Land mines were used by all sides during the Vietnam War and caused significant casualties. In 1965 alone, more than one-third of U.S. Marine Corps casualties were caused by mines and explosive booby traps. A modern land mine is a concealed explosive device emplaced under, on, or even above the ground to kill or wound enemy troops, or destroy or disable vehicles.

The land mines of the Vietnam era were triggered by direct contact or command-detonated by wire. The most common contact triggers were pressure or pull (tripwire). Anti-personnel mines used a combination of blast and fragmentation effects. Most anti-vehicular mines used blast effect. Land mines are most effectively used in fixed defenses or for “area denial.” Rather than serving as a barrier to enemy movement, the purpose of a defensive minefield is to disrupt and slow an enemy’s advance and channelize him into pre-planned fields of fire and kill-zones.  

Why Land Mines?

Land mines were used by both sides in contested and remote areas. The U.S. deployed millions of air-dropped small anti-personnel “button mines” as part of the McNamara Line strategy to deter NVA infiltration into South Vietnam from North Vietnam and Laos. The explosive charge in the button mines decomposed quickly. Only slightly more effective were the BLU-43/B and BLU-44/B “Dragontooth” mines. The VC made extensive use of anti-personnel mines and booby traps in likely American/ARVN assembly areas, high ground, hedgerows, tree lines, shady areas, trail junctions, and fence lines and gates.

The VC normally did not have enough material to mine an entire fence line. U.S. troops quickly learned to bypass the gates and batter down the fence at some distance from the gate. Yet all too often a later patrol would assume that an already battered-down section of the fence was clear.

The VC, however, were highly disciplined about keeping their mines under surveillance. As soon as one patrol passed through a cleared area, the VC would move in and mine the gap. The VC were methodical about marking their mines so that their troops or local villagers would not walk into them. The markers were cleverly concealed, but known to locals. American and South Vietnamese patrols generally tried to secure cooperation of one or more locals before initiating an area sweep. That was not easy. Villagers might be VC sympathizers or intimidated by other sympathizers who would hold them accountable later.  

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Types of Land Mines

Command-detonated anti-personnel directional mines were widely used. The U.S. M-18 “Claymore” mine blasted 700 steel balls in a 60-degree arc, 6-feet high, out to a range of about 150 feet. The Claymore was triggered by an electrical blasting cap via a wire with a hand generator.

The VC used any Claymore they captured. The VC and NVA were also supplied with the Chinese-made DH-10 Directional Mine, known as the “ChiCom Claymore.” Crudely made but larger and more powerful than the U.S. M-18, it was devastatingly effective when emplaced in a tree, pointed down a jungle trail. The VC also used the DH-10 to mine anticipated helicopter landing zones.  

The standard U.S. anti-personnel mines were the M-14 and M-16. Called the “Toe Popper,” the M-14 was a pressure-triggered blast mine with a relatively small charge. The M-16 was a fragmentation mine designed after the World War II German S-mine, called a “Bouncing Betty.” When triggered, either by stepping on one of the exposed pressure prongs or pulling a tripwire, a short delay fuze detonated a secondary charge which blew the main body of the mine 5 to 6 feet into the air. A second, slightly longer-delayed fuze then detonated the main charge, spraying fragmentation out to 25 meters.  

An Enduring Menace

Anti-vehicular mines were used to destroy or disable trucks, armored personnel carriers, and sometimes tanks. They were either pressure- or command-detonated by wire. Road-clearing became an almost daily ritual, especially around major bases. Sweep teams of combat engineers with mine detectors worked the roads each morning, while flank security teams screened both sides of the roads looking for evidence of digging, detonating wires, and even ambushes. It was slow and tedious.  

Although North Vietnam manufactured mines and some were supplied by China, the majority of mines used by communist forces in Vietnam were improvised. Enemy forces in Vietnam were exceptionally innovative at turning anything into a mine—including captured or unexploded ordnance such as hand grenades and mortar and artillery shells; ammunition cans; oil drums; beer and soda cans; and even bicycle frames. Triggering devices included flashlight batteries, wristwatches, field telephone hand cranks, and mousetraps.

This story appeared in the 2024 Winter issue of Vietnam magazine.

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On June 8, 1969, U.S. President Richard Nixon and Republic of Vietnam (RVN) President Nguyen Van Thieu stood side-by-side at Midway Island and formally launched Vietnamization. The goal was to allow U.S. operational combat forces to depart South Vietnam as quickly as possible before the next U.S. presidential election, leaving South Vietnam able to defend itself. Seven months after this announcement, I arrived in Cam Ranh Bay as a replacement headed for the U.S. Army’s 1st Signal Brigade. I was about to have a front row seat on Vietnamization in practice as a quality assurance NCO. Communication technology is an essential combat support function, which Gen. Creighton Abrams, U.S. commander in South Vietnam, had identified from the beginning as critical if South Vietnam’s Armed Forces were to defend their country on their own.

The short time projected for Vietnamization was inadequate for the South to build an effective national defense force with sufficient training to wage modern warfare effectively. Such a project can require years—especially when the local government’s social, economic, and political foundations have been stunted by a century of colonialism and nearly two decades of violent internal turmoil. From my vantage point in South Vietnam throughout most of 1970, these obstacles to rapid Vietnamization appeared insurmountable.

Insurmountable Obstacles

I reported for induction on Oct. 14, 1968, went through basic training at Fort Bliss, Texas, and received orders for advanced training at the Electronic Warfare School at Fort Huachuca, Ariz. Completing the high frequency radio operator course (MOS 05B) in five weeks, I remained at Fort Huachuca as an instructor. With controversy over the war growing, the Army was having trouble getting junior NCOs to reenlist. Instructors were needed. On Nov. 14, 1969, after only 13 months in service, I was promoted to Sergeant E-5. Near the end of November, the training company’s first sergeant called me into the orderly room, looked across his desk, and said, “Congratulations, Sgt. Anderson, you’re going to Vietnam.”

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I landed at Cam Ranh Bay on Jan. 6, 1970, with orders to report to Company C, 43rd Signal Battalion at An Khe in the Central Highlands. The 1st Signal Brigade’s clerk at the 22nd Replacement Battalion, a buck sergeant like me, modified the original orders. I literally went up the hill from the replacement center to the 361st Signal Battalion. I could not believe my luck. Cam Ranh was a large and secure combat base. In the evenings off duty, we wore civilian clothes, and there were a lot of creature comforts with barracks, hot showers, mess halls, snack bars, clubs, a big PX, and a beach just over the hill.

There was a problem, however. My MOS was 05B4H: high frequency radio operator, NCO, instructor. My personnel folder also listed college graduate, high-speed code intercept operator, French linguist (based upon Army testing and six semesters of college French), and a secret-cryptology clearance from my work at Fort Huachuca. The 361st operated tropospheric scatter microwave facilities, and the Table of Organization and Equipment (TOE) of this high technology installation that could transmit almost 200 miles did not include any slots for high-frequency radio operators.

The operations sergeant was on his third straight tour in Vietnam, all at the same job. We called him “Grandpa” behind his back, which was a term of respect because it sure looked like he ran the whole battalion. I knew virtually nothing about tropospheric scatter communication, but Grandpa was pleased to have me, mainly because I was a college graduate who could type and compose a complete sentence. I soon discovered that everyone in the office except the sarge were college graduates. He immediately put me to work as the author of various monthly and quarterly reports but soon realized that I had a more valuable skill—French language ability.

Vietnamization had created an urgent need for a linguist. The operations officer was a signal corps major with an ARVN signal captain as a counterpart. The ARVN officer was in the battalion to learn to manage this integrated wideband communication site. The American officer had studied Portuguese at West Point and didn’t know any Vietnamese. The South Vietnamese captain spoke French but little English. With no training as an interpreter and only basic conversational French, it became my job to help the two officers communicate.

In the 361st Signal Battalion, Vietnamization in 1970 hinged on an American officer mentoring an ARVN officer to take command of a highly technical facility through the hand gestures and college French of a sergeant whose expertise was tactical, not long-range communication, and whose French was better suited to translating Molière than to conveying military technology. The mentoring process was slow and not, I am sure, what Washington envisioned Vietnamization to be. As bad as the situation was for efforts to Vietnamize the 361st Signal Battalion across a serious language divide, the ad hoc process received a further setback with my sudden transfer out with no apparent way to bridge the language gap. The commander of the 1st Signal Brigade later acknowledged in his lessons-learned study that the language barrier hampered training.

A Daunting Task

Brigade headquarters at Long Binh refused to issue permanent orders assigning me to the 361st because my MOS was not authorized for that type of unit. It transferred me to 12th Signal Group at Phu Bai for assignment somewhere in I Corps, the five northern provinces of the Republic of Vietnam. On Feb. 9, I got off a C-130 at Phu Bai airport. I waited in the transient hooch at Headquarters, Headquarters Detachment, 12th Signal Group with my duffle bag packed. I could be off to any of the radio telephone/teletype sites the brigade operated in support of the 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile); 1st Brigade, 5th Infantry Division (Mechanized); III Marine Amphibious Force (MAF); 1st ARVN Division; 2nd ARVN Division; or Republic of Korea Marine Brigade. I could expect to spend the next seven months at a division or battalion headquarters, if I was lucky, or a small remote site if I was less fortunate.

As it turned out, I soon learned that I was going to be the group’s quality assurance NCO in charge of a small team of three or four currently being assembled. Col. D.W. Ogden Jr., the group commander, had created the team and its “communication evaluation” mission because, I was told, he was tired of complaints from the combat commanders (termed “customers”) about the quality of signal support from 1st Signal Brigade. The combat commands had their own signal assets, but depended on the 12th Signal Group to link their tactical networks to others in the corps tactical zone and from there to the Integrated Communication System [ICS], Southeast Asia and to worldwide networks operated by the Strategic Communications Command at Fort Huachuca. The technology of this vast system—sometimes referred to as the AT&T of Southeast Asia—was powerful. Through tropospheric scatter, line-of-sight microwave, cable, and other electronic assets, a commander could connect securely by voice, teletype, or data from a combat bunker to anywhere in the world as long as 1st Signal Brigade units in the field kept the complex system up and working.

It was a daunting task for well-educated and thoroughly trained signal soldiers with access to reliable equipment. Would the ARVN be able to manage this critical military infrastructure on its own, especially in the short time that Washington had allowed to accomplish Vietnamization? A new brigade regulation had created Buddies Together (Cung Than-Thien) to train Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces signalmen in highly technical communications skills. Units like ours were also expected to conduct surveys by special teams in each corps tactical zone to determine where American operators could turn over equipment and operations to the South Vietnamese.

My team consisted of an electric generator mechanic (another sergeant), a radio operator (one of my students at Fort Huachuca), and a draftsman. The latter two were SP4s and served as drivers or guards or were assigned other tasks. We usually traveled with the group’s engineering officer and the sergeant major from his office. The colonel had wanted a sergeant first class (E-7) to be the NCO, but senior NCOs were in short supply. He settled for me because of my education and instructor experience, and my rank was at least a hard stripe NCO. There were fewer than 10 E-5 and E-6 NCOs in the group headquarters. The team’s sergeant major (E-9) traveled with us primarily to back me up if the issues at the site turned out to be related to command or personnel problems.

Inexperienced Operations

The U.S. Army history of military communications in Vietnam describes the urgency of the task at hand. The recently completed Automatic Digital Network (AUTODIN) could transmit an average of 1,500 words per minute, but the tactical teletype circuits to which it was connected passed traffic at 60 to 100 words per minute. Signal operators experienced continuous maintenance problems with their overextended machines. In the summer of 1970, the Da Nang tape relay received 20 flash messages (highest precedence) in a 20-minute period from the AUTODIN. This signal company had to relay these messages to the tactical units on its circuits at 100 words per minute, which required about 20 minutes per message. This volume of traffic overheated the recipients’ equipment, requiring transmission to be slowed to 60 words per minute. As the official history records, “Besides such technical problems, tactical operators lacking special training on the operation of the new Automatic Digital Network were bewildered by its formats and procedures. The 1st Signal Brigade had to keep troubleshooting teams constantly on the road to help inexperienced operators.”

The group’s Operational Report-Lessons Learned (ORLL) for July and October 1970 recorded major emphasis on improved communications through quality assurance inspections. Working seven days a week, we were responsible for maintaining the efficient and effective performance of installations operated by 17 units in 5 provinces. The QA team conducted 57 site inspections in six months to improve equipment maintenance, operator efficiency, site operating procedures, and customer satisfaction. According to the ORLLs, “Partly due to the effort of the Quality Assurance team the high standards of customer service provided by units of the 12th Signal Group were maintained or bettered.”

The smallest detail could become significant when dealing with modern electronics. In northern I Corps the soil was red clay (red mud in the rainy season and red dust other times), which made it extremely difficult to establish a working electrical ground for the system. In some cases, poor signal quality or even interrupted transmission was owing to where and how deep the metal grounding rods were installed. Without this basic setup at a tactical location, all the immense technical power to connect the corps level and global system was of no use. It was a variation on the “for want of a nail” adage. In this case, for want of a ground, the message was lost; for want of a message, the battle was lost.

My job took me to signal sites from the DMZ southward to the Batangan Peninsula. Traveling usually by UH-1 Huey helicopters, we went to Camp Carroll (the 1st ARVN Division’s forward command post just south of the DMZ), Quang Tri, Dong Ha, Tan My, Hai Van Pass, Da Nang, Hoi An, Tam Ky, Chu Lai, Duc Pho, and Quang Ngai. Our work also included small fire bases and landing zones: Hawk Hill (5 miles northwest of Tam Ky), LZ Sharon (between Quang Tri and Dong Ha), and FB Birmingham (southwest of Camp Eagle, headquarters of the 101st Airborne, about 5 miles from Phu Bai). We went by road to sites in Phu Bai, Hue, and Camp Eagle.

We tried to get into and out of a site (especially remote ones) in one day without having to stay overnight. On one occasion, because helicopters were unavailable and a signal problem at III MAF needed urgent attention, I went from Phu Bai to Da Nang in an open jeep along Route 1 over Hai Van Pass with only one other soldier to ride shotgun. That we could make that drive at all indicated that by 1970 the level of enemy activity along this key road had declined significantly. My sense was that the enemy was not deterred by the growing size of the ARVN but was waiting for U.S. troop withdrawals to continue. Unknown to me was the CIA’s Special National Intelligence Estimate of Feb. 5 that “Hanoi may be waiting until more US units have departed, in the expectation that this will provide better opportunities with lesser risks, and that Communist forces will be better prepared to strike.”

Phu Bai was a large and relatively secure base. It was not Cam Ranh Bay, but there was a sign at the front gate proclaiming, “Phu Bai is Allright.” It received periodic mortar and rocket bombardment, especially aimed at runways, helipads, and signal towers. Signalmen are soldier-communicators who provide specialized skills and defend their installations against enemy attack. Our detachment had responsibility for about five perimeter bunkers and had a quick reaction team in the event of an assault on the base. With the shortage of junior NCOs in the detachment, I drew the duty as sergeant of the guard, reserve force NCO, or staff duty NCO at least one night a week.

Vietnamization

Most nights were uneventful, but occasionally I was NCOIC during probes of the perimeter or other imminent threats. One occurred during my last month in Vietnam. Perhaps Charlie knew I was short, because enemy bombardments and ground probes of Camp Eagle, nearby Camp Evans, and Phu Bai increased markedly in July and August 1970. Actually, the enemy was testing the progress of Vietnamization and not targeting me specifically.

There were ARVN troops at many of our bases, but most of them provided perimeter security, manned artillery pieces, or handled supplies—not operating signal equipment. Similar to what I had witnessed at the 361st Signal Battalion, there were a few ARVN officers and NCOs shadowing American counterparts, but I observed little interaction or hands-on communication activity by Vietnamese.

Aware of Vietnamization goals, I wrote to my parents: “The Vietnamization program is really going on in earnest over here.… Even 12th Sig. Gp. is getting in on the ARVN training program. We have about 20 ARVN at various sites in the Group receiving on-the-job training on a buddy system basis.” In retrospect, my estimate of 20 ARVN signalmen over a five-province area suggests that the number being trained was woefully small. With the exception of Camp Carroll, an ARVN command post, I seldom heard Vietnamese spoken at signal facilities.

An exception came when my team worked at a line-of-sight microwave installation near Chu Lai. A group of American military and civilian officials appeared. There were ARVN signal soldiers at the site. A high-ranking U.S. officer asked the American signal officer escorting them how long it would be before the Vietnamese would be ready to assume operation of this station on their own. After a long pause, he reasonably estimated about eight years. Enlisted ARVN signalmen had an approximately sixth-grade education. It required two years or more of hands-on experience for American soldiers with high school diplomas to develop the technical knowledge and problem-solving skills needed for this military occupation. The Nixon administration’s timetable for Vietnamization and turning over the defense of the RVN to its own military was measured in months—not years.

Lt. Gen. Walter Kerwin, a senior U.S. adviser, had estimated in 1969 that it would take five years for the ARVN to be self-sufficient. Washington’s goal was to have Vietnamization completed by January 1973. My former unit, the 361st Signal Battalion, had been designated as a test of 1st Signal Brigade’s buddy effort to turn over the fixed communication system to the South Vietnamese Signal Directorate. That initiative explains the presence of the ARVN captain in the battalion S-3 while I was there. That unit’s 1969 ORLLs assessed that South Vietnam’s armed forces lacked the “broad scientific and technical education base…to allow takeover of the ICS in [a] short time frame.” This study projected a minimum of four years for the South Vietnamese to take control and more realistically eight to 10 years.

 As my return to the United States neared, entire U.S. combat units were leaving the RVN. The 1st Signal Brigade’s primary mission of support for U.S. forces was narrowing. Gen. Abrams had wanted to keep a residual U.S. combat support element to bolster Vietnamization, but the Pentagon mandated sweeping reductions.

I left Vietnam on Sept. 8, after 1 year, 10 months, and 26 days active duty and 8 months and 5 days in Vietnam. The 12th Signal Group soon afterward relocated to Da Nang, as U.S. commanders consolidated their remaining strength and transferred their signal assets to the ARVN. American aid paid private contractors to operate the network as a stopgap to meet the South’s military communication requirements, but the days were almost gone when the U.S. Congress and public would pay the bill.

In my two assignments as an impromptu interpreter and as a quality assurance NCO, I experienced some of the problems with Vietnamization. Studies of combat support at the time and soon after the war frequently referenced what I personally witnessed—limitations on the effectiveness of Vietnamization because of language hurdles and lack of expertise on the part of the South Vietnamese to support modern combat operations. In an otherwise upbeat report on Vietnamization at the end of 1969, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird singled out the challenge posed by specialized training as a “serious concern.” “More English language instructors and more trained technicians to man military and civil communications systems are required,” he admitted. He added that there “were simply not enough qualified persons in the Vietnamese manpower pool to fill all the demands for technical skills.”

The bravery of the ARVN soldiers and their ability to shoot straight were necessary but not sufficient for battlefield success, as Gen. Abrams had perceived when first receiving his marching orders from Washington. As a nation-state, the Republic of Vietnam had major structural weaknesses to overcome before it could field a modern military establishment.

Anderson went directly from Vietnam in September 1970 to a classroom at the University of Virginia, where he later received a Ph.D. in history. After 45 years of teaching American foreign policy, he is now professor of history emeritus at California State University, Monterey Bay, and a former senior lecturer of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. His twelfth book was Vietnamization: Politics, Strategy, Legacy, published in 2019 by Rowman and Littlefield. 

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of Vietnam magazine.

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John Haseman was a captain assigned as a Deputy District Senior Adviser (DDSA) in Mo Cay District, Kien Hoa Province, in the Mekong Delta. He had arrived at Advisory Team 88 in July 1971 and was DDSA in Ham Long District for 10 months before being reassigned to Mo Cay in May 1972.

Nov. 20, 1972, began as an ordinary day, at least at the start. My boss, the Mo Cay District Senior Adviser (DSA), had departed about a week earlier for much-deserved home leave that included several days of hospital care. He was seriously wounded during a major battle in July 1972 with an NVA regiment in which the Mo Cay District Chief had been killed in action. I was introduced to the new District Chief, Maj. Manh, before my superior departed for the U.S. At that time there were no main force Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) units stationed in the province; except for provincial and district level officers, the soldiers were all locally recruited Regional Force and Popular Force (RF/PF).

My first operational meeting with Maj. Manh had taken place several days earlier. A small convoy that included the newly assigned Province Intelligence (S-2) officer was ambushed just a few kilometers south of Mo Cay town. Manh hurried off with a small security force without telling me.

When told of the incident by Mo Cay’s communications officer, I quickly followed with my interpreter. When I arrived at the ambush scene, Manh’s first words to me were: “I did not tell you because I did not think you would go out to a dangerous area.” Apparently, he had experienced less-than-good relations with advisers during his previous duty in the 7th ARVN Division.

“Sir,” I responded, “I am your adviser while the DSA is away. You know much more about fighting this war than I do, but there are a lot of things I can do to help you. I want to go with you on all operations, dangerous or not. Please don’t leave me behind.”

Taken somewhat aback, he answered that he was glad to know it and would not leave me behind again.

The Explosion

On Nov. 20, I prepared to accompany Manh on my first combat operation with him—a two-company RF sweep through a contested part of western Mo Cay District. The operation line of march was centered on a seldom-used rural road. A company-sized unit would be about 200 meters out on each flank. The troops were well-spaced and well-led. There had been no enemy contact. My interpreter and I were with the command group, which included Manh, his radio operator, his personal bodyguard and security staff, and a platoon of RF soldiers to provide close-in security. I carried the advisory team’s PRC-25 radio—I always carried it on tactical operations. The Vietnamese commander and the advisory team interpreter always offered to carry it instead, but I did not want to wonder where the radio was if we had contact with the enemy.

The road led northwest and then west. The trail was muddy and very rocky and was lined sporadically with young palm trees and open-terrain rice paddies to the north, with the trees of a dense coconut forest parallel to the line of march. Terrain on the south was mixed rice paddies and fruit orchards.

We advanced roughly 3,500 meters when a loud explosion came at the edge of the tree line on the right flank. A report came in that a soldier had hit a booby trap that blew off his foot and inflicted head wounds from shrapnel. Manh stopped forward movement and ordered the casualty to be brought to his location on the road. It was obvious that this soldier was critically wounded.

At this stage of the war, a fairly new official Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) policy required that all medical evacuations (medevacs) of Vietnamese casualties had to be done by Vietnamese Air Force (VNAF) helicopters only. American helicopters were only supposed to evacuate American casualties. The policy was designed to force the Vietnamese to be more responsive to their ground force casualties. I disagreed with the policy because, in my view, it ignored the fact that the extremely cautious Vietnamese pilots were not nearly as responsive to the ARVN ground troops as U.S. helicopter pilots were.

Manh and I knelt on the road with his radio operator while he called the ARVN side of the joint VN-US Tactical Operations Center (TOC) in the provincial capital of Ben Tre to request a medevac flight. He was told that no VNAF helicopters were available. Visibly upset at the rejection, he turned to me and asked, “Can you help?”

A Life or Death Dilemma

I knew at once that this was a test from Manh. Was his adviser truly willing and able to help him when help was really needed? I was fully aware of the MACV policy on medevac for Vietnamese casualties. Yet, in an important and very favorable coincidence, I also knew that a U.S. Army UH-1 (Huey) helicopter was on the ground at adjacent Huong My District. This helicopter was detailed to transport the MACV Inspector-General (IG) team on inspection missions.

I believed the wounded Vietnamese soldier would die if he did not get prompt medical attention. I refused to remain silent and let this man die for lack of a Vietnamese medevac. I used my radio to call the American side of the TOC. The duty officer, a captain, matter-of-factly disapproved my request, saying, “You know what the policy is on medevacs.” I argued that this was a life-or-death situation for one of “our” soldiers and that it was critical to have a medevac if he were to survive. I reminded him of the IG team helicopter on the ground less than 10 minutes away and strongly urged that we needed the medevac. He repeated his refusal.

Unknown to me at the time, the duty officer had passed the radio to the newly arrived Advisory Team 88 Operations (S-3) adviser—a major who outranked me. I was angry and frustrated. I outright demanded that the nearby helicopter be requested to fly this medevac. In my sense of urgency over the badly wounded soldier lying just a few feet away from me, my open anger was coming very close to insubordination.

Fortunately, the Huong My DSA broke into the contentious radio transmission at that point and told us to calm down while he asked the pilots if they would be willing to fly the medevac. A few minutes later, he called back to report that the crew had agreed to fly the mission for us and were on their way to take off, with my frequency and call sign, and would contact me after take-off.

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The pilot soon radioed me and asked me to confirm our location and asked about the security situation at the landing zone (LZ). Manh’s security platoon quickly organized an LZ on the road where no palm trees could obstruct the landing. I remained on the radio, confirmed to the pilot that the LZ was secure, and described the area. Meanwhile the casualty was prepared for evacuation.

Moments later we all heard the familiar “whup whup whup” sound of the approaching Huey, which came into sight flying over the road. I asked Manh for a soldier to “pop smoke” to show wind direction and the exact spot where we wanted the helicopter to land.

I stepped to the center of the road and raised my rifle with both hands over my head to guide the pilot. Soon the helicopter was on the ground. Soldiers quickly loaded the casualty onboard. Two soldiers—one of them an RF medic—got in to accompany the wounded soldier to the hospital. I stepped onto the helicopter’s left skid and thanked the command pilot for being willing to help with the medevac.

I could not clearly see either the pilot or copilot and did not get their names. I was very grateful that they had come to help when we needed it so badly. I recommended they take off to the north over the rice paddies and definitely not to fly over the distant tree mass until they had gotten high enough to avoid potential enemy ground fire. With that, I stepped back and saluted the crew. The pilot lifted off and the Huey was gone. The entire time from confirmation of the flight to take off with the casualty was only about 15 minutes. Manh quickly got the troops back into formation and the operation continued for the rest of the day. We had no contact with the enemy, and no additional casualties.

Why Deny Treatment to An Ally?

This was an extremely important event for me for many reasons. First and foremost, the medevac was crucial to get the wounded RF soldier to a hospital and hopefully save his life. I was told several weeks later that he had survived but had needed major surgery to amputate his foot and ankle. I was outraged by the unspoken but very real medevac policy corollary: that MACV was willing to deny a medevac to an allied soldier—in this case, a man who would probably have died from severe injuries—just to attempt to make the Vietnamese air force do their job better.

I knew well that, as an adviser, I did not command the RF/PF soldiers fighting alongside me. Nevertheless, I thought of them all as “my” soldiers—my brothers-in-arms. We laughed together, cried together, talked together, fought the common enemy together. I trusted them to be good soldiers and to protect me as best they could. I would do everything I possibly could to keep them alive. Therefore, I was especially grateful to the flight crew who willingly agreed to conduct this medevac. I have the highest regard for, and am very thankful for, all U.S. Army aviators, whose skill and responsiveness helped my counterparts and me countless times during my 18 months as a district adviser. They always came when called, regardless of the tactical situation on the ground and the time of day (or night).

Their courage was limitless and deeply respected by us ground soldiers—Americans and Vietnamese alike.

Second, this had been a definitive test by the Vietnamese district chief to determine his adviser’s responsiveness and reliability when assistance was needed. There was no way I could explain that over the radio to the American TOC personnel. Manh trusted me to be there when he needed help, and I had passed his test. No adviser can succeed without establishing trust. Our relationship for the remaining months of my assignment was close, professional, and worked well for both of us in the challenges we would face.

Third, I knew I was in trouble with my advisory team senior officers in Ben Tre. Full of emotion and adrenaline in the dire circumstances, I had openly challenged U.S. policy on handling medevacs for Vietnamese casualties. Perhaps more significantly, I had been intemperate on the radio and was nearly insubordinate to the Province S-3 adviser. Senior officers do not take kindly to junior officers demanding anything.

Fourth, in retrospect, the incident provided the district chief the opportunity to demonstrate his own sense of responsibility and trust in me—and by important extension, to the other members of the Mo Cay advisory team. Several days later I accompanied Manh to the monthly District Chief/DSA meeting in Ben Tre. I was nervous, anticipating perhaps difficult meetings with the Province Senior Adviser (PSA) and the major I had argued with on the radio. As the meeting convened, the Vietnamese Province Chief asked me to stand up. He thanked me for what I had done on behalf of his soldier and commended the outstanding counterpart relationship in Mo Cay District. Manh had told the Province Chief the details of the event, knowing I was probably in trouble with the senior officers on the advisory team. I knew from then on that I could trust Manh to be an outstanding counterpart. His willingness to intercede on my behalf increased my own trust and confidence in him.

“I Would Do It Again”

The PSA thanked me in public—but in private he told me not to do it again. Later that day I met for the first time the major with whom I had argued on the radio. He took me aside and quietly but firmly told me I needed to work on my communications with senior officers. He was correct. I had been intemperate and disrespectful on the radio. During his first tour of duty in Vietnam he was wounded in action during an airmobile assault into the A Shau Valley, and he had earned the right to criticize me.

“Sir,” I said, “I apologize for being disrespectful on the radio. It was a tense moment for me, and an important test imposed on me by my counterpart.” I also told him the restriction on using American helicopters to evacuate Vietnamese casualties was a lousy policy, and I would do it again if I had to. He was a true gentleman. “John,” he replied, “you’re my kind of officer. You are doing a great job. Just work on your communications.” We had a mutually respectful relationship from then on.

I never forgot that particular medical evacuation among the many I requested for RF/PF casualties during my 18 months as a district adviser in Kien Hoa Province. The event always stood out in my memory.

A little over two months later, in February 1973, my assignment as a district adviser ended when the Paris Agreement mandated the  end of the American advisory effort in Vietnam. I spent the final years of my career in Foreign Area Officer (FAO) assignments in Thailand, Indonesia, and Burma, with short stays in the U.S. for language school courses and assignments at Fort Leavenworth and on the Army staff. On Jan. 31, 1995, I retired to my home in western Colorado and embarked on more than 25 years of writing, lecturing, and traveling as often as I could.

In early March 2023 I was a panelist at the annual conference at the Vietnam Center, Texas Tech University. That year the conference dealt with Vietnam in 1973 and the topic assigned to me was my experiences as a district adviser at the end of the U.S. tactical commitment in the war. Just before our panel was to begin, several other attendees were gathered in front of our table and the conversation turned to the topic of helicopter and tactical air support for advisers in the last months of the war. I expressed my thanks to them “for being there when we needed them.” I began to describe the circumstances of that event I had faced long ago, on Nov. 20, 1972, when obtaining a U.S. medevac for a seriously wounded Vietnamese soldier.

One of the men paid particular attention, his eyes getting bigger and bigger as I went along, and then he burst out saying, “I flew that mission!” And thus, on March 3, 2023, I met Chief Warrant Officer-5 (Retired) John M. Harris, more than 50 years after he flew as copilot on that mission, during which he and I had shared a few minutes on the ground on a muddy, rocky road in Mo Cay District in our efforts to save the life of a soldier.

The Rescue Pilot

John Harris flew that humanitarian tactical medevac mission more than 50 years ago. He had been voluntarily activated the previous August as a novice 20-year-old WO1 Army Aviator from an Army Reserve troop unit, specifically for duty in Vietnam. He was later advised that he was the last USAR soldier mobilized for Vietnam.

Before reporting to Vietnam, I had attended the AH-1G Cobra qualification course. As a new Cobra pilot, it was intended that I would be employed in Vietnam as an attack helicopter pilot, most likely in an air cavalry troop. I was eager to get into the fight and see some action. However, soon after I arrived in Saigon I was told that due to recent losses, the immediate needs of the Army trumped my specific training, rank, and orders. I was instead ordered to perform duties as a Huey pilot. On Nov. 8, 1972, I was assigned to the 18th Aviation Company, 164th Combat Aviation Group, 1st Aviation Brigade, based in Can Tho, the capital of Military Region (MR) IV. Our unit’s mission was to provide aviation support to the remaining U.S. advisers who were located in all 16 MR IV provinces; the 7th, 9th, and 21st ARVN divisions; and the 44th Special Tactical Zone (STZ), located along the Cambodian border.

Each day, we would usually put up a dozen UH-1 Hueys whose mission would often be simply stated as, “Upon arrival, fly as directed by the Province Senior Adviser.” These missions included aerial resupply, visual reconnaissance for both tactical air and B-52 strikes, personnel transport, payroll distribution, offshore naval gunfire support, and much more. We were advised that while the medevac of any ARVN soldiers was to be primarily performed by the VNAF, if a PSA should ask us to medevac an ARVN casualty in a time-critical combat situation, the final decision would be up to the U.S. helicopter crew.

On Nov. 20, 1972, I was eagerly performing the duties of a UH-1H Huey copilot, often referred to in Vietnam as a “Peter pilot” or newbie. Our initial mission was to fly as directed for Kien Hoa Province for the first half of the day, followed by support in the afternoon for the 44th STZ, located near Chi Lang. This was my 10th mission in Vietnam. I was trying to learn as much as possible from the aircraft commander with whom I was paired. He was a very experienced captain with two tours in Vietnam under his belt as a pilot. We commenced our support that day by flying a MACV Inspector General (IG) team to various district headquarters. We were on the ground at Huong My District and relaxed in the advisers’ team house as the inspection team went about their work.

Suddenly we received a call requesting an urgent medevac for a gravely wounded Vietnamese soldier in the adjacent district of Mo Cay. My aircraft commander first asked me, then the crew chief and door gunner, if we were willing to carry out such a mission. Being new and very “gung-ho,” I was frankly surprised that he had even posed such a question. I said we absolutely had to go to the aid of an allied soldier. Both the crew chief and door gunner agreed and off we went.

Approaching the casualty site, we established radio contact with the U.S. adviser, who had his troops pop smoke and identified the LZ as secure. Then we set down following his guidance; he was waving an M16 over his head. During the loading process, I distinctly recall that although the wounded soldier’s leg, which was missing his foot, was covered in bloody bandages, the expression on his face was rather detached from reality. I guessed he had been heavily sedated with multiple doses of morphine to help him cope with extreme pain.

Preparing for Takeoff

As we prepared to take off, the aircraft commander began to direct me to fly to the nearest ARVN aid station. If it had been my first or second mission, I most likely would have simply followed his instructions without comment. But fortunately, while flying a mission a few days earlier for advisers in nearby Vinh Long Province, one of them had pointed out the existence of an ARVN hospital in Ben Tre.

Being rather outgoing, I hastily told the aircraft commander about this hospital and expressed my strong opinion that we should fly there instead of the aid station. I said it would take only a few minutes longer for us to reach it. I then added, “If I get shot down in the future, have my foot amputated and a VNAF helicopter comes to perform my medevac, I certainly hope that he does the right thing and flies me to a fully functioning hospital, versus a simple aid station, which may save my life!”

The aircraft commander acquiesced and allowed me to fly directly to the hospital. We dropped the patient off and I certainly felt good for having asserted myself that day. Once I eventually became an aircraft commander and in charge of my own Huey, I always told the story of this medevac to my new “Peter pilots” and recommended to them that if a similar situation should ever arise, they too should assert themselves and be sure to do the “right thing.”

When reflecting back on my rather abbreviated Vietnam tour, I have always been proudest of asserting myself that day to fly that wounded soldier to a place with a higher level of care. I performed a few more minor medevacs for Vietnamese soldiers during my tour but none of them involved any life-threatening injuries. After the Paris ceasefire took effect, I remained behind for two months and continued to fly as an aircraft commander in unarmed Hueys, conducting peace-keeping missions for the International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS), which was composed of military representatives from Canada, Poland, Hungary, and Indonesia. When I finally left Saigon on March 28, 1973, there were only about 500 U.S. troops remaining. They all departed the following day.

An Unlikely Reunion

I remained on continuous flying status as an Army aviator for over four more decades, serving as both a Huey and Cobra instructor pilot/tactical operations officer in multiple assault helicopter companies, attack helicopter companies, air cavalry troops, and other positions. I served for a year in South Korea and deployed for “contingency operations” with U.S. military forces to areas including Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Uzbekistan, Jordan, and Qatar. While in the U.S. Army Reserve, I flew search-and-rescue, medevac, and firefighting helicopters for multiple agencies including the U.S. Forest Service and Kern County Fire Department.

I retired from Kern County in late 2021 after receiving the Federal Aviation Administration’s Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award for safe flight operations for over 50 years. I like to think that after performing that medevac flight in Vietnam, I was forever motivated to perform to the best of my ability in all subsequent urgent missions, both military and civil, to which I was called.

In early 2023, I heard from the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association (of which I am a Life Member) that the Vietnam Center & Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, was hosting a conference focused on the 1973 Paris Peace Accords and the withdrawal from South Vietnam. I was invited to participate on a panel session focusing on the air war in 1973.

On March 3, the day before my panel was scheduled to meet, I happened to notice there was to be a panel on the “Last Phase of U.S. Advisory Efforts” at the end of the war. As I had flown for numerous U.S. advisers during my tour of duty, I was particularly drawn to that topic. I had a feeling that perhaps one of the advisers at the conference might have been aboard my aircraft during one of our support missions. When I read that one of the presenters, Col. John B. Haseman, had been a district adviser in the Mekong Delta at the same time and in the same area I regularly flew in, I became even more optimistic that our paths may have crossed.

I introduced myself and Haseman began to express his gratitude for both the tactical air support and helicopter assistance he had often received. He then told me the story of one particular mission in which he desperately attempted to get a U.S. medevac for a critically wounded Vietnamese soldier on a patrol with him. As he related the details, the hair on the back of my neck literally began to stand up. I thought, “What could be the chances that he was describing the same medevac mission that I had played a role in?”

When he confirmed that the wounded soldier had lost a foot due to a land mine, I knew it was the same mission. During my planning to attend the conference, I never dreamed I would relive a most emotional mission over 50 years later with the same person I had worked together with to “push the envelope” on the rules and to do the right thing when it came to trying to save a wounded soldier’s life.

John Haseman has authored more than 250 articles and book reviews about Southeast Asia political-military affairs, as well as many book chapters on the subject. He is the author or co-author of five books, the most recent of which, In the Mouth of the Dragon: Memoir of a District Advisor in the Mekong Delta, 1971-1973 (McFarland, 2022), describes his experiences as a tactical adviser at the district level in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta.

John Harris retired from the U.S. Army Reserve in October 2013 as a CW5 with over 44 1/2 continuous years of Army service. He was the last U.S. military aviator from any branch of service who had flown combat missions in Vietnam to have retired while still on military flying status.

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of Vietnam magazine.

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Easter came early in 1972 and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) came with it. On March 30, “Holy Thursday,” three NVA divisions stormed out of Laos and across the DMZ. It was the first of multiple assaults that struck not only the northern provinces of South Vietnam but also Kontum in the Central Highlands and An Loc, only 60 miles north of Saigon.

North Vietnam was “going for broke,” committing its entire combat capability—14 divisions and 26 separate regiments, all with attached armor and heavy artillery units. Enemy forces numbered 130,000 troops and 1,200 tracked vehicles, primarily tanks. Aging Communist revolutionaries controlling Hanoi’s Politburo believed the time was right to achieve a decisive military victory, topple South Vietnam’s government, and embarrass the United States.

As U.S. military personnel continued to withdraw, American troop strength was brought down to 69,000. Only two U.S. combat brigades remained—their missions were restricted to guarding airbases and patrolling the surrounding areas. Although the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) listed 5,300 men as “advisers,” the only Americans fighting on the ground were a handful of men serving with provincial advisory teams and Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) divisions and regiments.

As a result of Vietnamization, battalion advisers were only authorized in the Airborne Division, Marine Division, and selected Ranger units. There were also battalion advisers, mainly NCOs, with the ARVN field artillery battalions.

Americans On The Front Lines

The term “adviser” was a misnomer. By 1972, advice was rarely solicited and when offered, rarely heeded. However, U.S. advisers often cajoled and encouraged their counterparts, particularly in dire situations when spirits were flagging. The presence of even a lone American adviser was a morale booster, as every ARVN soldier knew they would not be abandoned as long as one American was with them.

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The advisers’ primary role was employing the massive air assets President Richard M. Nixon had sent to South Vietnam. U.S. air power proved decisive in blunting the 1972 enemy offensive. Advisers routinely exposed themselves to NVA fire while working with USAF forward air controllers, identifying lucrative targets and adjusting air strikes to ensure bombs were “on target.”

Americans who remained on the front lines, especially advisers with airborne and Marine battalions, suffered significant casualties. Adm. Chester Nimitz’s famous quote after World War II’s Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945 was equally applicable to the advisers who helped turn back the NVA offensive 27 years later: “Uncommon valor was a common virtue.”

Early in 1972, allied intelligence personnel were watching NVA build-ups in Laos and Cambodia but had no idea of the timing of a possible offensive. When it occurred, the ARVN Joint General Staff (JGS) and MACV were surprised by its scale and ferocity. With fighting raging in three areas, military officials were unable to determine the communist main attack. The focus of III Corps, the ARVN headquarters responsible for provinces surrounding Saigon, was on enemy attacks in Tay Ninh. These were diversionary operations, masking the movement of three NVA units: 5th VC Division, 9th VC Division, and 7th NVA Division. The 5th and 9th were VC in name only; they were manned and equipped by the North Vietnamese Army.

The situation grew more tenuous on April 5, 1972, when those divisions—36,000 troops organized into combined arms teams of infantry, armor, heavy artillery, and engineers—poured across the Cambodian border into Binh Long Province. The immediate threat to the government in Saigon was clear.

Maj. Gen. James F. Hollingsworth, commander of the Third Regional Assistance Command (TRAC), urged Gen. Nguyen Van Minh, III Corps commander, to reinforce An Loc, the provincial capital. Hollingsworth, a 1940 graduate of Texas A&M University, was one of Gen. George S. Patton’s outstanding tank commanders during World War II. He led from the front and during his service in three wars he was awarded three Distinguished Service Crosses (DSC), the nation’s second highest award for valor, four Silver Stars and six Purple Hearts, plus four Distinguished Service Medals and 38 Air Medals.

Known as “Holly,” he was also a Korean War veteran and had served a previous Vietnam tour as assistant division commander of the famed 1st Infantry Division. Advisers revered him and were grateful for the air support he was able to muster.  

A City Under Siege

The district town of Loc Ninh, a few miles from the Cambodian border, fell on April 7 when the NVA overran it, killing or capturing nearly 1,000 soldiers. Two U.S. advisers were killed and seven were listed as missing in action. Only 100 ARVN defenders and one American, Maj. Tom Davidson, managed to escape the battle and make their way to An Loc, which was 15 miles south and obviously the enemy’s next target. The 5th ARVN Division defended An Loc with three infantry regiments, two ranger battalions, and provincial forces.

If An Loc was lost, there were no ARVN troops to stop an enemy move on Saigon. President Nguyen Van Thieu issued a directive that An Loc must be held at all costs. The well-publicized order caught the attention of the communists, challenging them to quickly capture it. The pivotal battle for An Loc and the heroism of U.S. advisers there was a microcosm of the fighting throughout South Vietnam in what the U.S. press now called the Easter Offensive.

On April 7, 1972, President Thieu convened a meeting of his key advisers and corps commanders to assess the military situation; it was a grim session. General Minh outlined his circumstances and requested more troops to reinforce An Loc, surrounded by the 5th and 9th VC Divisions. He also pointed out the 7th NVA Division had cut the main supply route, QL (National Route) 13, into the provincial capital, isolating the defenders.

Because of the enemy’s proximity to Saigon, the president made the unprecedented decision to commit the country’s last reserve, the 1st Airborne Brigade, to III Corps. He also directed the 21st ARVN Division move from the relatively quiet Mekong Delta region and join the battle in Binh Long Province.

By the afternoon of April 8, the 1st Airborne Brigade, augmented by the 81st Airborne Ranger Battalion, was assembled south of An Loc, ready to fight. The 81st was originally activated as a reaction force during the days of cross-border operations into Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam. Now, it was employed as an elite infantry battalion. It was teamed with the Airborne Division because its advisers were part of the Airborne Division Assistance Team, also designated MACV Team 162. The brigade’s 2,000-plus paratroopers were tasked to open QL 13 into An Loc. Soldiers of the 7th NVA Division, 8,600 strong, had prepared extensive defensive fortifications along the vital supply route. The NVA easily stopped the 1st Brigade.

A One-Man Operation

With a stalemate occurring, Hollingsworth recommended a mission change: reinforce An Loc with the 1st Airborne Brigade and have the 21st ARVN Division clear QL 13. The paratroopers were needed because on April 13 the NVA kicked off an armor and infantry attack that threatened the town.

Late in the afternoon of April 14, the 6th Airborne Battalion, about 400 paratroopers, conducted a helicopter assault into an LZ near key terrain just south of An Loc. Two American advisers, Maj. Richard J. Morgan and 1st Lt. Ross S. Kelly, accompanied the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Nguyen Van Dinh, in the first lift. The high ground, Hill 169 and an adjacent feature called Windy Hill, was needed for an artillery firebase. It would provide support for the 5th ARVN Division because all its guns had been destroyed by incoming fire.

Initially, the landing was unopposed. Yet the NVA reacted quickly and stopped the paratroopers from gaining the summits of the two hills. The advisers called in air strikes. Kelly, accompanying attacking troops, directed U.S. Army AH-1G Cobra rocket and machine gun fire to within 25 meters of his position, forcing the enemy to withdraw. It was a “danger close” call, but a necessary one.

As the high ground was taken, Morgan, the senior adviser with the battalion commander, suffered a severe leg wound.  He needed immediate evacuation or would bleed to death. Fortunately, a U.S. Army Huey helicopter responded to Kelly’s request for a medevac. The pilots braved enemy mortar and artillery fire to rescue Morgan and five ARVN paratroopers who were also seriously wounded.

Kelly, a 1970 graduate of West Point with less than two years in the Army, was now the lone American responsible for the battalion’s desperately needed air support. The old Army expression “operating way above his pay grade” described Kelly’s circumstances.

The remaining battalions, the 5th, 8th, and 81st, plus the brigade headquarters, arrived on April 15-16. CH-47 Chinook helicopters brought in six 105mm howitzers and emplaced them on the high ground, secured by two rifle companies of the 6th Airborne Battalion. Maj. John Peyton, Morgan’s replacement, was in the airlift and joined Kelly on the afternoon of April 16. Peyton was only on the ground two days before he too was badly wounded and evacuated. Again, Kelly was a one-man operation.

The North Vietnamese commander was not about to allow an ARVN firebase to operate in his area of responsibility. Within 24 hours, NVA artillery fire destroyed all six howitzers and its stockpile of ammunition. The battalions airlifted in on the 15th and 16th were ordered to move into the town and join the 5th ARVN Division defenders who were fending off major NVA attacks. The 6th Airborne Battalion was left on its own. Two NVA regiments with eight tanks began to systematically isolate and destroy the 6th.

Kelly used every air sortie at his disposal to keep the numerically superior foe at bay. The communist commander was determined to annihilate them, regardless of the cost. By April 20, the 6th Battalion had fewer than 150 effective fighters. Seriously injured soldiers died for the lack of medical treatment. U.S. helicopters only flew medevac missions for wounded U.S. advisers—so the evacuation burden fell on the Vietnamese Air Force (VNAF) helicopter pilots, most of whom were sadly lacking fortitude.

Waiting For the NVA

Supply shortages and the VNAF’s reluctance to fly caused morale to plummet. Having grown used to the robust support from the U.S. Army, the failure of the ARVN and VNAF to perform critically needed tasks was a shock to the paratroopers, including the battalion commander. Lt. Col. Dinh was psychologically overwhelmed and stayed in his foxhole, almost in a trance. Remnants of two rifle companies on the hills, less than 50 men, were forced off and escaped to An Loc. Eighty other paratroopers, who were not on the high ground, formed a tight perimeter and waited for the NVA.

Kelly began to work what little magic he had left. He coordinated with the brigade senior adviser, Lt. Col. Art Taylor, and his deputy, Maj. Jack Todd, for assistance to allow them to break out to the south, away from An Loc. Todd called Kelly at 7:30 p.m. and said three B-52 strikes were scheduled just after dark to hit the concentrations of North Vietnamese threatening the 6th Battalion. U.S. intelligence had a good “fix” on enemy locations. The bombers would drop “danger close,” meaning less than 1,000 meters from the friendlies, the minimum safe distance from B-52 bombs.

Kelly’s cajoling and the news of the upcoming bombing strikes snapped Dinh out of his depressed state. He made the difficult decision to leave the seriously wounded soldiers behind and prepared the men to move. When the first 500-pound bombs began to fall, 80 exhausted men headed to the southeast, away from the enemy. Kelly led while Dinh, farther back in the column, kept the troops moving. The shock of three successive B-52 strikes and rapidity of movement gave the bedraggled force some breathing space.

Throughout the night and into the next day, Kelly continued to serve as “point man” for the small group. On more than one occasion, he called in air strikes on pursuing enemy troops. When Kelly found a suitable pickup zone, the adviser used U.S. air strikes to seal off the area and protect the incoming helicopters.

Finally, VNAF helicopters arrived but they only touched down briefly and several hovered a few feet off the ground, making it impossible for the walking wounded to get aboard. They were not taking any enemy fire. Without warning, they “pulled pitch”—taking off with Kelly hanging on to one UH-1’s struts and leaving 40 soldiers on the ground.

Threats from the battalion commander failed to intimidate the pilots, who refused to land again. Fortunately, the corps commander and Hollingsworth forced the VNAF to return the next day, but they only retrieved half of the 40 men left behind. Those 60 rescued paratroopers became the 6th Airborne Battalion’s nucleus as reconstitution began immediately.

On Oct. 17, 1972, Kelly was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his bravery. Without his personal example, forceful urgings, and timely orchestration of airstrikes, no one would have survived. His actions belied his rank and experience and his professionalism saved the day.

Trial By Fire

During the 6th Battalion’s ordeal, the 81st Airborne Ranger Battalion was undergoing its trial by fire. It was lifted in on April 16, arriving with 450 soldiers and three U.S. advisers: Capt. Charles Huggins, senior adviser; Capt. Albert Brownfield, Huggins’ deputy; and Sgt. First Class Jesse Yearta, light weapons adviser. The unit was detached from the airborne brigade and directed to fight its way into An Loc and occupy positions in the northeastern sector of the town’s perimeter. The NVA had attacked several days earlier and gained a significant lodgment, almost to the center of the town. The communists had nearly reached the east-west thoroughfare that bisected An Loc, leading one American defender to report: “The bastards are almost to Sunset Boulevard.”

As the 81st moved off the LZ, Yearta was hit by artillery shrapnel but refused evacuation. An ARVN medic patched him up. Yearta, a hardcore soldier, continued the mission. At 36, he had come of age in the Cold War army and spent most of his career in airborne units. He was known as a “hard ass,” but the troops held him in high esteem because he was a fighter and genuinely concerned for their welfare. The Airborne Rangers of the 81st had an unbounded affection for Yearta.

On the night of April 22, the battalion was directed to launch a counterattack to eliminate enemy positions. Huggins was provided a Spectre gunship, a USAF AC-130 aircraft equipped with a 105mm cannon and twin 40mm Bofors guns, to assist the attackers. The Spectre had cutting edge technology sensors that allowed it to fire very near friendly forces, almost within the 50- meter bursting radius of the 105mm shells. A rolling barrage was planned with the troops following closely behind it.

Yearta volunteered to accompany the lead company so he could direct the Spectre’s fire. Not taking a chance that he might become separated from his radio operator, he carried his own AN-PRC 77 radio so he could maintain constant contact with the airplane. To ensure the Spectre gun crew could track the leading friendlies amid battlefield obscuration, Yearta continually fired small pen flares that the aircraft’s sensors easily identified. He adjusted both the 105mm cannon and the Bofor guns by constantly sending corrections, positioning himself almost within the blast area. The fire was so devastating the NVA was pushed back and original defensive positions were restored.

Later, Yearta was asked about the Spectre’s support that night. He replied in typical fashion, “Damn! They are good ol’ boys.” Yearta became a legend among the advisers for the pen flare episode and was later awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his valor.

The siege of An Loc lasted 66 days and resulted in the destruction of three NVA divisions. It was ironic that the reconstituted 6th Airborne Battalion, still commanded by Lt. Col. Nguyen Van Dinh, broke the enemy’s grip on the town. On June 8, 1972, the 6th Airborne linked with the town’s defenders after fighting its way from the south. In mid-June, President Thieu declared the siege lifted and the 1st Airborne Brigade was sent to the northernmost province of Quang Tri to participate in a counteroffensive.

“The Battle That Saved Saigon”

The 1st Airborne Brigade and the 81st Airborne Ranger Battalion paid a heavy price for their part in what some journalists called the “battle that saved Saigon.” From April 7 thru June 21, the 1st Airborne suffered 346 killed in action (KIA), 1,093 wounded, and 66 missing; the 81st lost 61 KIA and 299 wounded.

The An Loc campaign took its toll on MACV Team 162. Nineteen airborne advisers began the operation in April 1972. Of that number, 10 were wounded and one, Sgt. First Class Alberto Ortiz Jr., died from his wounds. He was the first of five airborne advisers killed during the Easter Offensive. One officer, Capt. Ed Donaldson, was wounded on April 7, evacuated, returned to duty in An Loc, and was wounded again, for which he required extended hospitalization.

Five battalion advisers with the 1st Airborne Brigade and the 81st Airborne Ranger Battalion were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for their actions in An Loc. In addition to Kelly and Yearta, DSCs were awarded to: Capt. Michael E. McDermott, 5th Airborne Battalion; Capt. Charles R. Huggins, 81st Airborne Rangers; and 1st Lt. Winston A.L. Cover, 8th Airborne Battalion. For McDermott, it was his second DSC, the first being presented in 1967 when he was a lieutenant in the 101st Airborne Division. With two DSCs, a Silver Star, and a Purple Heart, McDermott became one of the most decorated soldiers of the Vietnam conflict.

An Loc was destroyed in the Easter Offensive. Only rubble and burned-out communist tanks remained. The town was rebuilt and today commerce flourishes. One would not know that a climactic struggle occurred there five decades ago; there is no evidence of the battle. Several cemeteries are located just south of An Loc where the remains of NVA soldiers are interred. At each cemetery, there is a large statue and plaque dedicated to the heroism and sacrifice of the communist “freedom fighters.”

After South Vietnam surrendered in April 1975, NVA soldiers desecrated the 81st Airborne Ranger cemetery in An Loc that the town’s citizens had meticulously tended to when the 1972 battle ended. Like other ARVN cemeteries, there is no trace of it today.

During the 1972 Easter Offensive, John Howard served as senior adviser with the reconstituted 6th Airborne Battalion and 11th Airborne Battalion. On a 2011 trip to Vietnam, he returned to Tan Khai and An Loc. For further reading he recommends James H. Willbanks’ book, The Battle of An Loc and Dale Andradé’s book America’s Last Vietnam Battle.

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of Vietnam magazine.

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After years of wearing down its South Vietnamese and American opponents with a mixture of guerrilla and light infantry tactics, North Vietnam cast them aside for a thoroughly conventional invasion in 1972, with both sides putting an unprecedented emphasis on armored warfare. William E. Hiestand does a comprehensive survey of the equipment, organization, doctrine, and combat practices of the North Vietnamese Army and the South’s Army of the Republic of Vietnam in No. 303 of Osprey’s “New Vanguard” weaponry monographs, Tanks in the Easter Offensive 1972.

Ironically, by 1972 the ARVN armored element had evolved markedly since the early 1960s, when it inherited its armor from the departing French, only to be used more for instruments of political rivalry, with M24 light tanks cynically dubbed “voting machines” and their crewmen “coup troops.”

Well trained and motivated, the ARVN tankers made the most of their M41A3 Walker Bulldog light tanks—essentially enlarged M24s with higher velocity 76mm guns—but worked most effectively with their limited supply of M48A3s, which could outfight the NVA’s T-54s in long-range duels. Although aided by South Vietnamese and American air support that their opponents lacked, the ARVN armored units were handicapped by corrupt senior officers and a fighting doctrine that spread them too thinly over the three fronts on which they had to fight.

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Despite their formidable arsenal of Soviet- and Chinese-built T-54s and amphibious PT-76 and Type 63 light tanks, the NVA tankers plunged into the South with a rather inflexible doctrine that often caused them to hesitate when they should have followed up. They also showed that they had much to learn about coordinating their tanks’ operations with their infantry and artillery.

When evaluating the performance of both sides, however, the author rightly reminds the reader that in practice the Easter Offensive was not determined by tanks or armored personnel carriers alone. The campaign saw extensive allied use of the M72 light anti-tank weapon as well as the debut of the TOW (tube-launched, optically tracked, wire-guided) missile.

The NVA soldier, already experienced at using the RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) and recoilless rifle, also made deadly use of newly introduced AT-3 Sagger anti-tank guided missiles. As for the undisputed air power backing the ARVN, the NVA tankers had to rely on a new generation of self-propelled anti-aircraft guns alongside its ubiquitous 12.7 and 14.7mm machine guns.

Profusely illustrated with photographs and profiles, Tanks in the Easter Offensive 1972 offers a fascinating evaluation of two armies adapting their combat doctrines to new-generation weapons, very much as they went along, while the Cold War powers who armed them observed with interest of their own.

Tanks In the Easter Offensive

The Vietnam War’s great conventional clash
by William E. Hiestand, Osprey, 2023

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One of the nation’s foremost authorities on firepower and land warfare, Robert H. Scales retired from the Army in 2001 after more than three decades in uniform, much of it influenced by his service in Vietnam. A 1966 graduate of the United States Military Academy, Scales initially served in Germany before joining the 2nd Battalion, 319th Artillery in Vietnam. Scales commanded a howitzer battery in the battalion and earned a Silver Star in 1969. He would later lead artillery units in Korea, command the Field Artillery Center at Fort Sill, and serve as the Commandant of the U.S. Army War College.

Scales holds a doctorate in history from Duke University and has written a number of critically acclaimed books, including Firepower in Limited War, Certain Victory, and Yellow Smoke: The Future of Land Warfare for America’s Military. In an interview with Vietnam contributor Warren Wilkins, he discusses his experiences in Vietnam, the role of firepower in that conflict, and the defining characteristics of American war-making.

On the night of June 14, 1969, you were in command of a 105mm howitzer battery at Firebase Berchtesgaden, located on a hill on the eastern side of the A Shau Valley, when a force of approximately 100 North Vietnamese sappers attacked the base. You received a Silver Star for your actions during the battle. Tell us about that night.

My four guns and two 155mm howitzers were clustered together on this mountaintop. In May 1969, the NVA [North Vietnamese Army] attacked my sister battalion on Firebase Airborne. They destroyed guns, killed 13 soldiers, and completely eviscerated that unit. One month later, they attacked us. They attacked early in the morning, and the hole that I lived in was right on the edge of the perimeter. My battery was the first thing they attacked. The goddamn infantry that protected us had decided that they were going to be in charge of illumination. The key to defeating a night attack is illumination. So the infantry said that they would handle it, but I didn’t believe them. If you look at Berchtesgaden on Google, you will see this one lone gun at the very top of the firebase with the tube sticking up almost vertically. Well, that was my gun. I kept that gun at 1100 mils [milliradians], one-and-a-half second delay on an illumination round, pointed straight up.

We got involved in this horrendous fight, and I had to get to that gun because the infantry never fired a round of illumination. The first sergeant and I fought like hell to get to that damn gun. Finally we got to it, and I pulled the lanyard. When that illumination round went off, it changed the whole complexion of the battle. All of the sudden, the light went on and the troops started killing those guys. They [the NVA] were literally caught in the open. We fought like hell, beat them back, and killed a whole bunch of them. Our main mission as artillerymen was to shoot artillery, but an equally important mission for young gunners is to be able to defend your position. That was a lesson I learned.

Prior to the sapper attack, your battery had provided artillery support for the 101st Airborne Division during the battle for Hill 937, better known as “Hamburger Hill.” How did the employment of artillery in Vietnam compare to other American wars?

You can almost draw a graph, starting with the 25th Infantry Division at Guadalcanal, that traces the density of supporting fires dedicated to the maneuver mission up through the Pacific battles, the Battle of the Bulge and the push into Germany, and then forward to Korea. That graph or curve goes way up in terms of the ratio of firepower expended versus the maneuver forces employed. Entire ships full of ammunition were expended in 1951-52 to preserve American lives.

By the time we got to Vietnam, this idea of trading firepower for manpower really started to take hold. So when I was there, no infantry unit was allowed to maneuver outside the artillery fan. The infantry in Vietnam would literally maneuver by fire. Artillery was also used as a navigation aid, to recon by fire and clear the way as units moved through the jungle, and to fire defensive concentrations.

Speaking of “Hamburger Hill,” you’ve noted that your battery hammered that hill with thousands of 105mm rounds, air strikes blasted its slopes and summit, and yet the enemy continued to fight. Did this cause you to reconsider the efficacy of firepower on the battlefield?

When I was at Berchtesgaden, I was higher than Hamburger Hill and could look down on it through my scope. By the time our infantry had conducted their fifth or sixth assault, the top of that mountain was completely denuded. I would sit there with my scope, and we’d fire and fire and fire. If our troops got down, behind a log or something, we could shoot within 40 meters [of them] if we were very careful.

I would look through that scope, and as soon as we lifted our fires, I could see those little guys [the NVA] come out from those underground bunkers and take up positions and start shooting back. I remember saying to myself—and this has been kind of a thesis of all the books I’ve written about firepower—that firepower has a limitation. We saw this in the First World War when artillery was shocking to both sides early in the war. By 1917, there were images of the British “Tommy” [soldier] brewing tea in the middle of a barrage.

In the age of “imprecision”—before what we now call “precision” munitions—the primary impact of artillery was psychological and not physical. It’s what’s called the palliative effect of artillery. By the time I got to Vietnam [in 1968] the psychological effects of artillery had dropped off considerably, and the enemy was no longer as intimidated by our killing power as he was in 1965. Two things always amazed me about artillery—one is the enormous pyrotechnic effect of artillery going off over the enemy, and the other is the remarkably few enemy it actually kills.

So from my experience at Hamburger Hill, I learned that there is a crossover point in the use of artillery and firepower at which its ability to influence the maneuver battle diminishes considerably. If a soldier is warm and protected—in other words, if he’s down or better yet under cover—it takes an awful lot of rounds to kill him. And no matter how much artillery and firepower you pile onto that—again I’m talking about “dumb” artillery and “dumb” firepower—its ability to influence the battle diminishes with time. That was reinforced in Korea and Vietnam.

The U.S. military—particularly the Army—clearly favored firepower over maneuver in Vietnam. Was this emphasis on firepower unique to that conflict, or was it merely a reflection of what some have called the “American way of war”?

We do emphasize firepower, but the Russians do the same. Although the Russians are far more willing to sacrifice human lives than we are, they have a very similar doctrine…. In Vietnam it was a career ender if your maneuver force was caught outside the reach of your artillery. And that psychology continued all the way into Desert Storm. As late as Desert Storm, one of the cardinal tenets of the American way of war was to never exceed the limits of your artillery.

The American army was caught in a dilemma in Vietnam. We had reached the limit, before the point where we could achieve our maneuver objectives, when artillery was no longer all that helpful. So what do you do? Do you start expending more human lives to achieve your objectives because you are no longer protected by firepower? Or do you fall back under the protective arcs of your artillery and refuse to maneuver beyond that and give the enemy the advantage? And until the “precision” revolution in 1972, that’s sort of where we were.

In retrospect, do you believe that a firepower-first approach in Vietnam was justified, given the operating environment and the existing political climate, or do you agree with critics who argue that the military’s overreliance on heavy supporting fires undermined American pacification efforts and failed to address the true nature of the enemy threat?

I argue in my book [Firepower in Limited War] that in a counter-insurgency campaign, firepower has its limits. But I failed to mention the psychological impact of firepower on the civilian population and the deadening effect it has on the innocent. That is particularly important when you’re fighting a war seeking popular support. So the presence of innocents on the battlefield greatly diminishes your ability to apply overwhelming firepower. The second thing we learned in Vietnam was that, after a while, firepower becomes an inhibitor rather than a facilitator of your ability to maneuver. So the days of using light infantry as a find, fix, and finish force were greatly diminished because of its inability to move outside the arc of artillery.

The Army was on the horns of a dilemma. The center of gravity of the American military in Vietnam was dead Americans, and the NVA knew it. In World War II, Col. [Hiromichi] Yahara, who served with the Japanese army on Okinawa, wrote a series of missives in which he said, essentially, the only way you can beat America is to kill Americans. We lost in Vietnam not because we were not able to defeat the enemy in battle, or that we had too little or too much firepower, but because too many Americans died and we tired of it first, just as Ho Chi Minh predicted the French would do before us. The only way to save lives in the close fight in Vietnam was through the use of protective fires. But firepower became a millstone around our necks in terms of our ability to maneuver. It also had a debilitating effect on our ability to maintain the “hearts and minds” of the people.

So we reached a plateau in our use of firepower, beyond which we could not go, and for which we had no alternative by 1970. Anytime you put maneuver forces forward in close contact with the enemy, soldiers are going to die. Yet we got to a point by 1970-71 where, anytime an American soldier died, it would end up on the front page of the New York Times. So you have two choices to keep those soldiers safe: lock them in firebases and let the enemy run amok in the countryside and control the population, or put them out there under the protective umbrella of firepower but greatly limit their ability to maneuver. It was that juxtaposition between keeping soldiers safe—our vulnerable center of gravity—or being able to maneuver and control territory, and we were never able to reconcile that.

The traditional role of the infantry has always been to close with and destroy the enemy. American infantry units in Vietnam, however, typically sought to find the enemy so that firepower could destroy him. Did this change in tactics occur organically within individual platoons and companies in the field, or was it mandated by some higher headquarters and then codified by formal regulations?

Actually, it was both. One of the amazing things about the American way of war—and we saw this in World War II, particularly as American soldiers became more literate and as the American army became more egalitarian—is that tactical innovation in the American army, beginning in North Africa, really came from the bottom up, not the top down. That’s different than the Russian army, which is ruled by norms driven by the general staff. The American soldier, when he learns something that will keep him alive, will embrace it and proliferate it very quickly. You build a firepower system around what the soldiers are telling you makes it most effective.

In his book Firepower in Limited War, Scales examines the advantages and limitations of firepower by analyzing its effects in several pivotal recent conflicts. The book was placed on the Marine Corps Commandant’s Reading List.

Part of the reason that we rely so heavily on the artillery was that the revolution at Fort Sill [home of U.S. field artillery] was such that we came up with by far the best artillery firepower system in the world. We just were never really able to embed it into the Army’s system until our experiences in North Africa taught us how to do it and how to provide close support. But we just hit the wall in terms of our ability to do that, because the enemy has a vote.

What did the Japanese do at Okinawa? What did the Chinese and North Koreans do? What did the NVA do? They learned how to effectively counter American firepower dominance by maneuvering outside of the [firepower] range fan, hugging maneuver units so that they couldn’t bring in heavy close supporting fires, using camouflage, and going to ground.

To reduce the destructive effects of American firepower, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese would frequently “hug” American infantry units in battle. How effective was that tactic?

It was very effective. I saw that firsthand. They were literally willing to die under our artillery fan to stay in their holes, frankly longer than we ever would, in order to continue to kill us. Remember, their purpose was not to hold ground. Their purpose was to kill us.

Gen. Vuong Thua Vu, former deputy chief of the North Vietnamese Army General Staff, characterized the American practice of generating contact with enemy troops and then calling in artillery and air strikes to destroy them as an “outmoded fighting method of a cowardly but aggressive army.” Similarly, some of our Australian and South Korean allies have suggested that the American infantryman, while certainly not “cowardly,” nevertheless relied too much on firepower. How did American soldiers and Marines perform in infantry combat?

For a drafted army and to some extent a [drafted] Marine Corps, they performed remarkably well. Whenever the U.S. Army got involved in what [retired Marine Corps general and former U.S. Secretary of Defense] Jim Mattis and I call “intimate killing,” they did it remarkably well, considering what was at stake. The critics have this wrong, because I suspect if you were South Korean, or Australian, or whomever and had that firepower available to you, you would fight precisely the same way. The problem is that you want to avoid intimate killing, and in that sense the American army had it right. But the limits of technology precluded the American army from avoiding intimate contact without the cost of logistics being so great that it was no longer effective.

So I have no problem whatsoever with the tactics that the American close combat forces used in Vietnam. My critique has always been with the firepower system that supported them. I have no problem whatsoever with finding, fixing, and finishing—the three words we used to describe Vietnam combat. I do have a problem with the technology that we used in our firepower system to do the finishing part. It was always inefficient, logistically burdensome, and reached a point of diminishing returns. What the “precision” revolution has allowed us to do is reverse that.

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of Vietnam magazine.

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In October 1967, as the North Vietnamese Army made final preparations for what would become known in early 1968 as the Tet Offensive, the 5th Marine Regiment was redeployed northward to reinforce the demilitarized zone. Replacing the leathernecks on Hill 63—which dominated the southern portion of the Que Son Valley 22 miles south of Da Nang—was our Army contingent, the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile).

The 1st Cav—famed for our yellow shoulder patch with a horse’s head—was the Army’s first and only airmobile division, with a huge inventory of helicopters capable of shifting men and materiel around the battlefield at a moment’s notice. This “materiel” included food—GI rations.

Seasonal monsoon rains gripped much of South Vietnam when our unit, the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry (Airmobile)—wiped out at the Battle of the Little Big Horn but resurrected as a combat assault force using Huey helicopters—was airlifted from fighting on the Bong Son Plain into the Que Son Valley, replacing the 5th Marine Regiment and redesignating their hill and principal outpost as Landing Zone (LZ) Baldy. It was an apt description for the small mound dominating the valley. The monsoons made it impossible for our large cargo helicopters to sling-load in the brigade’s supporting 105mm artillery pieces.

Beer and Hot Sauce

The Marines were tasked to leave behind a battery of six 155s to keep the 2nd NVA Division off our backs until the monsoons passed by. Along with the 80 or so Marines of Whiskey Battery, a platoon of perhaps 15 minesweeping personnel remained on Baldy to probe the dirt-packed main supply route each morning for mines that the local Viet Cong forces may have planted during the hours of darkness. So let’s say maybe 100 gyrenes remained on the hill to take care of their Army brethren until we were better able to fend for ourselves.

Because the 1st Cav had something like 428 helicopters of all sizes, shapes, and capabilities, we were able not only to deploy our troops with unprecedented surprise and mobility, supported by our gunships and rocket-firing aerial artillery, but also to feed ourselves very comfortably compared to usual infantry grunts.

Choppers that weren’t in use chasing after NVA and VC bad guys could find gainful employment resupplying our sky soldiers not only with C-rations and water in five-gallon cans but also pretty fair (if soggy) ice cream, milk reconstituted from powder at processing plants in Yokohama, Japan, occasional cases of warm Budweiser beer, and large #10 cans of beef stew, corned beef hash, ham and beans, and other delicacies, which—heated over outdoor field ranges by our battalion cooks and liberally doused with Red Devil hot sauce, tabasco, and other condiments—made for a pretty decent meal after a hard day searching for and fending off the NVA.

On our first day at LZ Baldy, troopers of the 7th Cav ate cold C-rations like most combat infantrymen in Vietnam. On Day 2, “B” rations (the vastly improved meals originating in the large #10 cans) were very much du jour. By the third day, milk, ice cream, candy bars, and even some homemade brownies were being fed to our cavalrymen in the evenings.

Here Come the Marines!

Now I’ll say this for the 19- and 20-year-old leathernecks obliged to consume Marine-mandated cold C-rations on the far side of LZ Baldy: they sure weren’t no slouches! When the delicate aromas of our “home-cooked” gourmet meals began wafting over the hill to the Marine cannon-cockers and minesweepers, they began—cautiously at first—infiltrating our chow line. Their jungle fatigues looked a little different from ours; the Marines (who weren’t infantrymen and therefore were not used to living, breathing, and sleeping with their M16 rifles slung across their backs) looked cleaner and wore fatigues that weren’t as filthy as those worn by our cavalrymen. Other than that, you’d conclude that they looked like normal American boys a couple of years out of high school.

I was at that time the only major left in our battalion. The other major had sustained lung damage in the crash of the unit’s command and control helicopter and had been medically evacuated out of theater. So I was holding down two jobs: battalion executive officer and S-3 (operations officer).

One evening on the third day, I was eating my pretty decent evening meal al fresco on a small folding field table when the battalion’s mess steward came charging up the hill in a state of high dudgeon.

The Wisdom of Solomon

 “Major! Major!” he exclaimed at the top of his lungs. “The f—g Marines are bucking our chow line!”

As mess sergeant, he had every right to be incensed at this invasion of the Army’s turf. After all, he was accountable for how many rations were consumed and if his count reflected a hundred or so extra meals being consumed each day for maybe a week or two, his jungle boots might be held to the fire.

What to do? I could of course direct that the “f—g Marines” be returned to their own side of the hill, destined to eat cold C-rations made soggier by the itinerant monsoon rains.

Then again, these were after all merely post-adolescent American boys—just like our cavalrymen—who were helping protect our rear ends until we could take care of ourselves. Did we in the Army have any ingrained right to live better than our leatherneck brothers in arms?

I looked up into the cloudy sky as the rains ceased for the moment, praying for divine guidance along with the wisdom of Solomon. Inspiration from above arrived mere moments later. I knew what had to be done.

“Feed the bastards,” I instructed the mess steward. And we did.

Bob Orkand, a retired lieutenant colonel of infantry, was drafted during his senior year at Columbia University.

This story appeared in the Autumn 2023 issue of Vietnam magazine.

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Riverine warfare was a central element of combat in Vietnam. The French and Viet Minh struggled for control of the Red and Black Rivers. Later, the South Vietnamese and Americans contested with the Viet Cong for the lower Mekong and its tributaries. With 15,600 square miles of land and more than 15,000 miles of waterways, the Mekong Delta was of vital strategic importance. Producing some 16 million tons of rice per year, the Delta was the foundation of the Republic of Vietnam’s economy. For the communists, the Mekong River running south from Cambodia was the southernmost branch of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, bringing vital support to 28 VC battalions and 69 separate companies in the Delta, totaling some 82,500 troops.

By 1966 the communists controlled almost 25 percent of the Delta’s population, and their primary objective was to cut off the South’s rice supply. The twofold objective of the allies was to sever the flow of supplies to the VC, and eliminate VC forces and infrastructure. The U.S. Navy’s lighter patrol forces of Task Forces 115 and 116 patrolled the Mekong, Co Chien, Long Tau, and Bassac Rivers and their tributaries to deny the use of those waters to the VC.

Army-Navy Patrols

TF 117, also known as the Mobile Riverine Force (MRF), was the striking arm of the joint Army-Navy riverine warfare campaign. Established in late 1966, the MRF was based closely on the French Dinassauts (Divisions Navales d’Assaut), integrated units of naval and army forces established for riverine warfare in the late 1940s. The MRF’s ground combat element would have been a natural mission for the U.S. Marine Corps, but all the Marines in South Vietnam were deployed in the north.

The mission fell to the 9th Infantry Division’s 2nd Brigade. Initially, TF 117 only had capacity to maintain and transport two battalions at any time. The battalions rotated, with one maintaining security for their base camp at Dong Tam. The Navy component of the MRF was River Assault Flotilla 1, initially consisting of the 9th and 11th River Assault Squadrons.

Each squadron could carry a battalion. Many of TF 117’s boats were modified conversions of World War II-era Landing Craft Mechanized-6 (LCM-6), and included armored troop carriers, heavily armed monitors for fire support, and radar-equipped command boats.

An important innovation was mounted field artillery on barges, increasing the mobility and operational range of the artillery battalion. Each barge carried two 105mm howitzers, crews, and ammunition. Field artillery requires stationary firing platforms and fixed aiming points, which meant that the barges had to be beached and secured along a waterway bank to fire effectively.

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The most significant riverine operations were the CORONADO I through XI series from June 1967 to July 1968. Initially the MRF’s tactics surprised the VC. Accustomed to defending against attacks from land and air, VC defenses initially faced away from water. But the VC adapted quickly. While underway, principal security threats to the MRF came from command-detonated mines in the centers of the channels.

Mines and Suicide Boats

Hugging shorelines brought boats closer to land ambushes with heavy fire from recoilless rifles and B-40 rockets. While anchored, the most critical threats were from floating mines, swimmer saboteurs, and suicide attack boats.

The 2nd Brigade had to operate with only two battalions instead of three, depriving the brigade commander of the ability to attack with the standard one-third of his force in reserve. It also took time to get the attack force in position to make the landings. The afloat force could only move at a speed of 6 to 10 knots, indicating to the VC that an attack was coming. Typical operations lasted two to four days. Once ashore, the main tactical problem was to seal off the objective area to prevent VC from escaping.

When the troops disembarked, the boats moved to blocking positions along nearby waterways to prevent VC from using them to withdraw. But the VC quickly learned the drafts of TF 117’s various boats and took up positions secured partially by streams too shallow for the boats to navigate. That made it almost impossible for the assault force to encircle the objective completely.

Marshy ground and numerous intersecting waterways made it difficult to move fast on foot. Helicopters solved that problem, with part of the assault force landing in the VC rear. Helicopter assets were always at a premium, however; forces north of the Delta often had higher priority. As time went on, the VC became more elusive and difficult to engage decisively.

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of Vietnam magazine.

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U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Adelbert F. Waldron III was the highest-scoring American sniper of the Vietnam War, with 109 confirmed kills. He was also the most highly decorated, earning the Distinguished Service Cross twice, the Silver Star, and three Bronze Star Medals. Born in Syracuse, N.Y., in 1933, Waldron served in the U.S. Navy from 1953 to 1965, leaving the service as a petty officer 2nd class. In 1968 he enlisted in the U.S. Army and at age 35 completed airborne school to earn his jump wings. In late 1968 he was assigned to the 9th Infantry Division in the Mekong Delta. Upon arriving in-country, Waldron attended the 9th Infantry Division’s sniper school, established by the division’s legendary commander, Maj. Gen. Julian J. Ewell.

Waldron was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 60th Infantry Regiment (3-60), part of the Mobile Riverine Force (MRF) operating on the waterways of the Mekong Delta. Waldron’s better-known U.S. Marine sniper counterparts, Carlos Hathcock (93 confirmed kills), Eric R. England (98), and Charles Mawhinney (103), used bolt-action rifles. Waldron, however, used the semiautomatic M-21 sniper rifle—a 7.62mm M-14 rifle fitted with an optical scope and accurized by the Rock Island Arsenal. He frequently operated at night using a starlight scope. On several occasions he made his kills from a moving boat platform, in one case at a range of more than 900 meters.

As a Specialist 4, Waldron earned the Silver Star in January 1969 while on a reconnaissance mission in Kien Hoa Province. After establishing a night outpost, Waldron spotted enemy movement to his front. For more than three hours he engaged the VC force from his concealed position, killing 11. He withdrew only after the enemy finally detected his firing position.

As a sergeant, Waldron earned his first DSC for a combined series of 14 sniper missions during the period from Jan. 16 to Feb. 4, 1969, while serving with Company B, 3rd Battalion, 60th Infantry. On Jan. 19, while his company was being resupplied near Ap Hoa, Kien Hoa Province, they were attacked by a force of some 40 VC. Under a heavy barrage of small arms and automatic weapons fire, Waldron engaged the attacking force from an exposed position, killing a number of the VC and forcing them to break contact.

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Three nights later, on the night of Jan. 22, Waldron’s unit was moving through an area heavily infested with booby traps. Pinpointing a VC probing force, Waldron engaged them, moving through open rice paddies from one firing position to another. By skillfully deceiving the communists as to the actual strength of the American unit, Waldron prevented a night assault by the main enemy element. Eleven days later, on the night of Feb. 3, a nearby South Vietnamese Army unit came under attack. Moving to the sound of the guns, Waldron spotted a VC element attempting to flank the ARVN soldiers. He broke up the attack with deadly accurate fire. Later that night he killed a VC who was collecting the weapons of his dead comrades.

Waldron received his second DSC for another combined series of 18 sniper missions in Kien Hoa Province from Feb. 5 to March 29, 1969. On Feb. 14, while his squad was on a night patrol near Ap Phu Thuan, Waldron observed a numerically superior VC force maneuvering to assault a nearby friendly unit. Moving rapidly from one position to another to deceive the enemy as to the strength of his squad, Waldron killed several VC and broke up their attack. On Feb. 26, near Phu Tuc, Waldron killed a VC rocket team preparing to fire on MRF boats. At Ap Luong Long Noi on March 8, when his company was attacked by a large VC force, Waldron killed many of the attackers and forced them to withdraw. As the official citation for his second DSC reads, “Despite adverse weather conditions, poor illumination and the pressure of arduous missions night after night, he repeatedly located and engaged many hostile elements, killing a number of the enemy.”

After returning from Vietnam Waldron served briefly as an instructor for the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit. He left the Army in 1970 and worked as a firearms instructor at a private paramilitary training school operated by former Office of Strategic Services operative and mercenary Mitchell WerBell. Waldron died in 1995 and is buried in Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, California.

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of Vietnam magazine.

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During Vietnam’s dry season there is not a lot of water. It is rationed. As the dry season progressed our water turned yellow. In the communications center we had a five-gallon plastic jug. We used to fill it for our drinking water. We would take a pillowcase and fold it in quarters and put it under the opening of the five-gallon jug. We used it to filter out sand. One of the things that was down on the list when it came to rationing was showers. It might have been at least a week since I had taken a shower. You can imagine the odor of the average guy when we did not shower for a week and the temperature was over 100 degrees.

One day someone came to the communications center and announced the water was on in the enlisted men’s shower. I asked the captain if I could go and shower. His response was, “Please do.” That told me I was pretty ripe. I went to my hooch and got my soap and towel, then headed for the shower. Once I was all lathered up, the water ran out. I dried off, but sure did feel uncomfortable. I felt all sticky after I got dressed. The temperature was 100 degrees, so I was sweating. Specialist 4 Woburn heard me complaining and asked, “Do you want to take a bath?” I thought he had lost his mind or was goofing on me. I asked, “How is that going to happen?”

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He told me to be outside my hooch that night with flipflops and a towel. I was desperate enough so I was there and waiting. He showed up with a towel and flipflops himself. We went to the motor pool and snuck past the guard.

Soon we got to the “water buffalo.” The water buffalo is a GI slang term used for a 250-gallon water tank mounted on a two-wheeled trailer. The trailer is small enough to be dragged by a jeep or a three-quarter-ton utility truck. Woburn told me if I squeezed my shoulders and crossed my arms, I could fit through the top of the water buffalo’s manhole. I did as he said and in I went. He followed me in. It felt great. We soaked in the water. It was cool and I got all the soap rinsed off.

The next morning I went to the motor pool to dispatch a truck for the communications center. When I got there, I was alarmed to see that the sergeant from the motor pool was filling his coffee pot from the water buffalo. I said, “Hey, that says ‘Non-Potable’ (i.e. not for drinking water) on the outside of the water buffalo.”

“It is okay,” he replied. “I fill the tank myself from the water tower.”

“Yeah, but you don’t know what was in the tank before you filled it,” I answered.

He was not concerned. “I have been filling the water buffalo for months, so I know the water is clean,” he assured me. “Come on in and have a cup of coffee.”

I declined his offer.

After leaving Vietnam in 1970, James Vaughn became a CPA and ran his own tax practice.

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of Vietnam magazine.

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When we think about war, it is tempting to focus only on its human participants. Sometimes it is all too easy to forget that the natural world around us is, in fact, alive and dynamic, and filled with creatures that can have unpredictable and dangerous interactions with humans. Soldiers often run across these creatures when fighting in harsh or remote environments—indeed these creatures often literally run, or crawl, across them. Wildlife in war zones can be fascinating, annoying, or even fatal. Animals and insects remind us that, despite incredible advances in technology and weaponry, there are still some things that humans cannot fully control.

The Vietnam War is a particularly good example of this—a war in which a “Spooky” gunship could wipe out enemy troops in wreaths of fiery destruction, yet something as tiny and fragile as a single mosquito could bring death by transmitting malaria. Numerous men who fought in Vietnam mention their interactions with wildlife—good, bad, or ugly. Many of these creatures are common across Southeast Asia, and there are too many to describe in a single article. In this portfolio, we take a look at animals and insects that posed dangers to soldiers in Vietnam. In some cases, the danger seems obvious; in others, not so much.

It is worth noting that the enemy often used venomous creatures against American and allied troops when possible. The VC made use of snakes, spiders, and scorpions to guard entrances to underground tunnel systems; “guard” snakes were suspended from tunnel ceilings to strike intruders, while spiders and scorpions were released from baskets to sting interlopers entering passageways [read more at: www.historynet.com/tunnel-rats-vietnam]. Sometimes soldiers had to get creative to keep unwelcome creatures away from them. There is no question that the presence of dangerous wildlife made fighting the Vietnam War even tougher.

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This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of Vietnam magazine.

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Lt. Gen. Robert F. Foley has led a distinguished career in the U.S. Army. Graduating from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, he served as a company commander in Vietnam with the 27th Infantry Regiment, famed as the “Wolfhounds,” and received the Medal of Honor for his actions during Operation Attleboro in November 1966. Foley subsequently rose to become a battalion and brigade commander with the 3rd Infantry Division in Germany, served as West Point commandant of cadets, and was commanding general of the Fifth U.S. Army.

In his autobiographical book Standing Tall: Leadership Lessons in the Life of a Soldier, Foley offers us an in-depth view of his life and military career. The book contains a detailed account of Foley’s life, including his family background, career milestones, interactions with comrades, his marriage, faith, and experiences with mentors. It is a very personal book and there is a lot of material to sink into. Readers of Vietnam magazine will likely be most interested in Foley’s overall observations about the Vietnam War and the details of his experiences as an infantryman “in country,” especially during Operation Attleboro.

Views on Vietnam

Foley is a battle-tested Wolfhound and it is with justifiable pride that he frequently alludes to the prowess of his regiment, organized in 1901 and fighting under the motto, Nec aspera terrent, meaning “No fear on earth.” Fearless in combat, Foley also shows himself to be fearless in sharing his overall views about the Vietnam War itself. Some soldiers are leery of wading into politics, but Foley makes some controversial observations which merit further reflection.

Foley’s criticism of the war is not reactionary; he is well-read on the Vietnam War in addition to having experienced it himself, and he cites a variety of firsthand sources as a foundation for his criticisms. Foley alludes with regret to a failed opportunity for the United States to form a working alliance with North Vietnamese leaders, describing how Ho Chi Minh’s life was saved by U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) officers in August 1945. “After the OSS dissolution on October 1, 1945, its solidarity with the Viet Minh vanished in the wake of the American and Allies’ pursuit of a new world order,” Foley writes. He also cites the words of Col. Harry Summers, founding editor of Vietnam magazine, from the latter’s work On Strategy: “Every military operation should be directed towards a clearly defined, decisive and attainable objective.”

Foley is plainly skeptical of the Eisenhower administration’s policies based on an abstract “domino theory.” He argues that the Vietnam War “had no clearly defined objective” and that “conditions for declaring war against North Vietnam did not meet the criteria for a national security interest.”

The Wolfhounds

On Aug. 5, 1966, Foley became the commanding officer of Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry (Wolfhounds) while serving in Vietnam. His descriptions of the actions he took in the war zone demonstrate his competent leadership. For example, his “cure” for VD among his troops was depriving the stricken misbehavers of bed rest and ordering them instead to participate in all regular combat duties, regardless of their physical discomfort springing off helicopters and shuffling through leech-filled rice paddies. The rate of infections quickly dropped to zero.

“We lived with our soldiers 24 hours a day—we knew them and they knew us,” writes Foley. He allowed his subordinates leeway to devise deceptive methods to counteract communist forces attempting to infiltrate their base camp in night attacks. Foley also shares humorous anecdotes about his encounter with a bamboo viper and an occasion when he toppled into a well, only to be serenaded by his grinning men later with a new take on an old nursery rhyme: “Ding Dong Dell, there’s a captain in the well!”

“Angry As Hell”

Foley describes Nov. 5, 1966, as “the most difficult and devastating day” for his company in Vietnam. During Operation Attleboro, Foley was ordered to break into an enemy bunker system to create a corridor through which trapped comrades could escape back to friendly lines. He and his men were facing NVA regulars, and because the surrounded Americans were so close to enemy bunkers, his options were limited. “I couldn’t employ artillery, close air support or gunships,” according to Foley. As his group got stalled in dense underbrush and his men fell down shot all around him, Foley got “angry as hell” and took matters into his own hands. Accompanied by Pvt. First Class Charles Dean, who carried ammunition belts for him plus a grenade launcher, Foley swooped up an M-60 machine gun and led a charge against the NVA.

The NVA fled the battlefield taking heavy losses and Foley succeeded in rescuing the hemmed-in U.S. troops. He was wounded by shrapnel from a grenade. Foley was awarded the Silver Star and later received the Medal of Honor for his actions, but above all credits his fellow Wolfhounds who followed him into the fray, saying that their “indomitable spirit…made all the difference.”

Courage to Say No

True to its title, the book chronicles the evolution of a young soldier into an effective and capable military leader. Foley shares wise observations about leadership of soldiers that have withstood the test of time throughout military history, such as: “Good leaders make it a habit to get out of the command bunker, walk around the unit area, and be accessible—in the chow line, on the rifle range, in the mess hall, or in the barracks.”

Anyone familiar with the history of war will know that military science is not the science of agreement or passivity; the edifice of war history is etched with instances in which commanders have not agreed with each other—this friction is beneficial. Foley shares insights about military leadership in difficult moments.

“Leaders must also have the courage to say no when the mission has unacceptable risk, when essential resources are not provided, or when following orders is simply not an option,” writes Foley. “A solid background in moral-ethical reasoning is essential for leaders to feel confident in asserting their beliefs.… They can’t walk by the red flags of ethical turmoil and then maintain, during damage recovery, that there were no indicators.”

Standing Tall

Leadership Lessons in the Life of a Soldier
by Robert F. Foley, Casemate Publishers, 2022

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On May 24, 1969, a B-40 rocket hit Monitor M-92-1 of River Squadron (RIVRON 9) as it was supporting a reconnaissance mission on the My Tho River, wounding three crewmen with fragments. The monitor turned and returned fire with its 40mm and 20mm cannon while the embarked Army liaison directed artillery fire and a helicopter strike on the enemy position. Nine Viet Cong reportedly were killed during the 30-minute engagement. The monitor itself suffered no significant damage.

Introduced into service in September 1967, the monitors constituted the battleships of the Mobile Riverine Force. Heavily armed and armored, they suppressed enemy fire during ambushes and river assaults. Like the force’s armored transport carriers (ATCs), they were modified Landing Craft Mechanized 6 (LCM-6) boats from World War II. They differed from the ATCs in having the landing ramps removed and their bows rounded off to reduce water resistance.

Monitor gun turrets were armored against shrapnel and small arms fire. The hull and superstructure were better protected with an armor plate covered by 18 to 24 inches of polyurethane and welded hardened steel bars that either detonated or “shorted-out” enemy shaped charge rounds. The polyurethane absorbed the warhead’s blast stream. Below, water blisters protected against underwater damage and added buoyancy that reduced the boat’s draft.

Two sets of river monitors were built during the Vietnam War. Eight were converted into flamethrower variants called Zippos. The last 10 of the 24 built replaced their 40mm cannon with a Mk 49 105mm howitzer turret with a ring of bar armor and better superstructure protection.

The monitors were turned over to the South Vietnamese Navy on June 30, 1969. They had played a key role for two years, delivering firepower to support the troops operating along the riverbanks, but had no role in the U.S. Navy’s post-Vietnam “blue water” operations.

Monitor

Crew: 11-13
Length: 18.5m/61ft
Beam: 5.3m/17ft 6 inches
Draft: 1m/42 inches/3ft 6 inches (full load)
Displacement: 76 tons (full load)
Propulsion: 2 x 220shp GM/Detroit Diesels – 2 propellers
Top Speed: 8.5kts
Fuel: 450 gallons diesel in two tanks
Max Range: 200km/110nm@6kts
Electronics: 1 x Raytheon 1900 Nav Radar, 2 x AN/ARC-46 & 1 x AN/PRC-25 radios
Armor: Hull/Superstructure: 20mm steel splash plate covered by urethane blocks & spaced XAR-30 22mm hardened steel bars; Turrets: 22mm hardened steel armor plate 
Armament: FWD Turret: 1 x 40mm Mk 3 & M2 .50 MGs; Aft Turrets: 3 x 20mm Mk 16 cannon; Well Deck: 1 x Mk 2 Mod 1 Combined 81mm mortar/ .50 M2 MG Mount, 4 x .30 M1917 initially/later M60 7.62mm MGs, 2 x Mk 18 40mm MGs (hand cranked), crew small arms (M16s, M79s)

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of Vietnam magazine.

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I can say without hesitation that SOG Kontum: Top Secret Missions in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia 1968-1969 by Joe Parnar and Robert Dumont is one of the best histories assembled by Vietnam War veterans that I have ever read. This is an ideal companion book to John Plaster’s SOG: A Photo History of the Secret Wars, which we profiled in our portfolio. This book is a very moving tribute to the heroism of the top-secret unit based on research and oral histories gathered from SOG veterans themselves.

It is true that Special Forces fighters draw admiration for their toughness, grit, and prowess in the field of battle—and there is plenty of that to be found in the book. Those who love soldier stories as much as this reviewer will find much to appreciate and enjoy while reading about SOG men navigating do-or-die missions, backed by quick wits, combat skills and a salty sense of humor. Reflecting on all their daring, you might be tempted to think that such men were invincible—but they were not, and it is actually the tales of human vulnerability contained in this book that makes it outstanding. Amid all the glory there are plenty of stories of fear, pain, and human frailty–and the memories of the men described shine all the brighter for it because they kept going despite it all, not only for themselves but for others.

One of the many examples of heroism described in the book is that of John Kedenburg, who would be posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Kedenburg had the opportunity to be lifted from a fierce enemy onslaught but sacrificed himself to allow an indigenous trooper to be saved by the evacuation helicopter. Author Joe Parnar was called upon to wash his fallen comrade’s body for transport back to the United States. He writes: “I was never an overly religious person, but I recalled the story of someone telling Christ they were not worthy to loosen the thongs of his sandals. This is how I felt as I unlaced John’s boots.”

This powerful sense of sacrifice permeates the book and makes it profound and unique—especially when one considers the void of secrecy in which SOG existed. These soldiers entered enemy territory wearing “sterile” clothing, such as jungle fatigues spray-painted with black stripes, without any trace of individual identity. “Dog tags, ID cards, or any item that indicated an individual’s name or nationality could not be brought on a mission,” the authors write. Secrecy might seem glamorous to those of us looking on from a distance. But it meant that these soldiers, whose existence and purpose was officially denied by their government, fought and died within a proverbial vault of silence. It also placed them at risk of being totally erased from the annals of history and thus from living memory itself. Fortunately the authors have made a considerable and heartfelt effort to ensure that this is not the case—a worthy triumph honoring not only the SOG veterans living today but also the 407 U.S. SOG men killed in action and those who went missing and remain unaccounted for.

—Zita Ballinger Fletcher

SOG Kontum: Top Secret Missions in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, 1968–1969

by Joe Parnar and Robert Dumont. Casemate, 2022

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This book review appeared in the 2023 Summer issue of Vietnam magazine.

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There has been no shortage of literature about the North Vietnamese Army’s final advance on Saigon and the many and varied means by which the last withdrawing Americans got various South Vietnamese out of town before the Presidential Palace sprouted the gold star on a red and blue field of the Viet Cong (soon to be permanently replaced by the gold star on red of a united Socialist Republic of Vietnam). Each is about as personal as every participant’s story. Ralph White’s memoir Getting Out of Saigon is no exception—which is to say that it’s its own sort of exceptional.

White was an employee at Chase Manhattan Bank’s Bangkok branch when higher-ups gave him a special assignment in April 1975: Keep Chase’s Saigon branch open as long as possible and, if (well, when really) the communists prevailed, get out with all the senior staff he could. White had been in Vietnam before, in 1971, but his principal assets for this assignment were that he was young (27), competent, single, and most of all expendable. Fortunately for him, he also seems to have been open minded, resourceful and, when it came to sorting out the right people to assist him from among what he called “delusionals,” “pilgrims,” and “realists,” he was a quick study.

While the American ambassador to South Vietnam and chief “delusional” Graham Martin clung to the illusion that Saigon could never fall to the communists—who were a few days’ march away—White got a different perspective from the brother of a teenaged prostitute who greatly appreciated his efforts to get her out of the country and into a better life. Her brother happened to be a Viet Cong and he gave White all the help he could as well as a summation of the “bloodbath” to come: “Not happening. They just want us to leave. They want their country back. As far as they’re concerned their choices have narrowed to capitalist occupation or communist independence. This day has been inevitable since President Truman turned down Uncle Ho’s pleas for help against the French.”

Even with that cold comfort, White faced obstacles aplenty on his own side when he took it upon himself to get all the Vietnamese Chase employees out of the country—a challenge that came down to knowing the right “realists” and finding the right vehicles for passage by water or air (both, as it turned out). In the course of an intriguing tale worthy of Graham Greene—which White fully realized he was now living—the author learned as he went and got by with a little help from his friends. While admitting that he took some artistic license with the dialogue, White adds that, “The events related herein are entirely true.” What emerges from his memory is a bona fide page-turner. —Jon Guttman

Getting Out of Saigon: How a 27-Year-Old American Banker Saved 113 Vietnamese Civilians

by Ralph White.Simon & Schuster, 2023, $28.99

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This book review appeared in the 2023 Summer issue of Vietnam magazine.

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Daniel Ellsberg, whose leaked “Pentagon Papers” revealed to the world in 1971 the U.S. government’s closely guarded overview of the Vietnam War, died of pancreatic cancer on June 16 at his home in Kensington, Calif., at age 92.

Ellsberg, a Harvard-educated former Marine, was an analyst for the RAND Corporation before becoming an adviser to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1964. He spent two years in Vietnam for the DoD assessing the war and spent significant time accompany counterinsurgency sorties in the field.

It was there that his formerly pro-war stance began to change, as the brutality and likely futility of the fighting slowly turned him against American policy. In 1967, he joined three dozen others in compiling what would later be called the Pentagon Papers—a 7,000-page study commissioned by McNamara—detailing the history of the conflict in Southeast Asia and revealing that four successive presidents from Eisenhower to Johnson had expanded the war illegally, misleading Congress and the American public while doing so.

Ellsberg’s work on the document led him to believe the war was unwinnable. In 1971, he leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, and later the Washington Post, who published them wholesale after court battles debating the limits of the First Amendment.

Ironically, it became the next president in the series, Richard M. Nixon, to take the fall. Nixon ordered a series of aggressive countermoves, including illegal wiretaps and a break-in of Ellsberg’s former psychiatrist’s office to dig up dirt, that ultimately led to the Watergate scandal and the subsequent resignation of the president.

Ellsberg was charged with espionage, conspiracy, and other crimes that could have seen him spend decades in prison, but his case was thrown out in 1974 when the level of the government’s misconduct came to light. Nixon’s domestic affairs adviser, John Ehrlichman, even offered the trial judge the directorship of the F.B.I. as the court case was proceeding. Ehrlichman later went to prison.

Ellsberg continued his antiwar activism and in later years became a vocal advocate for nuclear disarmament. In 2018 he was awarded Sweden’s Olof Palme Prize, which noted how his “moral courage” to leak the report led to an “untold number of saved lives.” He is survived by his second wife, children, and extended family.

As dawn broke over Quang Ngai Province on Aug. 18, 1965, the political officers of the 1st Viet Cong Regiment looking on from the village of Van Tuong were startled to see an American naval force anchored just off the South China Sea coast. Within an hour, landing craft began disembarking riflemen from 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment onto the shore—dubbed Green Beach—adjacent to the small fishing village of An Cuong.

Four miles west, on a swath of land pummeled by artillery, airstrikes, naval gunfire, and napalm, Marines from 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment were lifted by helicopter into three north-to-south landing zones at one-mile intervals. The 3rd Battalion’s M Company moved south from the Marine air base at Chu Lai and established a mile-long blocking position north of the engagement area by 4 a.m. that day.

With his “anvil and hammer” pieces in place, Lt. Gen. Lewis Walt’s Operation Starlite was underway. Attacked and pursued eastward, the Viet Cong would be unable to escape by sea. They would have to stand and fight or attempt to escape and evade.

Operation Starlite took place when it did for two reasons. Gen. William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV), had made it clear by early August 1965 to Walt, commander of III Marine Amphibious Force, that he expected Marine infantry units to conduct “major combat operations” against communist forces throughout the I Corps Tactical Zone without delay. A 17-year-old deserter from the 1st VC Regiment surrendered on Aug. 15. This man was personally interrogated by Maj. Gen. Nguyen Chanh Thi, commander of I Corps. Thi was convinced of the deserter’s claims that the 1st VC Regiment was based in Van Tuong and planned to attack the air base at Chu Lai, and he immediately notified Walt. When American intelligence confirmed the presence of insurgents in the area, Walt acted immediately, leaving Aug. 16-17 for planning and preparation. He planned the attack for 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 18.

Not all the deserter’s claims proved accurate. The 1st VC Regiment had just concluded a successful summer campaign. By late July, its four dispersed battalions had infiltrated northward into base areas around Van Tuong 1, Nam Yen 3, and elsewhere, and had no plans to attack Chu Lai. The 1st VC Regiment—the 40th, 60th, 90th, and 45th Weapons Battalions—was a well-armed and seasoned force led by a veteran cadre that had scored repeated victories over ARVN forces in the last half of 1964 and first half of 1965. On July 5, 1965, it had overrun and almost annihilated the 1st Battalion, 51st ARVN Regiment at Ba Gia 20 miles south of Chu Lai, but had also suffered extremely heavy losses and needed time to rest, refit, and begin recruiting and training new conscripts.

The Marines were unaware that elements of the 2,000-man enemy regiment were absent. The 1st VC Regiment’s commander, Le Huu Tru, his deputy, and the battalion commanders were attending a post-campaign conference in the mountains west of Chu Lai, leaving command to political officers, while the 90th and half of 45th Weapons Battalion were still 15 kilometers south of the engagement area. The remainder of 45th Battalion, along with 40th and 60th Battalions, would be present in the battle area on Aug. 18 with 1,500 men at most.

With the regimental command post located at Van Tuong 1 just four kilometers from Green Beach, Nguyen Dinh Trong, the 1st VC Regiment’s top political officer, moved to delay the Marines while the command post was either reinforced or relocated. Duong Tong Minh set up a defensive position in a trench halfway between Green Beach and Van Tuong 1, then moved close to the beach and prematurely detonated a mine in the path of the oncoming Marines that did no damage. Lt. Phan Tan Huan prepared a defensive position south of An Thoi 1, from where he would direct 57mm recoilless rifle, machine gun, mortar, and small arms fire at any Marine unit within range.

Hostilities commenced in earnest when Companies K and I, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment disembarked from LVTP-5s (Landing Vehicle, Tracked, Personnel 5, also called amphibious tractors or “amtracs”) and advanced abreast toward An Cuong 1. On the right, Capt. Jay Doub’s three platoons of K Company came under automatic weapons fire and called in airstrikes, then moved forward and cleared the northern third of the village.

Backed by two M50 Ontos fighting vehicles, K Company’s platoons continued west and secured the high ground beyond the village.

The M50 Ontos was a tracked, lightly armored anti-tank vehicle boasting massive firepower. It was equipped with six 106mm recoilless rifles, a .30-caliber machine gun, and several .50-caliber “targeting” guns; the .50-caliber M-8C spotting rifle for the 106mm M-40 recoilless rifle was not a machine gun, but a magazine-fed single shot that fired a special marking round. The M50, used by the Marines as an anti-personnel weapon, struggled in harsh terrain; crew members were exposed to enemy fire when they had to leave the vehicle to reload the rifles.

K Company pivoted right and advanced northward toward Phase Line Banana. On the left, I Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, cleared the rest of the village and continued westward to link up with 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment a mile inland near An Cuong 2.

On Green Beach, Lt. Col. Joseph Muir, commanding officer of 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, had moved his command post ashore and was joined there at 7:30 a.m. by Col. Oscar Peatross, CO of 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment and overall commander of Starlite’s ground forces. Capt. James McDavid led L Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment ashore at 7 a.m. and had his three platoons spread out on the battalion’s right flank and dig in.

At 6:45 a.m., UH-34 helicopters shuttled G Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment into Landing Zone (LZ) Red, while E Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment and Lt. Col. Joseph Fisher’s battalion command post landed at LZ White at 7:45 a.m.

The eight-hour ordeal of H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment began when it landed at LZ Blue onto ground occupied by 1st VC’s 60th Battalion. LZ Blue lay in an exposed position between Nam Yen 3 and Hill 43, a wooded knoll dominating the otherwise flat terrain. The enemy allowed the first wave of helicopters to land unmolested. Afterwards the Viet Cong poured .51-caliber (Soviet 12.7mm) heavy machine gun fire into the succeeding waves and into the Marines working feverishly, in merciless 105-degree heat, to establish a perimeter around the landing zone.

As the fighting escalated around LZ Blue, the companies farther north made good progress. G Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment left LZ Red and searched two nearby hamlets, found nothing, and continued pushing steadily eastward against light resistance. They eventually dug in on M Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment’s right flank at PL Banana.

Advancing northeast from LZ White for 200 meters, E Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment came under mortar, machine gun, and small arms fire from an estimated 70 insurgents on a ridgeline to their front. Thanks to the lavish use of supporting arms—particularly Marine A-4 Skyhawks and F-4 Phantoms rocketing, strafing, and napalming the enemy—the company fought their way up the ridge and cleared it, evacuated casualties for an hour, and continued north at around 11 a.m. At noon, they made contact with 50 more insurgents. Another firefight ensued.

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Advancing, E Company spotted a force of about 100 insurgents in the open, heavily armed and moving briskly south. The timing was auspicious. Whiskey (“Howtar”) Battery, 3rd Battalion, 12th Marine Regiment had been lifted via helicopter into M Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment’s position that morning. The 20-round barrage it delivered killed about 90 of the enemy. (A “howtar” is a hybrid 107mm shell mounted onto the platform of a 75mm pack howitzer.) By 3 p.m., E Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment had fought its way to PL Banana with moderate losses and was settling into defensive positions.

Around noon, Muir ordered his executive officer, Maj. Andrew Comer, to send a resupply column to I Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, then a few hundred meters north of Muir’s command group. Comer assembled three M67 “Zippo” flame tanks (napalm only), five amtracs loaded with ammunition and water, and 23 Marines led by 2nd Lt. Robert Cochran. Column 21 moved out at 12:30 p.m. The convoy had advanced only a few hundred meters between Nam Yen 3 and An Cuong 2 along a trail flanked by rice paddies and trees, dikes, and hedgerows, when a mortar disabled the lead tank. The entire column then came under a devastating barrage that killed Lt. Cochran and halted the advance. Trapped inside their amtracs and tanks, the Marines returned fire with every weapon at their disposal. Yet by late afternoon most of the armored vehicles had been disabled, casualties were high, and the column was down to just one vehicle-mounted automatic weapon returning fire.

Sgt. James Mulloy, who later said he could see “hundreds of insurgents in every direction,” abandoned his amtrac, hid in a nearby paddy, and kept up a steady stream of M-14 rifle fire that stymied repeated enemy attempts to overrun the convoy. The column’s radio operator, panicking, kept his handset keyed on “send,” blocking incoming calls requesting detailed information. Due to communications problems, Column 21 couldn’t be located and remained in place until it was extracted the next morning. The enemy unit that launched the ambush, 1st Company, 40th VC Battalion, also suffered severe losses due to their habit of attacking in large, close formations.

K Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment had advanced two kilometers northward when both 2nd and 3rd Platoons, save one squad led by Lt. Burt Hinson, were pinned down by heavy fire coming from trench lines to their front and left flank. Firing his .45-caliber M1911A1 pistol, Lt. Hinson led his lone squad on a charge up the slope to their front, driving the surprised insurgents and their automatic weapons from the crest of the hill. After 1st Platoon captured the enemy trench on the left flank, the pressure along the entire front was relieved. After Muir ordered L Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, to come up from Green Beach and deploy on K Company’s right, the two companies continued northward. By 1 p.m. they were setting up defensive positions along PL Banana.

Unsure of the enemy force’s size, 1st Lt. Homer Jenkins, commanding H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, ordered one platoon to attack Hill 43 and two platoons to attack Nam Yen 3. Both thrusts were easily halted. Jenkins called in airstrikes and led an attack against Nam Yen 3 with all three of his platoons. An entire enemy company occupied the village. As 3rd Platoon moved forward, it was hit by a fury of automatic weapons fire from a VC-occupied hedgerow. Although the Marines killed a number of insurgents and captured the hedgerow, H Company was unable to suppress the torrent of enemy fire and could advance no further into Nam Yen 3. Lt. Jenkins regrouped his company and led another attack against Hill 43, and with the help of M48 Patton tanks finally captured the crest of that hill. Needing more Marines on the ground, Col. Pea-tross summoned one company from his reserve, I Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment.

The airstrikes called by Lt. Jenkins had halted the advance of Capt. Bruce Webb’s I Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment east of Nam Yen 3. When the barrage lifted, I Company continued to its assigned position opposite An Cuong 2, only to come under fire from An Thoi 2 and from high ground southeast of An Thoi 1.

Aware the company to his left, H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, was in difficulty, Webb asked permission to attack An Cuong 2, though it was in 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment’s area of responsibility. Muir assented.

Webb and his men advanced and encountered a fortified village numbering about 25 huts, honeycombed with dozens of camouflaged trenches, tunnels, bunkers, spider holes, and huts with collapsing walls that allowed machine gun teams inside to open fire when the walls were lowered. The terrain was marked by dense vegetation, rice paddies, and wooded areas, leaving the Marines few open fields of fire. Hedgerows and thickets measuring six to eight feet high divided the rice paddies, providing the defenders with excellent cover and concealment.

I Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, had just entered the village when a grenade killed Capt. Webb and mortar fire wounded nine others. 1st Lt. Richard Purnell, the company’s executive officer, assumed command and called the reserve platoon forward. Again, armor and supporting arms turned the tide, helping I Company to capture An Cuong 2 and kill 50 insurgents in 90 minutes of fighting. Purnell radioed Muir and was told to resume his march north toward PL Banana. As I Company departed, a helicopter gunship was shot down northeast of the village, and on Muir’s orders Lt. Purnell left 10 men and three tanks to protect the craft until it was evacuated.

With Hill 43 secured, Lt. Jenkins regrouped H Company and renewed the assault against Nam Yen 3, backed by two flame tanks and three M50 Ontos. The advance was again halted, however, by intense fire from hedgerows on both flanks, with the insurgents now adding white phosphorus rifle grenades to the barrage. In the debilitating heat, a good number of Marines spent their water supplies and began suffering from exhaustion and dehydration.

Carrying their dead and wounded, I Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment arrived at PL Banana around 1 p.m. The company’s tired Marines got almost no rest as they were called back to the regimental command post to help search for Column 21, the “lost column.”

Notified the column had been ambushed, Muir ordered Maj. Comer to gather whatever support he could and move to the convoy’s aid, with I Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment leading. Comer’s rescue column—one tank, five amtracs, three Ontos, and most of Lt. Purnell’s I Company riding aboard the vehicles—left the command post around 1:30 p.m., unaware of the convoy’s location and unable to make radio contact.

After Comer’s column traveled just 400 meters and reached high ground 200 meters east of An Cuong 2, a projectile halted the lead tank. The bunched-up column came under a fierce barrage of enemy fire that killed five Marines and wounded 16. Much of the fire came from An Cuong 2, which had been “cleared” earlier in the day, after the enemy had reentered the village through a hidden tunnel network. After calling in airstrikes, the men of I Company again found themselves battling an enemy hidden in trenches and hedgerows surrounding the village.

Tank fire set the hedgerows aflame, adding smoke and dust to the haze blanketing the battlefield. Reinforced by L Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment and two more tanks, I Company fought its way through An Cuong 2 as darkness fell on Aug. 18 and then searched unsuccessfully into the night for the lost supply column. Muir called off the rescue when he learned the column was no longer in danger and ordered L Company to join the regiment at PL Banana. The exhausted Marines of I Company finally returned to the command post at 4:30 a.m., having fought for almost 24 hours while losing 15 dead and 55 wounded from their original 177-man contingent.

With Nam Yen 3 quieted by airstrikes, Lt. Jenkins gathered his company and armor—five tanks and three Ontos—and headed northeast for PL Banana. Around 11:30 a.m., he led the company into an open rice paddy between Nam Yen 3 and An Cuong 2 and quickly came under small arms and machine gun fire. With mortars raining down on the entire column, H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment found itself under fire from all directions and with no room to maneuver. With his position untenable, Lt. Jenkins finally received orders to withdraw to LZ Blue at 2 p.m.

After Jenkins and H Company moved out, their lead platoon had to alter course when medevac helicopters landed in the midst of the column. Moving to the flank, the platoon lost contact with the main body and was ambushed. Fortunately the men were able to link up with Lt. Purnell’s helicopter security detail, after which the combined force fought its way to safety. Jenkins and his two remaining platoons fought through several additional ambushes and arrived at LZ Blue at 4:30 p.m., where he was ordered to dig in and await resupply and reinforcements.

After eight hours of almost constant combat in crippling heat and humidity, the parched and exhausted Marines of H Company welcomed the rest. Though they hadn’t achieved their objectives, they had killed a good number of enemy soldiers.

The Marines spent the night of Aug. 18 shoring up their lines while Col. Peatross brought the rest of 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment ashore. Muir and Fisher found only scattered pockets of resistance when they attacked at 7:30 a.m. on Aug. 19. Snipers holed up in caves and spider holes continued to harass Marine patrols.

As the Marines moved into the area of the previous day’s heaviest fighting, they found 1st VC had largely escaped during the night, leaving one company behind to assist the villagers with casualties. M and I Companies, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, pushed through An Cuong 2 with no resistance, brought out the lost supply column, and established a blocking position outside An Thoi 2 by 3 p.m. By nightfall, the Marines had completed their sweep of the Phuoc Thuan Peninsula and organized resistance had ceased.

Due to the presence of so many hidden tunnels, bunkers, caves, spider holes, and machine gun emplacements discovered in and around Van Tuong 1, Gen. Walt continued the operation for another five days (Aug. 20-24) to conduct a thorough search. After 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment and 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment returned to Chu Lai on Aug. 20, the men of 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment moved into the area and joined 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment and units from the ARVN’s 2nd Division for the search. The Marines killed another 54 enemy soldiers before Operation Starlite concluded on Aug. 24, bringing the total of confirmed Viet Cong dead to 614, along with nine prisoners of war and 42 suspected insurgents at a cost of 45 Marines killed in action and 203 wounded. Although both sides claimed victory, the Marines were more than satisfied with the results of what became the war’s first major U.S. offensive and the war’s biggest battle to date involving American troops.

The Marines had killed a disproportionate number of enemy soldiers fighting from expertly camouflaged, prepared positions in extremely harsh terrain, had overcome extreme weather conditions and communication difficulties, and had evicted, at least temporarily, a formidable enemy regiment from its stronghold in and around Van Tuong 1.

Although the speed with which 1st VC Regiment replenished their ranks and returned to the battlefield shocked the Marines, their hard-fought victory bolstered their confidence that American firepower, technology, and determination would eventually triumph over a tenacious, highly skilled enemy.

John Walker served in Vietnam July 1970–June 1971 with the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Binh Dinh province. He lives in Oceanside, California.

This story appeared in the 2023 Summer issue of Vietnam magazine.

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Assuming command of the 4th Infantry Division in early January 1967, Maj. Gen. William R. Peers understood that his new assignment in the Central Highlands was something of an economy-of-force operation. The 4th was to monitor the Cambodian border, sound the alarm whenever the North Vietnamese Army returned in strength, and respond accordingly.

Lt. Gen. Stanley Larsen, then the commander of I Field Forces responsible for the Highlands, recommended using spoiling operations to keep the North Vietnamese off balance. “If you ever let him get set,” Larsen had cautioned Peers’ predecessor, Maj. Gen. Arthur Collins Jr., “you’re going to pay hell getting him out.”

Collins initiated Operations Paul Revere IV and Paul Revere V (later renamed Sam Houston), the latter just two days before he turned the division over to Peers, as part of the 4th’s ongoing efforts to observe and counter enemy infiltration in the Highlands. Collins warned Peers that the North Vietnamese were constructing a “fortified redoubt” in the Plei Trap Valley—a rugged stretch of jungle between the Se San and Nam Sathay Rivers in western Pleiku Province.

At first, Peers found little evidence to support those suspicions. By February, however, aerial sightings, long-range reconnaissance patrols, and communications intelligence had detected signs of enemy activity in the Plei Trap. That activity was likely connected to Gen. Chu Huy Man’s plans for a winter-spring offensive. A veteran of the Viet Minh war against the French and commander of the Communist B3 (Central Highlands) Front, Chu intended to attack west of the Nam Sathay to disrupt Operation Sam Houston and prevent the Americans from destroying his rear areas and supply caches.

Responding initially with B-52 strikes, Peers based Col. James Adamson’s 2nd Brigade between the Plei Trap and Pleiku City and pushed two of its battalions across the Nam Sathay on Feb. 12. Adamson would soon tangle with elements of Col. Nguyen Huu An’s battle-tested 1st NVA Division west of the river, prompting Peers to recall his 1st Brigade from Phu Yen Province on the coast. Commanded by Col. Charles A. Jackson, the 1st assumed responsibility for the area between the two rivers, while Adamson was to continue working west of the Nam Sathay to the Cambodian border.

Over the next few weeks, the two brigades made regular contact with North Vietnamese regulars. Smaller skirmishes sometimes developed into much larger fights. While operating east of the Nam Sathay on March 12, the 2nd Battalion, 35th Infantry attacked a bunker complex, but could not eliminate the enemy position despite air and artillery support. The daylong battle cost the battalion 14 killed and 46 wounded. Abandoning the complex that night, the North Vietnamese left behind 51 dead, though another 200 may have been killed in the fighting.

Four days later, the 2nd Brigade shifted to the Plei Doc, a heavily jungled area that abutted the Cambodian border south of the Plei Trap. When the brigade lost radio contact with a long-range reconnaissance patrol (LRRP) team late on March 21, Adamson ordered Lt. Col. Harold Lee’s 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry to retrieve the missing men. Lee, recognizing the urgency of the mission, dispatched two companies the following morning.

Breaking camp early on the 22nd, Company A—led by Capt. William Sands, a hardnosed Citadel graduate—moved west-southwest along a ridgeline, flanked by Company B to the south. Company A had only maneuvered a short distance through the dense vegetation when Sands halted the four-platoon column and instructed his 1st Platoon to move forward and join the 2nd Platoon up front. The 3rd and 4th Platoon were to remain in a column formation behind the two lead platoons.

Slipping out of the company column, the 1st Platoon moved abreast of the 2nd Platoon around 7:30 a.m. “The First Platoon was to the left of us, probably fifty to one hundred yards,” noted Sgt. Ron Snyder, a squad leader in the 2nd Platoon. “We barely got lined out, when the First Platoon was hit.” Snyder hit the ground as the roar of enemy rifle and automatic weapons fire reverberated across the jungle.

Struck in the groin, a young soldier wailed in agony while a torrent of fire sliced through the 1st and 2nd Platoons from hidden positions along the ridgeline in front and to the left of Company A. The two lead platoons, trapped in what appeared to be the kill zone of a large enemy ambush, were being cut to pieces.

“I would say within the first four or five minutes, we had 27 killed and 45 wounded,” recalled medic John “Doc” Bockover. “I heard ‘medic’ and started running like hell to the front. There were NVA all around us.” While Bockover raced to treat the wounded, North Vietnamese troops swept around the pinned-down platoons, most likely in an attempt to outflank and encircle the entire company.

Sands, moving with the company command group behind the 2nd Platoon, requested artillery fire and attempted to organize a defensive perimeter. He also radioed Company B on the battalion radio net. “You got to get down here!” he shouted over the radio. “We are taking heavy casualties and don’t know how long we can hold out!”

Sands was adjusting artillery fire when a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into the command group. He was killed instantly. 1st Sgt. David McNerney, a tough career man on his third tour of duty in Vietnam, assumed command of the company and calmly rallied the shaken men.

Lee had spoken to Sands earlier in the battle and had directed Company B, commanded by Capt. Robert Sholly, to move at once to assist Company A. Company B, however, was already en route. Sholly had heard gunfire that morning. When he could not raise Sands over the radio, he immediately placed his four platoons online and headed west-northwest.

The sounds of battle grew louder as Company B made its way through the underbrush, hurried along by Sholly. Suddenly a pair of machine guns raked the 4th Platoon on the left flank of the company line. Pinned down in a bamboo field, the platoon returned fire. They could not silence the enemy machine guns nor the shadowy snipers perched in the trees above them. The North Vietnamese, later identified as a battalion from the 95B NVA Regiment, had positioned a blocking force between the two companies to prevent them from linking up.

Worried he would not reach Company A in time, Sholly instructed his 2nd Platoon to flank the enemy force from the right. He hoped this would relieve some of the pressure on the 4th Platoon. Forming up quickly, the 2nd Platoon dashed forward and leapt into a dry creek bed approximately five feet wide and four feet deep. The bed provided a measure of cover. However, as the platoon prepared to scramble out of it to continue the assault, the startled troopers were met with a heavy volley of automatic weapons fire from enemy soldiers hidden on the opposite bank.

SP4 Victor Renza, one of two machine gunners in the 2nd Platoon, was setting up his M60 machine gun when a single rifle round whistled past his ear with an audible crack. Renza’s legs suddenly went limp, and he slumped back down into the creek bed without firing a shot. The color had drained from his face, and he could feel his heart thumping loudly. Convinced he had been targeted by an enemy sniper, Renza grabbed the M60 and, together with his assistant gunner, crawled along the bed in search of a new position for the gun.

The 2nd Platoon responded with M16s and M60s and was quickly drawn into a costly shooting match with the enemy blocking force. Stalled on the flanks, Sholly attempted to press ahead with the two platoons in the center of the Company B line, but the North Vietnamese refused to budge. “We could not see out of the brush and bamboo, so we were at a disadvantage,” he explained. “We set up fire in the trees but could not break the tie.” The advance had ground to a halt and the company had taken casualties. Facing the prospect of an even tougher fight, Sholly pulled his command post back and called on supporting arms.

Meanwhile Company A had been split into two separate perimeters. As the North Vietnamese maneuvered on its flanks, past pockets of pinned-down troopers from the 1st Platoon, they bumped into the 3rd Platoon as it moved forward to link up with the 1st. Firing from the hip, machine gunners from the 3rd and a handful of grunts armed with M16s succeeded in slowing the enemy advance.

Though no longer in any immediate danger of being overrun, Company A needed firepower—particularly close-in artillery fire, to shatter the North Vietnamese assault. McNerney recognized as much. After taking over command of the company from the late Sands, he skillfully adjusted artillery fire in support of the company to within 20 meters of friendly positions.

The storm of incoming artillery shook the surrounding jungle. “I can’t begin to tell you how many rounds landed around or on us,” Pfc. Tom Carty observed. “The artillery came screaming in and then exploded with a deafening roar. Shrapnel was hitting everyone and cutting vegetation like a weed eater. It didn’t seem like the artillery would ever stop.” He added, “Round after round after round of artillery came screaming in, exploding, and sending hot deadly metal in all directions, killing [North Vietnamese] and U.S. soldiers without discrimination.”

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Gunships and fighter bombers hammered the enemy as well, and before long the sheer weight of American firepower began to ease some of the pressure on the embattled company.

Flying overhead in a UH-1B Huey helicopter, WO1 Don Rawlinson of the 4th Aviation Battalion asked Company A for a visual aid so that he could align his approach. McNerney, aware that Rawlinson’s overloaded bird carried desperately needed supplies, climbed a tall tree under intense enemy fire and tied a bright orange identification panel to the highest branch he could find to mark the company’s location. Rawlinson spotted the panel and hurriedly searched for a landing spot. “My God!” he yelled to his copilot as the chopper cruised in. “Can you believe someone climbed up there in that tree and did that?”

McNerney clambered up the tree although he had been knocked to the ground and injured by an enemy grenade earlier in the morning. Throughout the battle, he offered words of encouragement to the troops, checked in on the wounded, and at one point helped clear a landing zone for helicopters. For his extraordinary leadership and remarkable bravery, McNerney was awarded the Medal of Honor at a ceremony held at the White House in September 1968.

As the battle raged around Company A, the number of dead and wounded continued to increase. Bockover treated a wounded radioman and then moved with a squad leader from the 4th Platoon to aid a recent replacement who was lying against a tree, covered in blood.

Chunks of flesh and bone had been ripped from his face, and he was having difficulty breathing. As Bockover prepared to perform an emergency tracheotomy so that the wounded man could breathe, the soldier gazed up at his squad leader and asked if he had finally earned a Combat Infantryman Badge, a highly coveted decoration signifying that the wearer had participated in ground combat. Heartbreakingly, when his squad leader replied that he had done enough to earn a CIB, the man inhaled one final time and then died.

To the south and east of Company A, Sholly summoned all manner of fire support to destroy or dislodge the enemy force blocking Company B’s advance. Sholly pounded the North Vietnamese with 105mm and 155mm guns, fighter bombers, and several flights of A1-E Skyraiders loaded with napalm. Bolstered by this support, Company B was able to maintain freedom of maneuver and establish a more defensible position.

“Saying the platoons were able to consolidate their positions is a cold and distant description of what really went on,” Sholly acknowledged in his book, Young Soldiers, Amazing Warriors. “Each man was looking for targets, moving and shooting, throwing grenades, trying to look out for his buddies, calling for more ammunition, and hearing that hated call for ‘medic.’”

Combat Badge

Established on Oct. 27, 1943, the Combat Infantryman Badge or CIB was awarded to any U.S. Army soldier or Special Forces member below the rank of colonel who used his infantry skills in battle. Troops who did not see combat but who met the standards during specialized training could receive the Expert Infantryman Badge.

The cumulative impact of concentrated American firepower softened up the enemy blocking force. By early afternoon Company B was moving west-northwest again, carrying its dead and wounded. The firing tapered off as the North Vietnamese, battered by air strikes and artillery fire and fought to a standstill by Company A, withdrew from the battlefield.

Companies A and B eventually linked up later that afternoon. Taking command of both companies, Sholly met with McNerney, who informed him that Sands had been killed. Sholly, after lamenting the loss of his friend, advised McNerney that a perimeter large enough to accommodate two companies would have to be completed before night-fall. Company A would take up positions in the center of the perimeter. For the remainder of the day, the exhausted troopers evacuated the dead and wounded and dug fighting positions.

Fought for the most part at close range, the battle in the Plei Doc cost the 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry 27 killed and 48 wounded. Company A suffered the lion’s share of the losses, including 22 dead. The missing LRRP team was never found.

Adamson praised the performance of the battalion without considering the number of North Vietnamese killed in the fighting. “That evening at about 2300, General Peers asked me for an enemy body count—I said I had no idea,” Adamson admitted. “He said Saigon wanted to know. Later I received a call from Swede [Stanley] Larsen by secure radio asking the same question. I was to provide a number. I said ‘150.’ The next day we found about 45 bodies and had the body count previously given withdrawn and ‘45’ reported in its place.”

Officially, the 4th Infantry Division reported 136 enemy killed. Whatever the final number—and it was almost certainly higher than 45, given the North Vietnamese practice of removing their dead from their battlefield—Company A had survived the deadly ordeal. Many credit McNerney. “I know that God saved us,” wrote SP4 Willis Nalls of the 2nd Platoon, “but Top’s bravery was what got us out of that firefight.” While undoubtedly a critical factor, McNerney’s heroism alone would not have been enough to save the company without the courage and determination of the young “grunts” holding the line.

In May, Companies A and B moved into the remote Ia Tchar Valley in western Pleiku Province. On the morning of May 18, while investigating a well-worn trail near the Cambodian border, a platoon from Company B was ambushed and surrounded by a large enemy force. Company A received orders to reinforce its stricken sister company, even as some of its soldiers privately feared that the battle had all the makings of another March 22, only this time in reverse.

That night Company A stumbled around in the dark for hours searching for the “lost platoon.” Overrun and all but wiped out, the platoon was eventually found the following morning. “Those two days [March 22 and May 18] created a bond and a brotherhood between the two companies that has lasted for over 50 years,” said Renza, one of the “lost platoon” survivors. “When we got to them [Company A] in March, they were so happy to see us. We didn’t know who was coming for us. But when they found me on May 19, after the North Vietnamese had overrun us the day before, I couldn’t believe it was those same guys we’d gone to help in March. I know that they were determined to get to us.”

Warren Wilkins is the author of books and magazine articles about the Vietnam War and is a frequent contributor to Vietnam magazine.

This story appeared in the 2023 Summer issue of Vietnam magazine.

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Special operations missions are the stuff of legend. Shrouded in secrecy, these dangerous assignments are fit to be undertaken only by warriors who have proved they can excel at what others find impossible. Sometimes secrecy can give rise to myths. But there are no myths in John L. Plaster’s fine book, SOG: A Photo History of the Secret Wars—the incredible stories of heroism, sacrifice, and daring are all based firmly on fact and enriched with source materials provided by the men themselves.

Consisting of volunteers from elite special operations units across the spectrum of the U.S. military—such as the Army Green Berets, Navy SEALs, and Marine recon units—the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam-Studies and Observations Group (known by its acronym SOG) was an ultra-secret force that was practically invisible to all.

Reporting directly to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and even at times the president, SOG left zero public footprint and performed clandestine missions that remain unknown to many today. Despite the challenges of chronicling the history of this unit, Plaster’s book provides a wealth of information about the SOG experience during the Vietnam War, using more than 700 photos snapped “in wartime by the very men who performed SOG’s amazing missions.” This portfolio contains a selection of those rare images, which Vietnam magazine is pleased to share with readers courtesy of Casemate Publishers.

The book features an array of remarkable and striking images. No less striking and remarkable are the stories of personal bravery that accompany them. “I’ve sought to humanize and make real these phenomenally courageous men, to help readers understand in our image-conscious era that it’s what’s inside such extraordinary warriors that makes them special,” writes Plaster in his introduction. It is a noble mission and one that the author has accomplished with excellence.

This story appeared in the 2023 Summer issue of Vietnam magazine.

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A Cessna O-2’s night reconnaissance mission turned tragic on Christmas Day, 1967. Near the Demilitarized Zone, Maj. Jerry Sellers (pilot) and Capt. Richard Budka (observer) received a radio message about a ground patrol in trouble. Quickly flying towards the area, Sellers turned on his landing lights to direct fire from a nearby AC-47 gunship towards the enemy—putting himself and Budka at high risk. Hit by ground fire, the subsequent crash killed both men. Sellers was posthumously awarded the Air Force Cross. The crew’s bravery allowed the ground patrol to return to safety.

Forward Air Controllers (FACs) were integral to America’s war effort in Vietnam, using various aircraft. One such aircraft—the Cessna O-2—was a modified civilian 337 Skymaster and flew a wide range of missions during the war. Then-Lt. Mike Jackson’s memoir Naked in Da Nang noted: “FACs…plodded along at ridiculously low levels to direct airstrikes, observe troop movements, gather intelligence, and/or choreograph search-and-rescue missions…we were the traffic cops of Southeast Asia, telling everyone where to go, when to go, how to get there, and what to do once they were there.” 

Cessna and military aviation have a long history together, as Cessnas were used as World War II trainers and transports. After the war, Cessna designed the single-engine Model 305 with tandem seating for recreational aviation. In turn, the 305s were repurposed by the military into the L-19 “Bird Dog,” seeing service in Korea as observation aircraft.

Redesignated as the O-1 in 1962, Bird Dogs were used extensively in Vietnam and Laos. Their slow speed, limited range, and small ordnance-carrying capacity reduced their effectiveness. The Air Force began searching for more advanced aircraft. At home, Cessna continued developing civilian models such as the 336—first flown in February 1961. This aircraft featured engines in front of and behind the fuselage and twin cantilever booms, which helped avoid yaw if one engine failed.

Re-engineered with improved performance and retractable landing gear in 1964, the 336 aircraft became the Model 337 Skymaster. With two 210-hp Continental engines, these new aircraft had a top speed of about 200 miles per hour and a range of more than 1,000 miles. The Skymaster had a wingspan over 38 feet and were about 30 feet long. The Air Force evaluated over 100 civilian aircraft before deciding in 1966 that the Skymaster, while imperfect, was the best short-term option to replace the O-1. Renamed the O-2 (and earning nicknames such as “Oscar Deuce”), about 450 were deployed to Southeast Asia. O-2s were faster, had longer loiter time over a target, carried more ordnance, and had better instrumentation for night missions compared to O-1s. Two variants saw action: O-2As for FAC missions and O-2Bs for psychological operations.

Military reconfiguration of Skymasters added observation windows, 7.62mm miniguns, LAU-59/A pods holding Folding Fin Aircraft Rockets, armored seats, self-sealing fuel tanks, and stronger landing gear.

O-2 pilots considered the Air Force-designed gunsights ineffective. To improve accuracy, some pilots used a grease pencil mark on the windshield, coordinated with the seat and pilot’s height, as an alternative gunsight.

The U.S. military introduced O-2s into Vietnam beginning in May 1967. This first required getting the aircraft to Asia, which was not a straightforward process. Civilian pilots flew O-2s in flights of four from Cessna’s Wichita, Kansas, plant to Hamilton AFB in California. At Hamilton, the Air Force removed all the seats except the left front and installed extra fuel and oil tanks and an emergency radio. Still flown by civilians, these aircraft island-hopped from California to Vietnam, with flight leaders earning $1,000 and other pilots $800 for the trip, plus airfare home. The Hamilton-Hawaii leg was the longest at about 13 hours flight time; fuel aboard provided for about 14.5 hours of flight, leaving a small margin for navigational error. Years later, an anonymous Air Force pilot wrote: “Civilian misfits ferrying Air Force airplanes across the Pacific to a combat zone? No way!… We began firing off messages to get this idiocy stopped.” The Air Force ultimately assumed responsibility for aircraft delivery.

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O-1 pilots stationed in Vietnam received field training for the new aircraft. The 20th Tactical Air Support Squadron (TASS) was the first FAC unit to receive these aircraft and the first O-2 qualified pilot was Maj. James Leatherbee, who described the Cessna as “an ideal plane for FACing.”

For pilots receiving training in the U.S., flight qualification was at Hurlburt Field in Florida (sometimes referenced as “FAC U”). Instruction included Air Ground Operations schooling for coordinating with ground troops, and Fighter Lead-in Training (conducted at Cannon AFB in New Mexico) to ensure that airmen directing attacks near U.S. troops were qualified fighter pilots. Graduates from Cannon were classified as “A” pilots. Those without that training were rated as “B” pilots and relegated to directing attacks only near non-U.S. allied troops. There was an ongoing dispute within military leadership about the tradeoff between fighter pilot training (increasing FAC effectiveness) and the need for aircraft in the sky (given the expanding operational tempo).

Other facets of a pilot’s education included the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape School at Fairchild AFB in Washington State and the Jungle Survival School at Clark Air Base in the Philippines. After arriving in Vietnam, pilots provided detailed personal information to military intelligence, such as describing their tattoos and scars, to help search-and-rescue teams avoid potential North Vietnamese traps. After arriving in-country, pilots would fly observation missions to become familiar with the terrain and received a check ride with an experienced FAC. They were then deemed to be ready for combat.

Call signs were ubiquitous for FAC pilots, regardless of the type of aircraft flown. For example, “Nail” FACS were assigned to the 23rd TASS and “Covey” FACS were at 20th TASS. These call signs were common self-references that the airmen might use long after their military service concluded.

The Air Force developed an extensive command structure for the FAC effort. The 504th Tactical Air Support Group headquarters had nearly 3,000 personnel by 1968. There were five TASS units: the 19th at Bien Hoa; the 20th at Da Nang; the 21st at Nha Trang and Cam Ranh Bay; the 22nd at Binh Thuy; and the 23rd at Nakhon Phanom in Thailand. These squadrons used about 70 forward operating bases.

Being a FAC was a high intensity job, both in the number of sorties flown and performance requirements on each mission. The 1967 flight manual “FAC Procedures–Target Marking” directed that FACs: “[perform] an area reconnaissance of the target area prior to arrival of the strike aircraft…to confirm the position of friendly forces and study the target terrain, weather, etc. All operations in the target area should be at an altitude above the effective range of small arms fire [approximately 1,500 feet above ground level] unless there is an urgent operational requirement to fly lower. The FAC should have a plan or system but should not establish a set pattern [and] take advantage of sun, clouds, speed, binoculars, etc., to protect and separate himself from the enemy.”

Once assigned to a squadron, FACs would be given specific areas of responsibility (AORs). Pilots were expected to become familiar with their AOR’s terrain and to be alert for changes indicating enemy troop or supply movements. Telltale signs of the enemy would be fresh tracks or smoke from a cook-fire. The movement of water buffalo out of the fields could signify an imminent fire fight—villagers would not want to put these animals at risk.

Intelligence, navigators, or maintenance personnel might accompany pilots for daytime missions. FAC missions involved marking enemy positions with white phosphorus (“Willie Pete” in G.I. vernacular) rockets, signaling where the fighters should aim their bomb strikes. If the FAC thought placement was satisfactory, he would call “hit my smoke” as the target for the first bomb. The pilot’s next call would be “cleared hot”—green lighting the first fighter attack. The initial action would be followed by any necessary coordination for additional strikes on the enemy.

Accuracy in marking enemy positions was paramount, as North Vietnamese forces were often close to U.S. and South Vietnamese troops. Given the proximity of the FACs to other U.S. aircraft, often moving overhead at very high speeds, O-2s might have their wing tops painted white to contrast with the jungle terrain. For night missions, O-2s would be painted black and the observer would use a starlight scope to amplify starlight and moonlight. These scopes were effective in illuminating trucks on the Ho Chi Minh trail, leading to the destruction of enemy vehicles.

O-2s were employed for other critical purposes, including assessing bomb damage after B-52 missions and, if circumstances warranted, requesting an attack by the B-52s. It was a risky assignment. The aircraft would circle at low altitude to review the bombing damage while simultaneously avoiding bombs dropped from the higher altitude B-52s.

FACs also supported the insertion/extraction of special forces teams in Laos and Cambodia. They coordinated helicopter and aircraft rescues of downed aircrews. Command Master Sgt. Craig Corbett recounted after bailing out of an AC-119 “Flying Boxcar” (7.62mm and 20mm mini-guns/cannons) gunship near An Loc, South Vietnam: “I turned on my survival radio and heard the pilot of the O-2, whose call sign was Sundog, talking to one of our guys on the ground. Waiting a few seconds…I too made contact with Sundog who said, ‘Sit back, relax, Sandy [the call sign for the rescue teams] is on its way’.…I told myself all would be okay.”

Psychological operations involving O-2B missions included loudspeaker broadcasts and dropping leaflets into enemy positions from a chute installed for this task. The 9th Special Operations Squadron, operating from Da Nang, Phan Rang, Tuy Hoa, and Bien Hoa airbases, engaged in these exercises as part of a broader effort to break the will of enemy soldiers. Broadcasts included a series of pained moans interspersed with Vietnamese music, reminding North Vietnamese fighters of home and the risk of death if they continued fighting.

While these missions were challenging and risky, FAC pilots faced other complications. One was the Rules of Engagement, which provided restrictive, confusing, and contradictory procedures on what could or could not be done in combat situations. Attacking Buddhist temples in Cambodia was off limits, for example. The Communists exploited these constraints by purposely placing weapons in religious temples to shoot at U.S. aircraft. Having to strictly abide by these rules in the face of enemies exploiting them demoralized many American personnel.

Radio communications pilots required expert knowledge, adding to the other challenges they confronted. O-2s were equipped with UHF radios for coordinating with nearby tactical aircraft, FM for communicating with ground troops, and VHF for contacting tactical air control and requesting air support.

S&W .38 Victory

The Smith and Wesson .38-caliber “Victory” 6-round revolver with its 4- or 5-inch barrel was used by U.S. Army, Marine, and Air Force personnel in Korea and Vietnam. Of limited use as a weapon, American airmen appreciated its light weight, although as a slow-reloading revolver it was of limited use as a defensive weapon.

Personal safety was a constant concern. Many pilots wore Kevlar flak vests and would sit on a spare vest when airborne for added protection. Flight helmets provided protection against small arms fire. Pilots would be issued personal weapons such as a Smith & Wesson Model 10/Victory Model .38 Special and an M-16. While enemy forces might withhold fire on the FAC if they had not been spotted, all bets were off if the enemy thought they had been seen.

Combat damage resulting from the heavy use of the O-2s required extensive field maintenance. Some maintenance personnel received stateside training from Air Force or Cessna technicians at bases such as Sheppard AFB in Wichita Falls, Texas. For others, on-the-job training was the norm. One airman recalled being given a toolbox, the O-2 instruction manual, and being told “go fix it.” All the same, pilots gave high praise to the quality of their ground maintenance crews.

Courage was never in short supply in the FAC units. Lt. Jackson’s memoir describes an O-2 mission near Hue in mid-1971. Without an observer on board, he was in continuous contact with South Vietnamese forces on the ground (who had rudimentary English skills) while coordinating with nearby F-4 Phantom pilots in dealing with a North Vietnamese attack. Jackson came under heavy ground fire. The ARVN commander on the ground radioed for Jackson to be “careful.” He later wrote: “The ARVN Commander knew that…without me, his unit had a life expectancy of about 20 minutes.” Ultimately promoted to lieutenant colonel, Jackson later became the executive director of the National Aviation Hall of Fame at Wright-Patterson AFB.

Maj. Gerald Dwyer, who served with 23rd TASS, was awarded two Silver Stars in separate actions involving O-2s. In one incident, he was trapped in a ravine surrounded by North Vietnamese fighters after being shot down. He killed three North Vietnamese soldiers with his service revolver and the others fled before he was rescued.

Capt. Thomas Beyer was declared as MIA in July 1968 after he did not return from his O-2 mission in Quang Tin Province. Promoted to major while on MIA status, he was declared as Killed in Action in May 1978. He was awarded the Silver Star with his remains being identified in 2010 and returned home to North Dakota for burial.

These were not isolated incidents, and FAC casualties were high: 84 O-2 crewmen died in combat, part of the 223 total FAC fatalities on all aircraft during the Vietnam War. Two airmen were captured as prisoners of war. Over 100 O-2s were lost to enemy action, and another eight in ground attacks at South Vietnam bases.

There is no doubt that the FACs made a huge contribution to the air war and supporting ground troops in Vietnam. Col. Tom Petitmermet wrote in his memoir, Pretzel 06—Memories of a Forward Air Controller, about his 535 combat sorties in O-2s: “As a FAC I had a level of responsibility that I never came close to again in my future Air Force career. Never again would I have the direct power over the life and death of another person,” as there was virtually no margin for error when calling in airstrikes.

The legacy of the FAC aviators is honored at locations such as Memorial Park in Colorado Springs, Colorado; Hurlburt Field in Florida; and the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. There is also a memorial in Canberra, Australia, commemorating Royal Australian Air Force FAC personnel who served in Vietnam.

Barry Levine works at the Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, Michigan, volunteers at the Yankee Air Museum in Belleville, Michigan, and writes on a variety of aviation and history topics.

This story appeared in the 2023 Summer issue of Vietnam magazine.

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