Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces
The Rangers were lifted into Dak To by C-123 aircraft, then air-assaulted into the Dak Pek area by helicopters with gunship support. When they reached the area, they were almost immediately engaged by a superior NVA force. Two of their accompanying twelve-man advisory team (an Australian captain and a U.S. SF NCO) were killed during the first few minutes.
Faced with overwhelming firepower, the losses of key advisers, and heavy losses of their own, the Mike Force broke off the engagement, leaving the remainder of the advisory team there. We were able to extract that team before dark, together with the bodies of those KIA (the defenders of Dak Pek were not involved in the action, and remained in place at the camp).
It took three days for the disorganized and retreating remnants of the Mike unit to be assembled at Dak To and flown out.
It was obvious that the NVA would eventually lay siege to Dak Pek and was willing to pay a high price for the camp. As air strikes continued, Dak Pek was reinforced with an infantry battalion from the 1st Brigade, together with thirty preplanned Arc Lights (a total of ninety B-52 bombers), which would be employed when the attack came.
The attack came in early April—by an estimated NVA regiment supportedby tanks—but was unsuccessful. Our preparations had paid off. The few surviving NVA withdrew back to the sanctuary from which they had come.
Ben Het would come next, and we expected the same-perhaps even more, because this infiltration route had greater strategic value. If Ben Het could be knocked off, it was a straight shot over a major road network to Dak To, on to An Khe (the division base for 1st Cav), and then to the coast and Da Nang.
Two major pieces of key terrain dominated Ben Het: a hill to the west, and another to the east—each within supporting fires distance of the other. It would be awfully tough to take Ben I let without controlling both hills. The 3rd Battalion, 8th Infantry (reinforced), was given the mission to occupy these hills and defend Ben Het. The plan called for air strikes on the western hill summit to clear a landing zone, followed by an artillery prep, and then by the landing of two companies. Once this hill was occupied, the rest of the battalion would occupy the hill to the east.
When the first flight, carrying a rifle platoon, touched down, they immediately came under fire from an NVA force that had already occupied the hill. Artillery fire was shifted to the hill’s western back side, while the remainder of the two companies were landed at its eastern base. By nightfall they had fought their way up the hill, driven off the NVA force, and linked up with the platoon at the summit. The eastern hill was occupied without incident.
For the next two days, the two hills would be developed into defensive positions, completely bracketed by the fires of five supporting artillery battalions.
Meanwhile, the 7th/17th Air Cav conducted daily screens to the west of Ben Het to detect infiltration. When it was detected, the plan was to stop it with artillery and air strikes. But things did not quite work out that way. In spite of thousands of rounds of artillery, 846 close-air-support sorties, and 99 Arc Lights—all during a three-week period in May 1968—Ben Het and the two hills were hit by three regiment-size NVA attacks.
At first light on the mornings after each of these attacks, the 7th/17th Cav would pursue and engage the attackers all the way to the border. As one Cav commander reported back, “The foot trails through the dust of the bomb craters are three, four feet wide, and many are covered with blood and dragged body trails.”
The NVA never succeeded in taking Ben Het, and their casualties must have been enormous. Yet after each attack they withdrew to their sanctuary to refit and come again.
During this same period, several smaller NVA units were also discovered in the hills only a thousand meters north of the Dak To airstrip, and Arc Light strikes had to be brought in danger-close (within 350 meters of friendly positions) to neutralize them. Somehow, at least a battalion-size unit had managed to get through, because on the night of the main Tet Offensive, this unit attacked the South Vietnamese province headquarters located in the village of Tan Can one kilometer cast of the Dak To base complex. Supported by an Air Force gunship, the SF-trained CIDG defenders acquitted themselves well. At least 125 NVA bodies littered the clearing around the village.
During the Tet campaign, practically every unit in the 1st Brigade area of operations was attacked, yet not a single unit’s defenses were penetrated, and the NVA suffered heavy casualties.
In retrospect, we can assume that the heavy fighting during the November-December ‘67 battle for Dak To and in the April—May ’68 fight for Dak Pek and Ben Het had significantly reduced the 2nd NVA Division’s capability to accomplish their part of the Tet campaign.
Though the NVA and Viet Cong suffered heavily during Tet, that did not break their will or change their designs on the Central Highlands. Nightly bombing did little to stop the convoys rolling down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Both the glow of headlights and the green tracers from NVA antiaircraft weapons were clearly visible from the firebases our battalions occupied.
During the next two months of my tour, hardly a day passed without significant contact with at least a company-size NVA unit, and there were two or three battalion-size attacks against our battalion firebases as well.
Twice a week, a resupply convoy—usually fifty to a hundred trucks escorted by military police, helo gunships, and tanks—would run from Pleiku to Kontum, and then on to Dak To. Even though the jungle had been cleared 100—200 meters on each side of the road, the convoy was often ambushed by at least a company-size force. Sometimes the fighting was so intense that the tanks would fire on each other with beehive rounds (flechette) to clear off the NVA.
I ROTATED from Vietnam in July 1968. While I was there, the 1st Brigade, together with the Special Forces teams and their Montagnard defenders, controlled and defended the Central Highlands, never losing a battle, and never abusing, violating, or oppressing the people there.
All of us who were able to come home felt that the cause for which we fought and sacrificed was worthy, justifiable, and right—our own freedom and the freedom of those we had been sent to defend.
I have the utmost admiration and respect for all with whom I was privileged to serve, especially the soldiers of the 1st Brigade and the Special Forces teams, and for their sacrifices and accomplishments in relieving the plight of the Montagnards. I also share their sorrow over the tragedies suffered by the Montagnards after U.S. forces were withdrawn. Though all Montagnards endured terrible retribution from the NVA—many were killed, and many others died in reindoctrination camps—the extraordinary and heartfelt efforts of the SF teams who served with them saved many others, who now live in the United States as productive citizens.
DEEP RECONNAISSANCE
Tom Clancy resumes:
Reconnaissance behind enemy lines is a traditional special operations mission—to put eves on otherwise hidden enemy activities. In Vietnam, because the enemy found it so easy to hide beneath triple-canopy rain forest or in tunnels, the need for deep reconnaissance was even more than normally pressing.
In the spring of 1964, MACV and the South Vietnamese Joint General Staff established a dedicated deep reconnaissance capability, called Leaping Lena, made up of CIDG and Vietnamese troops under U.S. Special Forces leadership. Its mission was to conduct critical, hazardous recon missions inside South Vietnam (though a few teams were also sent across the Laotian border against the Ho Chi Minh Trail, but with disastrous results). In October of that year, a control headquarters was established, called Detachment B-52, and the overall operation became Project Delta.
Throughout the war, Delta was involved in long-range reconnaissance against enemy sanctuaries and concealed enemy positions. This took many forms—reconnaissance-in-force missions (often using MIKE Force units), intelligence collection, directing artillery and air strikes, bomb damage assessment, rescue of downed pilots and allied prisoners of war, capture of enemy personnel in order to gather intelligence, deception missions, PSYOPs, photoreconnaissance, and many
others—all deep within enemy territory. Teams would be inserted for several days, then brought out and debriefed. The program continued until 1970, when Detachment B-52 was deactivated.
Though Delta had a nationwide mission, other deep reconnaissance operations—Projects Omega and Sigma (Detachments B-50 and B-56)—had a more regional orientation. But their missions were otherwise very similar.
DEEP reconnaissance across borders (into Laos or Cambodia, say) was by its nature a covert operation, and initially a CIA responsibility; but later it became a MACV-directed mission (though with some continued CIA participation), under what was called MACVSOG—the Military Assistance Command Vietnam Studies and Observation Group (it was called that for cover purposes). MACVSOG was activated in January 1964, and used Special Forces, Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, and Vietnamese to conduct covert and unconventional operations throughout Southeast Asia, but of course specifically against North Vietnam, the NVA, the Viet Cong, and the Ho Chi Minh Trail.16
MACVSOG was involved in a wide range of activities, not just deep reconnaissance. A great deal of effort, for example, was put into operations against North Vietnam: Agents were inserted, with the aim of setting up intelligence or resistance cells (most were captured soon after insertion and executed or turned). There were seaborne commando raids against the North Vietnamese Navy and North Vietnam’s coast. There were psychological operations and dirty tricks. And teams were sent to observe the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Later, teams conducted raids against it.
Beginning in 1961, Special Forces personnel, under CIA direction, had been involved in cross-border surveillance into southeastern Laos. For the next two years, close to fifty teams sent over the border gave the Agency eyeball proof that the NVA had a strong and growing presence in Laos and were infiltrating at least 1,500 troops a month into South Vietnam. Between 1963 and 1965, for political reasons, this surveillance was halted. For those two years, Americans were not allowed to conduct cross-border deep reconnaissance against the Trail, allowing the NVA the opportunity to greatly build up and extend their facilities and capabilities. By 1964, it was estimatedthat at least 45,000 troops had infiltrated south, and the numbers were growing.
In March 1965—and after considerable struggle-the JCS finally convinced the Lyndon Johnson White House to allow MACVSOG to resume covert cross-border operations into Laos, with Special Forces personnel leading the teams. The SOG operational plan was ambitious (and just maybe workable). It had three phases: (I) Short-stay, tactical intelligence missions would identify NVA headquarters, base camps, and supply dumps. These would then be attacked by air strikes. This would be followed by (2) company-size raids against NVA facilities discovered by recon teams. This would be followed by (3) the recruiting, organizing, and training of local tribesmen living near the Trail to become the nucleus of long-term resistance movements against the NVA. This phase was based on the earlier—and successful—White Star Program in Laos. The overall aim of the plan was to interdict traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
No one will ever know how well the plan would have worked. Using the preservation of the 1962 Geneva Accords as a reason, the State Department successfully opposed the implementation of the second and third phases, and severely limited the first.
The terms of the deal worked out with the State Department allowed teams into Laos to observe the Trail, but only a few of them could go in each month, their time inside Laos was extremely limited, they had to walk in (they couldn’t use helicopters or parachutes), only a very small part of the border was open to them, and they could penetrate no more than five kilometers into the country (their area of operations was in all about fifty square miles). Targets that the teams identified could be bombed, but only after the American Embassy in the Laotian capital had approved the target, and the targets would have to be bombed by U.S. planes based in Thailand.
The man chosen to run this program was (by then Colonel) Bull Simons.
He quickly put together a field organization and headquarters staff, and recruited teams-usually three Americans and nine Vietnamese from one of the minority tribes, such as Nungs and especially the Montagnards.
The mission was to be totally covert, and the teams infiltrated into Laos were to be, in the jargon of the covert world, “sterile.” That meant they wore non-American/non-Vietnamese uniforms that were made somewhere in Asia for SOG. The uniforms showed neither rank nor unit insignia.
In the fall of 1965, the first teams crossed the Laotian border; excellent results soon followed. After two years of unrestricted operations in Laos, the NVA didn’t expect trouble. They’d gotten overconfident. SOG teams quickly identified truck parks and fuel depots, supply caches, bridges, and other storage sites. Air strikes were called in, with the BDAs (Bomb Damage Assessments) often claiming eighty to a hundred percent destruction.
Continued success resulted in expanded missions. Thus, in 1966, helicopters were allowed for insertion of SOG missions, though they could penetrate no deeper than five kilometers inside Laos. The team inserted could now, however, go another five kilometers on foot. In other words, the limit was now ten kilometers and not five. Missions would last up to five days.
Though the SOG teams’ primary mission did not change—covert teams identifying targets on the Trail for air strikes—other missions came to be added, virtually identical to those conducted by Project Delta within South Vietnam:
Teams conducted BDAs, tapped NVA land communications, captured NVA soldiers to gain intelligence, rescued U.S. personnel who were evading or escaping capture, and inserted electronic sensors along the Trail to detect targets for air strikes. Thousands of seismic and acoustic sensors were placed, most of them by air, but SOG teams also carried many in on their backs. Larger teams came to be formed and used for conducting raids, ambushes, and larger-scale rescue.
In 1967, the depth of insertion by foot or by helicopter was allowed to grow to twenty kilometers; the size of the teams was allowed to increase, as was the number of teams per month (from a high of fifteen to forty-two); and Cambodia was added to SOG’s area of operations (the NVA had significant facilities and operations there, including the main NVA headquarters in the south, called COSVN—the Central Office for South Vietnam). However, operations in Cambodia would be limited to reconnaissance, and missions were limited to no more than ten per month. There’d be no air strikes, no raids, no combat except to avoid capture. Teams were expected to avoid contact, and helicopters could only be used for emergency exfiltration.
Just as in 1966, SOG had much success in 1967. They’d caught the NVA napping. “For two years,” Richard Schultz writes, Bull Simons and his “SOG teams had used surprise, diversion, deception, and operational deftness to outfox the NVA on the Trail.” In 1968, that began to change. The NVA started countermeasures. The NVA’s Laotian defenses “had become redundant, layered, and in-depth. Hanoi knew it could not sustain its war in South Vietnam without unfettered use of the Trail, and it took the necessary steps to defend it.”17
The chief agent for this change was the Tet campaign, which consumed enormous quantities of supplies and enormous numbers of troops. The NVA had to have free movement on the Trail for Tet—and for the most part they got it—but they needed it even more after Tet. During the next two years, they exploited that strategic victory (though, to repeat, it was a tactical defeat). Tet convinced the White House (in both its Johnson and Nixon years) that the war in Vietnam was not winnable. The best outcome was thought to be a dignified withdrawal combined with help for our South Vietnamese friends.
Tet also had a number of practical consequences:
During the offensive, the SOG teams that would have been tasked for deep recon inside Laos and Cambodia were needed for fire brigade missions inside South Vietnam. Observation of the Trail suffered, of course.
Meanwhile—with characteristic ingenuity and common sense—the NVA were setting up their defenses. These were—characteristically—primitive, and terribly effective. As early as 1966, the NVA
had placed spotters at high points (ridges or treetops) along the border to listen or watch for insertion helicopters. When helicopters were detected, the observers would communicate back to headquarters by radio—or by drums, bells, or gongs. Later, the NVA began to scout the possible helicopter landing zones—since there were only a finite number of these—and placed spotters to observe them. Antiaircraft weapons began showing up in ever-increasing numbers. (Lyndon Johnson’s Tet-inspired bombing halt over North Vietnam released large numbers of personnel and equipment for expanding the Trail’s security system.) Trackers began to hunt for SOG teams; they then coordinated their findings with follow-up military units. The NVA studied SOG operational patterns and methods (night movements, phases of the moon, and the like) and set up traps and ambushes. A very mobile, Ranger-like unit was formed to attack the teams. Spies in Saigon passed over plans and schedules to the NVA.
The consequences were predictable: Casualties during recon operations in Laos and Cambodia dramatically increased, while average team time on operations in Laos decreased from the Bull Simons goal of five days down to no more than two days. That was how long teams were able to avoid the NVA searching for them.
By 1970, the magic word out of the Nixon-Kissinger White House was Vietnamization. U.S. Forces would withdraw from Vietnam, white South Vietnam’s forces would be given “all the help and support they needed” in order to take over the war. (It should not be forgotten that the American buildup had originally been justified as a way to give South Vietnamese forces time to grow strong enough to take care of their own war. That never happened.)
For the next two years, SOG recon teams continued to cross over into Laos and Cambodia. Large-unit incursions went into both countries to attack the Trail and the NVA command facilities located along it: In Cambodia it was a joint U.S.—South Vietnamese effort. In Laos, it was solely South Vietnamese—and a great disaster. Bombings came and went. The reconnaissance produced valuable intelligence, and there was considerable heroism, but the end game was in motion. The final moves were already determined.