14
PAVN SURROUNDS SAIGON
As PAVN forces stood poised to sweep into Qui Nhon, Tuy Hoa, and Nha Trang, the Politburo assembled for a fateful meeting. For the hardened revolutionaries who made up the North Vietnamese political and military leadership, the battlefield reports pouring in over the past two weeks were stunning; their forces were seizing territory and population at a dizzying pace. After decades of “struggle,” a term embodying Ho Chi Minh’s vision of an unrelenting effort to unify the country under the Communist banner, they now stood on the brink of victory. The “struggle” philosophy had been cobbled together from militant Marxist/Leninist ideology and fervent Vietnamese nationalism. It had provided the theoretical framework that enabled the Communists to persevere through the long, difficult war years. Now, as events in South Vietnam unfolded with a rapidity that made previous timetables and plans irrelevant, the Politburo gathered to discuss the next moves toward achieving their long-sought dream.
The Politburo meeting of 31 March was to discuss the third strategic blow in the campaign, the final attack on Saigon. As the men took their seats, Le Duan opened the meeting. After laying out the basic issues, he asked Giap to report on the battlefield situation. Giap’s views were clear. In a fiery call to arms, he urged his Politburo colleagues to strike now: “Our army is in a position to launch an all-out attack to exploit our victory. We are fully capable of massing the maximum number of forces from throughout our nation to confront the enemy with overwhelming force on the primary battlefield, Saigon. We now have a great opportunity. It is certain that we can achieve complete victory in this final, decisive strategic battle. I recommend that we quickly develop a battle plan, strategically surround Saigon/Gia Dinh from the east and the west, and use a powerful main-force ‘fist’ to make a surprise deep strike aimed at destroying the enemy. One attack will bring us victory. The formula for this strategy is ‘lightning speed, daring, surprise, certain victory.’”1 (Emphasis in the original.)
After Giap finished, other Politburo members, including the old ideologue Truong Chinh, also spoke in favor of throwing the full weight of the People’s Army against the remaining ARVN forces. Chinh’s speech swept aside any remaining doubts. If the former guerrilla-warfare advocate was suddenly a main-force supporter, surely a large-scale conventional attack was the proper course. In this heady atmosphere, a vote was taken. The decision was unanimous: South Vietnam was collapsing, and it was time for decisive action.
In perhaps the most momentous message sent during that fateful year of 1975, on 1 April, Le Duan sent new instructions to Pham Hung, Le Duc Tho, and Van Tien Dung, instructions that sealed the fate of the Republic of Vietnam. Summarizing Giap’s briefing, he told them: “We have wiped out and disbanded 35% of the enemy effectives, killed or put out of action two enemy army corps . . . and destroyed more than 40% of their material and logistical bases, liberated 12 provinces and increased the population of the liberated zones to nearly 8 million.” Furthermore, “our armed forces have matured immeasurably, there have been few military casualties . . . [and] there has been inconsiderable loss of weapons and ammunition on our part. . . . In this context, the Politburo has arrived at this conclusion: strategically, militarily and politically we have an overwhelmingly superior force, the enemy is facing the danger of collapse. . . . The Americans have proved completely powerless, and no reinforcements from the U.S. can salvage the situation. . . . From this moment the last strategic decisive battle of our army and people has started. . . . Therefore the Politburo has decided [to] successfully end the war of liberation in the shortest time. The best way is to start and end it in April of this year, without any delay.” To his southern commanders, he then outlined what the next steps would be: “Immediately—at a higher speed than planned—we have to send more reinforcements to the west of Saigon as a matter of great urgency . . . In order to carry out [this] strategic orientation . . . the Central Military [Affairs] Committee has decided to swiftly move 3rd Corps . . . [to Saigon] . . . and has decided to bring in the Army reserve corps.”2
This historic Politburo meeting approved three significant items: send the 1st and 3rd Corps to help conquer the South Vietnamese capital; use the B-2 Front forces to attack ARVN units in III Corps to see if they would immediately collapse; conquer Saigon by the end of April. In his memoirs, Giap sketched the basic North Vietnamese battle plan: “With regards to our strategic disposition of forces, the Politburo decided to quickly strengthen our forces on the western approaches to Saigon, strategically encircle and isolate the city from the southwest, and completely cut Route 4 to isolate Saigon from the Mekong Delta. Our forces east of Saigon would attack and capture important targets and encircle and isolate Saigon from Ba Ria and Vung Tau. Our main-force punch would be truly powerful, including the use of [tanks, artillery, and anti-aircraft], and would be prepared to strike directly into the most critical enemy targets in the center of Saigon when the opportunity presented itself.”3
After the 31 March meeting, Giap’s staff now focused on three mission-critical tasks: First, monitor the battlefield situation. Second, supervise the deployment of forces to the Saigon battlefield. Third, study and recommend strategic and campaign fighting methods for the coming attack on the capital. That night, the General Staff shifted half of the 1st Corps—the last remaining strategic-reserve unit, which until now had been held in North Vietnam—toward the DMZ. The 1st Corps history states that a “corps advance element . . . moved to the assembly position. Eight military trains . . . transported corps forces southward. . . . More than 1,000 vehicles left the assembly position and, throwing up an enormous cloud of dust, began rolling south down Route 1. At Vinh City [north of the DMZ] the corps advance element divided into two sections. The 66th Mechanized Infantry Battalion and 2nd Artillery Battalion moved down to Vinh harbor and were transported by sea on Navy ships down to Quang Tri. The rest of the advance element, consisting primarily of 320B Division and 367th Air Defense Division . . . continued a motorized movement down the highway.”4
The next day Giap visited the 1st Corps headquarters to personally issue the order for the corps to move into South Vietnam. Only the 308th Infantry Division, long considered PAVN’s most elite division, would remain behind to defend the North. The 1st Corps’s ultimate destination was an assembly area at Dong Xoai in Phuoc Long province, fifty-six miles northeast of Saigon. It was to arrive by 15 April. With no time for elaborate preparations, Giap made it clear that the men of the 1st Corps would have to follow the time-honored PAVN slogan of self-reliance (tu tuc) and overcome most obstacles on their own—finding fuel and food, making repairs, fixing roads and bridges. For Giap, in another oft-repeated slogan, “Time is now strength,” and with ARVN seemingly on the verge of collapse, he had no time to waste.
Implementing the Politburo’s ambitious war plans, however, would not be easy. Shifting an entire corps 1,050 miles over dirt roads and high mountain passes, across numerous streams and deep valleys, was an enormous logistics challenge. The Rear Services Department and unit staffs had to quickly determine how to ship south all these troops and supplies. Next, they needed to develop a workable road-march timetable that would not generate huge traffic snarls or make tempting targets for South Vietnamese or American bombers. The staffs would then need to organize, move, feed, and support a massive number of troops from the 1st and 3rd Corps—and soon the 2nd Corps—in an incredibly short time. Yet they were totally inexperienced in an effort of this scale. Moreover, the roads in the western part of South Vietnam were rough and choked with dust—it was the end of the dry season—and the Communists’ trucks and armor were generally worn older models. Although the Rear Services Department sent a large number of mechanics south to help with repairs, it was unclear how much of the 1st Corps’s aged Soviet Bloc gear would survive such a long and fast-paced journey. While the North Vietnamese had captured and pressed into service enormous quantities of ARVN war booty, the leadership was taking a huge gamble that the entire road and logistics system could handle such a substantial influx of men and equipment without completely breaking down.
Fortunately for the North Vietnamese, PAVN had been preparing for this since before the signing of the Paris Accords. In October 1972 the Rear Services Department had begun replenishing PAVN’s stockpiles of food and ammunition in the South. Once the process of rebuilding the supplies in the South was nearly complete, PAVN instituted a wide array of logistics programs. As the History of the People’s Army notes, “during the two years 1973–74 all units throughout the armed forces carried out a general inventory of their property and finances and organized the retrieval, collection, and repair of their equipment, thereby resolving at least a portion of our difficulties in providing supply and technical support. Units operating on the battlefields were ordered to economize on their usage of ammunition, and especially of large-caliber ammunition. Units were also ordered to improve and repair weapons and equipment captured from the enemy so that we could . . . use these weapons and equipment to fight.”5
The various military branches also worked diligently to repair their own vehicles and equipment: “The Artillery Branch established a number of collection teams to retrieve damaged artillery pieces located on the various battlefields and bring them back to North Vietnam for repair. . . . The Armored Branch . . . [raised] the Branch’s combat availability from 60% in 1973 to 98% at the end of 1974. The Signal Branch put into service more than 1,000 radios captured from the enemy and repaired 2,300 inoperable radios, 3,000 telephones, and 1,000 generators. The 2nd Corps alone repaired more than 1,000 vehicles and almost 10,000 weapons and other pieces of equipment. . . . The number of technical personnel and mechanics sent to the battlefields during the two years 1973–74 reached 15,000 men.”6
The PAVN history goes on to state that the most important aspect of this considerable logistics effort was the expansion of the fuel network to support the tremendous increase in the number of vehicles: “Paralleling the strategic transportation and troop movement corridor was a petroleum pipeline network 1,050 miles long with 101 pumping stations, of which 814 miles was newly constructed during the two years 1973–74. Overcoming many technical, terrain, and weather difficulties, our POL [petroleum, oil, lubricants] troops brought the gasoline pipeline over mountain peaks [more than] 1,000 meters high and across rugged terrain, building flat places for the placement of pumps along steep mountain slopes, etc. On 15 January 1975, for the first time the flow of gasoline through the pipeline reached [Quang Duc].”7
New buildings were constructed to store the vast amounts of material shipped south: “The various warehouse units along Group 559’s [the element commanding the Ho Chi Minh Trail] strategic corridor reorganized their forces and . . . a large number of warehouses with storage capacity in excess of 10,000 tons were built. . . . This network of warehouses [was] directly linked with the great rear area in North Vietnam and with the rear-services bases and networks of the battlefields . . . via the strategic and campaign road networks including both land routes and sea routes through the ports of Cua Viet and Dong Ha. This created a continuous, solid rear-services network with a large supply storage capacity, a relatively complete force of support personnel, and a powerful motorized transport force.”8
On the basis of these improvements, the Rear Services Department rightfully boasts that “The success of the army’s rear services task during the . . . [1975] offensive was the result of preparations made during the previous years, especially 1973 and 1974. . . . By the time of the general offensive we had a whole integrated road network extending from the rear area south to the most distant battlefields. . . . In addition to the road network there was a whole network of POL pipelines. . . . [This enabled] the extensive use of mechanized transportation forces, especially trucks, to transport troops and equipment to the front. This truly became the principal formula for success. [During the offensive] nearly all transportation of material and equipment to the fronts . . . was done by means of mechanized equipment.”9
In order to build this massive road complex, the PAVN Engineer Branch greatly expanded the size and upgraded the equipment of the engineer forces assigned to Group 559 and to the various military commands.10 In 1973, the “engineers of the military regions were reorganized into regiments, were reinforced with mechanized river-crossing components, [and were given] the mission of making strategic preparations and of preparing a network of campaign roads . . . The military engineers of . . . such combat arms as armor, artillery, missiles—forces which accompanied the units—were strengthened with regard to organization and equipment in order to increase their capability to meet their own mobile requirements.”11
This strengthening of engineer forces would eventually pay another huge dividend for the North Vietnamese. As the PAVN tanks and trucks advanced forward, the South Vietnamese continually tried to slow them down by destroying bridges and culverts. Yet the engineers, well practiced in the art of hasty repairs, rapidly fixed the damage. This enabled PAVN to hotly pursue the retreating South Vietnamese, denying them the time to regroup their forces. Besides the other logistics factors, this expanded engineer force is another critical element in the military success of the 1975 offensive.
While the peasant soldiers of North Vietnam no longer had to walk down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, their commanders now faced a new problem: efficiently commanding the larger combat units they had formed. Recognizing this predicament, the Signal Branch expended tremendous energy improving PAVN’s radio, telephone, and military postal networks. Multiple communications networks were installed to assist the command echelons. Of special importance was the completion of a system of telephone cables, called “Unification,” which ran from Hanoi all the way down to the B-2 Front. The senior PAVN signal officer describes the result: “The armed forces concentrated . . . on installing cables along with multi-circuited high-frequency telephone equipment . . . to link it with [the various fronts] and to combine them with the radio relay axis going parallel with them so as to support one another. This was a very great effort on the part of our signal troops, who overcame . . . complicated terrain, high mountains, deep streams and inclement weather in order to install hundreds of miles of cables and tens of switchboard stations . . . the units also installed tens of radio relay stations at altitudes ranging from 1,500 to 2,000 meters. . . . At the same time, we also designed and steadily developed the short-wave radio network and installed receiving and transmitting stations . . . of great power. As a result, the [signal forces] were able to maintain uninterrupted communications . . . [for] the leadership and command of various strategic and combat echelons during the general offensive. . . . After our victory in Ban Me Thuot . . . the short-wave radio network was extended to the units taking part in the campaign . . . to reach division and provincial military commands.”12
Moving virtually the entire North Vietnamese army south to attack Saigon required senior leadership able to act on Politburo decisions. While the Politburo was meeting, Van Tien Dung was waiting for other high-ranking leaders in the South to join him for the scheduled meeting with Le Duc Tho at Dung’s headquarters on Route 14 near Ban Me Thuot. But after the Politburo had made the decision to mass the People’s Army to attack Saigon, Le Duan sent a flash telegram canceling the meeting. He had decided instead to send both Dung and Tho to the B-2 Front to form a new campaign headquarters for the coming battle. As long as the Americans had been involved in the war, sending senior officials like Dung and Tho that far south was fraught with danger. Since that menace no longer existed, the Politburo had decided to provide direct high-level supervision to ensure victory.
On 2 April, Dung and his forward command, code-named Group A-75, left for COSVN headquarters in Cambodia, just across the border from Tay Ninh. They arrived on the night of 3 April. Tho would meet Dung at COSVN. As the North Vietnamese struggled to synchronize their different battlefields, the greatly improved command-and-control structure was another critical factor in their success.
While half of the 1st Corps—the 320B Infantry and 367th Air Defense Divisions, plus artillery, tank, and engineer brigades—was moving toward Quang Tri, the other half—the 312th Division, 202nd Armor Brigade, and assorted rear-service units—was preparing to deploy. But despite Hanoi’s constant urging of speed, PAVN had only enough trucks to move one division at a time. Consequently, it had to implement truck shuttles, with the 320B Division moving first. For instance, when the 320B reached Dong Ha (a small river port inland from the coast just north of Quang Tri City) on 2 April, it switched to trucks belonging to Group 559, while the trucks it had been riding in returned north.
On 5 April, as the 320B Division sped through southern Laos, behind it the 312th Division reached Dong Ha after a long trip on the same trucks that had ferried the 320B to the town. The corps headquarters then contacted Group 559 to switch vehicles again, and the trucks that had brought the 312th south returned to North Vietnam to pick up more troops. The 312th Division would continue south along the same route and on the same trucks used by the 320B. Despite the stretches of bad road and heavy traffic, by ferrying in this manner, the 1st Corps elements were able to move south fairly rapidly.
March orders from the 1st Corps to its units were straightforward. The convoys would travel between eighteen and twenty hours per day. Each vehicle would have two drivers. Troops would sleep in the vehicles. Drivers would be given priority for rations and sleep. The average speed would be nineteen miles per hour, but trucks that could move faster were allowed to pass those that could not. If a truck broke down, the men riding in it were responsible for fixing it.
While the infantry, air-defense, and engineer troops of the 1st Corps were rolling forward in rickety trucks through a huge cloud of dust, the General Staff was paying particularly close attention to one unit, the 202nd Armor Brigade, which was the most powerful 1st Corps combat element. PAVN had invested an enormous amount of effort in creating the 202nd. It was formed in North Vietnam during late 1973 by combining a mechanized infantry regiment with tanks from another armored battalion and the tanks assigned to the Armor School. The brigade comprised the 3rd and 198th Tank Battalions, the 66th and 244th Mechanized Infantry Battalions, one engineer battalion, six support companies, and the brigade headquarters. On 27 December 1973, the brigade’s organization was completed, and it was assigned to the 1st Corps.
Given the difficulties in moving tracked vehicles these great distances, the General Staff copied the American method: It moved the vehicles and their personnel by ship. The Navy had also spent the last two years preparing for this day. The Navy’s history notes: “we built the [Cua Viet] base and the Dong Ha Harbor into an important maritime communications and supply line linking into our supply artery leading from our great rear area in North Vietnam into South Vietnam.”13
The 66th Mechanized Infantry Battalion, 202nd Armor Brigade, was the first corps element sent south. After the battalion had moved by train to the Vinh City rail station, “Navy vessels then transported the battalion, together with elements of corps artillery, to the Cua Viet harbor.”14 For the first time in the war, North Vietnamese Navy ships carried a complete armored unit to the South. The Navy would eventually transport “17,343 cadres and enlisted men, 40 tanks, and 7,786 tons of weapons and fuel forward to fight in the Spring 1975 Campaign to liberate South Vietnam.”15
Aircraft also carried men and equipment south. According to the Air Force history, “On 5 April 1975 the first transport aircraft flight landed at the Phu Bai airfield [outside Hue]. Two days later the first transport flight landed at Danang. During succeeding days we began sending flights from Danang to the newly liberated airfields in the Central Highlands. . . . By the end of April, our aircraft had conducted a total 163 flights south, transporting 4,250 officers and enlisted men and 120.7 tons of weapons and technical equipment, including 48 tons of main gun ammunition for tanks, Saigon city maps, and large quantities of flags and leaflets to meet the urgent requirements of the campaign.”16
On 26 March the 202nd Armor Brigade received orders to send its remaining units forward to the front. On 4 April the 66th Battalion was ordered to take Route 14 straight down to Dong Xoai in Phuoc Long province. Despite the importance of the tanks to the coming attack, like all other units, “the battalion had to send reconnaissance teams to check on and repair the road even while it moved forward, repairing its own vehicles and weapons when they broke down, locating sources of fuel on its own, and finding its own fords and river crossing points. The battalion crossed six rivers and drove over hundreds of steep passes to reach its designated assembly point. On 9 April the [202nd] brigade headquarters, 244th Battalion, and 10th [Reconnaissance] Company set out, continuing its journey along Routes 9, 22, and 14 through the Central Highlands and then down [to the B-2 Front area]. Long columns of dusty tanks and armored vehicles drove day and night through newly liberated areas.”17
Traveling in shifts, the advance corps elements, mainly from the 320B Division, arrived in Dong Xoai on 11 April. By 14 April, all remaining corps units except the 202nd Brigade had also arrived, one day earlier than the General Staff’s plan. Although other units continued to straggle in, the 1st Corps had accomplished an amazing feat, rapidly traveling over a thousand miles while not leaving a trail of broken-down vehicles along the road. In two short weeks, the most powerful combat unit the North Vietnamese had ever assembled had driven unopposed from North Vietnam down the long Ho Chi Minh Trail and through South Vietnam itself to the very gates of Saigon.
While the 1st Corps was rolling south, on 1 April Giap recalled Deputy Chief of Staff Le Trong Tan from Danang back to Hanoi to receive a new assignment. Simultaneously, the General Staff ordered the 2nd Corps to detach the 325th Division, the 203rd Tank Brigade, and one anti-aircraft regiment to reinforce the 1st Corps, now arriving at Dong Ha. Major General Nguyen Huu An and the other senior 2nd Corps officers were deeply upset by this order, and they went to see Tan before he left for Hanoi, to try to get him to reverse this decision.
For An, the movement south and the attack on Saigon were precisely what the Soviets had trained him for, and he was determined not to miss this opportunity. Trapped by PAVN’s tradition of obedience to General Staff mandates, he could not directly protest the orders. Nonetheless, he had vast experience in PAVN command circles as well as in battle, and he knew how to manipulate the system while still appearing obedient. He cleverly sidestepped military etiquette by telling General Tan that he and his fellow officers were “concerned about the order for 2nd Corps to send 325th Division, 203rd Tank Brigade, and an anti-aircraft regiment to reinforce 1st Corps. However, if we suggest an alternative plan I am afraid it might upset the plans of our superiors.”18 He then requested permission to present another option. Tan agreed. Seizing his chance, An asked that the entire 2nd Corps remain together and be sent south, emphasizing “the mobile capabilities of the corps, the fact that we have trucks, vehicles, ships, and good roads, and that we are capable of fighting during the advance and attacking from the march.” Convinced by An’s passion, Tan promised to present his proposition to Giap.
As Le Trong Tan flew back to Hanoi, another Politburo member also had strong feelings about the proper disposition of the North Vietnamese forces. Right after Giap and Le Duan accepted Van Tien Dung’s argument regarding the use of the 10th Division, Giap sent a conciliatory message to Le Duc Tho advising him that “according to Dung, it will require no more time than turning around and taking the old route. We feel that it is advantageous and [Le Duan] agrees.”19 While Le Duc Tho had supported Tra’s request to send additional divisions to the B-2 Front, when he learned that Le Duan had approved Dung’s recommendation concerning the 10th, he dropped his objections. But then he recommended a new course of action.
On 3 April, he sent a message back to Hanoi, outlining another strategy. “If the 10th Division has advanced that far south, we should consider having it and another division from [B-1 Front] liberate Phan Rang and Phan Thiet and advance south to liberate [Vung Tau]. . . . That would be very unexpected, and we could quickly approach Saigon from the east. Although the supply line might be stretched out, we can take advantage of Route 1 . . . to move cargo more rapidly and conveniently than advancing from [the west].”20
The General Staff now faced a dilemma. Should it reinforce the 10th Division with the 3rd Division, send them to attack the coastal cities of Phan Rang, Phan Thiet, and Ham Tan, and then use this force, along with the B-2 Front’s 4th Corps, to attack Saigon from the east? Or should it send the 10th back to the west to link up with the rest of the 3rd Corps? Moreover, what was the best way to use the 2nd Corps? Should part of it strengthen the 1st Corps, or should the General Staff keep it intact and send it to help complete the conquest of the coast—which would mean a long drive down Route 1—and join the attack against Saigon from the east?
These questions and more faced the senior leadership at the General Staff meeting on 4 April. As the options were discussed, Tan kept his promise to Nguyen Huu An. According to Giap, Tan “suggested that we should form a coastal column made up of the forces that had just liberated Danang to quickly move down the coast, attacking the enemy from the march, to destroy enemy forces and gain control of the strategic positions from Nha Trang south in order to prevent enemy forces from pulling back and regrouping to defend Saigon.”21 The General Staff pondered both Le Duc Tho’s and Tan’s recommendations, but they soon realized that even with the addition of the 3rd and 10th Divisions to the 4th Corps on the eastern approach, that side would be much weaker than the columns from the north and west of Saigon. In addition, the eastern force would have to deal with ARVN forces on two flanks: in the Bien Hoa/Long Thanh areas, and in its rear at Vung Tau. After considering all the options, and after a flurry of messages between Hanoi, the various southern commands, and Le Duc Tho, both Giap and Le Duan approved Tan’s suggestion. In one of the key strategic decisions of the “Great Spring Offensive,” they formed a “Coastal Column” comprising the 2nd Corps, several units from North Vietnam, and the 3rd Division. Le Duan quickly issued orders naming Le Trong Tan as commander of the newly organized Coastal Column and Major General Le Quang Hoa as political commissar. Both were told to report immediately back to Danang.
It was a logical decision for a number of reasons. Given the crush of trucks and PAVN elements moving down Route 14 toward the western side of Saigon, trying to push parts of the 2nd Corps down that same road would have resulted in a major traffic jam. It would also have resulted in an imbalance of forces between the western and eastern approaches to Saigon. Moving the units down Route 1, while a longer journey and subject to air strikes, naval gunfire, and blown-up bridges, provided them an excellent road unrestricted by the movement of other units. It also put another full corps on the eastern side of Saigon, thus balancing PAVN forces for the assault.
These new decisions necessitated other changes as well. When the 320th and 10th Divisions departed for assembly areas north of Saigon, a vacuum would be created along the coast. The PAVN commanders could not leave the independent 25th Regiment and local forces all alone to garrison that area, while simultaneously manning the front line at Phan Rang. Realizing their vulnerability, on 2 April the General Staff ordered the 968th Division, then still in Binh Dinh, to immediately move south to take over the coastal defense. The division reached Nha Trang on 6 April and replaced the 10th Division. The 968th would remain in this area until the end of the war. In addition, the General Staff ordered Ninh Thuan province local forces to clear away remaining South Vietnamese positions near Phan Rang and along Route 11, the road from Phan Rang to Dalat. At the same time, the 812th Regiment received orders to advance on Phan Thiet and pin down ARVN in that city.
On 5 April, Le Trong Tan returned to Danang, where he held a meeting with Nguyen Huu An in the former headquarters of the ARVN 3rd Division. Earlier, Tan had sent Major General An a cable telling him the Central Military Affairs Committee had agreed with his recommendation. At the meeting, the decision was made to leave behind the 324th Division to guard the Danang area and the 2nd Division to guard the Quang Nam/Quang Tin area, while the 3rd Division and the 5th Armored Battalion would join the 2nd Corps. The 46th Infantry Regiment was attached to the 325th Division to replace its 95B Regiment, which was still in the Central Highlands. Tan informed the 2nd Corps staff that the lead element must depart by 7 April and be in an assembly area northwest of Xuan Loc by 25 April. To prepare for this long journey, Giap “decided to reinforce the Corps with additional transportation resources. The 571st Truck Division [from Group 559] and the 83rd River Crossing Engineer Regiment were attached to the Corps . . . and Navy transport vessels were provided to transport 9th Regiment, 304th Division, from Danang to Qui Nhon.”22
Giap immediately pressed the commander of Group 559 to help the 2nd Corps. In a cable he outlined his orders: “The requirements of the front are extremely urgent, and must be figured in days and hours. At this moment, Time is force; time is power. You must use every possible means to ensure that the units marching to the front move extremely quickly, that supplies move with great urgency, and that you properly complete this urgent supply campaign.”23 In response, Group 559 established a headquarters in Qui Nhon. Giap also sent Hoang Minh Thao from the Central Highlands campaign to establish a headquarters in Nha Trang to organize and direct the movement of units down Route 1.
But it was not enough. Group 559 was running out of trucks. The Rear Services troops were still also transporting the 1st and 3rd Corps, and ensuring that all necessary supplies and transportation would be available for them. Now they had to help Tan’s forces cover more than four hundred miles along Route 1 to reach Phan Rang, and they needed to do it quickly, before ARVN could recover and prepare defenses to block their advance. As one senior officer recalls, “The 571st Division was given the continuing responsibility for helping to transport 2nd Corps forward. At this time, while the main portion of 571st Division was helping to move 1st Corps and 3rd Corps south, the rest of the division’s trucks were working to transport rice and ammunition from Dong Ha to Danang to support 2nd Corps.”24 Under Giap’s prodding, the 571st Truck Division headquarters radioed all units to concentrate everything they had to carry out this new mission. They managed to round up almost seven hundred trucks from Danang to assist the 2nd Corps’s rapid advance.
After his meeting with Tan, a jubilant 2nd Corps commander now discovered that his earlier analysis of his corps’s mobility had been overly optimistic. Danang is four hundred miles from Cam Ranh. Writing in his memoirs, Nguyen Huu An admitted that “Although we understood that we would run into many problems when conducting such a long march, we had not fully anticipated how great these problems would be. When we officially began our preparations for the journey, almost half of the vehicles and weapons of our 673rd Air Defense Division and of the . . . 203rd Tank Brigade were still stuck [in the hills]. . . . When we assembled all our transportation resources, including a number of trucks from the 571st Division that had just arrived to reinforce us, we had only enough to transport a bit over two-thirds of our forces. Along the road our corps would have to cross 569 bridges, of which 14 spanned large rivers. We had just learned that the enemy had destroyed [numerous bridges], but the corps river-crossing engineer element was tiny and only able to assembly four fifty-ton ferries.”25
While the 2nd Corps was trying to figure out how to haul itself south, the 3rd Corps units were also receiving movement instructions. The 320th Division would depart from Tuy Hoa, the 10th from Cam Ranh, and the 316th from Ban Me Thuot. The 316th was told to move first and arrive in Tay Ninh province on 3 April. Soon afterward, the 320th was ordered to depart from Tuy Hoa on 10 April. Following Route 7B to Route 14, the 320th ran into its “twin,” the 1st Corps’s 320B Division, which had been cloned from the original 320th back in 1965. Together, the lead elements of the division arrived in Tay Ninh on 15 April.
The 10th Division, meanwhile, had a much tougher time than the other units. Its history notes: “The greatest problem confronting the division at this time was transportation. Even though 3rd Corps Headquarters gave the division top priority for the use of trucks, the division was still sixty trucks short of its transportation requirements. To resolve this problem the division headquarters sent . . . the Division Chief of Political Affairs back to personally work with the Nha Trang and Cam Ranh Military Management Committees to persuade the local citizens to provide vehicles to help our troops. At the same time the maximum use was made of captured enemy vehicles for transporting our forces into battle.”26
When the 10th Division finally departed on 9 April, the North Vietnamese forces’ road march turned deadly for the first time. The 10th’s delay had allowed the South Vietnamese the breathing room they needed. The division’s route was uncomfortably close to ARVN positions; at one point it was only twelve miles from the South Vietnamese Air Force base at Phan Rang. When spotter aircraft detected the division’s movement, Colonel Le Van Thao’s A-37s pummeled the moving convoy. The 10th Division history details the deadly effects. “After 72 hours of preparations at Cam Ranh, the entire division moved out down Route 450 [a small road leading from Cam Ranh across the mountains to Route 11] . . . the division advanced through a ferocious storm of enemy bombs and shells. On 10 April the 7th Engineer Regiment’s river-crossing battalion lost six vehicles transporting vehicle ferries. On 11 April the enemy destroyed five of 28th Regiment’s trucks. On 12 April the division headquarters and 4th Regiment lost seven trucks. On 13 April the 24th Regiment had nine trucks destroyed. Route 450 turned into a flaming hell. However, the entire convoy, numbering hundreds of vehicles filled with troops, guns, ammunition, and food, kept moving forward. . . . On the afternoon of 13 April [most of the division], having survived the enemy bombing attacks, reached . . . Dalat.”27
The 3rd Corps urged the division to hurry, but it faced logistical conditions every bit as difficult as the other PAVN elements had faced. The division history states: “our vehicles drove constantly, night and day. The soldiers were allowed only short stops to cook rice and boil drinking water before continuing . . . Riding on uncovered vehicles, the sun and the dust blackened the faces of our troops.”28 Despite these hardships, the division arrived at the campaign assembly area in a rubber plantation in Tay Ninh on the night of 22–23 April. The 3rd Corps, the fourth main-force “fist” of Dung’s powerful army, had gathered outside of Saigon.
Meanwhile, the 2nd Corps, after a rapid inspection of captured equipment, determined that it could use a significant number of American weapons and vehicles to alleviate shortages. As Nguyen Huu An noted: “In the space of only a few days the 203rd Tank Brigade confiscated and incorporated into its ranks dozens of enemy M-113s and M-48 tanks. Our artillery took large numbers of enemy trucks, artillery pieces, and ammunition to replace their old equipment. More than one-third of the guns in our artillery units were now captured weapons. . . . The units also put into use the communications equipment mounted on the enemy vehicles, high-powered radios that were excellent for command and control. Infantry units also switched to the use of many types of enemy weapons and technical devices. Almost every company and battalion was now equipped with U.S.-made PRC-25 radios.”29
Given Tan’s order to depart on 7 April, the 2nd Corps headquarters convened a meeting of all subordinate elements to issue mission orders and march plans. The reconfigured 2nd Corps now comprised the 3rd, 304th, and 325th Infantry Divisions, plus the 673rd Anti-Aircraft Division. Separate artillery, engineer, and signal brigades augmented the infantry, along with the powerful 203rd Tank Brigade.
The corps organized itself into five separate march elements. In the First Element was a regiment from the 325th Division, an armored battalion from the 203rd Tank Brigade, an anti-aircraft regiment, and two engineer battalions. Follow-on elements would be equally balanced, meaning that the entire corps was organized into five separate combined-arms attack formations. Each element had a combat organization powerful enough to protect itself from small-scale attacks during the advance, yet it also had the capability, through the engineer brigades, to resolve any problems along the road.
As the 2nd Corps prepared to depart on the morning of 7 April, Giap sent a handwritten cable to the front, exhorting his forces racing toward Saigon to move as fast as possible: “Speed, ever greater speed. Daring, ever greater daring. Exploit every hour, every minute. Rush to the battlefield to liberate the South. Resolve to fight to secure total victory. Immediately disseminate this message to every cadre and every soldier.”30 Unit political officers immediately turned this cable into a psychological weapon. They ordered the soldiers to inscribe the slogan “Speed” onto rifle butts, tank barrels, and truck bumpers. It was an effective motto; it provided a clear-cut sense of mission to the young troops by emphasizing that the final battle to end this long and costly war was about to commence.
Despite the tremendous organizational improvisation, the shortage of trucks continued to plague the 2nd Corps. The First Element was split into two groups and shuttled south in a manner similar to the 1st Corps. Notwithstanding the scarcity of trucks, the Coastal Column was the largest North Vietnamese force ever massed during the war. It consisted of a total of “2,276 vehicles to transport supplies and personnel . . . 223 towed artillery pieces . . . 89 armored vehicles, of which 54 were tanks. A total of 32,418 personnel took part in this road march.”31 The Column was a steamroller headed straight for Phan Rang.
The first section of the First Element, consisting of the 325th Division’s headquarters, its 101st Regiment, artillery and anti-aircraft elements, and the advance guard, set forth at 9:00 A.M. on 7 April. Barreling down the road, its men quickly repaired eight major bridges and dozens of smaller ones destroyed by ARVN units, and built detours around several more they could not fix. Their reward for rapidly reaching Khanh Hoa province was air strikes from Colonel Thao’s A-37 wing. The blown-up bridges and the air strikes, however, did not appreciably slow the 2nd Corps’s movement. At one point, one section traveled an incredible 115 miles in one day.
In Binh Dinh, the 3rd Division was also preparing to move. While the troops rested and conducted training for urban combat, the division’s Rear Services personnel scrounged every available vehicle that could carry men and supplies. Over one thousand new replacement soldiers from North Vietnam arrived to make up the division’s heavy losses. After securing a total of 924 vehicles ranging from civilian buses and cars to captured ARVN trucks driven by press-ganged South Vietnamese soldiers, on 8 April the division began its road march south.
The timing of the various movements was near perfect. As the 968th Division arrived to assume the defense of Cam Ranh Bay, the 10th Division moved out. On 10 April, just after the 10th’s units departed, the lead section of First Element and some 3rd Division support units flowed down the road and bivouacked near Cam Ranh. Integrating itself into the second section of First Element as it passed through Binh Dinh, the 3rd Division arrived at the assembly area twenty-five miles northeast of Phan Rang on 11 April. The Coastal Column’s movement of more than 2,200 vehicles and thousands of soldiers over four hundred miles, repairing blown-up bridges and fighting off air strikes and naval gunfire along the way, was a magnificent achievement, accomplished through the combined effort of soldiers and officers alike.
The Communists’ success in moving three entire corps that far and that fast was for them a logistics feat unparalleled in the war, surpassed only by the building of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It was a wildly improvised orchestration of men and machines down hundreds of miles of dusty, rutted, sometimes mud-clogged roads, and over dozens of bombed-out bridges and steep mountains. Surely it is one of the most unheralded military movements in history. That the PAVN technical staff somehow managed to hold all of those old trucks, T-54s, and Chinese APCs together on that long journey south is by itself a remarkable triumph.
If improved armor tactics, skillful engineering, and increased command and control were now decisive on the battlefield, this success was made possible only by the earlier efforts of the PAVN Rear Services troops. In the two years since the Paris Accords, they had labored long and hard—and in gross violation of the peace agreement—to develop this critical logistics network. Most important of all was the fuel line running all the way to Loc Ninh, for without gas and oil, the trucks and tanks would have been useless.
No doubt the huge quantities of captured equipment also contributed mightily to the PAVN exploits. Also deserving of emphasis is the sense of urgency instilled in each soldier and cadre. The notion that final victory lay within their grasp—an idea repeatedly impressed upon them by their officers and reinforced by the relentless exhortations of their political officers—also undeniably played a major role in the successful movement of over a hundred thousand men and tons of equipment to a distant battle-field. Victory does wonders for morale.
PAVN, however, was not immune to weaknesses similar to the ones that so afflicted ARVN during the final offensive. Notably, PAVN had its own version of the family syndrome. As one senior Group 559 officer drove down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, his car ran into a traffic jam at a control station. The officer got out of his vehicle and walked to the station to find out the reason for the delay. The local commander told him that after word spread in North Vietnam that the Central Highlands had fallen, a large number of drivers coming from the North allowed family members and friends to hitch a ride aboard their trucks to “visit relatives” in the South. In fact, these people were trying to stake a claim to land and property in the vast and rich newly liberated areas. Since none of the civilians had valid travel documents, the control station had ordered them off the trucks. This left a tremendous crowd milling around and provoked a dangerous confrontation between the angry drivers and civilians and the tiny traffic-control team. Rapidly assessing the situation, the quick-thinking officer came up with a Solomonic solution. Any civilians who were immediate relatives of the drivers, including in-laws, would be allowed to accompany the trucks southward. Those civilians who were not immediate relatives would be loaded aboard the next truck convoy headed back north. All civilians, both those continuing south and those returning, would be required to arrange for their own food and housing. Soon the detained vehicles were released, and traffic was again flowing smoothly.32
THIEU’S GRIP ON POWER BEGINS TO LOOSEN
As the military situation worsened, President Thieu came under intense pressure to broaden his government in order to rally the nation. This was not the first time Thieu’s political opposition had exploited military reversals in an attempt to gain power. During the 1972 offensive, some of the same issues that bedeviled Thieu now had also arisen. Opposition parties had called for a broader government to rally the people after the fall of Quang Tri City in April 1972. Elements in the JGS had grumbled then about Thieu’s military moves, as rumors began circulating of super-power connivance to end the war at South Vietnam’s expense. However, after ARVN, with the help of U.S. airpower, had stabilized the situation in July 1972, much of the discontent had receded. Now once again faced with military reversals, a number of South Vietnamese began searching for an accommodation with the Communists that would offer a chance at nominal independence, not to mention personal survival. The quick answer was to remove Thieu. This is why Hanoi dangled the possibility of a coalition government. By exploiting Thieu’s image as an uncompromising hawk while playing on South Vietnamese fears of U.S. abandonment, the Politburo hoped to unravel Saigon’s command structure in order to ease its military conquest.
The opposition ranged from moderates who could work with Thieu but wanted to add to his government people whose talent extended beyond simple loyalty, to hard-core militants who demanded the president’s overthrow. The 15 March visit to Thieu by Bui Diem, Tran Van Do, and Tran Quoc Buu was the initial effort by the moderates. It was soon followed by a 21 March statement by the opposition bloc in the Lower House criticizing the retreats. Thieu quickly announced on 25 March that Prime Minister Khiem would form a new, broad-based government, but he failed to inform Tran Van Do beforehand. Do viewed this as a tactic by Thieu to fend off his demand to completely overhaul the government, including replacing Khiem. Hence the opposition immediately mobilized to draft a response to Thieu’s announcement.
One new participant in the opposition was Nguyen Cao Ky. Thieu’s former running-mate had been living on a farm in Darlac province since pulling out of the 1971 presidential election. Given the enmity between the Ky and Thieu, Ky’s presence in the opposition clearly had the potential to create political mayhem. Yet both Do and Dang Van Sung, publisher of Chinh Luan (the paper that had printed both Nguyen Tu’s articles on the retreat from the Highlands and the 21 March opposition statement), wanted to bring Ky into the fold. Father Tran Huu Thanh, founder of the People’s Anti-Corruption Movement, which had conducted anti-corruption and anti-Thieu demonstrations in September 1974, also sought out Ky. After hearing their supplications, the former Air Force commander offered the Tan Son Nhut VNAF Officers’ Club as a meeting venue. Gathering on the afternoon of 26 March, the group consisted of about thirty opposition members, including Father Thanh, Tran Van Do, and Dang Van Sung. Notably absent were representatives from the An Quang Buddhist sect and the left-wing Catholics, since they considered themselves part of the Third Force and not of the anti-Communist nationalists whom Thieu had requested to join his government.
Most of the participants wanted Thieu’s resignation, but Tran Van Do convinced them to call instead for a change in the government and for the formation of an “Action Committee to Save the Nation.” The price Thieu would have had to pay for Do’s co-operation, however, was steep. While the resolution did not directly call for Khiem’s resignation, Do wanted Khiem gone and the new Cabinet to have greater autonomy from Thieu, particularly regarding personnel changes and anti-corruption measures.
At first, Ky’s sponsorship of the meeting did not produce any fireworks. Ky claimed that he did not want to participate in politics, and stated that he would immediately ask anyone who even mentioned a coup to leave. To maintain his neutrality, Ky refused to sign the proclamation.
Thieu’s desire to broaden his government was cast in doubt, however, when he ordered the arrest that night of ten people on charges of “plotting” to overthrow the government. Since those arrested included two individuals who had attended the meeting, plus several journalists who worked for Sung and people who were known to be associates of Ky, it was generally assumed that the arrests were a response to the meeting.33 Ky reacted with fury, believing that Thieu was threatening him. Police Chief Nguyen Khac Binh denied that the arrests were an attempt to pressure Ky, but the damage was done.
The arrests spurred the Action Committee to meet again the next day. With Ky attending, the participants elected Father Thanh as their chairman. After the meeting, Thanh and Ky held a news conference. Going far beyond the previous day’s innocuous statement, Thanh demanded that Thieu turn over all power to a new government. Although Thieu could remain as president, he would become a figurehead. Ky once again declared that he had no intention of staging a coup, and he was not seeking political power. Instead, he wanted to lead the military to a victory to lift morale. Displaying a dissociation from reality, he publicly offered to “take eighty tanks and two regiments of infantry and go reoccupy Ban Me Thuot in three days, with me in the lead tank.”34Earlier he had broached this concept to General Cao Van Vien, who had politely declined. Ky did depict himself, however, as a binding force for the various opposition groups, which seemed to puncture his earlier denials that he was seeking political power.
Thieu’s arrest of the ten men had destroyed the fragile effort at reconciliation between the opposition and himself. It had also forced Ky to attend the next meeting and back Thanh. Since within the nationalist opposition Thanh was the most involved in personal attacks against the president, supporting Thanh guaranteed the reconciliation effort’s demise. In some ways, though, Thieu did not care. He did not believe that Hanoi would negotiate with a government headed by Ky (or anyone else, for that matter), especially given that the North Vietnamese now had the upper hand on the battlefield.
Apart from the arrests, however, Thieu generally ignored the growing opposition requests for consultations and change in government. Why? Because Thieu, besides fighting the war and trying to find new sources of aid, was secretly attempting to organize a new Cabinet on his own. Shortly after the 21 March opposition statement, he ordered Prime Minister Khiem to ask various opposition figures to join his government. When they all declined, on 28 March Thieu asked Senate Chairman and former Foreign Minister Tran Van Lam and House Speaker Nguyen Ba Can to meet with him. Thieu wanted them to help Khiem form a new government. Lam, however, was under pressure from his Senate colleagues to take a different course. On 20 March the Senate had voted to request that Prime Minister Khiem appear before the assembly to discuss the military situation. When Khiem declined, various senators, both from the opposition and from Thieu’s Democracy Party, jointly asked Lam to convene an emergency session. The intent was to request Thieu’s resignation. Lam had scheduled the session for 2 April.
The collapse of Danang and its attendant horrors destroyed Thieu’s final hope of forming a new government on his terms, as the last remaining pro-Thieu civilians also began demanding his resignation. On 1 April Thich Tam Chau, the head of the Buddhist pro-government Quoc Tu faction, sent a letter to Thieu denouncing the president’s military blunders and asking him to resign. The next day, the Senate followed suit and issued a public appeal for a new government and a “change in leadership,” a subtle way of calling for Thieu’s resignation without saying so directly. On 3 April the head of the Catholic Church in South Vietnam, Archbishop Nguyen Van Binh, published a letter supporting the Senate’s appeal. Binh deliberately couched his letter in the same terms as the Senate’s appeal so that other Vietnamese bishops would then be free to publicly agree or disagree with him.
After the Senate’s demand for Thieu’s resignation, Tran Van Lam called on the president. Lam wanted Thieu and Vice President Tran Van Huong to resign and turn over their powers to him. Lam’s intent was to form a national-unity government, with Ky as the head of a council that could negotiate an accommodation with Hanoi or a coalition with the Provisional Revolutionary Government. Lam, however, had badly misjudged Thieu. According to Lam, “Thieu reacted . . . abusively, [and accused] his former supporters of having deserted him. He refused to consider either resigning or handing over real power to a new government.”35
Although most civilian leaders were calling for his head, and there was much badmouthing in the military, Thieu retained the loyalty of the senior military officers. As long as they supported him, the president could fend off the political calls for his resignation. General Cao Van Vien, the chief of the General Staff; Lieutenant General Nguyen Van Toan, the commander of III Corps; and even the Air Force commander, Lieutenant General Tran Van Minh, continued to back Thieu.
Yet Thieu needed a scapegoat, and he found one in Prime Minister Khiem. Khiem’s inability to form a new government, the military reversals, and the opposition’s calls for a new government provided Thieu the excuse he needed. On 4 April Thieu asked Khiem to resign, along with the entire Cabinet. Concurrently, Thieu announced that the Speaker of the House, Nguyen Ba Can, had accepted the position of prime minister. Can’s marching orders were to form a broad government, what Thieu termed a “fighting Cabinet.”
The same day, Thieu made a lengthy TV speech to the nation. He admitted that he had ordered the withdrawal from the Central Highlands, but stated that it was with the intention of regrouping to retake Ban Me Thuot. He espoused the view that the fall of Danang was due to the Communists’ overwhelming strength. Finally, Thieu denied that a deal had been made to divide the country, and asserted that he was determined to defend all remaining territory. He also stated that he was prepared to return to the negotiating table if the North Vietnamese ceased their attacks. Lastly, he proclaimed that the Communists were attempting to destroy the South Vietnamese government by urging a coalition government. Thieu insisted that the constitution must be preserved in order to support any negotiations. The next day, according to Van Tien Dung’s account, Thieu sent out an order mandating the “urgent strengthening of the Phan Rang defense line, and reprimanded those of his generals who favored an early regroupment around Saigon/Gia Dinh for being defeatist.”36
As he had done so often in the past, Thieu had outmaneuvered his domestic opponents. Still, his hold on power depended entirely upon continued American support and, just as important, upon reversing the military tide.
INFORMING WASHINGTON
As the PAVN juggernaut closed in on the South Vietnamese capital, both the CIA and the DAO told Washington that South Vietnam was doomed. On 29 March the CIA’s Saigon station chief, Tom Polgar, stated: “Unless the U.S. takes prompt action to halt the North Vietnamese aggression—not necessarily through military means—the situation . . . is likely to unravel quickly over the next few months, resulting in the actual or effective military defeat of the GVN in a very short time.”37 Polgar’s views hit home. An interagency report, coordinated by the CIA, DIA, and State Department, and published on 4 April, was unequivocal: “The only question over the defeat of the Republic of Vietnam is timing—whether it will collapse or be militarily overwhelmed in a period of weeks or months. The North Vietnamese have recognized South Vietnam’s vulnerability and appear determined to take rapid advantage of it.”38
American intelligence soon confirmed the Politburo’s intention to go for the kill. According to Frank Snepp, on 8 April “the Station’s best agent supplied us with a crucial update of the intelligence already in hand. The Communists had just issued a new ‘resolution’ calling for . . . a move against the capital at an as yet unspecified date, with no allowance whatsoever for a negotiated settlement. All the ‘talk’ of negotiations and a possible coalition government, he emphasized, was merely a ruse to confuse the South Vietnamese and to sow suspicion between them and the Americans.”39
This was a great intelligence coup, for the CIA’s best source was reporting a brand-new COSVN resolution. Known as COSVN Resolution 15, it called for the seizure of South Vietnam by the end of 1975. Although Resolution 15 merely reflected the Politburo’s 18 March decision and not the latest decision to end the war by the end of April, this critical intelligence should have left no doubt about North Vietnamese intentions.
On 10 April, Colonel William Le Gro disseminated similar intelligence in what would prove to be the last Monthly Intelligence Survey and Threat Analysis (MISTA) produced by the DAO. Ambassador Graham Martin, however, disagreed with both the DAO’s and the CIA’s analysis of the new intelligence. While Martin accepted the estimate of PAVN’s military capabilities versus ARVN’s, he appended a dissent to Le Gro’s report. He laid out his belief that “the enemy’s capabilities will not be exercised to their fullest because factors exterior to the local tactical situation will operate to deter the DRV. Most significant in the exterior factors considered will be international diplomatic pressures. The prompt and adequate provision of US military assistance, not repeat not including the employment of US airpower in SVN, will in the Ambassador’s view give the defending forces . . . material and psychological strength to prevent the necessity of capitulation while the international pressures work to provide the basis for a new political settlement.”40
For Martin, it was a desperate wish born of a desire to see South Vietnam survive with some semblance of independence, and to see America extract itself from the Vietnam quagmire with a modicum of dignity. For his numerous critics, the ambassador’s assertion that a political solution could be found in time to stave off a PAVN march into Saigon was the culmination of what they saw as his “head-in-the-sand” approach. Instead, it was a man grasping at proverbial straws. No alternative existed except an abrupt and humiliating run for the exits by U.S. officials. Leaving as enemy tanks enter a doomed city is one thing, but cutting and running while life still breathes in your ally is quite another, and Martin would have none of that.
Regardless, there was little the CIA or the DAO could do about the torrent of North Vietnamese forces rushing toward them but report it and hope for a miracle. Writing to General Weyand at the end of March, Colonel Le Gro noted that “the 320B Division is currently enroute to III Corps and that two other divisions currently deployed in the south or from the . . . reserve will also move to III Corps in the next one to three months.”41 What Le Gro did not realize is that at that moment the Communists were in the process of sending eight more divisions to Saigon, and that they would arrive in two weeks, not in one to three months.
Now the destiny of a country so many Americans had fought and died for hung on the outcome of the race between the South’s efforts to reorganize its shattered units from the northern military regions, and the Communists’ ability to deploy forces into III Corps. For the moment, however, as PAVN prepared for the battle for Saigon, the South Vietnamese were tired of badly botched withdrawals. If Giap wanted Phan Rang, the peasant soldiers of the People’s Army would have to fight for it.