Abandoned in Hell _The Fight for Vietnam's Firebase Kate Read online

  While the highland tribes feared and distrusted the southern Kinh, the northerners presented a greater and more immediate threat to the Degar. Invading their forested slopes, they enslaved able-bodied men as porters, conscripted younger ones into their military, stole food, and, when it suited them, liquidated entire communities.

  Seeking safety, by the sixties many Montagnards had abandoned their seminomadic lifestyle to live in government-sponsored villages with rudimentary sanitation and bare-bones social services and schools.

  Team A-236 worked with the Montagnard clans in and around Bu Prang, trained their men to defend the community, and recruited able-bodied adults into the Civilian Irregular Defense Group, a kind of mercenary militia equipped as light infantry and deployed in a wide variety of mostly defensive roles.

  CIDG was originally a CIA program. Created in 1961, four years before US combat units were deployed, the CIDG was intended to counter expanding Viet Cong influence and control in the Central Highlands, both to defend settlements against attack and to deny Viet Cong the ability to conscript Montagnards as slave labor.

  “A” Teams from the Army’s newly minted Special Forces moved into selected Montagnard hamlets and villages and set up “area development centers.” Each small unit drew upon the specialized training of its NCOs in weapons, intelligence, engineering, communications, and medicine. They concentrated on local defense and initiated such civic action projects as digging wells, teaching sanitation essentials to families who had never known soap, and building schools and rudimentary hospitals. Green Berets trained villagers and provided weapons, equipment, and supplies for defense. They handpicked the best militiamen for further training, recruiting them into quick-reaction forces poised to respond to nearby Viet Cong attacks. The program was almost instantly successful. As each village was pacified, it served as a training camp for neighboring settlements.

  By 1963, the CIA believed that greater success against the Viet Cong could be realized by moving both CIDG units and Special Forces teams to military control, where they could carry the fight to the enemy instead of waiting to be attacked.

  Operation Switchback transferred the CIDG program to MACV. To manage it, the US Army’s Fifth Special Forces Group moved to Vietnam from Fort Bragg, North Carolina. CIDG units were employed in support of conventional military operations, especially patrolling border regions. It quickly became apparent that with patience, training, and leadership these diminutive soldiers could become a loyal, reliable, well-disciplined, and highly effective fighting force.

  Nevertheless, South Vietnam’s systematic oppression of minorities, and especially Montagnards, continued. In 1964, the Montagnard autonomy movement turned militant. On September 20, 1964, the Degar Highlands Liberation Front revolted, killing many government officials. Several sympathetic Special Forces soldiers volunteered to become “hostages” in order to serve as negotiators. Saigon made concessions and released movement leaders from prison. At the insistence of the US Embassy, the Saigon government, then run by a former Diem supporter, General Duong Van Minh, restored Montagnard institutions and took steps to win back their loyalty.

  Still suspicious of Saigon, organizations advocating for autonomy for the Cham and Kampuchean minorities joined with the Montagnards to create an umbrella organization called the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races (in French, Front Unifié de Lutte des Races Opprimées). FULRO was chaired by Y Bham Enuol, a charismatic and often-imprisoned Montagnard.

  Leaders of the three organizations agreed that their first priority must be to win the war against the Communists. While accepting the need for Montagnard CIDG units, South Vietnam’s leaders nevertheless viewed FULRO with hatred and suspicion. FULRO went underground, meeting in secret, biding its time.

  • • •

  THE CIDG program grew rapidly and was largely effective, but it could not stop the infiltration of PAVN regiments from Laos and Cambodia. By mid-1965, these units were poised for a quick strike at the Central Highlands aimed at cutting the country in half at its narrow waist, where South Vietnam was only fifty miles wide. If the North Vietnamese attacked in force, there was little hope that the undisciplined, poorly trained, and ill-equipped ARVN, with its notoriously corrupt and venal leadership, could stop them.

  To counter this threat, in July 1965 the newly appointed South Vietnamese prime minister, Nguyen Cao Ky, until a few weeks earlier the flamboyant yet relatively obscure VNAF commander, asked President Lyndon Johnson for an immediate infusion of American combat troops.

  This was the start of an enormous buildup that would reach, at its peak, more than half a million US soldiers, sailors, aviators, and marines in South Vietnam and its waters. At the same time, billions of US dollars poured into the country to train and advise the ARVN. To support ARVN, US, and other Allied military units, Fifth Special Forces created the Mobile Strike Force. Dubbed the Mike Force, its units were based in each of Vietnam’s four military areas and composed of elite, battalion-size CIDG formations led by US Green Beret and Australian Special Air Service advisers. Mike Force was a “force multiplier,” designed to supplement and enhance conventional military forces.

  Mike Force troops were mercenaries, including Chinese Nung tribesmen, feared fighters whose ancestors had been pirates in the Gulf of Tonkin, and members of the Degar tribes, Cambodians, Laotians, and other persecuted minorities: the Bahnar, Nung, Jarai, and Khmer Krom. Collectively, it was a countrywide quick-reaction force “for securing, reinforcing, and recapturing CIDG ‘A’ Camps.” Mike Force also conducted long-range recon patrols that reaped valuable intelligence, went on search-and-rescue missions for US and Allied prisoners of war, and carried out raids on PAVN and VC units.

  Mike Force also played a critical role in the rescue of downed American airmen. These highly mobile units moved through even the most challenging terrain, and were often stationed close to the so-called Demilitarized Zone between the two Vietnams. Mike Force established and secured drop zones for paratroop landings and landing zones for helicopter assaults. Equipped with the most advanced radios of the era, Mike Force advisers called in artillery and air strikes on high-value targets.

  In short, for an eager Special Forces officer anxious for action and yearning to carry the fight to the enemy, Mike Force was the place to be. By 1969, the largest Mike Force unit was based at Pleiku under Headquarters, Fifth Special Forces Group. It had about as many infantrymen as a US Army brigade or regiment, but lacked the combat support elements of these organizations: Mike Force was all teeth, no tail.

  Thanks to my older brother, Bob, a Green Beret sergeant, this was what I had envisioned as my combat assignment when I repeatedly volunteered for Vietnam. And that was why, after completing the Army’s tough Special Warfare course at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, then spending a comparatively laid-back year in Thailand training the Royal Thai Army, I had volunteered yet again for Vietnam.

  Thus my assignment as XO of A-236 was something of a disappointment.

  Nevertheless, in the weeks since coming to Bu Prang, I had worked hard at supervising construction of in-depth defenses of the camp and surrounding area to withstand attack by a large, well-equipped, and determined enemy force.

  • • •

  FOR both political and military reasons, South Vietnam’s forty-four provinces were grouped into four geographic districts, called Corps, and numbered north to south. II Corps, commanded by an ARVN general, was headquartered in Pleiku City and covered thirteen provinces, from Kontum in the northwest and Binh Dinh in the northeast to Quang Duc, Lam Dong, and Binh Thuan Provinces in the south—the largest Corps in geographic area.

  US, ARVN, and Allied military units within II Corps, including two Republic of Korea infantry divisions, were under the operational control of I Field Force Vietnam, a US Army headquarters then commanded by Lieutenant General Charles A. Corcoran. (Corcoran wore another hat: He was the MACV assistant chief of staff for operations.) In size, military components, and organization, it
was much like a larger US Army corps—several infantry divisions with supporting units—but designated a “field force” to avoid confusion with South Vietnam’s nationwide military-political corps system. Unlike a corps headquarters, however, IFFV had more than a purely tactical function. Its responsibilities also included logistics, running pacification efforts in rural areas, and providing advisers to the ARVN and other South Vietnamese government organizations.

  In late September 1969, the G2 (intelligence) staff at IFFV headquarters in Nha Trang—before the war a sleepy resort town with gorgeous white-sand beaches and more than its share of equally lovely women—began to assemble the jigsaw puzzle that is tactical and strategic military intelligence.

  G2’s puzzle pieces were diverse. In that era before spy satellites were flexible and reliable, ELINT (electronic intelligence, e.g., monitoring enemy radio and radar emissions) was developed from data captured by the NSA, and by Army Security Agency monitoring units; aerial reconnaissance data came from Air Force sources, including high-flying U-2 spy planes, EC-47s—converted WW II–era cargo aircraft jammed with state-of-the-art electronics—and Army OV-1 Mohawks, Grumman’s small twin-engine turbo prop surveillance platform, equipped with side-looking radar or infrared cameras. Mohawks flew in the dark, often at treetop level, popping infrared flashbulbs and snapping large-format images that captured the heat from campfires, engine exhaust, or groups of men. Other Mohawks flew between hills, their radar looking for anomalies in ground cover or movement where none should be.

  But the terrain along both sides of the Cambodian and Laotian borders was made for concealment. Thick jungle covered steep hillsides and watercourses. Ground fog and heavy rain often obscured visibility. A U-2 at 60,000 feet is all but blind over these jungles. The EC-47’s sensitive electronics could detect the radio-frequency energy produced by a spark plug from miles distant—but not with rain absorbing that energy before it reached the aircraft. And while the OV-1 was designed to fly at very low altitudes, few pilots could fly daily nap-of-the earth missions through monsoon rains and live to tell about it.

  US Army aviation units also deployed the tiny but safer O-1 Bird Dog, a single-engine Cessna designed for spotting artillery, and helicopters for tactical patrolling.

  July through September, however, is monsoon season in the Central Highlands—not the sort of weather that lends itself to aerial reconnaissance. In that era, the military’s most sophisticated snooping gear was of little value while heavy rains drenched the highlands nonstop for upwards of a week at a time. Wind-driven torrents wash out roads and bridges, trigger landslides, drive rivers over their banks, turn the ground into an impassable quagmire, and cover the mountains with low, thick clouds.

  Nevertheless, tough, motivated, and well-trained infantry can function even in such conditions. Thus, even before American combat troops arrived, the North Vietnamese had used this season to move men and equipment down the long network of trails and roads they’d established in Laos and Cambodia—the so-called Ho Chi Minh Trail. Every October since 1965, when the skies cleared, they launched a new offensive.

  As the rains faded in mid-October 1969, I Field Force aviation launched aerial surveillance, including a small helicopter fleet equipped with ungainly sensor arrays designed to detect ammonia in air flowing through a scoop beneath the fuselage.

  Ammonia is a mammalian waste product, found in sweat, feces, and urine.

  These sensors were unreliable—a high reading might indicate a troop concentration—but might as well be elephant dung, tiger, bear, a monkey troop, a previously unknown Montagnard village, or nothing at all. Sniffer sorties over thick, trackless jungle with an uncooperative population were usually only a bit better than nothing at all.

  Based in BMT, the 155th Assault Helicopter Company began flying sniffer missions along the border and found data suggesting either several previously unsuspected monkey troops and elephant herds, or a tremendous upsurge in enemy activity in the areas around Bu Prang and Duc Lap.

  By late October, intelligence had further indications of large troop movements along the Cambodian border north of Bu Prang. Mike Force units patrolling the border confirmed reports from “special agents”—local people paid to keep their eyes open and share what they saw with CIA or Military Intelligence agents—of a buildup of regimental-size units in Cambodian sanctuaries just across the border. On about October 22, the PAVN 66th and 28th Infantry Regiments, supported by elements of the 40th Artillery Regiment and the K-394 Artillery Battalion, whose 37 mm anti-aircraft guns were a new addition to the PAVN arsenal in South Vietnam, crossed the border and melted into the jungles north of Bu Prang and south of Duc Lap.

  The PAVN 66th was a familiar foe that had earned our respect. In August 1965, the 66th had slipped out of its base in coastal Thanh Hoa, about a hundred miles south of Hanoi. With some 1,600 men in its headquarters and component infantry battalions, the 7th, 8th, and 9th, the regiment made a grueling, three-month, 500-mile march across the width of North Vietnam, then turned south through Laos and Cambodia to a fateful encounter with elements of the First US Air Cavalry Division at LZs X-Ray and Albany in the valley of the Drang River.

  This bloody clash, the Battle of Ia Drang, was the first large encounter between the regular armies of North Vietnam and the United States. Both sides paid dearly in blood: 241 Americans killed or missing, and 258 wounded, while the 66th lost upwards of three-fourths of its men, about half dead and half wounded.

  The regiment withdrew into Cambodia to rest and replenish its ranks with replacements from the stream of PAVN troops flowing down the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

  Almost a year later, back at full strength, the 66th joined the PAVN 32nd, 24th, and 174th regiments in a months-long campaign on the massive hills south and southeast of Dak To. Opposed by elements of the US 173rd Airborne, 1st Cavalry and 4th Infantry divisions, and by the ARVN’s elite First Airborne Division, the 66th engaged in some of the hardest-fought and deadliest battles of the war. Battered and bloodied, it again retreated to its Cambodian sanctuary.

  The 66th returned to combat in January 1968 with a night attack on Khe Sanh village in northern Quang Tri Province, a settlement defended by a South Vietnamese Regional Force company—lightly armed infantry—and a US Marine rifle company. The Allied forces held their position until first light, when they called in air strikes and artillery from the big Marine combat base nearby. Relentless, the 66th continued the attack through the day and into the next night. The Marines and the RF withdrew after daylight on January 22. This pyrrhic victory cost the 66th Regiment 154 killed and 496 wounded; again it retreated into Cambodia to replenish its ranks and train for battle. By October 1969, the 66th was again combat ready and headed for Bu Prang.

  • • •

  BU Prang and Duc Lap were each defended by an “A” Team and CIDG forces; the team at Duc Lap was A-239. To IFFV intelligence officers at Nha Trang, and to the Green Berets of these “A” Teams, however, it was plain that their camps and garrisons were merely nuisances, obstacles to be removed en route to the main objective, the garrison city and provincial capital, Buon Ma Thuot.

  Home of the well-regarded 23rd ARVN Division and internationally famous for a hunting lodge built by Theodore Roosevelt, BMT had two airports and straddled a strategic crossroads. A good road led east to a still better one, the coast highway that runs southward to Saigon and northward to Hue, Vietnam’s ancient imperial capital, just below the fortified 17th Parallel dividing North and South Vietnam.

  The other highway past BMT ran south to Saigon and north through Kontum to Da Nang. Taking BMT would allow the PAVN to funnel large forces with tanks and heavy artillery into the heart of South Vietnam. If they could seize that prize, it might panic the 23rd Division and BMT’s civilian population. That would hasten the disintegration of ARVN defenses and its certain and rapid capitulation.2

  But in October 1969, before the NVA could attack BMT, they had to get through us: the Green Berets and our CIDG forces at Bu
Prang and Duc Lap.

  “We advanced down a gradual descent . . . with the batteries vomiting forth upon us shells and shot, round and grape, with one battery on our right flank and another on the left, and all the intermediate ground covered with the Russian riflemen; so that when we came to within . . . fifty yards from the mouths of the artillery . . . we were, in fact, surrounded and encircled by a blaze of fire. . . .

  “I think that every man who was engaged in that disastrous affair at Balaklava, and who was fortunate enough to come out of it alive, must feel that it was only by a merciful decree of Almighty Providence that he escaped from the greatest apparent certainty of death which could possibly be conceived.”

  —Major General, the Earl of Cardigan

  TWO

  Infantry proudly styles itself Queen of Battle. Like the queen on a chessboard, but with more firepower, infantry goes anywhere: frozen mountains, steaming equatorial swamps, forests, jungles, deserts, plains, tundras, savannahs—to almost any terrain and under virtually any condition on earth. From the middle of the nineteenth century on, however, the Queen of Battle has relied upon support from the King: artillery.

  Between the ninth and eleventh centuries, the Chinese invented gunpowder, which led them to rockets and then artillery. Starting in the twelfth century with bamboo barrels, then graduating to bronze, iron, and steel, steadily achieving greater accuracy at longer ranges, artillery became infantry’s best friend and most feared foe. By the American War Between the States, advances in metallurgy, chemistry, and manufacturing made possible the development of large-caliber guns with rifled barrels. Hurling time-fused shells that burst into deadly shrapnel, field artillery accompanied infantry on the front lines and was employed with deadly effect.

  But not until the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 did artillery achieve its modern form and assume its present role in warfare. German engineers built enormous guns that could lob explosive death up to 75 miles. Though lacking in accuracy, these guns introduced the concept of indirect fire.