Vietnam (9 page)

The year 1966 saw the big build up in Vietnam, with 385,500 men in country by the end of the year. However, only 14 per cent of US servicemen deployed were front-line troops. The rest were concerned with administration, construction, and logistics, much of it dedicated to providing the men with everything from colour TVs to Napoleon brandy. By 1968, there were forty ice-cream plants in Vietnam and over 760,000 tons of supplies were being delivered every month. With American goods on sale in the PXs, American movies and stage shows, American music on the radio station Armed Forces Vietnam, American TV and chilled American beer, it was possible for rear-echelon troops who never left the base to imagine they were still back home. This, General Westmoreland remarked, was 'one of the more remarkable accomplishments of American troops in Vietnam'.

President Johnson wanted to go further in the Americanisation of Vietnam. A liberal Democrat, Johnson had already begun his 'Great Society' reforms at home, an enormous programme of social welfare legislation that included his 'war against poverty', federal support for education, medical care for the aged through an expanded social security programme, and an extension of African-American civil rights which were still being restricted by state voter registration laws in the South. In February 1966, Johnson met Premier Ky in Hawaii and offered to extend his 'Great Society' to Vietnam, saying, 'We are determined to win not only military victory over hunger, disease, and despair'.

But Ky was no liberal Democrat and he was losing support at home. When the mayor of Da Nang rebelled against the Saigon government, Ky sent in troops, and America was forced to look the other way while its ally Ky, a military dictator, butchered elected representatives who were exercising the right of free speech.

If that was not irony enough, the cost of the Vietnam War, both in monetary and political terms, killed Johnson's Great Society. After he left office, Johnson told his biographer Doris Kearns:

With South Vietnam virtually in a state of civil war, Johnson realised that his ally could not be relied upon and the prosecution of the war would have to be done by the Americans. All he could do was escalate the war. But even though B-52 strategic bombers dropped hundreds of tons of bombs on the Ho Chi Minh trail, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara estimated that 4,500 men a month were being infiltrated into South Vietnam. B-52s bombed Hanoi and North Vietnam's principal port Haiphong, destroying up to 90 per cent of North Vietnam's oil reserves. But this only served to harden the Communist world's support for Hanoi, while turning allies, such as Britain and France, against US involvement. Civilian casualties mounted. After a visit to South Vietnam, US Representative Clement Zablocki claimed that five civilians died for every one Vietcong killed. The war also began to spill over into neighboring Laos and Cambodia. Westmoreland asked for more men. By the end of 1966, there were 400,000 US troops in Vietnam, but the Vietcong still seemed to be able to attack American bases, seemingly at will.

The American response grew more extreme. Armour was deployed, particularly the M113 Armored Personnel Carrier. These heavily armed 'battlefield taxis' which carried eleven troops, plus the driver, into battle at up to 40 miles an hour achieved some success in a series of battles along the Minh Thanh road in June and July 1966, when the 1st Infantry Division opened Route 13 from Loc Ninh to Saigon and blocked the VC's attempt to withdraw into Cambodia. On 9 July, ACAV's (Armored Cavalry Assault Vehicles) broke through the enemy's flanks and decimated elements of the 9th Vietcong Division, killing over 240 VC.

However, the M113 were vulnerable to anti-tank mines and the men would pack the floor with sand bags, flak jackets, empty ammunition boxes and even C-ration tins full of sand for protection. The VC and NVA were also armed with 57mm and 75mm recoilless rifles and RPG-2 rocket propelled grenades, which turned the inside of the M113 into a blizzard of lacerating metal fragments. Grunts often found it safer to ride on the roof. The tactic devised by the 1st Squadron of the 4th Cavalry Regiment to avoid enemy fire was the 'herringbone defence'. The ACAVs would move forward in a criss-cross pattern, ending with guns pointing in all directions and giving overlapping fields of fire. Then they would unleash a 'mad minute', sixty seconds of fire from the M113's 0.5-inch machine-gun and two M60 general purpose machine-guns or M163 20mm Gatling guns whose armourpiercing, ball and tracer was designed to flatten everything in sight.

Despite, the 1st Air Cav's victory in the Ia Drang valley, fighting continued in the Central Highlands. Huge operations were mounted by US, ROK and ARVN troops, now under close US supervision, but no matter how many victories they won and no matter how high the body count – 2,389 enemy casualties claimed in Operation Masher/White Wing in Binh Dinh province alone – the moment the troops moved on the area was reoccupied by the Vietcong and the NVA who were turning up in the South in increasing numbers.

IN THE HIGHLANDS
, the Green Berets still worked with Khmer, Mnong, Montagnard and other tribesmen who were ethnically different from the Vietnamese and persecuted by both Communist and anti-Communist Vietnamese alike. They were organised into Civilian Irregular Defense Groups (CIDGs). The cidgees often brought their families into Special Forces camps for such protection as these afforded them. But these remote camps strung along the border with Cambodia and Laos came under increasing pressure from the Communist forces. Again the US forces adopted a sledgehammer approach to defending their forward bases in the shape of 'Puff the Magic Dragon'. These were AC-47s – armed C-47 Dakota transport planes – named for the song by the folk trio Peter, Paul, and Mary, to the singers' great annoyance. They carried three six-barrelled Gatling guns, each capable of delivering 6,000 rounds a minute, along the port side. The Magic Dragon would drop a flare to illuminate the target, then circle, sometimes in pairs, raining down bullets on the enemy and forcing even the toughest NVA formations to withdraw. 'Spooky', the 4th Air Commando Squadron who flew them, sometimes also worked with PSYWAR C-47s of the 5th Air Commando Squadron. These 'Bullshit Bombers' carried huge speakers that blasted the jungles with appeals from the South Vietnamese government urging the VC to defect. This was not ineffective: by 1967, 75,000 guerrillas had come over to the government side on the promise of money, better food and conditions, and a chance to see their family and friends.

Even so, the US forces were amazed at how much punishment VC units could take without cracking, the more so as many were drafted at gunpoint. This did not necessarily make them any worse fighters than other conscript armies. After all, most of the Americans and Australians fighting in Vietnam were draftees. But the Vietcong had unique methods of dealing with the problems handling the hardships of their plight and homesickness among recruits, many of whom had not been outside their village before. Each recruit joined a three-man cell, which included at least one veteran. They would stick together through thick and thin as long as they survived, so they formed the strongest of ties. In turn, these three-man cells were attached to three-cell squads, which made up three-squad platoons. Few were Communists or had any knowledge of Marxism. Nothing was done to remedy this. Propaganda lectures concentrated on Vietnam's historic struggle to oust foreign invaders – first the Chinese, then the Japanese, then the French. The war against the South Vietnamese government and the US was portrayed as a continuation of the French anti-colonial war with the US in the role of a neocolonial power. Occasionally, when morale was low or a unit was doing particularly badly, a political officer would organise a session of self-criticism. But these attempts to shame men into greater effort were far more humane than the hard physical punishments other armies use. The factor most on the side of the Vietcong was that they were peasant farmers, used to backbreaking toil, deprivation, and hardship. Few saw their families again. For most a terrible death awaited. They were gassed like vermin in their tunnels, buried alive by artillery strikes, incinerated by napalm, or blown into unidentifiable hamburger by bombs. But what the Vietcong and NVA feared most was the B-52 strikes. They called them the 'whispering death' because the first they knew of the presence of the bombers high above the jungle canopy and the clouds was the whistling of their bomb. Aerial bombardments could go on for days or weeks at a time. Even the most battle-hardened veterans lost control of their bodily functions, soiling their pants and shaking uncontrollably. Some went mad and no one who survived could ever be cured of the abject terror a B-52 strike inspired. A B-52 mission could drop up to 54,000 pounds of bombs on a single target.

By 1966, B-52s began to strike against the Ho Chi Minh trail. The North Vietnamese had instituted a series of control points every three miles, where trucks could be hidden from US reconnaissance planes. As the Ho Chi Minh trail ran for most of its length outside Vietnam and US rules of engagement required that American planes only attack vehicles actually moving down the trail, bringing them in low and making them easy targets for the Communists' anti-aircraft defences. High-level carpet bombing was thought to be the answer. Tran Thi Truyen, a sixteen-year-old nurse who served in a field hospital in southern Laos, recalled how intense American bombing denuded the jungle and there was no place to hide. During her month-long march down the trail, she carried a rifle, a sixty-pound knapsack, and a shovel. When American planes came overhead, her group would disperse and dig foxholes. After the bombing had stopped, she said she could not focus her eyes and her head ached for hours. Wounded Vietnamese soldiers were brought up the trail for her to treat in her underground hospital. Most were so badly wounded, nothing could be done for them. Eventually Tran contracted malaria and was sent back to the North.

The bombing did little to halt the Communist war effort. While a B-52 could unleash over a hundred 750-pound bombs in thirty seconds, cutting a huge swathe through the jungle, it was estimated that this huge firepower only killed one infiltrator for every 300 bombs dropped, while the casualty rate due to disease was 10 per cent. With nearly six million tons of aid arriving in North Vietnam from the Soviet Union and China every day, only a tiny fraction had to find its way down the trail to maintain the war effort. The annual North Vietnamese infiltration soared from 10,000 in 1964, to 35,000 in 1965, to 90,000 in 1966, to 150,000 in 1967. Most of the North Vietnamese who died on the journey were killed by malaria, dysentery and other diseases, rather than US bombing. However, in 1966, the B-52 strikes along the Ho Chi Minh trail persuaded the North Vietnamese that it was safer to infiltrate their men across the DMZ. They took advantage of the rebellion in Da Nang, Hué, and other northern cities that lasted from March to June 1966 to attempt an invasion of Quang Tri, the northern-most province of South Vietnam. Civil disorder in the area hampered the Marine operations and the Green Berets were forced to abandon several Special Forces camps along the Lao border and in the A Shau Valley. Nightly reconnaissance flights had been keeping an eye on the DMZ with infra-red cameras since the Marines landed in Da Nang in 1965. At first, when each night's film was developed at Dong Ha air base, it came out completely black, showing empty jungle. Then in early May 1966, a number of white specks showed up. These were camp fires. Within days, the film was a mass of white dots and the jungles below were swarming with NVA. The Marines had already established a fire-base on the 'Rockpile', a 750-foot jagged fang of granite that stood at the intersection of three river valleys and two infiltration trails. But to hold it they would also have to take nearby Hills 400 and 484, two other granite outcrops infested with NVA bunkers. K Company of the 3rd Battalion of the 4th Marine Regiment were tasked to take the first objective, Hill 400. They headed out at 0930hrs on 27 September 1966.

When one of K Company's veterans saw the objective, he complained, 'Mountains like Korea, jungles like Guadalcanal. The only thing missing is snow'.

As they made their way along the ridgeline, they came across a human skull placed on the side of the trail. Under it was a note in flawed English which read, 'We come back kill Marines'.