteen medics, eleven were killed. The wounded huddled under a tree that had been blasted to the ground for more than fifty hours. Bloody ponchos kept the night chill off. Ten helicopters that attempted to medevac them out were disabled by enemy fire. Some drew comfort that at least an effort was being made to get them out. Others died when a 500-pound bomb intended for an NVA bunker hit their position. Forty-two died in that incident. More of the wounded perished from shock, dehydration, or just plain giving up.

  A machine gunner of 173rd Airborne 2nd Bn 503rd Inf with an M60, in readiness for the final assault on Hill 875, November 1967.

  When the 4th Battalion turned up to relieve them, they found a moonscape scattered with dead bodies. The following morning, the NVA began pounding them with 82mm mortars, often hitting men who had already been wounded. All the grunts could do was scuttle for cover when they heard the plop of a mortar dropping down the tube and dig their foxholes a bit deeper. But as the day wore on, foxhole after foxhole got hit. A platoon under First Lieutenant Bryan MacDonough from Fort Lee, Virginia, started with twenty-seven men on Sunday and was down to nine by midday on Tuesday. The NVA kept on coming, whatever casualties they took. Seven-hundred-and-fifty-pound bombs and napalm did nothing to deter them.

  By the afternoon of 22 November, a new LZ had been blasted in the hillside further down the slope. NVA mortars tried to hit it but, by the evening, 140 wounded had been medevaced out. At dusk, flamethrowers were brought in and they began to clear the enemy bunkers. By morning the 4th Battalion had made it to the ridgeline only to be thrown back that afternoon. They finally secured Hill 875 the following day, Thanksgiving, while the NVA fell back into Cambodia.

  Although things were hotting up on the battlefield throughout 1967, efforts were still being made to make peace. In January, North Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Van Dong led to international speculation that the Communists might be softening their position, though seven days later Ho Chi Minh said that Hanoi's former four-point plan for peace could now be reduced to one point: the United States should quit Vietnam. Nevertheless, the British put forward a fresh plan for a peace conference. This was rejected by Hanoi. Fresh international controversy was caused when UN Secretary General U Thant poured scorn on the idea that South Vietnam was vital to western security. However, in his State of the Union address, President Johnson promised that the US would 'stand firm in Vietnam' even though America would face 'more cost, more loss, and more agony'. On a goodwill tour of New Zealand, Premier Ky was described as a 'murderer' and a 'miserable little butcher' by the leader of the Labor opposition, Arthur Caldwell. Meanwhile in the US, Senator William Fulbright published the influential book The Arrogance of Power, criticising American foreign policy and advocating face-to-face talks between the US and the Vietcong. Letters were exchanged between Johnson and Ho Chi Minh, but Johnson dismissed peace feelers from Hanoi, saying that there were no 'serious indications that the other side is ready to stop the war'. Soon after, North Vietnam rejected Secretary of State Dean Rusk's suggestion that they scale down their military activities in return for a halt in the bombing campaign. In February, Congress passed a bill authorising the expenditure of another $4.5 billion on the war and $700 million in aid was given to South Vietnam, though on 12 November, 1967, The New York Times reported that due to corruption and blackmarketeering in Saigon 40 per cent of US aid failed to reach its destination. Senator Fulbright, chairman of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee, attacked Johnson's broad interpretation of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, saying that Johnson had no mandate to wage war on the present scale. Meanwhile the US revealed that Moscow and Peking had reached an agreement to supply North Vietnam. However, China denounced the Soviet leaders as 'a pack of traitors' and 'number one accomplices to the US gangsters'. The Chinese had fallen out with the Soviets in 1963 and in 1967 were in the middle of their 'Cultural Revolution'. They repeatedly accused the USSR of colluding with the US and 'resorting to dirty tricks with the aim of compelling the Vietnamese people to lay down their arms and give up the struggle'. Dean Rusk invoked the spectre of the 'yellow peril', but it was the Soviets rather than the Chinese who continued to support the North Vietnamese, pouring hundreds of millions of roubles' worth of food, weapons, and economic aid into the country.