This was the way the replacement system worked in Vietnam. Replacements came in as individuals and not as units. In units, soldiers get to know each other well before they have to fight, and they develop relationships based on mutual respect, trust, and confidence—relationships that often endure a lifetime. Forming and completing training as a unit before commitment to combat is far more effective in every sense than an individual replacement system.
They reached their company on Hill 1338 and were integrated into its ranks as the company was preparing its night defensive positions.
Next morning, after dropping off much-needed ammunition, the first helicopter carried back the bodies of one of the two new lieutenants, a sergeant, and three of the privates to where they had arrived some twelve hours before. During their first night in combat they’d made the supreme sacrifice, even before they’d met all the members of their units.
THE next day, as we swept over the ridge and down into the valleys that led to the backside, we found some amazing things: There was a swinging bridge, at least a quarter of a mile long, built underneath the triple-canopy jungle, so it could not be observed from the air. The NVA would use it to rush reinforcements back and forth between various battle positions. A dug-in hospital complex had been constructed along a stream in a valley on the backside of the mountain. It was so well-concealed that it was discovered only when a man from the point squad fell into a covered fighting position. A search of the area revealed complete underground operating rooms and enough body parts in a pile to fill a small truck.
We also learned that the NVA had taken far more casualties in the battle than the eighty or so that we’d taken in capturing Hill 1338.
About this time came the climax of another action that was part of the fight for Hill 1338: On an adjoining ridgeline about two kilometers to the west was a dug-in NVA gun position that for a few days had been shooting at the ammunition dump down at Dak To, so far without hitting it. From its “crack,” we thought it was a 57mm recoilless rifle, well-concealed and protected in a cave. The gunner would fire only six rounds or so a day, obviously hoping he wouldn’t be detected.
A reconnaissance patrol had been sent to the area where he was believed to be located, but hadn’t found his position. For some reason he did not fire while the patrol was in the area. After that, brigade headquarters assumed the mission of neutralizing him; they leveled an eight-inch howitzer and fired directly at the shooter’s position—but had no more luck than the recon patrol.
He continued to shoot, but not daily, and he varied the time on those days he did fire, then pulled the weapon back into the cave before counterfire could be placed on his position.
After a few days of this cat-and-mouse, he finally hit an ammo bunker filled with 155mm rounds—causing an explosion of something like 1,100 tons of various calibers of ammunition, including 8-inch and 175mm.
From my location on the 1,000-foot-high ridgeline, it looked and felt like an atomic explosion, with the mushroom cloud blossoming 1,000 feet above us.
A couple of moments after it went off, I called my Leavenworth friend, Maury Edmonds, who was still the brigade S-3, and said, “Maury, did you just get nuked? It looks like it from my location.”
“I don’t know what happened,” he answered, “but there’s eight-inch and 175mm unexploded shells lying all over this area.”
The explosion was so intense that it caved in many of the bunkers, and it took days to clean up the mess, and several ammunition convoys to restock the ammo.
AFTER the battle for Hill 1338, a lot of fighting was still going on throughout the brigade area of operation, and my battalion was given the mission to secure Hill 660, near the intersection of the Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnamese border. It also turned out to be a very hot area, and we continued to be involved daily in significant contacts until the twenty-seventh of December, our first day in a long time without enemy contact.
At this time some of the reinforcing units that had arrived at the beginning of the battle began redeploying elsewhere within the division area of operations. The First Brigade, with its three organic battalions, would now assume responsibility for the mopping-up operation, as well as security for the entire Dak To area of operation.
All our units had fought magnificently, and we were very proud of our accomplishments—essentially, thwarting the 2nd NVA Division’s plans for taking control of the Central Highlands and the major infiltration route that would have permitted them either to cut Vietnam in two all the way to the coast or turn south toward Kontum and Pleiku.
I have never known a more dedicated and selfless group of men: men who were motivated for the right reasons and who were willing to lay their lives on the line for our freedom. We were fighting for what we believed in, what we thought was right, and 1 can never recall a time when a single soldier refused to fight or showed cowardice in the face of the enemy.
Near the end of the war, newspapers in the States carried stories of pot-smoking, rapes, and fraggings of officers and NCOs. None of that happened in my unit.
After the battle, the 3/12 Infantry received a Presidential Unit Citation for its accomplishments, and many individual soldiers received medals for heroism. When General Westmoreland visited our battalion around Christmas, he told us that our battalion had seen more combat than any other battalion in Vietnam.
IN retrospect I would like to emphasize our respect for the NVA soldiers. They were outstanding fighters, who had little material support beyond what they carried on their backs. They knew how to survive, and they were tough.
On the other hand, it’s hard for me to understand the ways they chose to motivate their troops to fight. Or at least their ways were alien to our culture.
If they had one weakness, it was in their noncommissioned officers’ corps. They neither trained nor trusted their NCOs with enough authority to exercise flexibility in reacting to changing battlefield situations. I’m baffled by a culture whose leaders will chain their troops to trees to make sure they remain in position and fight. It is equally hard to understand a culture where political indoctrination forms the basis for motivation.
Every NVA soldier carried in his combat pack a small bag of marijuana wrapped in plastic. Before each battle, the troops would assemble to hear a lecture by the political officer (one for each company). As part of this preparation process, everyone would smoke the marijuana. You could often smell the aroma a good distance away from their attack position, and you knew they were ready and coming when you started smelling it and started hearing the bugles blowing.
Once they’d launched, they stuck to their attack plan—without any obvious ability to change it—until they had either suffered so heavily they could not continue or had been ordered to withdraw.
DURING the Battle of Dak To of November and December 1967, we were involved in almost continuous daily fighting, yet we had inflicted heavy casualties on the 2nd NVA Division, forcing it to withdraw into their Cambodian and Laotian sanctuaries for refitting.
During this same period, the Special Forces detachments in the Central Highlands reaped the benefits of their Village Defense Program efforts to organize and direct the Montagnard tribesmen. Their outstanding work denied the Viet Cong supplies and recruits from the area tribes, and reduced the Viet Cong’s capability primarily to small-unit activities such as occasional ambushes and weapons attacks.
The main threat, however, still remained: the NVA units using the Ho Chi Minh Trail to infiltrate into the “sanctuary” and resupply areas located in Laos and Cambodia, and from there directly into Vietnam, a one-night march.
In response to the change in mission assigned to Special Forces in 1965—“border surveillance and control, operations against infiltration routes, and operations against VC war zones and base areas”—most Special Forces camps had been relocated closer to the border near the main infiltration routes. Because their activities disrupted the NVA, they were prime targets. That meant in practice that they became vulnerable t
o attack by battalion- or regiment-size units at any time.
Two years earlier, there had been six SF A-Detachments (at Ben Het, Dak Pek, Dak Seang, Dak Sut, Poly Klang, and Plei Me) in what was now the First Brigade’s operational area. All had been heavily involved in organizing and training the Montagnard tribesmen. But by January 1968, only Ben Het, Dak Pek, and Plei Me remained.
Although all of them had been well fortified, Dak Seang had suffered heavily during a three-week siege (all resupply had to be air-dropped), and the camp was closed. Dak Sut and Poly Klang, subjected to repeated attacks, had also been closed.
Two of the remaining three, Ben Het and Dak Pek, were close to the border astride major infiltration routes. Their exposed location made them very vulnerable. The A-Detachment at Plei Me was in better shape, since it was in a much less threatened location.
Ben Het, fifteen kilometers west of Dak To, and only ten kilometers from the triborder area, was a typical SF camp: heavily fortified bunkers with interconnecting trench lines; observation towers; rows of concertina wire fencing, interspersed with Claymore antipersonnel mines; fifty-five-gallon drums of phu gas (napalm); and a short airstrip—too short to accommodate aircraft larger than C-7A Caribous.
Two batteries of 175mm howitzers had been positioned there for support of SF teams operating across the border against NVA infiltration and base areas. A U.S. infantry company had also been placed there for additional security. With maximum charge (110 pounds of powder), the 175s could hurl a 500-pound high-explosive projectile thirty-six kilometers; they were highly effective against targets discovered by the SF teams.
Several ammunition convoys a week (including tanks for protection against ambush) were necessary to resupply the 175mm howitzers. That meant the road to Ben Het had to be swept at least twice a week for mines, with tanks covering the minesweeping teams.
Dak Pek was located on another major NVA infiltration route, forty kilometers to the north in no-man’s-land. It was reachable only by air, and defended only by the A-Detachment there, mortars, and a contingent of loyal Montagnards. No U.S. artillery was in range.
ALTHOUGH these camps were located in our division’s arca, MACV had primary responsibility for their security (most of their support actually came from the 5th SFG). Our division commander, Wajor General William Peers, was neither in the SF chain of command nor responsible for the security of the camps. Even so, he recognized their vulnerability and the valuable role they were performing against the NVA, and decided on his own to augment their support. Peers took his concerns to my brigade commander, Colonel Johnson, and told him to make sure they had all available support needed for their defenses.
By January 1968, after Maury Edmonds was promoted to Division G-3, I had moved up to become Brigade S-3 (operations officer), and so 1 got the job from Colonel Johnson to visit each camp once a week. There I would check their defenses to determine what ammunition and artillery support they needed (this would include establishing a fire-support channel with U.S. units within range), exchange intelligence information, and establish a communications channel for operations.
The day after the Colonel gave me the mission, I set out with the brigade aviation officer and the fire support coordinator to visit the two SF camps. For the next six months, I not only ran the brigade’s operations, I was also closely involved with the Special Forces camps within the area.
The first time we showed up, the SF troops were initially a little stand-offish and apprehensive. I don’t know why, but they probably suspected I’d come to find faults. But when I told them I had worn the Green Beret a little over a year earlier, had trained many of the teams now in Vietnam, and was now in a position to help them with “conventional support,” they really opened up and welcomed us.
We went on to cheek their defensive measures as if we were in our own units, and except for mortar ammunition and preregistered defensive concentrations from artillery, we found them to be in pretty good shape (since Dak Pek was beyond artillery range, they had to be supported by air).
Though in the days ahead our visits proved mutually beneficial, our biggest payoff came from the exchange of intelligence information. I was very impressed with their operational activities against NVA infiltration; these had returned with intelligence information that might reveal future NVA plans for the area.
Both camps were reporting that their “border watch teams” had heard what appeared to be road-building activities near the border. If they were not mistaken, these roads were aimed in the direction of the camps at Ben Het and Dak Pck.
By mid-February 1968, aerial reconnaissance operations had confirmed their reports: The NVA were building roads under the triple-canopy jungle; they were already two to three kilometers inside Vietnam, and were headed toward Ben Het and Dak Pek.
In coordination with both camps, the First Brigade assumed responsibility for interdiction of the road-building operations. Soon, air strikes against both roads had succeeded in delaying but not stopping the construction work. Recon teams confirmed that the NVA was using a clever tactic to deceive us. They had left the bomb craters unfilled, leaving aerial observation with the impression that our bombing had made the roads unusable. And then, at night, they had built bypasses around the craters and camouflaged them with vegetation. This could be quickly removed when the roads were needed for large-scale movement of troops and equipment, and replaced.
The NVA were putting a lot of effort into possibly taking out a couple of remote SF camps. “Why?” we asked ourselves. And this led to a larger question : “What is the real purpose of these roads? Are Ben Het and Dak Pek the final objectives? Or are they just intermediate objectives for a much larger operation?”
The answer—or at least parts of it—came as a result of a major intelligence breakthrough in mid-March.
A youngArmy captain, commanding a radio research unit attached to the First Brigade, succeeded in breaking the code for the NVA ground tactical operations net. For the first time, we had reliable information about near-term NVA tactical plans—that is, we were not getting strategic intelligence about the NVA master plan for Vietnam, only operational intelligence concerning our particular area of operations. But this was accurate and very useful.
This information was so crucial and sensitive that it was safeguarded with the highest security. Only those who had an absolute need-to-know had access. We were afraid that Major General Peers would pull our captain and his detachment back to Division, but he didn’t. Instead, he would fly out to Dak To every day for a personal briefing.
As an aside: For about thirty consecutive days, brigade headquarters had been receiving a daily dose of incoming fire every afternoon—sometimes thirty rounds of 82mm mortar, sometimes fifteen to twenty rounds of 57mm recoilless rifle fire, and sometimes ten to twenty rounds of 105mm GRAD rocket fire (we feared this the most; no bunker could stop a GRAD rocket).
The weapons and gunners had reinfiltrated the area where we had earlier fought the 2nd NVA Division, and the ammunition was hauled in from Cambodia by sleds pulled by elephants. The fire was becoming more intense and accurate every day, and it was obviously coming from more and more firing positions.
Through this new intelligence source, we learned that the gun crews coming into the area were being instructed to “shoot at the Texas flag.”
Only one flag flew in the whole brigade base area. Sure enough, it was the Texas flag—flying on a twenty-foot pole above the sandbagged tent where the forward air controller slept (he was a lieutenant colonel from Texas). The tent was directly above and slightly behind the brigade tactical operations center, and provided a perfect aiming point. The lieutenant colonel was awfully proud of his flag, but it had to come down. It remained inside his sandbagged tent for the rest of his tour.
FROM this new intelligence we also learned (almost daily) which units they planned to engage with fire, the coordinates of their firing positions, and how many rounds they planned to fire. Accordingly, we planned our counterfires to
impact their locations about two minutes before their scheduled firing times.
We also pieced together that Dak Pek and Ben Hct were both targets for major ground attacks, which would most likely be supported by armor. It was likely that Dak Pek would be hit in early April. Once it was taken out, follow-on units could move through the mountains to our north and take positions near Dak To and to our rear. From Dak Pek, they could also head south toward Kontum and on to Pleiku.
Ben Hct was to be knocked off in early May. Dak To would follow.
Though we didn’t know it at the time, this plan of attack would turn out to be supportive of the major attacks of the 1968 Tet campaign—a long-planned and prepared-for NVA and Viet Cong offensive throughout South Vietnam, designed to inflict heavy casualties and damage and thus achieve a major setback for the South Vietnamese government and a worldwide propaganda victory. Tet accomplished those aims—even though the Communists actually lost Tet militarily. Afterward the Viet Cong were practically destroyed as an effective fighting force, and the NVA also took a huge hit. The first recognizable Tet attacks took place at the end of January, but the campaign continued for some months after that.
What we did know was that unless we prevented the fall of Dak Pek and Ben Het, we at Dak To would be cut off and fighting in both directions.
WHILE day-and-night air strikes continued to pound both NVA road-construction operations, in early April the 5th SF Group decided to bring in a MIKE Force (composed of Vietnamese Rangers) to attack the road builders and their security battalion near Dak Pek.15 Once that was accomplished, they would reinforce Dak Pek defenses.