by Ian Slater
To further dissuade the PLA, the planes on another run dropped napalm pods a hundred yards in from the gully on the PLA side. The screams of those caught in the swath of burning gasoline attested to the pilots’ having guessed right that the next wave of PLA assault troops had been assembling not far from the gully’s edge. The hesitation this caused the Chinese, along with the fact that much of the underbrush had been set aflame, thus denying troops cover close to the gully, saved the USVUN force, which had pulled back after several units found themselves badly mauled and their positions untenable, though in numbers lost the Chinese had suffered considerably more than the USVUN.
For Douglas Freeman, the retreat was a decision he abhorred. His intuitive reaction was to hold ground and take the gully while TACAIR kept the Chinese pinned down with napalm and rocket fire. But he was too good a soldier to pretend he could hold the gully against the PLA if he had no backup and/or no support from the flanks. He’d trusted the Vietnamese to fight if they were ordered by General Vinh to hold. But it was systematically built into the Communist cadre, as it had been in the PLA by Mao Zedong in his Little Red Book, to attack only when one had overwhelming strength, to withdraw when the odds of winning dropped. You struck where you thought the enemy was weakest, but withdrew once the maximum amount of damage had been achieved and before the enemy could rally in force against you. Though he knew this tactic well enough, Freeman hoped that Vinh’s troops would stay and assist his own men in securing and holding the gully while more USVUN troops could be brought up on the Lang Ro-Lang Son road.
Vinh disagreed. “No,” he explained through the interpreter, “the Chinese main force would come south down the Lang Son-Lang Ro road, so it would be unwise to withdraw USVUN troops from there to come here. It is vital,” he continued, “for the Chinese to take the road if they wish to move supplies quickly to feed the head of their snake.”
Major Cline asked whether he might not have a word with General Freeman.
“What is it, Major?”
“Sir, with all due respect, we’ll get nowhere if you argue with Vinh, particularly in front of his political commissars. He’ll lose face and then he won’t agree to anything.”
“Of course,” Freeman said, nodding, beaming at Vinh and his advisers. “I have full confidence in the fighting ability of the Republic of Vietnam’s armies—” He deliberately left out the Socialist before Republic. “—they’ve proved themselves in battle against us many times.” He paused, then smiled politely. “All I want to be sure of is that if we commit ourselves to an overall strategy, we stick with it till we have a touchdown.”
Vinh and the others were unsure about this term, and the translator had to spend some time imitating the huddle, et cetera. “Ah!” Vinh finally said, nodding and smiling. “Football.”
“Right,” Freeman said. “No good agreeing in the huddle, then having some joker suddenly decide it’s not for him — ruin the whole goddamn play. Right?”
There was a huddle of Vietnamese advisers while Freeman explained softly to Cline, “Point is, we’ve got to have the will to stand ground and use it as a launch pad from which to direct our heavy stuff — arty and TACAIR. For that I need those around me to hold the goddamn perimeter and not suddenly decide to retreat ‘cause we’re taking heavy fire. I meant what I said, Major. These Vietnamese troops are first-rate, but this constant hit-and-run business could suddenly leave me with a flank in name only.”
“We agree,” General Vinh said in heavily accented English, “but…”
Here the interpreter took over. “The general,” he told Freeman, “agrees but wishes to point out that what the Americans might think is a good strategic move, the Vietnamese might see as a simple tactical move in a local battle and therefore wish to break off if casualties are too high.”
Freeman could have spit wood chips. “Please tell the general that he and I must first agree on the overall strategic plan. My strategy is simply this — to pulverize the border area around Lang Son and Dong Dang by bombing, and then to roll forward along the road with arty until we clear the area once and for all and reestablish the correct political line between the two countries.
“Christ,” Freeman said in an aside to Cline, “I’m sounding like one of their damn commissars!”
The interpreter begged the general’s pardon, but what was the meaning of this word “arty”?
“Artillery!” Freeman replied. “Pound the area flat— reestablish a cordon sanitaire — hopefully secure a DMZ.”
Vinh nodded agreement but asked whether the other USVUN forces would agree to it or not, given what, in time, would have to be their countries’ postwar relationships with China.
Freeman was getting annoyed with what he perceived to be the Vietnamese preoccupation with minor players, and he told the translator straight, “You tell General Vinh that there are really only three players on this field: his forces, mine, and the PLA.”
“You have no respect for your allies?” Vinh asked.
“I have respect,” Freeman replied honestly, “but I won’t always have time to consult with my South Korean allies or the Japanese, for example. I know what I can expect from the British and Australian troops. Besides, their numbers aren’t high and they’re integrated with my command.”
Vinh understood Freeman’s underlying concern and brought the conversation to an end by saying, “I am not against nonconsensual decisions or massed fixed battles if they strategically make sense.”
Freeman smiled. “You mean the battle for Khe Sanh?” The Americans had dug in, in and around the airstrip, ringed as it was by Vietnamese artillery, and aided and abetted by U.S. airpower, had won by breaking the siege.
“No,” Vinh said without a smile. “I meant Dien Bien Phu.”
Vinh extended his hand, and Freeman, a sardonic look on his face, as if to say, You old fox, took it in the spirit it was offered.
Vinh bowed and said, “We will try to agree in the ‘huddle.’ A consensus. Yes?”
“Right,” Freeman said, thinking that Vinh would make a hell of an adversary.
Press aide Boyd looked, puzzled, at Major Cline. Boyd had noticed that this general agreement to work together on one plan rather than two had somehow been sealed by the mention of this Dien Bien Phu.
“Who’s this Phu anyway?” Boyd asked Cline.
“You dork,” Cline said good-naturedly. “Don’t you know any history? It’s a place—a valley ‘bout 230 miles west of us — near the border of Laos. During the French-Indochina War in ‘fifty-four, French were always bitching about the Viet Minh’s hit-and-run tactics, never being able to fight a one-place pitched battle with them. Well, the Viet Minh decided on just such a battle, and General Giap ringed twelve French battalions with more than thirty of his own. Viet Minh had brought in artillery — and I’m talking 105mm and triple A — a lot of it piece by piece on their backs through the jungle. French commander called for reinforcements, and six battalions of paratroops were flown in. The French were dug in, and the Viet Minh dug miles of tunnels around the French firebase. Often they came right up to the wire, fired a burst, then disappeared before the French could get a bead on them. French were finally overrun. Over twelve thousand Frenchmen were killed or taken POW. Absolute disaster. Put an end to all the crap about the Vietnamese not being able to win a set-piece battle.”
“What’d it cost the Vietnamese?” Boyd asked.
“Well over twenty thousand. Some on both sides were never found — blown to bits by the artillery.” Cline paused, glanced at Vinh and Freeman and explained to Boyd, “That’s why old Vinh mentioned Dien Bien Phu. He was telling Freeman that he can play it either way — hit-and-run or dig in. He’s flexible.”
“Well,” Boyd said, adopting an air of authority beyond his years, “they’d better agree on something pretty soon. All we’ve been doing so far is falling back.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
It was difficult for reporter Marte Price to know who was more surprised by the
Chinese breakthrough south of Lang Son: General Vinh or Freeman. Both commanders were well practiced in their ability to keep their innermost thoughts to themselves, and while Freeman was less inhibited about acknowledging defeat to a press conference than was the Vietnamese general, he, like Vinh, was not about to cause a plummeting morale in the U.S.-led U.N. forces.
Vinh, a veteran of the Chinese- Vietnam border clash in February of 1979, during which the PLA suffered more than 25,000 casualties in just three weeks of fighting, did say, however, that the PLA advance was “somewhat unexpected” by Hanoi, given what he described as the “corruption.” Beyond that he had nothing to say to either Marte Price, the CNN reporter, or to any of the other news correspondents who, under pressure from the U.N. to allow a larger press pool, were now flocking into Hanoi. Given General Vinh’s reluctance to elaborate any further, several reporters turned to Freeman to explain the Vietnamese general’s terse charge of “corruption.”
“Several years ago, in 1979 to be exact,” Freeman answered, “the Republic of Vietnam defeated the PLA in a border war. The Chinese premier, and thus the commander in chief of the PLA — which includes, by the way, the Chinese navy and air force — told the PLA that it had better get leaner and meaner. He reduced the force size by almost a million— that still left him with plenty — and he told the PLA chiefs of staff that if they wanted to upgrade their capability, they’d have to find the extra money themselves.”
“You mean,” an obviously surprised British reporter asked, “that the Chinese generals were told to go into business?”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Freeman answered. “It’s long been practice for many of the PLA armies to grow most of their food, but now they were being told to get busy making whatever would bring in hard cash.” Freeman paused. “And it wasn’t only growing and selling excess vegetables on the open market that they got involved in.”
Freeman had anticipated a knowing chuckle or at least a nod from some of the more senior correspondents, but none came, and he realized, from the frantic scribbling in his audience, that for many in the press pool this background information he was giving was something new. For a fleeting second or two Freeman had an uncharacteristic moment of anxiety as he wondered whether he was revealing information he’d gotten from classified intelligence sources. It was a professional hazard. Then, just as quickly, he realized that the information he was giving out was the result of his own “homework,” and that he wasn’t revealing anything the Pentagon had on its secret list.
“Problem was,” he continued, “that many of the PLA armies, particularly those who, with the government’s blessing, got involved with the making and selling of arms to make money, also got involved with a lot of kickbacks and the like. From privates who were making ten times as much money as an ordinary private’s pay to officers who were getting brown envelopes under the table from middlemen in the arms sale business, there was one hell of a lot of corruption.”
The CNN reporter had his hand up. “General, you mean that because of this so-called corruption, you underestimated the PLA’s ability in this war. Thought they’d gone soft?”
“Soft?” Freeman’s tone could barely conceal his anger. This son of a bitch was trying to ambush him. If he said no, he hadn’t thought the PLA had gone soft, his spiel about corruption wouldn’t be believed, but if he said yes, the PLA had gone soft, then the next question from the monkey gallery would be, Well, if the PLA has lost its combat readiness, General, what are your troops doing retreating south from Lang Son?
“I never said the PLA was soft — nor did General Vinh. Why, the PLA’s one of the toughest outfits in the world. Their training is hard, their morale is high, and they keep coming at you — ask anybody who fought in Korea. No, they’re sure as hell not soft! What I think my distinguished colleague had in mind in referring to corruption was that the PLA soldier has been corrupted politically by a lot of propaganda about his neighbors to the south — that their political leadership is ‘corrupt.’ “
Freeman pulled out his retractable pen-sized pointer and moved it in a huge semicircle, starting from the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, going west, north up to Russia and then east to the Siberian republic. “In the Spratlys, Vietnam, Burma, India, Tibet, Russia, all the way to—” He almost said, “Black Dragon River,” the northern border between Siberia and China, but Black Dragon was the Chinese name, and instead he used the Siberian name. “—all the way to the Amur River and to Vladivostok, the Chinese have been fighting neighbors for years. Now we’ve had enough, and we won’t put up with it anymore.”
“Who’s we. General?” the CNN reporter asked in his follow-up question.
“We are the United Nations.” Cunning bastard, Freeman thought, but at least he’d got them off their damn fixation with Vinh’s remark about corruption.
Press officer Boyd and Major Cline were likewise impressed, and after the press conference congratulated the general on his adroit handling of what could have been a loss of face, for Vinh.
“General, sir,” Boyd inquired, “why did the Chinese manage to push us back down the Lang Son road?”
Freeman telescoped the long pointer back into its pen’s sheath, simultaneously looking about him to make sure no reporters were within hearing range. “Because, Captain,” he answered, “we got the shit kicked out of us. Because General Vinh’s boys, tough as they are, like our boys, haven’t been in a major battle for years. For them it’s been since 1979—not counting the naval battle they had over one of the Spratlys in ‘eighty-eight and again in ‘ninety-two. Meanwhile, the Chinese have been keeping in practice in Tibet and all their other border disputes. But don’t worry. Second Army’ll be up to combat strength very soon, and then my boys’ll kick those Chinese asses back across the border beyond Dong Dang where they belong.”
One of the reporters, a Frenchman, Pierre LaSalle, now well back in the room, couldn’t suppress a smile. For a few American dollars in Manila on a stopover en route to Hanoi, he’d bought a pickup mike, one of those that advertisers boast can capture a whisper from thirty feet away, and he had Freeman’s answer to Boyd on tape.
The Frenchman, who had always resented American presence in Indochina after the French had lost it all at Dien Bien Phu in ‘54, didn’t want a French paper to have the tape. They could easily trace it back to him. No, he thought, the North American market would be best. The only problem for LaSalle was how long he should wait. It would be nice to get ahold of that photo the American woman, Price, was said to have taken of Freeman. No one could tell him exactly what the photo was, but it was rumored to be pretty embarrassing for the American general.
* * *
The next explosion that Mellin, Murphy, and the other prisoners heard on the island was followed at dawn by the agonized howl of a mobile claw crane, its tracks in several inches of water, its long neck stretched out beyond the edge of the partially submerged reef. Its claw brought up huge lumps of coral that had been blasted out by underwater dynamite charges, then swung inland and deposited the coral and sea bottom mud on a pile on part of the reef that was now submerged beneath a few inches of water in the high tide.
Dozens of variegated fish — grouper and red snapper among them — some stunned, some dead, a few sharks and hawksbill turtles as well, lay floating on the sea’s surface. Several PLA soldiers who, apart from thongs on their feet, were stripped naked — despite the presence of three women among the thirty POWs — were wading out to gather up the fish, one soldier carrying an AK-47 over his head to make sure of the sharks. Quietly, Mellin, his temples still pounding from the headache he’d suffered as a result of a PLA guard hitting him with the rifle butt the day before, nudged the Australian. “See all the heaps of coral they’ve dredged up?”
Murphy was looking to the west. “No,” Mellin told him. “Other way — east of us.” When Murphy saw them, he could also see a line of what he thought might be prisoners, all clad in peasant-style black pajamas, passing baskets of cora
l from one of the heaps along the line, several of the black pajamas emptying the broken coral on a part of the reef covered in a few inches of water. The mud, or rather sea bottom ooze, was being carted away by another line of black pajamas to one main heap a few hundred yards inland, amid the scrubby and stunted bushes.
“How big d’you reckon?” Mellin asked. “The island?”
Mike Murphy shrugged and a guard saw it. “ ‘Bout half a mile long, maybe less, five hundred yards wide.”
“Up shut!” shouted the soldier.
Murphy saluted the guard. “Sorry, shithead.”
“Jesus,” Mellin murmured, looking away from the guards. “For Chrissake, shut up, Mike.” But Upshut seemed impressed by Murphy’s elaborate show of obedience and the snappy salute.
Now Mellin could see several pairs of the black pajama figures leaning, straining forward like beasts of burden, pulling cement rollers behind them over the coral that had been spread out over the tidal pools.
Upshut and his cohort were looking away from Mellin, Murphy, and the dozen or so other prisoners in their charge when Mellin heard a soft and distinctly British woman’s voice — one of the other rig prisoners — whispering to them to be careful, that Upshut understood more English than the American or Australian realized.
Mellin checked out the guards. They were talking to one another at about a hundred decibels, pointing at the fish dinner provided by the latest explosion. It was the Englishwoman doing the translating.
“You know a lot of Chinese?” Mellin asked the woman.
“I speak Mandarin, a little Cantonese,” she said. “I was radio operator on Chical 3.”