5
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
While battles had raged in III Corps in the spring of 1974, the war had mostly spared the northern military region of South Vietnam, called I Corps. The opposing forces were encamped in fairly well-defined positions: a GVN-controlled enclave in the foothills and coastal lowlands, and a Communist redoubt in the mountainous terrain to the west. Although occasional fighting flared, the situation was generally quiet. The corps consisted of five provinces running north-south. The northern-most was Quang Tri on the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ); the next province south was Thua Thien, housing the old imperial capital of Hue. Next was Quang Nam, home to Danang, South Vietnam’s second-largest city. Last were Quang Tin and Quang Ngai.
Lieutenant General Ngo Quang Truong had assumed command of I Corps on 3 May 1972. He was born in December 1929 in Kien Hoa province in the Mekong Delta, and attended a French school in My Tho. After school, Truong joined the Army, and he graduated in 1954 from the Thu Duc Reserve Officers’ School. He then went to Airborne training, and was assigned to help rebuild the 5th Airborne Battalion after it was decimated at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. By 1963 he led the unit, and he eventually went on to command the Airborne Brigade. In April 1966 he took over the ARVN 1st Division. He personally directed the ARVN effort to retake Hue during the 1968 Tet Offensive, and his strong campaigning afterwards significantly enlarged the GVN’s control of northern I Corps. In 1970 he was rewarded with command of IV Corps after the death of Major General Nguyen Viet Thanh. He proved an excellent choice, and by 1971 he was routinely praised by both Vietnamese and Americans as ARVN’s top commander. At the height of the 1972 offensive, he was tasked with preventing the disaster looming in I Corps. His brilliant leadership swiftly turned around the desperate situation and probably saved the country.
Truong was the least colorful but most capable of South Vietnam’s senior officers. Despite his notorious reticence, he possessed both tactical brilliance and an uncanny ability to motivate his troops. His rapid advance was achieved on merit rather than because he was someone’s protégé, a rare feat in Thieu’s armed forces. Moreover, he was both non-political and incorruptible. Despite pressure from Thieu, he refrained from taking sides in the 1971 presidential election, and after the ceasefire, he resisted pressure to enroll in Thieu’s Democracy Party. Neither action endeared him to Thieu. Given Truong’s sterling combat record, the president kept a watchful eye trained on him for any signs of nascent political interests, despite Truong’s frequently expressed desire for the Army to remain aloof from politics.
Truong commanded five divisions in I Corps—three north of the Hai Van Pass, the major chokepoint on Route 1 between Hue and Danang, and two south of the pass. The pass also served as the border between Thua Thien and Quang Nam provinces. Because of the geographic isolation of Quang Tri and Thua Thien provinces and their proximity to North Vietnam, an ARVN command subordinate to I Corps, called I Corps Forward, was created for them. I Corps Forward was led by Lieutenant General Lam Quang Thi, who was concurrently Truong’s deputy. Thi commanded South Vietnam’s three finest divisions: the 1st Division, long considered the best regular ARVN unit, and the two elite general-reserve units, the Airborne and Marine Divisions.
Thi was from a land-owning family in the Mekong Delta. He was born on 7 May 1932 and joined the Vietnamese National Army in October 1950. He served as an artillery officer with the French in North Vietnam. In later years he commanded the ARVN 9th Division in the Delta during the Tet Offensive. His next assignment was as commandant of the Dalat Military School, which he transformed into a four-year institution modeled after West Point. He joined I Corps in April 1972, during the Easter Offensive, and remained there until the collapse.
South of the Hai Van Pass were the ARVN 2nd and 3rd Divisions. The 3rd Division was stationed west and south of Danang. Formed in 1971, the unit had been shattered during the opening campaign of the Easter Offensive, and was pulled back to Danang in late May 1972 for refitting. In mid-1972, Brigadier General Nguyen Duy Hinh was given command of the outfit, and he rapidly rebuilt it. In October 1972 the 3rd Division was given a new mission: create a security zone around Danang. So successful were Hinh’s efforts that after the ceasefire, the 3rd’s territorial duties were increased to include all of Quang Nam and the northern half of Quang Tin. Hinh’s masterful turnaround of the badly battered unit earned him a second star; he was the only division commander promoted in 1973.
South of the 3rd was the ARVN 2nd Division, which was commanded by Brigadier General Tran Van Nhut. His courageous efforts leading the Binh Long provincial forces at An Loc in 1972 had earned Nhut a general’s star and command of the 2nd Division. The 2nd also held a wide swath of territory: from the middle of Quang Tin to the southern border of Quang Ngai. In addition to the five divisions, I Corps also had the 1st Armor Brigade, the 1st VNAF Air Division, four Ranger groups (the 11th, 12th, 14th, and 15th), fifty Regional Force battalions, and naval assets.
I Corps’s proximity to North Vietnam had made it the scene of the heaviest combat during the 1965–72 period, and the mountainous terrain along the western flank and the thin coastal plain also made it the most difficult to defend. Truong’s corps was essentially a long, narrow rectangle. At the top of the box sat the Demilitarized Zone and North Vietnam. The major road through the area is Route 1, which snakes along the coast to Danang. Continuing north, the road meanders through the Hai Van Pass, where it enters Hue and the tiny lowlands of Thua Thien and Quang Tri, an area the Vietnamese call “the narrow strip of land” (Mieng Dat Hep). During the war against the French, Route 1 north of Hue was nicknamed “The Street without Joy” for the bloody ambushes that often erupted along its flanks. Later, during the 1972 offensive, it became known as “The Highway of Death” when Communist artillery shelled the refugee-clogged road, killing thousands of innocent civilians fleeing the advancing Northerners.
Since the Hai Van Pass was heavily defended, PAVN commanders sought another area to out-flank ARVN defenders north of the pass. Severing Route 1 would cut off Hue and South Vietnam’s three best divisions. Of particular concern to Truong was the hill country between Hue and the pass. A series of hills overlooking Route 1 begins approximately ten miles southeast of Hue and the Phu Bai airbase, the only airfield serving the former imperial city. It was impossible to garrison every hill, and in the steep defiles and rolling ridges the North Vietnamese could pierce the ARVN defensive lines in any number of places.
Recognizing the precarious situation, in late December 1973 Major General Murray had requested additional cargo ships (specifically LSTs), which could rescue or resupply thousands of trapped soldiers. In perhaps his most prophetic vision, Murray noted that if PAVN managed to cut Route 1 between Hue and the Hai Van Pass, Truong, “brave, fierce, battle hardened as he is, would face Dunkirk without ships.” The South Vietnamese Navy currently had nine LSTs, but Murray wanted six more. He also wanted to dredge the channel from the Thuan An Inlet on the coast to the small harbor of Tan My, located east of Hue at the mouth of the Perfume River. The harbor was currently silted up, and LSTs could not enter. Pentagon lawyers nixed Murray’s LST request, claiming that adding even unarmed ships might violate the accords. In October 1974, Ambassador Martin again raised the issue, but the State Department’s chief legal officer also denied it. While the LST denial was a small detail in the larger picture, it would have great repercussions during the 1975 debacle.
Luckily for Truong, PAVN commanders in I Corps had withdrawn their forces into more defined positions rather than remaining interspersed with South Vietnamese forces as in III and IV Corps. Several badly battered divisions had rotated back to North Vietnam in 1973 for refitting, leaving the remaining troops to quietly rebuild their strength. But after Le Duc Anh’s insubordination in the lower Delta was trumpeted as a North Vietnamese victory, Giap considered the passive response of PAVN commanders in northern South Vietnam a major mistake. His orders to begin limited but strong attacks in 1974 were directed particularly at this area, as he wanted to alter the existing balance of forces dramatically. Thus, in the spring of 1974, Giap began a series of campaigns throughout the region that tested ARVN to the limit and caused severe casualties on both sides. What few know is that Truong, widely praised for reversing the tide of defeat in I Corps in 1972, performed a second such miracle in 1974. By swiftly redeploying his units and accepting significant risks in one area to stem attacks in another, Truong again saved I Corps. The cost, however, was 15,000 South Vietnamese casualties.
In May 1974, PAVN launched its first major attack in I Corps in a year. The target of the initial assault was the district seat of Tien Phuoc, located about twenty-five miles west of Tam Ky, the provincial capital of Quang Tin. Tien Phuoc was a key Regional Force base in the outpost shield protecting both Route 1 and Tam Ky. Given the heavy pressure on Tien Phuoc, Brigadier General Nhut was forced to move most of his division from Quang Ngai in order to defend Quang Tin. While he held the North Vietnamese at bay, Communist forces immediately attacked the Quang Ngai coastal plains. Truong then assigned two of his Ranger groups, which he had hoped to use as a corps reserve, to defend that province. Although ARVN held its ground, losses on both sides were high.
After the fighting in southern I Corps ended, PAVN forces mounted a major operation in central I Corps. The attack began on 18 July, and after two weeks of fierce fighting, a regiment of the PAVN 324th Division over-ran South Vietnam’s only coal mine and a district town deep in the mountains.1 The regiment continued east and assaulted Thuong Duc, a small district town that sits at the head of a valley leading directly to Danang. Anticipating the attack on Thuong Duc, Truong had transferred a Ranger battalion from Quang Ngai to guard the town. When the Rangers held out against repeated attacks, PAVN troops employed a new tactic. They dismantled their 37-mm anti-aircraft guns and hauled them through the mountains to the front lines to use as direct-fire weapons.
In early August the Northerners again attacked Thuong Duc. The direct fire from the anti-aircraft guns smashed the Ranger bunkers, forcing them to retreat. Truong quickly sent a Ranger group and a regiment from the 1st Division from I Corps Forward to stabilize the situation, but PAVN poured another regiment into the breach. Under Major General Hinh’s command, the 3rd Division and the reinforcements halted the offensive and then counterattacked, but Communist units that had dug in on the nearby hills stopped Hinh’s advance two miles from the town.
Overall, the fighting had been ferocious; more than 4,700 South Vietnamese soldiers had been killed or wounded since mid-July. The 3rd Division alone had taken 3,500 casualties, about 25 percent of the division, mostly in the infantry units. According to Hinh, “The losses were not replaced in full. . . . Combat effectiveness of units, as a result, decreased markedly for lack of adequate replacements.”2 Ammunition cuts played a large role in Hinh’s failure to retake Thuong Duc. Hinh was limited to only six rounds of 105-mm and four rounds of 175-mm artillery shells per gun per day. That meant his artillery could fire less than five hundred rounds a day both to support a major attack and to conduct outpost defense within his one and a half provinces. Fuel was so scarce that Hinh could not commit his armored cavalry unit to support the counterattack. Even his command helicopter was limited to four hours of flight time per week. Meanwhile, in the eyes of increasingly demoralized ARVN troops, PAVN supplies appeared plentiful.
With all of Truong’s reserve now committed, PAVN began concentrating troops in the hill area between Hue and the Hai Van Pass. With the situation stabilized, Truong shifted the 1st Division regiment and the Ranger group back to I Corps Forward. But when those forces withdrew from Thuong Duc, PAVN quickly pushed forward, seizing a dominating hilltop, known as Hill 1062, three miles northeast of Thuong Duc. Enemy 130-mm artillery was now in range of Danang. Truong immediately pulled the 1st and 3rd Airborne Brigades out of Thua Thien, and ordered the highly regarded Airborne Division commander, Brigadier General Le Quang Luong, to retake Hill 1062.
The appearance of the elite “Red Berets” (the Airborne Division’s nickname) grabbed Hanoi’s attention. General Van Tien Dung, the chief of the General Staff, had just returned from a lengthy overseas medical leave. He recalled the 2nd Corps commander to Hanoi to give him orders personally. Dung emphasized that the defense of Thuong Duc was paramount; he said, “You must hold them there as long as possible, all the way through the spring of 1975, in order to enable our other areas to conduct their operations. You will receive ample supplies and ammunition and plenty of new recruits as replacements.”3
Despite Dung’s admonitions, the Red Berets methodically pushed forward. On 18 September, they retook Hill 1062, but a counterattack the next day drove them off. PAVN casualties were high, so the regiment from the 324th Division was swapped with a regiment from the 304th Division. After switching places, the 304th’s troops dug in and grimly waited for the Red Berets to return to fight for Hill 1062.
After lengthy planning, Luong launched a surprise attack on 2 October that drove PAVN from the hill, killing four hundred North Vietnamese soldiers. Undeterred, the People’s Army counterattacked, this time with a second regiment from the 304th. Hundreds of Communist soldiers were mowed down, but the 304th relentlessly pressed forward. For the next two weeks, the Red Berets fought off repeated attempts to regain the hill. Dung was furious at the failure. Feeling the whip, the 2nd Corps commander sent his deputy, Major General Hoang Dan, to take personal command of the battle. He brought with him the third 304th regiment, plus two battalions of engineers and four thousand rounds of artillery and mortar ammunition.4
Rallying the Communist troops, and using a two-day artillery barrage to keep the Airborne pinned down, Hoang Dan launched another assault on 1 November. The new regiment drove the airborne off Hill 1062. Determined to hold the position, Hoang Dan used the engineers to build extensive fortifications to defend his hard-won gains, knowing the airborne would return. True to form, several days later, Luong counterattacked. VNAF fighters bore in, pounding the 304th troops. Despite the new fortifications, within two days the Airborne had recaptured the hill. It was the final battle for Hill 1062. Both sides were too exhausted to move any further. In six weeks of fighting, the Airborne had lost five hundred dead and almost two thousand wounded, while claiming that PAVN casualties approached seven thousand. Although the threat to Danang had been halted, Thuong Duc remained in enemy hands.
Meanwhile, the removal of the two Airborne brigades from the defense of Hue had left it badly exposed. Truong moved the Marine Division from Quang Tri province south to Thua Thien to cover Hue, and assigned the 15th Ranger Group and 1st Armor Brigade to take over the Marine positions. It was a move that he would partially duplicate in March 1975. While this time it worked, it would prove disastrous in 1975.
Between April and June 1974, PAVN units of the B-4 Front, the area north of the pass, had probed the most important section of the hill country between Hue and the pass, the Bong Mountain/Mo Tau Hill complex. Communist troops initially captured several of the almost two dozen hills running along Route 1, only to be pushed off by the 1st Division. The sector was then quiet for most of the summer, but as September approached that was about to change.
Taking advantage of the badly extended ARVN forces in I Corps Forward, on the morning of 28 August, artillery fire suddenly rained down on the troops of the ARVN 3rd Regiment, 1st Division, defending Mo Tau and Hill 350, another significant high point in the area. Striking swiftly, PAVN soldiers attacked and captured the hills. The 1st Division commander, Brigadier General Nguyen Van Diem, rushed his reserve regiment into the line to recapture the hills. Enemy artillery soon started shelling Phu Bai and Route 1, forcing the airport’s closure and badly disrupting road traffic. Intense fighting raged for several weeks as the ARVN soldiers fought to reclaim the high ground, but they failed. Truong pulled Hinh’s reinforcements, which were then engaged on the Quang Nam front, back to the area to reinforce the 1st Division. It was this move that allowed PAVN to capture Hill 1062.
Given the dangerous situation, Lieutenant General Lam Quang Thi at I Corps Forward took command of the counterattack to regain Mo Tau and Hill 350. He added an Airborne battalion and an RF unit to the newly arrived regiment and Rangers. Launching the attack in late October, ARVN made steady headway, but poor weather grounded all VNAF flights. In a desperate move, Thi pulled the 15th Ranger Group and more RF units from Quang Tri, leaving only the 1st Armor Brigade and RF/PF troops to defend the province and the ceasefire line. When the weather cleared, Thi focused on retaking Mo Tau and Hill 350. By mid-December, he was back in control of the hills, and air and ground traffic in the area returned to normal.
While PAVN had not seized much territory in the fighting, the initiative now clearly lay with the North Vietnamese. They had severely tested I Corps, although by attacking sequentially rather than concurrently (Giap’s design for limited but strong attacks), they had achieved no major victory. Regardless, Truong had been forced to redeploy existing units constantly to prevent breakthroughs, all the time hoping that a full-scale offensive would not occur, let alone the commitment of any of the reserve divisions in North Vietnam. More important, the Thuong Duc/Hill 1062 battle had serious strategic overtones. As Hoang Van Thai, North Vietnam’s deputy chief of staff, stated, “After the Thuong Duc battle we noted that the enemy troops were becoming increasingly weak, their air and artillery support had declined, and the mobile troops had to be dispatched on a patch-work basis, and moved primarily by road. Thus they responded slowly and the morale of both the main-force and local troops had declined. . . . In sum, after the . . . Thuong Duc battles we could conclude that our mobile main-force troops had become superior to the enemy’s mobile main-force units. That conclusion had a close relationship to our strategic intentions.”5 Still, Thai was not oblivious to PAVN losses, and he told the Politburo that “we attacked a district seat with many strong fortifications [Thuong Duc] and although we annihilated the enemy on a rather large scale we did not do so very effectively.”
Although Truong’s generalship and the fighting ability of his troops and subordinates had stymied the PAVN attacks, ultimately, in Truong’s opinion, it was the Airborne that “had saved Danang,” and the people knew it. This would have repercussions in March 1975: when the Red Berets were withdrawn from I Corps and sent south, the population panicked. From Truong’s perspective, the 1974 summer-fall campaign “revealed that the PAVN were well equipped and had increased fire power significantly since the ceasefire.”6 While his troops had demonstrated excellent “combat effectiveness, strong spirit, and supply discipline,” the lack of U.S. intelligence proved onerous. As Truong later wrote: “The most frustrating problem plaguing [me] was a severe lack of enemy intelligence . . . protected by the triple canopy jungle in the western part of the region . . . the deployment of the 304th Division . . . to Quang Nam was unknown until the 3rd Division had captured a number of prisoners.”
The severe fighting throughout the region, which lasted from April to December 1974, while not as intense as the 1968 or 1972 offensives, was the next closest thing. ARVN casualties for the year were the second highest on record. Although Thieu’s armed forces fought well, by the end of 1974 their morale was sinking fast. According to one American observer, the RVNAF was “a tired, dispirited, and frightened force, lacking confidence in its leaders, its future, and itself.”7
TAKING PHUOC LONG
Meanwhile, Hanoi’s plans for new military attacks continued to evolve. While Le Duan’s Politburo comrades remained uneasy about Giap’s strategic plan for 1975, the summer and fall battles convinced Giap that his main forces were now stronger than ARVN’s. His assessment was wholly supported by Tran Van Tra and Pham Hung, who had just reported a similar analysis to the Politburo. After a COSVN conference in early August to evaluate the first half of 1974, Hung told the Politburo that “our movement . . . has been transformed and has scored many successes.”8 Good results had been achieved “in terms of enemy troops annihilated and enemy outposts eliminated; great progress had been made in comparison with the results during 1973.” In the first six months of 1974, “throughout the entire COSVN area we had now recovered . . . back to the posture and the strength that we had possessed prior to 28 January 1973.” Hung concluded that “we were on the road to victory and the enemy was weakening and was encountering difficulties [and] was on the defensive on the military front and was more politically isolated than ever before.” Despite PAVN’s heavy losses in 1974, both Tra and Hung believed that the South Vietnamese had dramatically weakened and that major attacks could bring victory.
In October, Hung and Tra finalized their 1974–75 dry-season plan. Since Tra recognized that his forces remained too weak to capture Saigon, he again fervently pleaded with Hanoi to provide him with additional divisions and new supplies of artillery ammunition. Just as before, the General Staff refused.
Tra’s dry-season plan was bold. In Phase One, lasting from December 1974 to February 1975, his forces would attack to achieve three territorial goals. First, cut major transportation arteries in the northern Delta, especially Route 4, the main road from the Delta to Saigon. Second, capture the portion of Route 14 running north from the remote province of Phuoc Long on the Cambodian border to Quang Duc province. This would connect the B-2 Front’s rear area with the Central Highlands. Third, seize two rich rice-growing districts in Binh Tuy province northeast of Saigon. Phase Two, beginning in March and going on until the end of May 1975, aimed for a large section of Tay Ninh and Binh Long provinces northwest of Saigon. Phase Three would continue attacks during the rainy season.
Tra chose these areas as “springboard” positions for his ultimate goal: attacking Saigon. In 1964 Tra had devised a five-column attack plan to seize the capital, and he still passionately believed in the concept. Just as he had done in the 1974 rainy season, Tra planned his new attacks to weaken Saigon’s defensive ring in preparation for a future offensive against the capital. According to Tra, the dry-season plan “was in essence continuing to attack the enemy to accelerate their decline, changing the balance of forces . . . even more in our favor, and creating the opportunity for winning a decisive victory [that would] create conditions for the assault on the enemy’s final lair [Saigon].”9
Phuoc Long was the primary target in Phase One, and the district seat of Dong Xoai was the key to capturing the province. Dong Xoai had long been a Communist objective, as the town controls an important road junction where Route 14 ends. Northward, the highway connects Phuoc Long to Quang Duc and goes on to Ban Me Thuot, the capital of Darlac province in the southern portion of the Central Highlands. Taking Dong Xoai would isolate Phuoc Binh, the provincial capital of Phuoc Long, and open Route 14 for the requested additional divisions to reinforce the B-2 Front. Tra committed elements of two divisions and his remaining armor and heavy artillery to capture Dong Xoai.
Phuoc Long was an easy mark. It was lightly populated by Montagnards, and only four RF battalions and several dozen PF platoons defended the large, mountainous province. For the South Vietnamese, supplying the province was even harder than defending it. The roads into Phuoc Long had been cut by PAVN troops shortly after the ceasefire, and resupply depended on C-130 cargo planes. In November, after repeated intelligence warnings by the JGS that Tra’s B-2 Front planned to attack Phuoc Long, III Corps flew in the reconnaissance companies of the 5th, 18th, and 25th Divisions to provide reinforcements.
While preparing for the dry-season offensive, Tra and Hung received a message at the end of October telling them to attend a Politburo meeting scheduled for 18 December. They arrived in Hanoi from their jungle headquarters in Tay Ninh province in late November. In the course of briefing the General Staff on their offensive, both were shocked to learn that during their journey to Hanoi, Giap had canceled their dry-season plan. The General Staff had ordered B-2 to refrain from attacking Dong Xoai, and had forbidden it to use its tanks or heavy artillery. Instead, B-2 was ordered to seize two small villages on Route 14 north of Dong Xoai—Bu Dang and Bu Na—in preparation for a Phase Two attack toward Duc Lap. This thrust would support the main offensive in the southern Central Highlands. Otherwise, B-2 should concentrate on the Mekong Delta and husband its forces for 1976.
Giap, and to some extent Van Tien Dung, reined in Tra because they did not want major attacks in other sectors tipping off the South Vietnamese to the overall strategy. Giap’s Phase One was limited in scope, mostly for the purposes of surprise and diversion. Giap also needed to economize on the expenditure of equipment and ammunition for the main Phase Two attack. As Giap later wrote, he explained to Tra “that we must keep our strategic intentions, which had been approved by the Politburo and the Central Military Affairs Committee, a secret. It was not yet time for our tanks and heavy artillery to make their appearance in [his area], because we wanted to take maximum advantage of the element of surprise. If such weapons were to be used, Tra would first need approval from the General Staff. In addition, we needed to economize on our use of artillery and tanks, because after the signing of the Paris Peace Agreement, both the Soviet Union and China had stopped supplying us with these types of weapons.”10
Tra, of course, strongly disagreed. He believed that ARVN was on the ropes, and that the North Vietnamese should commence strong assaults across South Vietnam. Such attacks would “win a great victory and create a new opportunity for the decisive phase of the war. The B-2 plan had been based on that spirit . . . and we had recommended the Politburo draft [such] a plan.”11 For his strategy to succeed, Tra needed to launch concurrent strikes across his region to keep ARVN pinned down. Just as important, Tra wanted to use Thieu’s sensitivity toward Tay Ninh, the critical city west of Saigon, to fool the South Vietnamese. According to Tra, “The plan was based on the enemy’s assumption that we would attack to liberate Tay Ninh province so that we could make Tay Ninh City the capital of the PRG. We would use feints to tie down his forces [in this area].” Instead, Tra would attack toward Dong Xoai. For Tra, Dong Xoai was the linchpin of the entire campaign, and capturing it would enable him to conquer the rest of Phuoc Long.
Hidden beneath Giap’s explanation lay the real reason for his skepticism about Tra’s plans: Tra’s rainy-season attack in the Iron Triangle, supported by tanks and heavy artillery, had badly failed. The 9th Division had incurred very heavy casualties, and Tra had drained his stores of artillery rounds. Giap was afraid that if Tra attacked Dong Xoai, which seemed a more difficult target than Rach Bap in the Iron Triangle, Tra would again fail and expend even more precious artillery rounds. In addition, ammunition supplies were even scarcer in the northern part of South Vietnam—the battle for Thuong Duc had bled PAVN coffers in that region—making Tra’s supply requests sound not only parochial but ludicrous. Moreover, the General Staff—led by Hoang Van Thai, who knew him well—were disdainful of Tra’s military stratagems. The disaster of the 1968 Tet Offensive had soured the General Staff on Tra’s advice, and his failure in 1972 to seize An Loc had hardened that attitude. Furthermore, it was difficult to reconcile Tra’s claim that ARVN had dramatically weakened with the fact that his forces had taken heavy casualties in the Iron Triangle while seizing little terrain.
Despite the General Staff’s attitude, Tra was not without influential supporters. Le Duan and Le Duc Tho, who had worked closely with Tra in the South during the 1940s and ’50s, had previously supported his plans over the objections of his military superiors. This time, though, Tra found little backing. Even Le Duc Tho disagreed with him. He informed Tra that “The tendency [the fall of South Vietnam] is very clear and cannot be reversed. [But] our material stockpiles are still very deficient, especially with regards to weapons and ammunition. The situation in our country and the situation abroad are very complicated and it will be difficult to augment our strategic reserves. Therefore, we must limit the fighting in 1975 in order to save our strength for 1976, when we will launch large-scale attacks and win a decisive victory. . . . We should not and cannot prolong the war indefinitely.”12
Regardless, Tra pressed his vision with the senior leadership. On 3 December, Tra and Pham Hung tried to convince the General Staff to let them attack Dong Xoai, but the General Staff refused. Hung then decided to go over their heads. Two nights later, he and Tra met Le Duan for dinner. After discussing the situation in his theater, Tra came right to the point: “Why did you instruct us not to attack Dong Xoai?” Le Duan said that the General Staff had told him that Tra was going to use his main-force units at the beginning of the offensive. “To attack Dong Xoai,” Le Duan stated, “and then fight a whole series of other large battles, would not be appropriate. We must fight in such a way as to conserve our strength.”13 Hung and Tra argued that was not the case, and again laid out their plan.
Many analysts have claimed that Phuoc Long was a planned “test” by Hanoi of American will to respond to Communist attacks. That is only partially true. It was also an aggressive general, Tran Van Tra, pushing the envelope. Yet Le Duan needed little prodding to accept a plan that pressed hard against the South Vietnamese. In a key turning point of the war, he agreed to Tra’s plan, but he also issued a stern warning; “You must be certain of victory and not use large forces!”
Tra was ecstatic. He fired off a cable to his headquarters ordering his officers to attack Dong Xoai. However, he soon discovered that was impossible. The units that were originally assigned to attack Dong Xoai had been dispersed. The tanks had returned to their base camp, and the infantry and sappers were maneuvering toward Bu Dang and Bu Na, as the General Staff had ordered while Tra and Hung were traveling to Hanoi. Because of the change to Tra’s original plan, while the rest of the B-2 forces would launch their initial attack in Tay Ninh province on 6 December, the assault against the two villages had been delayed until 13 December. Dong Xoai would have to wait until after the villages had been captured.
On 6 December Communist forces opened fire. Elements of the newly formed 303rd Division attacked in Tay Ninh. ARVN forces stymied most PAVN’s efforts in the province, but they were unable to lift the siege of Ba Den, a mountain rising out of the plains near Tay Ninh City where an important RVNAF communications outpost was located. Still, the feint succeeded admirably; both U.S. and ARVN intelligence firmly believed Tay Ninh was the major target.
On the eastern side of Saigon, another newly formed unit, MR-6’s 812th Regiment, struck the district capitals of Tanh Linh and Hoai Duc in Binh Tuy province. Although local RF forces fought back, they slowly gave ground. On Christmas Day, PAVN captured Tanh Linh. Lieutenant General Du Quoc Dong, ARVN’s new III Corps commander, rushed elements of the 18th Division and the 7th Ranger Group to protect Hoai Duc. They held despite heavy fighting.
In the Mekong Delta, the PAVN 5th Division and forces belonging to MR-8 and MR-9 launched the strongest probes in IV Corps since the ceasefire. Fighting raged across the breadth of IV Corps, but ARVN forces were able to stem the Communist advance. PAVN losses were high. The 5th Division alone took almost one thousand casualties.
On 13 December Tra’s forces in Phuoc Long—consisting of two infantry regiments, one each from the 303rd and 7th Divisions, plus sappers, artillery, and engineers—made a surprise attack on Bu Dang. Concurrently, a PAVN battalion made a supporting attack against another town, the district seat of Bu Dop, an important defensive position guarding the approach to the provincial capital, Phuoc Binh. Another battalion was hurriedly sent to Dong Xoai to probe its defenses.
All the initial attacks were repulsed, but after a day of fighting against the outmatched RF, Tra’s soldiers captured Bu Dang. A day later, Communist forces seized Bu Na. Like a wave, North Vietnamese troops began sweeping away RF outposts on Route 14 and closed in on Dong Xoai, where the RF continued to hold out. By 17 December over fifty miles of Route 14 was captured. Fortune then smiled upon Tran Van Tra. While searching the destroyed fortifications at Bu Na, the PAVN troops made a shocking discovery: the fleeing RF had abandoned their ammunition stores, leaving 6,400 rounds of 105-mm ammunition and two intact 105-mm cannons. In an instant, Tra’s heavy-ammunition problem was solved. Given the ease of the victory and the impressive war booty, the Politburo voted to allow Le Duc Anh, commanding B-2’s forces in Tra’s absence, to continue the attack toward Dong Xoai.
Le Duc Anh quickly prepared to take both Dong Xoai and Bu Dop. He sent another infantry regiment and sappers to attack the RF battalion and the three divisional reconnaissance companies defending Bu Dop. Five battalions were assigned to assault Dong Xoai itself.
Striking first at Bu Dop, on 23 December PAVN regulars quickly penetrated the outposts around the town and threatened to overrun it. By noon, ARVN’s III Corps recognized the serious situation and flew in the 2nd Battalion, 7th Regiment, to replace the three reconnaissance companies. Landing at the Phuoc Binh airfield, the 2nd Battalion assumed blocking positions between Phuoc Binh and Bu Dop but did not advance to the town. VNAF fighters flew bombing missions, but these were ineffective because of heavy anti-aircraft fire and SA-7 missiles. By nightfall on 23 December, Bu Dop had fallen. The next day, PAVN troops halted their advance at the 2nd Battalion’s bunkers.
With ARVN’s attention focused on the noose tightening around Phuoc Binh, PAVN struck Dong Xoai. Attacking on the morning of 26 December, Communist forces quickly breached the town’s fortifications. Although the RF had earlier mounted a staunch defense, it crumbled under the larger attack. PAVN captured another three thousand rounds of artillery ammunition. With much of Phuoc Long province now under Communist control, Tra personally sought out Le Duan. He explained that the remaining South Vietnamese defenders were isolated, and that ARVN was incapable of dispatching strong reinforcements to lift the siege of Phuoc Binh. Tra asked permission to seize the city. Le Duan agreed. To ensure victory, Tra requested the use of a tank battalion and 130-mm artillery to capture the provincial capital. His second request was also granted.
For the defenders, although they were compressed into a tight defensive position, the terrain was advantageous. On the eastern and northern sides of Phuoc Binh flows the Be River. Dominating the city’s southern side is Ba Ra Mountain. Remnants of three RF battalions held defensive positions around the city. Five artillery platoons provided immediate fire support, while police and PF soldiers helped patrol the city. The 2nd Battalion of the 7th Division was placed in reserve.
Arrayed against the defenders were five regiments of PAVN regulars, five anti-aircraft battalions, sapper and engineer units, three battalions of artillery, and twenty tanks. Studying the terrain, PAVN commander Le Duc Anh quickly determined that the key to seizing Phuoc Binh was to capture Ba Ra Mountain, which overlooked the city. Anh’s plan was to send the sappers to capture the mountain, while concurrently striking Phuoc Binh by throwing a regiment each along two roads into the city. He would punch a hole in the ARVN lines with his infantry and then drive his armor into the city to capture the provincial headquarters. North of the capital, two regiments would block any attempt to retreat across the river. The last regiment would be held in reserve.
Attacking on the morning of 30 December, Anh’s forces ran into difficulty. The regiments assaulting the roads stalled under withering fire from the RF, and the sappers were unable to take Ba Ra from its defenders. In response, Anh increased his artillery fire, and continued to press his infantry against the undermanned RF. In mid-afternoon on 31 December, Anh’s infantry finally broke through. On 1 January, the sappers took Ba Ra. By the end of the day, South Vietnamese forces had fallen back to a two-mile perimeter around Phuoc Binh.
On 2 January Thieu called an emergency meeting of his Cabinet to discuss Phuoc Long. Thieu and the JGS were uncertain as to the true situation on the ground, mainly because, as General Vien later claimed, the province chief’s reports were overly optimistic. To re-capture the province, Lieutenant General Du Quoc Dong, the commander of III Corps, requested immediate reinforcements, specifically asking for his old unit, the Airborne Division. Given the distance it would have to travel from I Corps and the difficulty of penetrating the enemy’s air defenses, Thieu rejected Dong’s request. He informed Dong that he must use his own forces to recapture Phuoc Long. When Dong protested, a compromise was reached: the 81st Airborne Ranger Group would be sent. The 81st was an all-volunteer, three-thousand-man commando unit, highly trained in reconnaissance and small-unit tactics. It was not, however, designed for regular infantry use, although it had performed magnificently in a similar situation defending An Loc in 1972.
At the time of the emergency Cabinet meeting, the 81st was attempting to break the PAVN siege of Ba Den Mountain in Tay Ninh province. Only two companies totaling three hundred men were not currently on missions. The two companies would go in first, secure Phuoc Binh, and await the arrival of the remainder of the 81st Airborne. The VNAF was ordered to divert aircraft from II and IV Corps to provide firepower for the embattled provincial forces.
On the morning of 3 January, ARVN Colonel Phan Van Huan, commander of the 81st Airborne, flew a reconnaissance mission to Phuoc Binh and picked out a landing zone north of the city for his troops. Assembling his men at Bien Hoa Airbase, he organized two flights to land his soldiers. However, the first flight did not lift off until the afternoon because of VNAF mismanagement. Further screwing things up, the planes assigned to bomb the landing zone before the first flight arrived did not appear. With artillery exploding on the ground and heavy anti-aircraft fire, Huan called off the mission.
The next morning, rain and foggy conditions at Phuoc Binh delayed Huan’s second attempt, but eventually the pilots lifted off. Following the twisting Be River, they arrived in mid-morning. This time, VNAF bombers flew sixty air strikes and cleared the landing zone of anti-aircraft fire. Lieutenant Colonel Vu Xuan Thong, commander of the initial task force, landed with his men and quickly linked up with the embattled defenders. The men in the second wave, however, were not so lucky. As their helicopters landed, hundreds of rockets pounded the area, causing moderate casualties.
Seeing the reinforcements, Le Duc Anh sent in his armor. The 81st Airborne hit the tanks with M-72 anti-tank rockets, but the North Vietnamese had learned the lesson of An Loc. The Communists had welded steel plates to the hulls and turrets of their old Soviet T-54s, and they had sappers riding on the tanks to provide infantry support. A tank hit by a rocket would shudder to a stop, but would soon resume its advance. Only direct hits from recoilless rifles, or shots in the rear, would stop the T-54s. Despite the onslaught, the 81st soldiers foiled the attack, but the defenders faced impossible odds. ARVN had one thousand defenders against more than ten thousand PAVN troops backed by tanks and heavy artillery and covered by an effective anti-aircraft umbrella. Even worse, Lieutenant Colonel Thong radioed Colonel Huan that the enemy artillery was heavier than what he had experienced at An Loc in 1972.
One 81st Airborne medical officer described the final days:
Late in the afternoon of 4 January, the enemy launched another ground attack directly at the headquarters of the defensive forces. The 81st engaged in hand-to-hand combat; Lieutenant Colonel Thong fought against them with hand grenades and killed an enemy group when they penetrated his defensive line. We also destroyed one of their four T-54 tanks. Once again, we succeeded in pushing them back, but we sustained heavy casualties. All of the M-72 anti-tank weapons were used up. Medical supplies that were supposed to last for ten days were quickly running out. The medics had to even use telephone wire to sew up the soldiers’ wounds. Within a few hours of landing in Phuoc Long, the 81st had been under heavy attack twice. Wounded soldiers and injured civilians filled a small medical bunker; many of them were bleeding to death for lack of urgent medical supplies.
On 5 January, the enemy launched another wave of nonstop artillery attacks. All day long rockets landed in the dead zone of the city, but there was no tank or ground attack. At dawn 6 January, the enemy bombarded the city again for a few hours. Then, the grinding noise of the tanks could be heard. Everybody readied themselves. The carnage started again as the tanks approached: there were explosions everywhere, soldiers and civilians falling to the ground as shells and bullets ripped through them; it was a horrific scene. Captain Thu appeared at the entrance of the medical bunker and yelled for retreat. Walking wounded helped carry the seriously wounded soldiers on stretchers. This group withdrew along a different route than the rest of the 81st. After pulling out from the city, Lieutenant Colonel Thong tried to regroup in an attempt to retake the city. He did not succeed. The enemy immediately surrounded the 81st. With less than a few hundred men, Lt. Colonel Thong led his men to break through the enemy line in a bloody battle at the river. Enemy machine guns and rockets rapidly fired at them from the other side of the river cut them down one by one, turning the river red. Still, the 81st managed to break through and disappeared into the Phuoc Long jungle.14
With T-54s approaching his compound, the province chief and the remaining troops and staff also attempted to escape across the river. The province chief was not seen again, but Colonel Huan flew many rescue missions and managed to find about one hundred of his men. Phuoc Long had fallen.
While the province did not have a high military value, its loss devastated the South Vietnamese. Thieu declared three days of mourning for Phuoc Long, and Lieutenant General Dong resigned. Behind the scenes, Thieu ordered an investigation into the VNAF failure to properly coordinate with the 81st Airborne Rangers on the initial helicopter assault. Despite having little to show for the day’s efforts—because of that sloppy operation and generally poor bombing results due to the heavy air defenses—the Air Force had lost almost twenty aircraft—including two irreplaceable C-130s—defending the province. At the same time, heavy rains swept Saigon, unusual for January. Colonel Le Gro later wrote that his Vietnamese driver, eyeing the pouring rain, turned to him and sadly remarked: “Even the gods weep for Phuoc Long.”15
PRESIDENT FORD RESPONDS
After the loss of Phuoc Long province, Ambassador Martin immediately cabled Kissinger to demand action: “We have arrived at a turning point in the history of the Paris Agreement. . . . North Vietnam . . . is determined to use whatever military force is required to gain its objective of conquering South Vietnam. The U.S. reaction to the North Vietnamese conquest is thus of critical importance for the success or failure of our policy in Indochina.”16 It was past time, Martin believed, to launch a public-relations offensive to “get the truth out.” He felt groups like the Indochina Resource Center were promulgating lies about the situation in South Vietnam.
Reacting to the overall Indochina situation (Cambodia was also in dire straits), on 7 January 1975 Kissinger called a meeting of the Washington Special Actions Group (WSAG), a National Security Council committee designed to handle serious crises and make policies and contingency plans.17 The meeting was to determine the Ford administration’s next steps regarding Southeast Asia. Kissinger reported at the meeting that President Ford had earlier told him he wanted “to take a forward-leaning position consistent with legislative considerations. The President wants to do as much as possible to restore the situation in South Vietnam and Cambodia. He is very positive about that.”18
The discussion centered on gaining congressional approval for the $300 million in military aid approved for South Vietnam but not appropriated. Ambassador Martin had been pushing for a $700 million military package, but he also wanted greater economic funding. To counter congressional arguments that it made no sense to send a seemingly endless stream of money to prop up a dictator when America was suffering a recession and high unemployment, Martin instead proposed a three-year aid deal. Resurrecting Thieu’s idea that sufficient aid would enable South Vietnam’s economy to “take off,” Martin urged Kissinger to press Ford to tie the complete aid package into one three-year agreement. He pointed to a December DAO study that found deteriorating South Vietnamese morale, particularly in the infantry units, because of a lack of support. It stated: “The conclusion of senior RVNAF commanders, supported by our own observations, is that the provision of adequate resources (ammunition, fuel, and pay and allowances) would dramatically reverse this trend. The economic conditions of the serviceman are such that he is unable to sustain himself and his family on his salary. DAO surveyed one-half of one percent of the assigned strength of each service/branch in each military region. Ninety-two percent of respondents stated that pay/allowances were insufficient to meet basic food/clothing/shelter needs. Over half of all respondents (officer and enlisted), declared monthly expenditures of from 100 to 200 percent of their military income. . . . Morale problems have a solution: provision of adequate compensation for the soldier’s sacrifice and adequate support for his combat operations.”19
The WSAG meeting also considered U.S. military options to block the Communist offensive that everyone acknowledged was forthcoming. Kissinger gloomily observed: “If North Vietnam makes the judgment that they can take South Vietnam there is nothing much we can do. We have to scare North Vietnam out of that judgment.” Several military recommendations to “scare” North Vietnam were made to President Ford, including sending new reconnaissance flights over North Vietnam, placing a Marine unit on alert at Okinawa, and steaming carriers close to North Vietnam’s shore.
Despite Martin’s strong recommendations, the Defense Department decided to ask for only the $300 million. The State Department declined to make any additional economic requests, fearing that to do so might detract from military-assistance funds. And on 14 January Ford also chose to request only the $300 million. Moreover, Ford did not want to antagonize Congress, and so he turned down several of the WSAG recommendations regarding military bluffs. His assessment of Congress’s mood was correct. When Kissinger leaked that the U.S.S. Enterprise had been ordered to divert toward Vietnam—an order the Navy never received—Representative Bella Abzug (D., N.Y.), the flamboyant liberal and extreme anti-war congresswoman, fired off a letter to the president denouncing the maneuver. Hanoi once again demonstrated its sensitivity to possible American re-involvement in the war. It vehemently protested the press reports on the Enterprise’s movement while secretly querying its ambassador in Paris to determine if the news was true.
Ford was boxed in not only by the congressional prohibition on further U.S. military force in Indochina, but also by public opinion against re-entering the war. Although the State Department sent protest notes to various countries in mid-January charging that North Vietnam had “flagrantly violated” the ceasefire, Ford put the final dagger into any notion that U.S. forces might intervene. In a TV news conference on 21 January, he admitted he could not foresee any circumstances in which American forces might return. However, he proclaimed his intention of asking for more military aid, adding that it was essential to boost Saigon’s confidence.
Ford knew the aid request had little chance of success, but he would not abandon the fight. On 28 January he sent a letter to Congress requesting $300 million in new aid for South Vietnam and $222 million for Cambodia. To improve his chances, Ford held a meeting with key congressional figures to discuss his supplemental request. The meeting was not only to sound out the senior congressional leaders on the prospects for the aid bill; it was also old-fashioned arm-twisting. While Ford hoped that additional aid would lead to a stalemate and force new negotiations, his main short-term goal was simply to shore up South Vietnam and Cambodia. He laid out his reasoning: “The [Paris] agreements were predicated on certain assumptions, and now we are faced with developments that were not foreseen. Last year, we asked for $1.4 billion. That was cut in half, and as a result, we can’t even supply them with the ammunition they need. The Vietnamese are fighting valiantly, they’re not asking for troops, and they deserve our support. . . . Today I am signing a [request] for military assistance for South Vietnam. . . . I know it is unpopular and will meet with resistance. But I do not think we should let these countries sink slowly because we are not prepared to give them support. I feel very strongly about this.”20
After listening to Ford’s pleas and arguments, Senator Strom Thurmond (R., S.C.) offered support for the president’s plan: “I just returned from a visit there. I am convinced they can make it if we help them. Martin says we won’t have to help them forever—maybe three years. They are finding oil there. The rest of Asia is watching what we do in Vietnam.”
Stennis spoke next: “I said last fall I would support additional aid if there was proof of dire need. I will redeem my promise, but I’ve got to see proof. You will have a hard time with this, and then there will be the 1976 bill.” Other lawmakers were even less enthusiastic. Senator Mike Mansfield (D., Mont.), the Senate majority leader and a long-time critic of the war, was adamantly against further aid. The Speaker of the House, Carl Albert (D., Okla.), also appeared reluctant, remarking: “Mr. President, I want to cooperate on matters of foreign policy. But I can’t help but say I want to reserve judgment on this. But my feeling is it will be almost impossible to get this through the House. I won’t say what I will do, but when all your fellows are against you, what can you do?”
Congressional hearings on Ford’s request were held on 30 January. While administration spokesmen provided detailed information, few congressmen changed their position. Ford was soon desperately searching for any measure that might salvage his request, which by now was on life support. He decided that a congressional “fact-finding” trip held the best chance for success. On 3 February Ford met again with congressional leaders and asked for a bi-partisan group to travel to South Vietnam and provide testimony to the various committees. Ford, however, was playing from a weak hand. His approval ratings were low, the country remained in a recession, and most of the public was apathetic about Vietnam. Yet Ford pressed on. Martin was summoned back to Washington to discuss his three-year proposal, which Ford decided to launch as a trial balloon. In an exclusive interview with the Chicago Tribune on 9 February marking his six-month anniversary of taking office, Ford offered to limit aid to South Vietnam to a single three-year package, provided Congress granted an adequate amount. He declared that he felt “very strongly that it was important for South Vietnam and Cambodia to survive . . . if there should be a disaster [there], I think the credibility of the U.S. would be hurt very badly.”21
His proposal was immediately rejected by a large group of members of Congress. In a letter to Ford, eighty-two legislators claimed they saw no “national interest” in continuing aid. That almost one-sixth of the membership of both houses voiced their opposition was an ominous sign. It was obvious that the multitude of new members elected in 1974 were determined to chart a new foreign-policy course.
For South Vietnam, meanwhile, even if Congress had granted Ford’s request immediately, it was growing too late. Giap’s army was secretly gathering in the Central Highlands.