The Tunnels of Cu Chi (6 page)

A few weeks before Kennedy was assassinated, in November 1963, President Diem was murdered during a coup staged with Washington's consent. This followed city-based agitation by Buddhists, long offended by Catholic domination, and led to a bewildering series of military juntas in Saigon. Viet Cong activity was, by 1964, augmented by practical help from North Vietnam. The militants who had gone north after 1954 had filtered home, trained and motivated for political action and guerrilla war. With them came the first North Vietnamese soldiers to fight alongside the Viet Cong under the command of the Communists' southern headquarters, the Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN).

Shortly before American soldiers arrived in force in 1965,
the Viet Cong were bold enough to hold a victory parade in the middle of Cu Chi town, while the local ARVN detachment, the 49th Regiment, stayed in its fort in the Fil Hol plantation. At the same time, General Giap was moving division-strength troops from the North to cut South Vietnam in half. With the growing ineffectiveness of the ARVN, Communist takeover in South Vietnam in 1965 was a serious possibility. The ARVN's area of control, commented Brigadier General Harley Mooney of the U.S. 25th Infantry Division, was “about three or four feet on either side of wherever they were.”

The full-scale military intervention in the war in Vietnam by the United States in August 1965 was a direct result of the ARVN's failure to hold back the tide of Viet Cong military successes. By that year the ARVN desertions were surpassing recruitment by 2,000 a month, and the U.S. advisers noted that only one senior ARVN officer had been wounded since 1954. At the lowest point in its fortunes, the ARVN was losing a battalion of soldiers and a district capital a week. President Lyndon Johnson decided to alter radically the degree of America's commitment to stopping Communism in Southeast Asia. Following the Tonkin resolution, Congress authorized him—without a declaration of war—both to bomb North Vietnam and to send troops to the South; Congress did not foresee millions of GIs would serve in Vietnam, and that the war would drag on for ten more years.

In South Vietnam, the Viet Cong had established huge enclaves that they alone governed. Some, like those on the Cambodian border, would remain inviolate sanctuaries for much of the war. But the NLF's aim was not just to carve out areas of rural hegemony; it was to fulfill Ho Chi Minh's promise of reunification and independence which they felt had been denied them by the cancellation of the 1956 elections. The Viet Cong's most critical forward bases would be those nearest to Saigon, in Cu Chi and Ben Cat districts, fearsome Viet Cong strongholds that the ARVN dared not enter. When General Westmoreland assessed the situation and decided upon the tactic of search-and-destroy, it was upon Cu Chi, the Iron Triangle, the woods of Tay Ninh and their giant tunnel and bunker complexes that the full sophistication of American military might would be unleashed.

The first sizable American units to reach Vietnam were
the marines. Their initial task was to defend coastal enclaves and airstrips. Large units of the army soon followed and halted the downhill slide caused by the collapsing ARVN. In mid-1965, General Giap tried to cut South Vietnam in two along a line from Pleiku in the central highlands to the coast. This threat was averted in October by the bloody confrontation in the Ia Drang valley between three North Vietnamese regiments and the 1st Air Cavalry Division, helicoptered into battle. This event established the pattern that would be one of General Westmoreland's proudest boasts, that the United States Army never lost a battle in Vietnam. Faced with such overwhelming firepower, including air support, the Communists were obliged to fight a different sort of war—harrying their enemies at times and places of their own choosing and otherwise avoiding contact by concealment. Only when the Americans had left Vietnam did the Communists again wage a conventional war of movement—eventually with success.

By the end of 1965, the ground war in South Vietnam was the main focus of American strategy. The bombing of North Vietnam was having little effect, nor was diplomatic pressure on Hanoi. The policy of nation-building, developing schemes such as irrigation, to ingratiate the Saigon regime with the peasants, could not undo historic xenophobic attitudes. The only place where America could be seen to be succeeding was in killing the Viet Cong by the use of its unmatched military technology and the size of its units. A war of attrition was the result, one that measured its success by counting the enemy dead.

General Westmoreland, who had headed American Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, since 1964, saw numbers as the solution to the deteriorating situation in the South. American commitment grew throughout 1965, and whole divisions of over 20,000 men each found themselves crossing the Pacific. Westmoreland's first concern was to protect Saigon; his second to “pacify” the countryside. He decided, therefore, to ring Saigon with huge base camps that would, in time, become almost permanent in character. The sites chosen were, not surprisingly, close to areas of Viet Cong domination and intense activity. At Di An, south of the Iron Triangle, would be the headquarters of the 1st Infantry Division, the “Big Red One.” The Hawaii-based 25th (Tropic Lightning) Division would be
based beside Cu Chi town. And there were many others. Before establishing these camps, there had to be sweep operations to secure the areas.

Large military operations had to await the dry season. In January 1966, Operation Crimp was the first sweep by American and allied troops into the Viet Cong strongholds of the Ho Bo woods and other parts of Cu Chi district. This was to “clear and secure” the area adjoining the planned new base camp. Before the operation began, artillery fire was rained on the area, and there were softening-up raids by B-52 bombers. B-52s had been built for strategic, or nuclear, attack, but from 1965 on, over a hundred were adapted to carry dozens of 750-pound conventional bombs. They flew from bases on the island of Guam and in northern Thailand. B-52 raids were called up at twenty-four hours' notice, and targeted by controllers on the ground in Vietnam. The planes were almost inaudible to their targets because they flew so high. The thirty-ton load of high explosive would leave a mile-long swath of destruction and deep craters.

After the bombing came the GIs and their allies. On 7 January 1966 over 8,000 soldiers of the 1st Infantry Division, the 173rd Airborne Brigade, and the Royal Australian Regiment were airlifted from Phu Loi to Cu Chi district, and straight into trouble.

   Operation Crimp

As the sun rose on another cloudless day that promised only the inevitable invasion of heat by breakfast time, the U.S. Air Force C-130 transport aircraft coughed noisily into life and lumbered awkwardly down the runway at Phuoc Vinh. It was Friday, 7 January 1966, and the 1st Battalion of the 28th Infantry, part of the 3rd Brigade of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division, the Big Red One, was being airlifted to Phu Loi in preparation for the start of the largest American operation yet in Vietnam—Operation Crimp.

The Christmas pause in the bombing raids against North Vietnam ordered by President Johnson was two weeks old—his public gesture to lure the Communists to the negotiating table would end in failure three weeks later. In the South, General Westmoreland's Operation Crimp was intended to teach the Communists a lesson they would never forget. With full armed might—helicopters, tanks, armored personnel carriers, and no fewer than 8,000 fighting men—he was going to solve the problem of Cu Chi.

A recently declassified U.S. Army report reveals that Crimp was to be “a massive attack … to strike at the very heart of the Viet Cong machine in South Vietnam at the notorious Ho
Bo woods just west of the fabled Iron Triangle itself.” This no-nonsense offensive was planned to destroy the long-time Communist redoubt by finding and eliminating the politico-military headquarters of the entire Viet Cong Military Region IV.

No World War II scenario could have been more apt. After playing cat-and-mouse with the ARVN troops for several years, the Viet Cong had it coming to them. Now the dogs of war were about to be unleashed.

From Phu Loi, the GIs of the 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry, were to be flown by helicopter directly to Landing Zone Jack, following on the heels of the 1st Battalion of the 16th Infantry. The location was almost on top of the Ho Bo woods. Long before the sun had flattened the dawn blue of the sky into an opaque glare, Operation Crimp had begun.

At Phu My Hung, on the banks of the Saigon River and within the Ho Bo woods area, Lieutenant, later Captain, Nguyen Thanh Linh of the Viet Cong's 7th Cu Chi Battalion sat deep inside the tunnels reading and rereading the long handwritten reports he had already drafted to his regional commander about the forthcoming American operation. Linh had command of a VC battalion of under 300 men. “We knew they were coming,” he said. “It followed basic military principles. They'd bombed, shelled, taken reconnaissance photographs. All this was unusual enough to make it clear there would be a big operation.”

Linh's battalion was one small unit within the local Communist defense force of at most some 1,000 men. Its mission was the defense of the all-important Phu My Hung tunnel complex, one of the largest in the entire Cu Chi district. Linh's soldiers were scarcely battle-hardened veterans. Most were teenagers or younger. Linh had, paradoxically, argued against being given command of too many men to defend the tunnels. “The more men I had, the more casualties I would receive,” he explained. “Fighting from the tunnels was an advantage if I did not have too many men. Often one or two riflemen would be enough, five or six rifles would be sufficient. In this kind of war one should attack numerous enemy troops with only a few men.”

Linh's major problem was to stimulate his youngsters into facing and fighting the Americans. Small unit attacks on the
South Vietnamese soldiers, random guerrilla assaults, all this was one thing. But facing a superpower that had put rockets in space and had the capacity to destroy the world was another. Besides, Americans were very tall, some were tall
and
black. They even had hair on their arms.

In his role as cadre, Linh fielded some awkward questions from his boy soldiers. Would a bullet fired from an old carbine kill a big American? Would it kill a black the same as a white? “I reassured them their bullets would kill if they struck the right spot, and I warned them that American bullets would kill them just as easily. Four days later, the Americans came. We watched with heavy hearts the helicopters endlessly landing men.”

As the 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry, settled down on the landing zone, the men could see that their colleagues from the 1st Battalion, 16th Infantry, were already in trouble and taking fire from the north corner edge of the landing zone. Battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Robert Haldane could see his men were growing increasingly apprehensive, particularly when they saw their comrades from the lead battalion being hit by enemy bullets and grenades. Captain Terry Christy, in command of B Company, knew he had to move his men off that landing zone and into the tree line quickly. He yelled at his platoon leaders and NCOs and moved all his men within minutes. But the enemy had suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. A few meters inside the tree line at the edge of a rubber plantation, Christy's men stumbled across a large trench. It was the first sign of a most elaborate underground fortification. Haldane did not have time to check the complex. He remained puzzled. How could the Viet Cong, who had been firing on the 1st Battalion, have fled undetected through the relatively open rubber trees? Haldane knew his unit was to operate here for several weeks, before handing the area over to the newly arrived U.S. 25th Infantry Division, and he did not want an enemy that simply melted away every time he advanced.

As the battalion moved forward with three companies, cache after cache of rice, salt, and other foodstuffs was turned up, perhaps enough to feed an enemy regiment. A large minefield was found across the wooded north end of the area, indicating the enemy had planned the area to be a permanent military complex. During the next two days of Crimp as the huge sweeps
continued, soldiers began reporting foxholes, trenches, mines, caves, right across the 1st Battalion's 1,500-meter front. The men were slowly approaching the Saigon River; there was ample evidence of VC base activity, but something was still wrong. Battle was simply not being joined. There were no running fights, no shouts, nobody was surrendering—yet GI after GI was being hit by Viet Cong sniper fire. Haldane watched anxiously as his men's morale began to ebb; he prayed they would soon pin the enemy against the river and extract their revenge for their own mounting losses. But when, on Monday 10 January, his battalion finally reached the wide expanse of rice paddies that linked the dry ground to the wide, sluggish Saigon River, his soldiers had seen only two fleeting glimpses of the enemy running through the jungle.