In March of 1970, Cambodian Marshal Lon Nol led a pro-Western coup, supposedly engineered by American CIA operatives and military advisors, and ousted Cambodia’s recognized leader, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who then fled to Paris and openly accused the United States of his ouster. The coup created the Khmer Republic, led by Lon Nol.
In less than a month, United States and South Vietnamese forces launched a clearing operation into the Parrot’s Beak and other areas of Cambodia that served as sanctuaries for North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces. The operation also helped to bolster Lon Nol’s regime against the Khmer Communists, who became known as the Khmer Rouge.
As American air and ground forces swept through Cambodia during April of 1970, President Richard M. Nixon, when confronted with press reports of the United States-led aerial bombing and ground combat operations there, addressed the issue in a nationally televised speech. President Nixon directly stated that the United States had no advisors on the ground in Cambodia, had no American military forces involved in any actions in Cambodia, and had no American military air assets supporting any action in Cambodia. He said, “Cambodia is the Nixon Doctrine in its purest form.”
President Nixon’s blatant lie set off a congressional firestorm and did more to cripple assistance in South Vietnam and Cambodia than anything else.
For the next three years, United States military air assets attacked the Cambodian links on the Ho Chi Minh Trail and in Viet Cong and North Vietnamese refuges, and executed air strikes and bombing missions on the Khmer Rouge in support of the Lon Nol, Khmer Republic forces.
Responding to the overthrow of Prince Sihanouk and the United States presence in Cambodia, the North Vietnamese (despite long-standing differences based on tribal and social conflicts) began significant support of the more than sixty-thousand-strong Khmer Rouge. This support included training cadres of Cambodian Communists at facilities in North Vietnam and providing a conduit and flow of military supplies and weapons from China and the Soviet Union.
During this same period, and despite an active South Vietnamese and United States presence, the Khmer Republic army remained poorly equipped and badly lacked formal military training. Called the FANK (Force Armee Nationale Khmer), the Cambodian Republic army did, however, manage to hold the Communist guerrillas at bay, in large part due to continued American air support.
Fighting generally took place during the dry season, the months from early January to mid June, after which monsoon torrents resumed and flooded much of the region for the remainder of the year. With each dry season, the Communists slowly began to gain more and more control of the rivers and roadways leading to Cambodia’s capital city, Phnom Penh.
Given the military investment in Cambodia, its impact on the war in South Vietnam, and the Communist gains made in the Khmer Republic despite American military support, in April of 1973, the United States Congress sent a fact-finding team to Cambodia to examine the situation. James G. Lowenstein and Richard M. Moose headed the team and issued the report from the mission to Missouri Senator Stuart Symington, who chaired the Subcommittee on US Security Agreements and Commitments Abroad.
Lowenstein and Moose reported that to offset Communist guerrillas’ increasing successes in gaining control of key territory, the United States had increased its air support of Cambodian republic forces to ensure the survival of the Khmer Republic. The report cited that the fighting would continue indefinitely since the Khmer Rouge and their North Vietnamese, Soviet Union, and Chinese Communist allies were clearly not interested in any cease-fire options. The report further stated that even if the Communists might agree to a cease-fire, it would no doubt hinge on the condition that the United States stop all of its support to Cambodia, similar to the stipulations laid out in the Paris Peace Accords. The report concluded that without American support the Cambodian republic could not last very long.
Most significantly, once Cambodia fell, then South Vietnam would face its worst nightmare: North Vietnamese Army forces poised on its western flank with no American air support.
The Lowenstein and Moose report virtually laid out a set of no-win options for Congress. Continued support of Cambodia would potentially mire the United States in another war much like the one in South Vietnam. The alternative literally gave away Southeast Asia to the Communists.
On June 29, 1973, two months after Lowenstein and Moose’s report, Congress placed a rider on the 1974 budget authorization bill that required a halt to all combat air operations in Southeast Asia. Idaho Democrat Senator Frank F. Church and New Jersey Republican Senator Clifford P. Case authored this amendment, which bore their names.
To seal out all American involvement in any combat in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, Congress passed yet another amendment. This measure, a shirttail rider attached to the December 1973 foreign aid bill, forbade any funding of any military operations anywhere in Southeast Asia.
Senator Church and other members of Congress were so angered by President Nixon openly lying about United States military involvementin Cambodia that they immediately took action to begin cutting funding for the war.
The first volley in Congress came in 1970 when Senator Church and Kentucky Republican Senator John Sherman Cooper authored a bill that cut off funding of all military activity in Southeast Asia. That measure narrowly failed in its original form. However, on December 29, 1970, as a shirttail amendment to the defense authorization bill, a watered-down version of the measure finally passed. That version of the amendment only barred the introduction of United States ground forces in Laos and Thailand.
“NO MATTER WHAT happens in Cambodia or South Vietnam,” Lee said, crunching a mouthful of ice as he spoke, “we have several mandates passed by both houses of Congress and signed into law by the President that say we can only watch while Southeast Asia goes down the tubes. We can land no ground forces. We can send no air support. We can provide no military advisors nor any military aid.”
“So we just let all that we fought for, everything that more than fifty-six thousand Americans died for, all just float down the binjo ditch?” Carl Ebert said. “We’re doing nothing but running a fucking Chinese fire drill.”
“Why do you think I get so frustrated when I hear guys like Staff Sergeant Carr chomping around the hootch, telling you guys to get your pack straps tightened up because we are going back to war?” Shelton said. “Its just hot air and sparklers. We’re pushing the envelope even if we end up only going back to evacuate.”
“So, Skipper,” Tingley said, “what happens if we go to get our people out and the bad guys start shooting at us?”
“Good question,” the captain said. “According to what we can and cannot do, we are supposed to only act as humanitarian relief, non-combatants.”
“So, when Gunny Thurman came back from his briefing today and said that the forecast casualty rate for First Battalion, Fourth Marines, if they lead our landing forces back into South Vietnam for combat operations, would be 90 percent, what was that all about?” Tingley blurted.
Jim Lee sucked on an ice cube and pretended to not hear.
Bob Neeley blinked at the captain.
Jerry Shelton drank more beer, said nothing, and looked squarely and coldly at Steve Tingley.
Carl Ebert spread a white, toothy smile beneath his black moustache and then slapped his hand over his mouth and laughed.
“Now we gotta kill ya,” Ebert said in his thick New Orleans drawl.
PLEIKU, CENTRAL HIGHLANDS, SOUTH VIETNAM
“WHERE CAN THEY be? Surely they did not leave without allowing me to tell them goodbye?” Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Manh Tuan frantically asked himself as he yanked hard on the parking-brake handle, slamming his car to a stop in the driveway of his home, and saw no one there. Obviously, his wife and sons had already joined the hundreds of other frightened civilians who had begun crowding the streets of Pleiku in a panicked exodus upon a heretofore abandoned roadway leading them toward the coast, and hopefully to safety.
The
South Vietnamese Army artillery commander ran through the front entrance of his house, letting the screen door slam, and found his suitcase and a duffel bag already packed and lying on the bed for him. His eyes shifted through the bedroom, and then he took a quick look in the bathroom to be sure that his wife had forgotten nothing vital when she packed his bags. Then, in the kitchen, he looked in the refrigerator and found a six-pack of colas in cans and shoved it under his arm, holding his suitcase in one hand and his duffel bag in the other.
Tuan did not bother to shut his front door or even switch off the kitchen light, which he left burning. No need. In a matter of hours, no more than a day at the most, he felt certain that the Communists would take possession of everything. His house, his furniture, his stereo system—they would take everything, and he would only have what he could carry with him.
The tall, stately officer had called his wife on the telephone the moment that he had departed the commanding general’s briefing in which Major General Pham Van Phu dictated his orders to redeploy the entire II Army Corps to Nha Trang and the coastal lowlands and from there to retake Ban Me Thuot. Tuan had sat in disbelief, as did many of the other officers, while the general told them that they would load all the weapons and ammunition that their trucks and trailers could carry, and that they would evacuate their forces and families from Pleiku and Kontum to the coastal plains, where they could regroup and counterattack the Communists.
“Our regiment has fifty trucks that can pull artillery pieces,” Tuan had whispered to the colonel seated by him. “However, our regiment has more than 150 howitzers, accompanying spare parts, and ammunition that I estimate could support our defenses here for three months. This means that we must abandon fully two-thirds of our weapons and an even greater proportion of our stockpiled munitions and supplies. We have organized our forces for defensive and offensive operations based on our fixed garrison and stockpiles remaining here. We do not have the logistical strength to redeploy our entire force! How can we simply leave so much of our materiel behind? What is going on?”
“We are cutting and running from the battle,” the colonel had whispered back to Tuan.
“What of our cache of weapons and supplies that we cannot carry with us?” Tuan asked.
“Blow them in place,” the colonel had suggested, “if you want to take the time to risk capture by doing such a thing. However, I think that we should be with our units, loading our trucks and running, rather than sitting here at this very moment, listening to this fool talk nonsense. If we can make it to Nha Trang, I intend to keep traveling south, to Saigon, where I will buy myself and my family airplane tickets to Australia or America.”
Tuan slammed the palms of his hands against his car’s steering wheel as he started the engine. He screamed in frustration and began to sob. Tears streamed from his eyes as he desperately wished that he had gotten home in time to say good-bye to his family.
Now, he could only return to his artillery battery and get his men and machinery on the road to Nha Trang. Already, the sun stood straight overhead in the sky, and he knew that he had only a matter of hours to complete everything and join the convoy eastward.
PHAM VAN PHU had already sent his family to Saigon when he briefed his staff about their redeployment a day ago. He had called his kinfolk from Nha Trang and had told them to take all their money and what things of value that they could carry and to leave nothing precious to them behind, but that above all else, to depart Pleiku with all haste. He had even told them to consider flying to America for a vacation, until matters became resolved in South Vietnam.
Even before he had returned to Pleiku to effect the withdrawal, redeployment of forces, and what he considered the suicidal attempt to retake Ban Me Thuot, Pham Van Phu had begun trying to formulate a plan that promised at least a degree of success.
Communist forces had fully blocked and now controlled the two best thoroughfares leading from the Central Highlands: Highway 14, which extended southward from Pleiku and intersected with Highway 21 just northeast of Ban Me Thuot, which led eastward to Nha Trang, and Highway 19, which extended due east from Pleiku, traveling over the An Khe Pass, where Phu recalled the Viet Minh had decimated the French in 1954 in a virtual massacre there.
Phu had studied reconnaissance photographs of the roadways leading from Kontum and Pleiku and found that the North Vietnamese had apparently overlooked one road, the abandoned Interprovincial Highway 7B. Although still paved in a few stretches near Pleiku, the old road had now decayed mostly to rocks and dirt. II Army Corps engineers had informed the general that all of the bridges on the route had fallen in disrepair, rendering nearly all of them unsafe for anything except bicycles and foot traffic, and in several locations the bridges had even collapsed.
“We can ford the rivers, and our heavy equipment can cut new pathways down the embankments,” Phu had told his staff, after he had decided to use the dilapidated roadway and now briefed them of his plan.
“The Communist forces will not look for us on Highway 7-Bravo,” he had said, correctly. “With the bridges in disrepair, and many even missing, we can move with surprise and catch the enemy not looking. Our forces can cross the 135 miles to Nha Trang in one day’s time if all goes well. Two or even three days, encountering a few difficulties.”
“General, sir,” Tran Van Cam, the one-star general who headed Pham Van Phu’s operations staff, said in a low voice while rising to his feet. “What about the mines?”
“What about them?” Pham Van Phu said, taken somewhat off guard.
“Once our traffic succeeds getting past these bridges, rivers, and gullies, and enters the coastal plains,” General Cam said softly, “they will find that the enemy has heavily mined Interprovincial Highway 7-Bravo. Clearing those mines will take time and will bring our traffic to a halt.”
“Put armored vehicles with mine plows on them at the lead,” General Phu told his deputy for operations. “Honestly, sir, we have no other route available with even a fraction of the promise for any degree of success that we have with Highway 7-Bravo.”
“You make a valid point, sir. However, I believe you have an overly optimistic timetable. It will take one or two days simply to mount our forces and several more to transit the highway, given the difficulties that I anticipate,” General Cam said and returned to his seat.
“To help assure that we deploy with an element of surprise,” Pham Van Phu continued, “I have ordered our regional and popular forces commanders to have their units screen our departure. They will begin maneuvers down Highway 14, drawing the enemy’s attention away from us. Hopefully, our column can then travel a reasonable distance before the North Vietnamese command realizes our movement. If we move quickly, we can perhaps enter the coastal lowlands before the enemy can begin to ambush our forces.”
With the afternoon sun streaming through his office window, Pham Van Phu looked at the dull green UH-1N Huey helicopter sitting on his command headquarters lawn, its blade tethered to its nose, and the sergeant wearing the helmet covered with reflective tape standing by the aircraft’s side door. A red placard displaying two white stars sat in its carrier by the pilot’s door. Phu’s aide-de-camp had already loaded the general’s two large canvas valises and his hanging suit bag aboard the chopper.
As General Phu had instructed the aide, he had also taken off the baggage belonging to Chief of Staff Colonel Le Khac Ly and II Army Corps Deputy for Operations Brigadier General Tran Van Cam. The two senior officers’ belongings sat ominously on the lawn a few yards away from the helicopter.
“I thought we would fly out on the same aircraft, General Phu, sir,” Colonel Ly said, seeing the suitcases piled together.
“Change of plans, Colonel,” Pham Van Phu said, taking his briefcase in hand and walking from behind his desk. “Since General Tat is so new in command, you will remain with him to assist in effecting the withdrawal from Pleiku and Kontum.”
“Sir, all members of your staff have departed,” Brigadier General Tran
Van Cam said. “Your aide-de-camp has apparently removed my baggage from your helicopter too.”
“Yes, General Cam,” Phu said, walking to the door and handing his briefcase to his aide. “Given the importance of retaking Ban Me Thuot, I have decided that your operational expertise will serve the command much better from the front line. You will keep me informed.
“Now, gentlemen, time is of the essence, and I must get started to Nha Trang. We will plan to retake Ban Me Thuot from there.”
Chapter 8
CHEO REO
CENTRAL HIGHLANDS—TUESDAY, MARCH 18, 1975
THICK BILLOWS OF dust, ground from the rocks and soil that covered Interprovincial Highway 7B, pulverized flour-fine and churned into the air by the slowly rolling wheels of thousands of trucks and cars and bicycles and carts, driven and pushed by more than 160,000 people fleeing Pleiku and Kontum, who intermingled with the 60,000-man mass of retreating forces of the II Army Corps, filled the sky. The dull orange pall rose two hundred feet high and lay more than fifty miles long. It drifted far above the Central Highland’s green hills and settled a filthy shroud on everything beneath the acrid plume. This mantle of engine exhaust and dirt rolled and boiled above the entire length of the elephantine exodus of newly begotten refugees who jam-packed the roadway from the intersection of Highway 14, on the eastern outskirts of Pleiku, all the way to Cheo Reo, the capital of Phu Bon Province. Like a red hailing flag, the prominence of the cloud signaled the migration of this massive mob of a quarter-million souls to anyone who might glance in its direction.
Goodnight Saigon Page 15