9

“THE ROAD OF BLOOD AND TEARS”

THE RETREAT FROM THE HIGHLANDS

Working throughout the night of 14 March and into the morning, Phu and Colonel Le Khac Ly developed a rudimentary plan for the redeployment to Nha Trang. Ly tried again to persuade Phu to use Route 19, but Phu refused, saying his orders from Thieu were unalterable. Phu’s first decision was to send the bulk of the corps headquarters to Nha Trang. From there, it would commence planning for the counterattack against Ban Me Thuot and the movement back to Pleiku. He halted the deployment of the two remaining battalions of the 44th Regiment so that the helicopters could be used in the morning to shuttle his staff to Nha Trang. A light corps headquarters commanded by Colonel Ly would move with the retreating column. Phu’s design was for his subordinates to handle the retreat, while he set up a forward headquarters near Phuoc An to oversee the clearing of Route 21 and the effort to retake Ban Me Thuot.

If the retreat was to succeed, Lieutenant Colonel Tinh’s engineers had to perform several critical missions. First they had to build the float bridge on the Ba River about ten miles southeast of Cheo Reo. Tinh, though, had a serious problem. His specially trained float-bridge troops were in Nha Trang, which meant his regular engineers would have to construct the float bridge. Without the specialists, building it would take two full days. Tinh’s second mission was to strengthen a weak bridge at the district town of Phu Tuc, about halfway between Cheo Reo and Cung Son. His third mission was to grade and repair the road between Phu Tuc and Cung Son. Then, he had to build a second, more important bridge across the Ba River near Cung Son. If he failed at any of these missions, the retreating II Corps forces would be caught out in the open, with no fortifications and few supplies. They would be the proverbial sitting ducks.

Remote and virtually unknown, the sleepy provincial capital of Cheo Reo was about to become one of the key battlegrounds in the final drama for South Vietnam. The town sits in a small, picturesque valley, bordered on the west by a number of high peaks that form the Chu Pa ridgeline, and on the east by the swift-flowing Ba River. The ramshackle settlement consisted mainly of one-story, tin-roofed houses around a small city center. From the local population of 20,000 Montagnards of the Jarai tribe, the South Vietnamese had raised three RF battalions to defend the area. One battalion was in the city, while the other two guarded the local countryside.

Le Khac Ly’s rudimentary movement plan called for the corps to depart in three elements over three days, one element per day. The first priority was to get the engineers moving and to secure Cheo Reo. The lead battalion of the 20th Engineers left Pleiku on 15 March. Shortly after the engineers moved out, the 23rd Ranger Group set off to secure Cheo Reo. Once they arrived in town, one battalion occupied the Chu Pa ridge-line to screen against a possible attack. Then the First Element—made up of the 6th Ranger Group, a troop of M-113 personnel carriers, and the rest of the combat engineers—would depart Pleiku on the morning of 16 March and move to Cung Son. Security from Cheo Reo to Phu Tuc would be the responsibility of the Phu Bon regional forces. The 6th Rangers would secure the road from Phu Tuc to Cung Son, and guard the engineers fixing the road and building the second, bigger bridge at Cung Son. Phu Yen RF units would secure the road from the second bridge to Tuy Hoa.

The Second Element would depart early on 17 March. It consisted of Ly’s light corps headquarters, the 4th Ranger Group, armor and artillery, the rest of the 44th Regiment, and the corps support units. The Third Element, comprising the 25th, 7th, and 22nd Ranger Groups, would set out on 18 March. To maintain secrecy, each unit would be informed only an hour in advance. The local administrations and RF/PF troops would remain and defend Kontum and Pleiku. Once everyone else passed through Cheo Reo, the 23rd Rangers would follow.¹

After the 23rd Rangers departed Pleiku, Phu got into his plane and flew to Nha Trang. When Brigadier General Cam learned that Phu had left, he stormed out of the II Corps headquarters. Cam, whom Phu had directed to “supervise” the retreat, refused to work with a new general like Tat. Instead, he took off for Tuy Hoa, telling Ly he would shuttle via helicopter between Tuy Hoa and Cheo Reo to oversee the operation.

Ly was furious. He suspected that Cam was more concerned with “overseeing” his business interests in Tuy Hoa than in helping plan the corps movement. Since Tat was arranging transportation for the Rangers, and Phu had flown the senior staff to Nha Trang, Cam’s departure left only Ly and several deputy staff officers to complete the planning for the movement of thousands of troops and vehicles. How an officer of Phu’s experience could have believed that his muddled chain of command, the abandonment of the civilians, and his presence in the rear instead of personally leading the column would not lead to a massive disaster is beyond understanding. The only possible explanation is that he was fixated on following Thieu’s order to retake Ban Me Thuot, thinking the retreat would be a fairly easy affair. If so, this again points up Phu’s lack of formal military education, as retreats and large-scale troop movements are difficult maneuvers requiring precise planning.

After the usual morning staff meeting on 15 March, Ly violated Thieu’s orders about informing the Americans. He covertly told the local CIA representative to gather his people and depart. After the CIA officer left, Phu and Ly pulled the American province representative for Pleiku, Earl Thieme, into Phu’s office. Phu informed Thieme that he should immediately begin evacuating all U.S. and foreign nationals, although Phu did not tell him why.²

Shortly thereafter, the CIA officer informed Tom Polgar in Saigon that II Corps was retreating. At the same time, Thieme alerted his boss in Nha Trang, Consul General Moncrieff Spear. Polgar immediately called Lieutenant General Dang Van Quang at the palace to determine whether this information was true. Quang, following Thieu’s stricture not to tell the Americans, denied it. Despite the denial, Polgar chose to believe his man on the scene and ordered all CIA personnel out of the Highlands. Deputy Ambassador Wolfgang Lehmann, after learning from both Spear and Polgar about the impending retreat, followed suit later that morning and ordered out all other U.S. staff. The first Americans were now heading for the exits.

Phu and Ly were not the only officers disobeying orders about keeping the retreat secret. After the afternoon meeting in Pleiku on 14 March in which Phu relayed Thieu’s orders, Air Force Brigadier General Pham Ngoc Sang immediately called the VNAF commander, Lieutenant General Tran Van Minh, to ask what he should do about his people and equipment. Sang could not just depart on a moment’s notice; he had tons of spare parts, engines, fuel, ammunition, disabled aircraft, and repair stands. Minh told him to follow Phu’s orders, but he also adopted a prudent course. Early on 15 March, Minh sent several C-130s to Pleiku with the supposed mission of flying out equipment. In reality, the planes were ferrying out not just supplies, but VNAF personnel and their families.

With the arrival of the lumbering cargo planes and the movement of the Air Force families to the airfield, rumors began to swirl among the rest of the population. In South Vietnam, people who lived near large bases always closely watched the military’s movements and would immediately flee whenever ARVN retreated. In this case, the roads had been cut for ten days, and the civilians and soldiers’ families were particularly anxious. When they then learned that the price of a ticket on Air Vietnam from Pleiku to Saigon had suddenly jumped, they rushed to the airfield. Chaos spread, and VNAF personnel and civilians fought with one another to get onto the planes. Sang tried to restore order, but panicked civilians interfered with his airmen’s efforts to destroy equipment and material that could not be taken along. Although the Air Force did ferry out some equipment and records, including much of the highly classified Pleiku signals-intelligence station, large amounts were left behind. Later that afternoon, PAVN sappers shelled the airfield again, closing down the airlift. Some VNAF personnel and many unlucky civilians would now have to walk or ride down Route 7B with the Army.

That same morning, Brigadier General Tat flew out to the Rangers and tankers trying to break through the roadblock on Route 19.³ He wanted to speak with Colonel Nguyen Van Dong, the commander of the 2nd Armor Brigade, who was leading the operation by the 4th Rangers to clear the road. Tat ordered Dong to halt the attack, and informed him of the plan to withdraw. Tat ordered Dong to fly to Cheo Reo and set up a command post there. The 6th and 23rd Ranger Groups would be attached to Dong’s 2nd Brigade. Dong’s mission was to secure Cheo Reo and hold Route 7B open with his armor and the Rangers so that the rest of II Corps could retreat.

Dong was flabbergasted. Despite the heavy loss of the M-113s the day before, the operation was slowly making progress against the Communists. Worse, retreat would mean abandoning the huge stockpiles of precious fuel and tank ammunition the JGS had sent into Pleiku and Kontum in January. Dong’s brigade had so many extra supplies the engineers had had to build temporary field dumps to stockpile all the gas and ammunition.

Despite his frustration, Dong obeyed orders and flew by helicopter to Cheo Reo, arriving at noon on 15 March. He found the province chief at home enjoying his lunch break, unaware that II Corps was preparing to retreat through his town. The next morning, Dong and some of his staff made a reconnaissance of the road from Cheo Reo to Phu Tuc. Dong immediately realized that the Tu Na Pass, a steep mountain pass between Cheo Reo and where the float bridge on the Ba River would be constructed, should be occupied by the Rangers. It was the natural choke-point on the road, and the easiest place to create an ambush. He claims he radioed Brigadier General Tat with his recommendation, but Tat said, “No, wait for orders.”⁴ Tat denies Dong’s story, saying Dong had full control of the Rangers in Cheo Reo and could have easily occupied the pass. It would be the first, but by no means the last, miscommunication between senior ARVN II Corps officers over who was responsible for which part of the operation.

That same morning of 16 March, Dong’s 19th Armored Cavalry Squadron arrived at Pleiku from Kontum. A troop of M-113 APCs from the squadron was immediately placed under the command of the 6th Ranger Group. With the M-113s leading the way, the First Element departed Pleiku, with a long convoy of vehicles belonging to the Rangers, engineers, and other support units following behind. Arriving in Cheo Reo at 11:00 A.M., the squadron commander went to see Dong, who instructed him to proceed on Route 7B past Phu Tuc to the Ca Lui Regional Force outpost thirty-four miles southeast of Cheo Reo. The Rangers would guard the engineers strengthening the bridge at Phu Tuc, while the armor would protect Ca Lui. An hour later, the First Element set off.

As it turns out, Phu was right on two points. His estimate that using Route 7B would provide tactical surprise was correct. Two ARVN Ranger groups plus armor had shifted from Pleiku to Cheo Reo, and PAVN had not reacted. The North Vietnamese, while aware of the arrival of the Rangers at Cheo Reo, misinterpreted the ARVN movement. One of their histories states: “when the enemy began his evacuation, we thought that the enemy was moving forces into Cheo Reo as a precaution to prevent us from attacking and taking the city. We thought that these forces were . . . to prepare a springboard position for use when the situation permitted to launch an attack to recapture Ban Me Thuot.”⁵ It is an easy mistake to make; one often construes the enemy’s actions as a reaction to one’s own plans, rather than as possessing a separate motive.

Phu was also correct regarding the need to move fast, but just how fast is uncertain. While North Vietnamese accounts do not provide a precise date for the follow-up attacks against Cheo Reo and then Pleiku, Giap’s instructions and Dung’s intent were clear: the two towns were the next targets. In addition to the PAVN 9th Battalion hidden in the mountains several miles west of Cheo Reo, another infantry battalion was moving into position to help assault the town. In February, PAVN engineers had begun constructing a secret road from Route 14 toward Cheo Reo. The 2nd Battalion, 48th Regiment, was now completing that work and was less than ten miles away from the town. Further, on 14 March an artillery reconnaissance element had snuck inside the town and surveyed a number of targets. Given that secret mission, an attack against Cheo Reo was probably less than a week away.

Thus the question is: Did Phu have a chance of repairing the road and executing a withdrawal before PAVN could react? The answer is maybe, but only if he had more carefully planned the retreat. But Thieu’s deadline of three days plus Phu’s refusal to consider anything but an immediate withdrawal doomed the effort. His excuse that Thieu’s orders were firm is thin at best. He certainly had no qualms in early February about disregarding the president’s directive to send the 23rd Division to Ban Me Thuot. While Phu was unaware of the close proximity of Communist forces, from the morning of 15 March until the morning of 17 March, he had a free hand on 7B. Since the Communists had misread the Rangers’ movement, if Phu or Ly had waited until the first float bridge was completed, and then sent the heavy equipment in one column, the armor would have probably escaped Cheo Reo. Granted, the critical bridges at Phu Tuc and Cung Son were not completed, but in the tight constraints of the Cheo Reo valley, everyone was easy prey for the PAVN gunners. If Phu had spent more time planning the retreat instead of delegating this unenviable task to his subordinates, he might have pulled it off.

The other problem was controlling the civilians. Rolling behind the First Element was the ruin of whatever chance Phu’s troops had to escape: a fleet of trucks, buses, motorcycles, and small cars, packed with frightened civilians, mostly the families of officers and enlisted men who had learned of the pullout. Phu later claimed that the Air Force had sabotaged the retreat by flying out their families ahead of time, thus alerting the town to the impending retreat. While partially right, he was mainly looking for a scapegoat. After the previous day’s bedlam at the airfield, Pleiku was on edge. Although the VNAF flights certainly tipped off the civilians, it was only a matter of time before a mass exodus began. Pleiku was swollen with people from Kontum and outlying areas who had fled to the city when the North Vietnamese first cut the roads. After BBC radio broadcasts announcing the redeployment of the II Corps headquarters to Nha Trang, the commencement of the destruction of supplies was the final signal. Thousands of civilians soon fled. Panic-stricken, few thought to bring food, fuel, or water, a tragic mistake that was compounded by vast overcrowding of wildly driven vehicles. It was this unruly mob of civilians that finally caught the Communists’ attention.⁶

By mid-afternoon on 16 March, approximately nine hundred vehicles had crowded into Cheo Reo. Because of the steep grades at the Tu Na Pass, a major traffic jam soon clogged the road south of town. Yet by the early evening of 16 March, a large number of these vehicles had crossed the existing bridge over the river. The bulk of Phu’s troops, however, including all the tanks and artillery, still remained in Pleiku.

Meanwhile, the PAVN 320th Division commander, Senior Colonel Kim Tuan, had set about implementing the orders he had received from General Dung. Tuan ordered his two battalions near Cheo Reo to move out. The 2nd Battalion, 48th Regiment, would attack from the Chu Pa ridgeline west of Cheo Reo, while the 9th Battalion, 64th Regiment, would swing south and block the road near the Tu Na Pass. All available vehicles would transport the other two battalions of the 48th Regiment from Route 14 to link up with the 2nd Battalion. The trucks would then return and pick up the remainder of the 64th Regiment. The last 320th Division regiment, the 9th, was on Route 14 at the Darlac–Pleiku province border. The regiment’s new mission was to move north on Route 14 to the Route 7B turnoff and block any retreating units. It would then turn down Route 7B toward Cheo Reo. Thus, the 320th’s plan had three elements converging on Cheo Reo: the 9th Regiment from the north, the 48th Regiment from the west, and the 64th Regiment blocking the Tu Na Pass south of town.

They all needed to hurry, as the ARVN movement was continuing. On the night of 16 March, the First Element reached Phu Tuc and Ca Lui. Here occurred the first of many failures to follow orders, whether through disobedience or misunderstanding. While the 6th Rangers left a battalion to guard the engineers improving the bridge at Phu Tuc, the rest of the Rangers and armor, instead of remaining at Ca Lui per Dong’s orders, continued on to Cung Son. There they sat for several days, doing nothing.

As night fell on 16 March, thousands of hungry civilians and soldiers began searching Cheo Reo for food and shelter. The town quickly descended into anarchy when Vietnamese soldiers began breaking into stores and homes, robbing and shooting the mostly Montagnard locals.⁷ Leaving the wrecked buildings, they set them on fire. Groups of leaderless soldiers began stealing vehicles from civilians, or selling rides in their own vehicles.⁸ With gangs of unruly soldiers rampaging through town, the local Vietnamese police deserted and joined the pillage. Montagnard civilians fled their homes, while some Jarai RF troops fought gun battles with the rioters to protect their families.

Pleiku was also teetering on chaos. The previous day, the city had been heavily patrolled by police. At noon on 16 March, seeing the destruction of supplies and the departure of the First Element, the provincial security forces abandoned their posts to flee with their families. That afternoon, Ly called Brigadier General Tran Dinh Tho, the J-3 (operations officer), JGS, and reported that soldiers were roaming the streets, looting and raping, and that the anarchy was interfering with the planned withdrawal from the city. Tho immediately took Ly’s report to General Cao Van Vien, who called Phu to demand that he take action to halt the mayhem. Phu denied Ly’s account, claiming that Pleiku was still under his full control. But instead of flying back to assume command, Phu castigated Ly for calling the JGS. Relations between Ly and Phu then collapsed. From this point onwards, Ly was in almost open rebellion against Phu and, shortly, against his fellow senior II Corps officers. He refused to work cooperatively, making the convoy’s command structure even more unstable at precisely the point when it needed superior leadership. Worse, it was not until the night of 16 March that Phu told Brigadier General Cam to inform the province chiefs of Kontum and Pleiku that they were to stay and defend their territory so that the regular military could withdraw. However, when the Montagnard RF/PF forces learned that the Vietnamese were retreating, they promptly deserted. They had no faith in Thieu’s plan to return once Ban Me Thuot was recaptured.

Nguyen Tu, the highly influential Chinh Luan correspondent who had interviewed Phu in mid-February, had returned to Pleiku shortly after the Ban Me Thuot attack. He was in the city when the flight began, and he published a series of newspaper reports describing the horrors of the retreat. He was the only journalist who accompanied the column, and his dispatches provided the people of Saigon their first information on the botched withdrawal. The power of his pen would spur deep popular discontent with Thieu’s government.

Tu noted that in the early hours of 16 March, with the beginning of the destruction of supplies, citizens flooded out into the streets. People “hastily and fearfully loaded goods, furniture, and personal belongings onto every type of vehicle imaginable—trucks, jeeps, garbage trucks, motorcycles, tractors, and even fire trucks. . . . After the vehicles were crammed full of possessions, people climbed up and sat on them. Every vehicle was so heavily loaded that its springs sagged almost to the ground.”⁹ The mass of people and vehicles then just sat there for hours, unsure of what to do next. Tu confirms that the first civilians departed at noon on 16 March, but the majority left around 8:00 P.M. A traffic jam a few miles outside of Pleiku halted the flow. It soon resumed, but it was constantly halted for various reasons, including many broken-down vehicles. The saddest part, however, was the thousands of people who were walking. Tu, fifty-six years old, was walking along with these forlorn refugees. He was especially worried about the “young and old, babies and toddlers carried by their parents, and pregnant women. They walk along,” he wrote, “each carrying a few bamboo sleeping mats and bundles of clothing. Sad and worried, family after family walks along in a long line on one side of the road to avoid being run over. The headlights of the vehicles illuminate the bent backs of adults carrying heavy burdens and the smaller shadows of little children desperately holding onto the shirttails of their mothers or fathers.”

All night the column proceeded toward Cheo Reo. As the sun rose, the heat began to take its toll. The elderly and the women and children “walk along the side of the road under the blazing sunlight with not a drop of water to drink.” Tu was fearful that many of them would die of thirst. He had witnessed many evacuations, including the tragic retreat on Route 1 from Quang Tri in 1972 when the Communists shelled the road, earning it the nickname “The Highway of Death.” Tu felt this was a far worse calamity.

Outside of Pleiku, three other Ranger groups struggled to execute the plan. The 25th Group began disengaging from Thanh An to join the column on Route 14, while the 4th Group retreated along Route 19 toward Pleiku. At Kontum, however, another problem arose: the 22nd Group had only enough trucks to move two battalions, stranding one battalion still defending the city. Since most of the unit was already halfway to Pleiku, Tat ordered the group commander to leave the last battalion, but the group commander refused. He sent his trucks back to pick up his men, telling Tat that he and his soldiers would either “leave together or die together.”¹⁰ They did both: being the last to withdraw, very few 22nd Rangers would reach the coast.

By the morning of 17 March, the idea of informing each unit one hour in advance was abandoned. Everyone knew about the retreat, and no one wanted to be left behind. One final, massive military convoy departed Pleiku. Shortly thereafter, telephone service with II Corps headquarters was cut. A few remaining engineers prepared demolitions to destroy the command bunkers. The 7th Ranger Group joined the rear of the column as it passed by on Route 14. The 4th Rangers fell in behind them. The 22nd Rangers acted as rear guard. They arrived at Pleiku around noon, but congestion forced them to bypass the town. Later in the day, air strikes attempted to destroy the remaining stores and disabled planes at the airfield. The first vehicles arrived in Cheo Reo around noon, with others not pulling in till the early evening.

The 25th Rangers, however, could not extricate themselves from Thanh An. After receiving Dung’s orders to trap the Rangers there, the PAVN 968th Division snuck a battalion through the forest behind them to block their retreat. At first light on 17 March, the remainder of the regiment surged forward. With artillery fire crashing down, they struck just as the 25th Rangers were departing. Caught out in the open, the Rangers took heavy casualties. They attempted to pull back, but were pinned between the advancing North Vietnamese and the blocking force behind them. Alone at the II Corps headquarters, Tat desperately requested air support, but none was available. He ordered the Rangers to break into small groups and escape through the jungle, but only a few remnants made it out. Tat then left Pleiku and arrived in Cheo Reo around 3:00 P.M.

That same morning of 17 March, the other regiment from the 968th Division near Kontum cut Route 14 south of the city. The province chief and his staff were captured attempting to escape. North Vietnamese histories claim that by 11:30 A.M., the 95A Regiment and the 968th Division advanced into Pleiku, and that they took Kontum shortly thereafter. South Vietnamese accounts, however, indicate ongoing functions at the airfield and other places until 18 March. Regardless, the Communists took the two formerly heavily defended cities without firing a shot.

In Cheo Reo, the trap closed slowly on the bottlenecked South Vietnamese convoy. During the night of 16 March, the PAVN 2nd Battalion, 48th Regiment, moved up to the Chu Pa ridgeline on the western outskirts of Cheo Reo and tangled with some 23rd Ranger outposts. At dawn on 17 March, the rest of the 48th Regiment joined the 2nd Battalion west of town. The Rangers sent out a large force to push back the encroaching PAVN troops, but they fell into an ambush and took heavy losses. At 10:00 A.M., the 48th Regiment commander ordered his 1st Battalion to move through the woods and cut Route 7B north of the city. Two 105-mm howitzers soon joined the regiment, but it was dark before the guns were in position.

Meanwhile, after walking and running all night, by late morning of 17 March PAVN’s 9th Battalion, 64th Regiment, had finally arrived at Route 7B. Comparing his location with the map, the commander quickly realized he was in the wrong position. Moving out again, he finally had one company in place near the Tu Na Pass by 4:00 P.M., with the rest of the battalion not far behind.

Although civilian and light military traffic continued to flow across the existing bridge on the Ba River, the previous night’s chaos had created a tremendous traffic jam, preventing the orderly movement of troops and vehicles. But with the float bridge finally completed, by late afternoon on 17 March the first armor element left the town and headed for the pass.

Upon hearing the armor rumbling toward it, the lead company from the 9th Battalion quickly hid behind termite mounds and in the dense forest along both sides of the road. Armed with anti-tank rockets, the troops waited until the armor slowed as the heavy vehicles climbed the steep grade. When the tanks reached the ambush point, the Northerners opened fire. Numerous rounds hit the armor. Within a few minutes, over ten tanks and APCs were burning. The failure to secure the Tu Na Pass—whether Dong’s fault or Tat’s—had proven deadly.

After the attack at the pass, Colonel Dong realized he needed to escape Cheo Reo now. He decided on a night attack to punch through the blockade. His plan called for helicopters to shine searchlights along the road while planes circled overhead and dropped illumination flares. His armor would then drive at high speed through the enemy. Unfortunately for him, PAVN intercepted his communications. The North Vietnamese immediately laid mines and reinforced their positions. Around midnight, Dong tried to break through the enemy siege ring. With him personally commanding his best armor, the M-48 tanks, his units surged forward, machine guns blazing, while helicopter gunships poured fire along both sides of the road. The men of the 9th Battalion, however, refused to retreat. Without any ARVN infantry support to clear the road, and with little room to maneuver, the tanks were not terrifying steel monsters but simply large, inviting targets. As the armor entered the kill zone, the Communists again opened up with anti-tank rockets. Within five minutes, seven vehicles were burning. As Dong tried to maneuver his forces, civilians surged forward, interfering with his attack. To avoid running over the civilians, Dong ordered the tanks to turn on their headlights. When they did so, the results were predictable. Several more tanks were also hit. Realizing the futility of his efforts, Dong ordered his units to withdraw. Within the span of six hours, ARVN armor had suffered one of its heaviest losses of the entire war.

At 7:00 A.M. on 18 March, the remainder of the PAVN 64th Regiment arrived at Cheo Reo. The division artillery was also finalizing its positions and firing data. Shortly thereafter, the JGS relayed to Major General Phu in Nha Trang the information that intercepted radio transmissions had revealed that the 320th Division intended to attack and destroy the column at Cheo Reo. Phu immediately jumped into his plane and flew toward the town. He ordered Dong to use the 7th Ranger Group and armor to break through the roadblock at the pass.

Gathering together over twenty tanks and numerous trucks, Dong began the assault shortly before noon. The Rangers carefully maneuvered through the pass, with the armor following close behind in support. The infantry moving ahead to clear the road made all the difference, and this time the Rangers punched through easily. Disaster, however, struck again. When the lead Ranger battalion reached the top of the pass, VNAF fighters called in by Dong to support the assault mistakenly bombed the unit. Several tanks were knocked out, and the Ranger battalion commander was killed.

When the 320th Division commander learned that the 7th Rangers had broken through, he rushed the rest of the 64th Regiment to the pass. They were too late: the 7th Rangers and a portion of Dong’s armor had escaped. However, the PAVN troops were able to close the road to further traffic.

While the Rangers fought for their lives at the pass, the PAVN artillery was finally ready. At noon on 18 March it began firing at Cheo Reo. With thousands of people and hundreds of vehicles confined to a small area, the artillery rounds created havoc. Many vehicles were hit and hundreds of South Vietnamese civilians and soldiers were killed or wounded. People fled in all directions to escape the barrage. Vehicles were abandoned or careened madly down the road to get away from the shelling, often running over women and children. Journalist Nguyen Tu described the carnage: “The roaring artillery, cracking small arms, screams of the dying and crying of children combined into a single voice from hell.”¹¹

At 5:00 P.M. on 18 March, the 1st and 2nd Battalions, 48th Regiment, launched their attacks on Cheo Reo. The 2nd Battalion assaulted the province headquarters, while the 1st Battalion swept down from the north to take the main RF camp. Despite resistance by small groups of desperate Rangers, by midnight the PAVN forces held complete control of Cheo Reo. Only the remainder of Dong’s armor and some Rangers and support troops south of town remained free.

At the first ground attack, Phu immediately sent in helicopters to pick up Ly and Tat. Phu ordered Dong to stay behind and attempt to break out, no matter what the cost.¹² As Tat and Ly flew away in helicopters, an angry and bitter Dong immediately began gathering his remaining armor and whatever Rangers he could round up. Early in the morning of 19 March, he launched his final assault. His forces fought valiantly to penetrate the lines of the 64th Regiment, but after several failed attempts, Phu ordered him to abandon all heavy equipment and escape on foot. Some soldiers avoided the North Vietnamese search teams, but many others were killed or captured. By 1:00 P.M. on 19 March, the 64th Regiment had eliminated all remaining ARVN forces in the Cheo Reo valley. For the next two days, VNAF air strikes attempted to destroy the abandoned vehicles and equipment. Although Colonel Dong managed to get away, he was captured on 26 March in Phu Yen province. He spent twelve years in prison.

The 320th Division claims that after three days of fighting, it had killed 755 ARVN soldiers, while capturing 5,590, including 512 officers. Another 7,225 soldiers “turned themselves in voluntarily to our forces,” for a total of 13,570.¹³ According to Dang Vu Hiep, the B-3 Front political officer, some 20,000 civilians remaining in the Cheo Reo valley were fed and then sent back to Pleiku and Kontum.¹⁴ Given the large numbers of civilians that were later reported at Cung Son, this would indicate that the vast majority of South Vietnamese civilians escaped the carnage at Cheo Reo, but that the bulk of II Corps soldiers did not. Only a third of Dong’s vehicles escaped the pocket and made it to Cung Son, mainly after the 7th Rangers broke through. The defeat, therefore, was staggering. The 4th, 22nd, 23rd, and 25th Ranger Groups were destroyed, the 2nd Armor Brigade and II Corps artillery were rendered combat ineffective, and the II Corps support and maintenance units were decimated. It was the worst defeat of the war inflicted on ARVN up to this point.

“THE SITUATION IS DEVELOPING SO FAST!”

After carefully monitoring the evolving situation, Giap began contemplating each side’s future moves. The same question remained. What should be PAVN’s next objective: the destruction of II Corps, or a bold stroke at Saigon? At the Politburo meeting on 12 March, Le Duan and Giap had wanted to attack the capital, but Dung convinced them to pursue the II Corps forces instead. Subsequently, Giap’s staff drew up two contingencies. Plan One called for developing the offensive in two directions. The main thrust would be toward Saigon. The B-3 Front units at Ban Me Thuot would move south on Route 14 and would assault Saigon in conjunction with Colonel General Tran Van Tra’s B-2 Front. The 968th and 3rd Divisions would continue east along Route 19 into Binh Dinh province. Plan Two called for sending Dung’s divisions first toward the coast, liberating Binh Dinh, Phu Yen, and Khanh Hoa provinces. Then they would drive south and attack Saigon from the east while Tra attacked from the west. As for the South Vietnamese, Giap and his lieutenants concluded that ARVN would retreat into enclaves around the coastal cities. The enclave concept was first put forth in 1966 by American Lieutenant General James M. Gavin, and was thus called the “Gavin Plan” by the Communists. For Giap, it was critical to prevent ARVN from withdrawing into enclaves, as it would prove costly to seize them.

On the morning of 17 March, Giap cabled Dung with an explanation of his thinking: “The enemy is now conducting a strategic withdrawal and regrouping earlier than we had anticipated. His plan is to mass his forces at Saigon, Cam Ranh, and possibly also Danang. This is a great opportunity. Expand your attacks in whichever sector you consider to be the primary sector. Send me your answer on the question of the development sector so that I have time to seek the opinions of the Politburo tomorrow morning.”¹⁵

Shortly after Giap had given Dung free rein to choose in which direction to attack, PAVN’s deputy chiefs of staff, Lieutenant Generals Hoang Van Thai and Le Trong Tan, learned that Le Duan still wanted to wheel toward Saigon. They immediately recommended that Giap implement Plan One. Since Giap also favored this move, he quickly rescinded his previous instructions. In a follow-up cable that same morning, he ordered Dung to implement Plan One.

On 18 March the Politburo gathered to assess the progress since their meeting a week earlier. Le Duan began by exclaiming, “The situation is developing so fast!”¹⁶ He demanded that the North Vietnamese forces press hard against the South Vietnamese to prevent them from forming enclaves. While he recognized that taking Saigon would be difficult, he favored shifting Dung’s units toward the capital.

The General Staff then made a report on the overall situation, although they admitted they lacked information on what was transpiring in the B-2 Front. They had received the front’s plan to attack in coordination with Dung’s assault on Ban Me Thuot, but they had been given few updates since then. Upon hearing this report, Le Duan became angry. The Politburo was already displeased with Pham Hung, the head of COSVN. In late February the Politburo had received his strategy for its Phase Two offensive, whichoutlined an aggressive plan calling on villages, districts, and provinces to “liberate” themselves through armed uprising. On 13 March Le Duc Tho replied, criticizing Hung for what he considered a flawed approach. Hung answered that while similar COSVN plans had failed in the past because of the enemy’s superior strength, this plan would succeed because the enemy was much weaker.¹⁷

However, by the time Hung’s message reached Hanoi, it was too late to decode it before the meeting. Thus, the Politburo became convinced that COSVN might need steadier leadership. If the North Vietnamese were to launch a risky attack against Saigon, it might be necessary to send Le Duc Tho himself to the B-2 Front to oversee operations. In the meantime, Tho and Le Trong Tan would go to the B-1 Front and provide a briefing to the leadership there on the Politburo’s strategy. If needed, Tho could then continue south to COSVN.

Next it was Giap’s turn to speak. Rising to his feet, the senior general of the People’s Army laid out a case for increased action. In the course of ten days, he said, the South Vietnamese had weakened rapidly, and they were pulling back into enclaves. The U.S. had many internal difficulties and would not dare intervene again. The People’s Army was at full strength, its forces were concentrated, and its morale was high. Giap recommended that PAVN should attack in three directions. One column would cut Hue off from Danang, the second would punch along Route 19 to the coast, and, lastly, Dung’s units should move toward Saigon while Tra’s troops cut Route 4 south of the city. More important, Giap said, it was time for Hanoi to re-adjust its goals, and liberate South Vietnam in 1975. The 1st Corps, PAVN’s last reserve, should be committed to the Southern battlefield. Only one division would remain to protect the homeland, just in case the Americans invaded.

Le Duc Tho quickly agreed, stating that ARVN, no longer stiffened by U.S. firepower, was on the verge of collapse. He also believed the Americans would not interfere. The only obstacles to victory were internal. Giap’s staff had to prevent the old PAVN failings from resurfacing: poor organization, clumsy logistics, and bad leadership. When Truong Chinh and Pham Van Dong also supported Giap’s position, the decision was inevitable. A quick vote was taken, and it was unanimous. The previous two-year plan to conquer the South was tossed aside. The long-feared general offensive was about to crash down on South Vietnam.

After the meeting, Giap visited the 1st Corps’s headquarters and ordered its commander to send half its forces to a staging area just north of the DMZ. Soon a thousand vehicles were rolling south on Route 1. Giap also sent another cable to Dung outlining the Politburo’s decision and reinforcing his previous order to Dung to turn his divisions toward Saigon. Giap also informed Dung that both Tho and Tan were being sent to the South to ensure that everyone understood the Politburo’s intentions. Ending his cable, Giap noted another possible South Vietnamese strategy. He predicted that Thieu might be planning to hold out “for a political settlement or a solution that would divide up the territory of South Vietnam.”¹⁸ Giap had scored another intelligence coup, and he was now aware of Thieu’s decision to truncate the country.

Dung, however, remained convinced that Giap’s plan was wrong. After receiving Giap’s initial 17 March message—the one giving him the choice of which direction to strike—Dung and his staff discussed Giap’s request. They understood the grave dangers Thieu risked by retreating from the Central Highlands. They concluded that their “tremendous” victory in the Central Highlands had “badly weakened the Thieu administration” and that “more military defeats might lead to [its] collapse.”¹⁹ Everything from logistics to mobility to time was now in PAVN’s favor. Dung understood the strategic question Giap had posed, but he believed that destroying II Corps would “stimulate further military disintegration and political collapse for Thieu.” He was afraid that if “we stopped or attacked in a different direction, the enemy would regroup.” Although there was “heated discussion” among Dung’s staff, everyone eventually agreed that continuing east to the coast rather than turning south to Saigon was the better option.

Dung responded to Giap with a proposal to continue east, but because of the slow communications system, his response and Giap’s second message crossed each other. No doubt Giap’s second cable, stating that Le Duan also wanted to turn south, must have given Dung pause. While he could oppose Giap, he could not ignore Le Duan. Couching a second reply in more diplomatic language, Dung agreed with the overall “strategic direction,” but pointed out that reorienting his troops to attack Saigon would require lengthy planning and reorganization. Moreover, such a move would consume precious time, eating into what was left of the dry season. Dung pleaded to be allowed to annihilate the rest of II Corps. Instead of sending his troops south, he proposed sending the 316th Division, currently guarding Ban Me Thuot, to the B-2 Front. He also rejected any meeting with Le Duc Tho. As a substitute, he recommended that the General Staff write brief messages and use couriers to bring them to the front.

Dung’s plea was successful, and once again Giap and the Politburo deferred to their field commander. Dung soon issued new orders. “Continue a fighting advance down Routes 19, 7, and 21 to liberate Phu Yen, Khanh Hoa, and, in cooperation with 3rd Division, liberate Binh Dinh. Your primary objective is to . . . liberate Nha Trang and Cam Ranh.”²⁰ After reading Dung’s cables, Giap even sent a short message to allay Dung’s fears about not following the Politburo’s instructions. On 22 March he informed Dung that “after receiving your cable . . . I discussed the situation with Le Duc Tho and also asked Le Duan for his thoughts. Right now we are in complete agreement with the plan for development of the offensive and for the employment of forces outlined in your cable.”²¹ Dung had won round two, and Phu would get no respite.

“SEE THIEU AS SOON AS POSSIBLE”

As alarming messages poured in from Saigon, the U.S. government was desperately trying to understand the rapidly unfolding events. On 17 March, a National Intelligence Bulletin was published analyzing the impact of Thieu’s recent decisions. Jointly written by the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the State Department, the report was pessimistic; Thieu’s change of strategy in I and II Corps, while probably necessary, “risks a psychological unraveling within ARVN that could seriously complicate an orderly consolidation of the GVN’s military position.” It was precisely the same fear that Thieu had expressed since 1972: giving up ground would devastate South Vietnamese morale. Even if the strategy was successful, substantial territory and population would come under Communist control, and the huge influx of new refugees would severely strain the South Vietnamese economy. The Politburo “will view Thieu’s moves as a clear sign of weakness,” and Hanoi might choose either a consolidation of its gains, or an immediate stab at Saigon. However, like most observers, the American intelligence community believed that “barring a psychological collapse . . . the GVN will survive the communist dry season campaign.”²²

That same day, Deputy Ambassador Lehmann (Ambassador Martin was still in North Carolina recuperating from his dental surgery) sent National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft the latest information on South Vietnamese plans. He noted that the GVN leadership faced a difficult situation, “quite possibly calling for some very basic far-reaching decisions.”²³ While his information was fragmentary, Lehmann had learned that “serious thought is being given to dramatic policy revisions which would call for abandoning major portions of the country in order to enable a truly workable defense of the remainder.” Worse, many government and military officials were grumbling that the Americans could not be “counted upon,” especially given recent congressional actions.

The American government could not make decisions based upon conjecture. Kissinger was still in the Middle East, but his deputy, Robert Ingersoll, ordered Lehmann to “see Thieu as soon as possible to obtain from him his rationale for the withdrawal of his forces. . . . You should tell him that we need a clear picture as to his intentions and strategy to deal with what is now clearly a general North Vietnamese offensive.”²⁴ Ingersoll was particularly upset that “we have learned of what obviously are major decisions on his part only through the newspapers and informal contacts at staff levels.” Since President Ford still sought congressional approval of the supplemental aid, administration efforts “in regard to the $300 million and future funding would be immensely strengthened if we can know his thinking first-hand.”

At 9:00 A.M. on 20 March, Lehmann met with Thieu. Upon the delivery of Ingersoll’s message, Thieu opened up. The loss of Ban Me Thuot, he told Lehmann, “had definitely been a blow.”²⁵ Thieu claimed that he faced a strong enemy with an unending stream of reinforcements that could concentrate a sizable force at any point. Since Thieu’s forces were spread out defending territory and population, his military was at a severe disadvantage. In this situation, he said, he “could no longer fight what from a military standpoint [had been] a stupid way to fight a war. He had to give up territory or face the prospect of having his forces defeated piece by piece.” In the Highlands, opening the roads could only have been done at great cost. With the enemy’s “strong local superiority,” the defense of Pleiku was “a suicide mission.” He had decided to pull out those forces, and because of the “close proximity of strong enemy forces he had considered speed and surprise to be essential. It had been a trade-off between losing some equipment and aircraft and perhaps at the expense of a carefully organized and very orderly withdrawal, or losing all of his forces because of inability to disengage themselves from imminent enemy attack.”

After discussing the situation in I Corps, Thieu stated that the “current North Vietnamese offensive had ended any hope of fighting on the premises of the Paris Agreement. Therefore, consideration of what is militarily most effective in defending as much of the population as possible and maintaining the integrity of the armed forces” was now paramount. Finally, while he appreciated Ford’s effort regarding the supplemental aid, the $300 million would not replace the items recently lost in combat, let alone provide for the one-for-one replacement called for in the accords. Lehmann ended the cable by stating that Thieu “had made a basic decision to trade major parts of territory . . . in order to provide for an effective defense of the remainder . . .It is, in my view, a courageous decision.”

The senior RVNAF leadership did not share that view. Knowledge that the abandonment of the Highlands was going badly was already spreading within the South Vietnamese armed forces. Many generals bitterly denounced the botched planning and execution. They blamed Thieu, who in turn was already casting Phu as the scapegoat. Thieu told his staff that Phu had misunderstood his orders, particularly regarding timing—although Thieu’s comments to Lehmann contradict that. The II Corps situation, moreover, was not Thieu’s only problem. Lieutenant General Truong remained upset about the pullout of the Airborne from I Corps, and many JGS officers were describing the overall situation as hopeless. Some were even advocating Thieu’s removal. Opinions that could only be whispered previously were now openly discussed.

For the badly demoralized JGS, the return of Lieutenant General Dong Van Khuyen from Japan on 19 March was the lone bright spot. As South Vietnam’s second-in-command and its best staff officer, Khuyen had the knowledge and dedication to right the drifting ship. He immediately sent JGS teams to Tuy Hoa to begin re-organizing and re-arming the II Corps troops. He also quickly formulated plans to help Truong withdraw equipment and men from I Corps Forward. Khuyen, however, was well aware that without major assistance from the Americans, he was only delaying the inevitable. He asked Major General Homer Smith at the DAO to coordinate the replacement of ARVN material losses. Khuyen also persuaded Smith to request once again the long-discussed but never-delivered LST ships.

Smith did not need any prompting. Several days earlier, he had asked the Pentagon to make all South Vietnamese equipment requests currently awaiting fulfillment a top priority. Now, after talking to Khuyen, much like Major General John Murray before him, Smith was virtually begging. Smith wrote a cable on 23 March to Admiral Gayler at CINCPAC relaying Khuyen’s concerns and requests: “The morale of the populace and particularly the armed forces, at all levels, is about as low as it can get. . . . Khuyen, with tears in his eyes, told me that something had to be done to at least stabilize RVNAF morale. He stressed that the RVNAF desperately needed some kind of assurance that the U.S. would continue to provide them with material support, and that they also needed B-52 support to help them buy time in order to solve the refugee problem and to get the material situation under control. I told him that I did not believe that reentry of the B-52 raids into the conflict was possible, but that I would ask for some indication of continued support on the material side.”²⁶

Smith asked Gayler to move beyond just prioritizing South Vietnamese equipment requests and, instead, to begin airlifting in all items apart from tanks. He promised Gayler that he would re-examine all remaining Defense Assistance Vietnam funding to provide the RVNAF “with those items necessary to fight.” He pleaded with Gayler to “pull out all stops in moving material . . .even if it requires withdrawing it from U.S. forces.” It was a bold, even career-threatening request, yet he staunchly defended it. “In my judgment, that will be necessary. Time has become most precious out here, and unless RVNAF can buy enough time to properly execute their retrograde plans . . . the situation will become desperate.” Finishing, he noted again that what Khuyen needed was time. “I hope,” Smith ended, “we can find a way to buy him some.”

Within hours, Gayler had sent a message to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff supporting Smith’s requests. In particular, he recommended a presidential statement and the release of the six LSTs that had been delayed by legal wrangling over whether the ships constituted a violation of the Paris Accords. Gayler apparently was unaware that President Ford had just sent a letter to Thieu. Unfortunately, Ford’s message to Thieu only contained additional encouragement and vague promises of support. Telling Thieu that “Hanoi’s attack represents nothing less than an abrogation by force of the Paris Agreement,” Ford stated that the attack was “no less critical” to the U.S. than to South Vietnam. He was “determined that America shall stand firmly behind the Republic of Vietnam at this crucial hour.” Ford claimed he was paying “the closest attention and am consulting on an urgent basis with my advisers on actions which the situation may require and the law permit.” Most important, “with regard to the provision of adequate military assistance to your armed forces, you can be sure that I shall bend every effort to meet your material needs on the battlefield.”²⁷

While Thieu still clung to a vain hope that the B-52s would return, aid remained his primary focus. He dispatched to Washington senior dignitaries with close American ties, along with official delegations, in the hope that they might persuade the U.S. Congress to provide money. With a growing number of press reports detailing South Vietnamese military failures, Thieu had to convince the American legislators that providing more aid was not throwing good money after bad. As usual, poor luck played a key role. In particular, there were the repercussions from the accidental killing of Agence France-Presse journalist Paul Leandri by the Saigon police on 18 March. Both Thieu and Vien were upset over reports that the Montagnard RF in Ban Me Thuot had deserted. When Leandri wrote an article claiming that Montagnards from the rebel group FULRO had led Communist troops through the jungle and into Ban Me Thuot, Thieu exploded. The police appeared at Leandri’s office and demanded that he reveal his source. When he refused, the Bureau of Immigration told him to report to their office. The implication was that Leandri’s visa was to be revoked. While at the bureau, he asked to speak to a superior officer, who was at that moment across the street at the National Police Headquarters. After waiting several hours without seeing anyone, an impatient Leandri jumped into his car and attempted to leave. A trigger-happy guard opened fire, hitting Leandri and killing him. Press reports were immediately filed using this as evidence of the repressive nature of the Thieu government. The news of this incident broke just as two GVN delegations reached Washington.

On 18 March Bui Diem departed for Washington to lobby for more aid. Close on his heels was the South Vietnamese labor leader Tran Quoc Buu. He would join a GVN parliamentary delegation that had left on 13 March. Thieu also sent his former vice prime minister, the former general Tran Van Don, to tour Africa to drum up support for the South Vietnamese. Like Bui Diem, Don had long pressed Thieu to open his government to other nationalists, although Don’s definition of “nationalist” was far broader than Thieu’s. While the delegations were a major initiative, Thieu was also getting potential opponents out of the way by sending them abroad.

Buu reached Washington first, as Bui Diem had initially stopped in Paris. Buu called on several senators, including Hubert Humphrey (D., Minn.), who promised to support increased aid to South Vietnam. Humphrey then promptly voted against any further aid. On 25 March, Buu met President Ford. Accompanying him were the current South Vietnamese Ambassador, Tran Van Phuong, and several GVN parliamentary leaders, including Dinh Van De, a Lower House deputy. De was a former ARVN lieutenant colonel who had been the province chief in Tuyen Duc and later Binh Duong. He was elected to the Lower House in 1967, and was currently the chairman of its Defense Committee. In one of the truly bizarre twists of the Vietnam War, Dinh Van De was also a Communist spy. The U.S. Secret Service was completely unaware that the leader of the Free World was sitting across from a man who belonged to a political organization that America had been at war with for the past fifteen years. Fortunately, De’s mission was subversion, not assassination. His mission was to describe “the situation in such a way that the U.S. would see that even if they provided mountains of money they still would not be able to rescue a regime that was falling apart.”²⁸

Phuong began the meeting by telling Ford that Thieu appreciated Ford’s letter of 22 March and his efforts with Congress. The president responded that he was sending General Frederick C. Weyand to Vietnam to assess the situation and report back on precisely what military supplies the South Vietnamese needed. Ford also promised to “expedite the military and economic assistance and try to get Congress to make additional funds available.”²⁹ Echoing Major General Smith, Buu concisely summed up South Vietnam’s desperation: “Whatever you can do, do it quickly.”

Thieu also searched for other means to convince the Americans to assist him. On 22 March, he met with Senate Chairman Tran Van Lam and Speaker of the House Nguyen Ba Can to discuss means to convince the U.S. to grant aid. Lam suggested that he and Can write joint letters to President Ford, Speaker of the House Carl Albert, and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. Why Lam and Can thought that these letters would be received any differently from the ones they had written in January is unknown.³⁰Regardless, Thieu agreed with their idea, and on 24 March, the first letter was sent to Ford. Lam’s letter revisited the pledges Kissinger had personally given him at the time of the Paris Accords. He detailed Kissinger’s promises that the Russians and Chinese would reduce aid to their ally, that the U.S. would undertake “vigorous and immediate reaction in case North Vietnam launched an offensive,” and that the U.S. would “continue substantial military and economic aid.”³¹ Since none of those promises had been kept, the letter asked Ford to take action to deter the Communist attack while also providing aid.

Thieu also dictated another letter to Ford. The letter was blunt. Outlining the military situation as “very grave and growing worse by the hour,” Thieu informed Ford that it “would be extremely difficult for us to contain the advance of the communist forces” without “prompt measures on your part.”³² After reiterating that “we trusted in America’s solemn commitment to safeguard the peace in Vietnam,” Thieu asked for “a brief but intensive B-52 air strike” against enemy concentrations, and requested that the U.S. “urgently provide us the necessary means to contain and repel the offensive.” Ending his letter, Thieu appealed “to the conscience of America” so that “generations of South Vietnamese” will be “free from the horror of North Vietnamese domination.” It was all in vain. Thieu and the ARVN troops fighting for their lives would not get the answer they so desperately needed.

THE PUSH TO THE COAST

Although PAVN had destroyed a significant portion of II Corps in the Cheo Reo valley, several Army units and some armor, the majority of the civilians, and a large number of disorganized troops escaped the pocket. The 320th Division’s new mission was to hunt down and destroy these fleeing remnants. Working through the night to scrape together any vehicle that could roll, the first column departed Cheo Reo on the morning of 20 March heading east. When it reached the float bridge over the Ba River, A-37 aircraft repeatedly bombed the pursuers, knocking out numerous vehicles and forcing a halt. The VNAF soon destroyed the bridge, but not before the PAVN 64th Regiment, six K-63 APCs, and the 320th Division headquarters had made it across. Although the PAVN engineers worked feverishly to rebuild the destroyed bridge, the rest of the 320th remained stuck on the other side.

The fighting in Cheo Reo, however, was only part of the action roiling the Central Highlands. In Quang Duc, the 24th Ranger Group held firm after beating back a large assault on the district seat of Kien Duc, but the pressure was growing. In Binh Dinh, the ARVN 22nd Division commander had pushed the 41st Regiment against the now-weakened 3rd Division blocking Route 19. Commanded by Colonel Nguyen Thieu (no relation to the president), by 16 March the regiment had moved up to the eastern entrance to the An Khe Pass. However, since the withdrawal from the Highlands had just begun, the 41st and 42nd Regiments pulled back into defensive positions at Binh Khe on Route 19. Meanwhile, the ARVN 47th Regiment continued to secure Route 1 near the Quang Ngai border to prevent the PAVN 52nd Brigade from marching south. The 40th Regiment and Binh Dinh RF were holding the Phu Cat airbase and Route 1 north and south of the provincial capital. Believing that the 22nd Division had stabilized the situation on Route 19, Phu pulled out the 40th Regiment. He allowed Brigadier General Niem to keep one battalion, but Phu sent the rest of the regiment to defend the district town of Khanh Duong on Route 21.

On Route 21, once the PAVN 66th Regiment, 10th Division, had captured the 53rd Regiment base camp at Ban Me Thuot on 17 March, it was assigned thirteen armored vehicles and was ordered to continue east and seize Khanh Duong. The town lies in a flat valley surrounded by high mountains. It was the last blocking position before the critical M’Drak Pass, which is the gateway to the coast. ARVN was using Khanh Duong as a collection point for the many stragglers still streaming out of Ban Me Thuot. Several RF battalions guarded the town, along with multiple tubes of artillery. Normally it was a solid defensive position, but RF morale was shaky from the recent crushing defeats. The two battalions of the 40th Regiment reached Khanh Duong on 19 March. One battalion was deployed several miles northwest of the town, while the other battalion defended Route 21.

At the same time Phu was trying to impede the PAVN advance on Route 21, he was determined to hold two other lines: one at Binh Khe in Binh Dinh province, the other at Cung Son. Holding from Binh Khe through Cung Son to Khanh Duong would enable the South Vietnamese to build a thin but defensible buffer zone to protect the coast. To accomplish that, Phu needed reserves. He ordered all RF/PF soldiers who had escaped from Darlac to be integrated into Khanh Hoa province RF units. The 23rd Division was told to reorganize at an old Special Forces camp on Route 1 just north of Nha Trang. Thieu also ordered the 3rd Airborne Brigade, which was sailing from I Corps down to Saigon, to disembark at Cam Ranh Bay. The ships moored at 1:30 A.M. on 19 March. The Red Berets’ mission was to hold the M’Drak Pass and provide a backstop for the 40th Regiment and RF defending Khanh Duong.

It was all that Thieu could give Phu. The VNAF was stretched to the limit. The 2nd Air Division at Phu Cat airbase was supporting the 22nd Division and trying to destroy the Air Force equipment and the mountains of supplies abandoned in the mad rush to leave Pleiku. The 6th Air Division, principally Colonel Le Van Thao’s 92nd Wing at Phan Rang, was conducting strikes in various locations. It was supporting the retreating column on Route 7B and the defenders on Route 21, while also trying to destroy the armored vehicles left at Cheo Reo.

Time, however, was what Phu needed most. If he could cobble together even a rudimentary defensive line, Dung would have to leave his divisions in place, preventing them from turning toward Saigon as the Politburo desired. Dung was determined not to allow Phu any breathing room, and he pressed his commanders to advance irrespective of any logistical issues. On all three fronts—Binh Dinh, Route 7B, and Route 21—PAVN units surged forward to deny Phu the time to regroup.

Dung’s renewed pressure soon worked. In eastern Binh Dinh, taking away the 40th Regiment created a vacuum for Communist local forces, newly organized into two regiments. They struck hard at RF/PF units on Route 1, and with South Vietnamese morale sagging because of the disasters on Route 7B and in I Corps, the RF crumbled. Within a week, Communist forces had swept away most positions north and south of Qui Nhon, and were threatening the capital itself. The 47th Regiment suddenly found its rear enveloped by enemy forces. The 3rd Division had also snuck a regiment behind the two ARVN regiments at Binh Khe, blocking their retreat and threatening Phu Cat airbase. The only hope now was for the 22nd Division to fight its way to Qui Nhon and set up a new defensive perimeter.

On Route 21, the PAVN 66th Regiment, 10th Division, organized its troops into two spearheads to assault Khanh Duong. One column, with six armored vehicles, positioned itself to strike from the northwest. Another column, with seven tanks, moved along the main highway. On 21 March, the northwestern column launched the first assault, but the 40th Regiment drove it off after VNAF air strikes knocked out several armored vehicles. Not giving up, at dawn on 22 March PAVN resumed the attack. The column from the northwest charged again, and once more lost several vehicles to air strikes. The column along Route 21 attacked, but it was halted by a blown-up bridge. The 66th Regiment commander ordered the northwest prong, now down to one tank and one personnel carrier plus infantry, to again press forward. This time it outflanked the ARVN regulars and drove straight into the city. The RF promptly collapsed. At noon, Phu ordered the 40th Regiment to retreat and defend the western approaches to Nha Trang. A second location on Phu’s improvised defensive line had now fallen.

After the blown-up bridge had been fixed, the 10th Division commander, Senior Colonel Ho De, ordered the other spearhead to capture the M’Drak Pass. From its vantage point on the high ground, the 3rd Airborne spotted the Communist troops coming and prepared an artillery ambush. As the enemy column entered a flat area right before the pass, the Airborne opened fire. As shells rained down, several vehicles burst into flames, prompting a quick retreat. PAVN would have to wait until the 10th Division was completely re-assembled before trying again. Finally, an ARVN position on Route 21 had held.

In the meantime, the convoy on Route 7B was struggling onward. Different groups were strung out from the float bridge through Phu Tuc to Cung Son. The lead element—the 6th Rangers and a troop of APCs—had moved on ahead and reached Cung Son on 17 March. However, while they sat doing nothing, three Communist local-force battalions from Phu Yen province raced south from their traditional strongholds in the northern part of the province. Their orders were to block Route 7B, which ran along the northern side of the Ba River, and Local Route 436, which followed the southern side. While these battalions were badly under-strength (each was barely the size of one company), their mission was to block the roads at all costs. Moving quickly, on 17 March one unit seized an important bridge about ten miles west of Tuy Hoa on Route 7B and set up a second block closer to Cung Son. Another battalion dispersed into small units and used rifles, mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades to harass the traffic on Local Route 436. Phu Yen RF troops were ordered to clear the roads, but their efforts were desultory, and they failed.

As the escaping column continued moving east, the next town along the road from Cheo Reo was Phu Tuc. Two days behind the 6th Rangers were the 7th Rangers and the portion of Dong’s armor that had escaped with them. Following them were thousands of forlorn civilians and a few small units of the 4th, 22nd, and 23rd Rangers who had cut through the mountains and jungle after the North Vietnamese captured Cheo Reo.

Striking out of nowhere, local guerrillas snuck into Phu Tuc and seized the district headquarters on the evening of 18 March. The 7th Rangers reached the town later that night. Attacking at dawn, the Rangers quickly drove the guerrillas out. However, another problem that should have been fixed earlier had not: the weak bridge at Phu Tuc had not been reinforced. Lieutenant Colonel Tinh’s engineers did not have enough materials to improve the bridge, so they had concentrated their efforts instead on fixing the narrow, rutted road between Phu Tuc and Cung Son.

The 7th Rangers moved on, leaving the remaining units of the other three Ranger groups to guard the tanks stuck at Phu Tuc. The armor had no choice but to try to ford the small river. While the water was shallow, both banks were marshy. As the first tank drove down to the water, the steel treads churned up the swampy ground, and it got stuck. Radio calls soon went out for help. The previous day, Brigadier General Nguyen Van Chuc, the commander of the ARVN Engineers, had flown from Saigon to assist Tinh with his efforts. Upon learning of the stuck tank, Chuc ordered steel plates called PSP (pierced steel plating) picked up from the Cung Son airfield and laid across the muddy ground to enable the armor to cross. Two Chinook helicopters carried one thousand pieces of PSP to spread over the boggy stretches. By 20 March, the job was completed. The last elements of the convoy, composed of hundreds of military and civilian vehicles, made it across. According to Pham Huan, “the total number of armored vehicles . . . able to cross the river was six M-48 tanks, sixteen M-41 tanks, and thirteen M-113 armored personnel carriers.”³³ If Huan’s numbers are correct, then over 70 percent of II Corps’s armor had been destroyed or abandoned at Cheo Reo.

The delay at Phu Tuc, meanwhile, enabled Dung’s troops to catch up. On 21 March, the PAVN 64th Regiment captured the town. The next day it reached the Ca Lui River and engaged a combined Ranger/armor rear guard using the small river as a blocking position. VNAF fighters were called in, but errant bombing again hit several ARVN tanks and killed many Rangers, enabling the PAVN troops to overrun the rear guard. This was the third costly friendly-fire incident of the campaign—the hit on the 23rd Division command post in Ban Me Thuot, the strike on the 7th Rangers in the Tu Na Pass, and now this. The combination of enemy attack and friendly fire destroyed the last vestiges of the other Ranger groups. On 23 March, the 64th Regiment’s lead elements reached Cung Son.

Lieutenant Colonel Tinh, meanwhile, had arrived at Cung Son on the afternoon of 18 March. Chuc and Tinh examined the river and picked a bridge site about six miles east of Cung Son, some three miles west of the original destroyed bridge. Although the engineers had to cut a fifty-yard path down a steep bank to the water, the river here was wide and the water was low with a slow-moving current. The area also had a large, flat, treeless section that could serve as a parking lot.

What Tinh did not realize was that the river bottom was very sandy. Vehicles attempting to drive across the river quickly bogged down. The next morning, while the engineers began erecting the bridge, a sergeant used a bulldozer and began towing vehicles across. By the afternoon of 20 March, about three hundred vehicles had traversed the river and arrived at a village near Local Route 436, where they were halted by the Communist roadblock further east.

Despite the pressing need for helicopters, maintenance issues with the few remaining Chinooks prevented Chuc from receiving more than ten sorties per day. Using the Chinooks to fix the ford at Phu Tuc also reduced the number of sorties to the Ba River. Because of the river’s width, the bridge company ran out of floats. Although Phu’s original plan was to use PSP plates to line the river bottom at Cung Son, nothing had been done. Chuc ordered the engineers to dismantle all the PSP plates from the Cung Son airfield and bring additional ones from storage facilities at Cam Ranh. With only a few operational Chinooks shuttling material, however, it took five precious days to build the bridge across the three-hundred-yard-wide river. Time, never on Phu’s side, was perilously close to running out.

Journalist Nguyen Tu, who had been picked up by a helicopter near Cheo Reo, rejoined the column at Cung Son and continued to file reports on the evacuation. His description of the refugees’ continuing misery was heartbreaking. “Sometimes one sees a few civilians walking down the road from Kontum, Pleiku, and the hell that is Cheo Reo. . . . These refugees, struggling down the road, now have nothing left but the dusty, sweat-soaked clothes on their backs. Their feet are swollen and their eyes are lifeless and devoid of hope. Small children, from twelve years old down to four, struggle along behind, their feet swollen and cracked, and dust the only medicine covering the soles of their feet.”³⁴ Based on Tu’s reports, people in Saigon began to call the retreat “The Road of Blood and Tears.”

While waiting for the second bridge to be built, an estimated one hundred thousand people and approximately three thousand military and civilian vehicles began bunching up at the Ba River. The people sat on the river bank, starving and thirsty. Families had become separated, and many people had died in traffic accidents—collisions, vehicle rollovers, and pedestrians hit by wild drivers. Others had died crossing streams or had gotten lost in the forest. Phu ordered the VNAF to send helicopters to begin shuttling food to the stranded refugees, and to airlift them to Tuy Hoa if possible. Although some pilots stopped to pick up women and children, the elderly, or the injured, others were not so caring. Fearful of the Communist gunners, they simply dropped the rations and flew away. By 22 March, although several thousand people had arrived in Tuy Hoa, either on foot or by helicopter, it was a drop in the bucket. Catholic priests in Tuy Hoa and Nha Trang worked feverishly to supplement the Army’s resupply efforts, but there were too many mouths to feed. In particular, the lack of water caused many deaths among the children. The enormousness of the crisis simply overwhelmed GVN efforts to shelter and feed the population.

Despite the many difficulties, the bridge was finally completed at 9:30 A.M. on 23 March. As the first civilian vehicles madly raced to enter the slot cut into the steep river bank, so many vehicles jammed onto the floats that the bridge collapsed. Soon thereafter, Communist mortar rounds struck the crowd, killing and wounding almost one hundred civilians. That night, the weather turned cold and rainy, adding to the misery. The next morning, high water and a fast current halted further efforts to wade across. Despite these problems, by the end of the day, over one thousand vehicles, mostly military, had crossed. More traversed that night. By 10:00 A.M. on 24 March, the 6th Ranger commander reported that all military vehicles were across.

Now the column faced another problem. The Communists still blocked Local Route 436. Civilian vehicles crossing the bridge were halted until the block could be cleared. Since the enemy troops had seized old but well-built Korean fortifications, Phu ordered Colonel Thao’s 92nd Wing to drop napalm to help clear the road. Brigadier General Cam begged one of the few II Corps units still maintaining integrity, the elite reconnaissance teams of the Vietnamese Special Forces known as the Loi Ho, or “Thunder Tigers,” to help destroy the enemy positions. The Loi Ho, who had already bypassed the roadblock and were walking with their families, refused to leave their loved ones. A compromise was soon reached. VNAF helicopters ferried the Loi Ho families to Tuy Hoa, whereupon the elite soldiers turned around and, in conjunction with Thao’s air strikes, quickly destroyed the roadblock.

Although the column soon began moving again, a third Communist unit blocked the road closer to Tuy Hoa. The 34th Ranger Battalion was pulled out of the bridge site to break the roadblock. It launched several assaults but failed. Phu personally flew in to help command the attack. He landed at Tuy Hoa and ordered the M-113 troop, which had accompanied the lead Rangers down Route 7B and had just arrived in the city by driving around the roadblocks, to turn back and attack from the opposite direction. The soldiers refused. To get them to return, Phu promoted all officers and men one rank. After several hours of fierce fighting, the combination of the Rangers pressing from one side and the M-113s from the other eliminated the last roadblock. The first vehicles from the convoy drove into Tuy Hoa on the afternoon of 25 March.

The delay in clearing the road had kept most of the civilians stuck on the other side. Late on 23 March, the PAVN 64th Regiment reached Cung Son and linked up with Phu Yen local forces. Since the PAVN engineers had not yet fixed the first float bridge, the 64th Regiment had only its own infantry weapons, two heavy 120-mm mortars, and six K-63 APCs for support. The Ranger rear guard was reinforced by tanks and a few artillery pieces. Consequently, PAVN Senior Colonel Kim Tuan determined that he could not make a successful attack until the remainder of his division arrived. Tuan would risk his men against the defenders only if it appeared that the ARVN troops were about to escape.

At about 4:00 P.M. on 24 March, the regiment’s reconnaissance troops saw the Rangers and remaining armor leave their positions and line up on the road, apparently to move to the bridge site. The reconnaissance troops were correct. With most of the military vehicles across, the 6th Ranger commander ordered a portion of the rear guard to pull out and proceed to the crossing.

Senior Colonel Tuan instantly told the 64th Regiment and Phu Yen local forces to attack. Luckily for him, the first rounds from the 120-mm mortars landed in the middle of the road formation. Confusion reigned as the Rangers and their vehicles scattered in every direction. PAVN anti-tank teams crept in close to the armored vehicles. Firing at point-blank range, they knocked out five tanks. The remaining armor escaped to a small hill east of Cung Son. Unfortunately, it was right next to the Communist local-force position. The Communist commander sent his men with anti-tank rockets to attack. Within thirty minutes the few ARVN tanks and armored vehicles that had escaped the Cheo Reo pocket were either burning or captured. Concurrently, the Communist local forces hit the pontoon bridge with mortars and destroyed a number of trucks. Panicky civilians raced around to escape the enemy fire. By late afternoon on 24 March, the last pockets of resistance were eliminated. Disorganized Rangers fled down to the bridge site. Both soldiers and civilians attempted to wade across. When the water proved too deep, many tried to swim, but the strong current swept away hundreds.

Just as the disaster at Cheo Reo could have been prevented with better planning, the failure at Cung Son could also have been avoided. First, General Vien, aware of the impending retreat, should have re-directed the 7th Rangers from Pleiku to Tuy Hoa to secure the roads and the bridge site. Second, Phu should have immediately dispatched the bridge company in Nha Trang to the ford. Third, the lackluster performance of the Phu Yen RF in attempting to break through the Communist roadblocks badly delayed the vehicles that got across the river. The combination doomed significant numbers of those who had escaped Cheo Reo.

Oddly, the Communists’ official histories neglect any discussion of their troops’ actions at the bridge site. Despite the PAVN victory on 24 March, South Vietnamese vehicles and civilians continued to cross the bridge the next day. It is uncertain when PAVN troops secured the bridge site. The North Vietnamese accounts simply jump from the victory at Cung Son to the attack on Tuy Hoa on 1 April. It is a strange omission. ARVN officers interviewed for this book claim that the Communists shelled the bridge area on 25 March, killing hundreds of people. One U.S. Embassy report seems to corroborate that. On 26 March, the Embassy reported that the “river crossing was heavily shelled by communist mortar fire,” leaving “over one thousand burning vehicles at the river crossing.”³⁵What happened at the bridge on 25 and 26 March remains shadowy.

By the end of the evacuation on 28 March, an estimated forty thousand civilians had reached Tuy Hoa, along with numerous vehicles. If one adds the twenty thousand civilians captured at Cheo Reo to the hundred thousand at the bridge site, then only one in three civilians made it to Tuy Hoa. How many civilians died along Route 7B is unknowable, but it was certainly thousands. Military casualties were also heavy. Most South Vietnamese accounts indicate that barely nine hundred Rangers out of approximately eleven thousand escaped. Colonel Ly estimated that five thousand out of twenty thousand ARVN support troops reached Tuy Hoa. Only portions of the 6th and 7th Ranger Groups would be reconstituted to fight again. All of the II Corps’s armor was lost save the one troop of M-113s. Six artillery battalions were destroyed, with many of the guns falling into North Vietnamese hands. Several thousand vehicles were captured, plus tons of supplies and repair facilities. The North Vietnamese state they killed 755 ARVN troops and captured 13,570 at Cheo Reo. Roughly three hundred more ARVN troops were killed and a thousand captured along Route 7B. PAVN claims that another two thousand South Vietnamese soldiers out of roughly six thousand were either killed or captured at Cung Son. Thus, approximately eighteen thousand ARVN troops were killed or captured from Cheo Reo to Tuy Hoa, and about six thousand made it to friendly lines, or one in four. By any measure, it was the second worst South Vietnamese defeat of the war. Only the debacle in I Corps dwarfed the horror that was “The Road of Blood and Tears.”³⁶