Hell in An Loc Page 13
Colonel Biet immediately reported the findings to 5th Division Headquarters. A few minutes later, Colonel Vy and two officers from the Division G-2 Section came to pick up the documents and the radio set. Immediately after that incident, the Division changed its radio code. The Ranger Group and other units also changed their internal radio codes and drew up a new list of name-codes for different prominent points inside and outside of An Loc for targeting purposes. “These measures had an immediate effect,” wrote Captain Khue, 3rd Ranger Group assistant S-3, “as the enemy no longer broke into our communication channels to disrupt our communications, cursing us and inciting us to surrender or to desert . . . They always said to us, ‘surrender and you will live; resist and you will die.’”13
As a matter of fact, South Vietnamese troops were constantly subjected to Communist propaganda and verbal harassment during the battles of Loc Ninh and An Loc. ARVN officers captured at Loc Ninh were forced to broadcast on Cambodia-based VC Radio stations their appeal to their former comrades to put down their arms and “join the ranks of the revolution.” Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, on the other hand, declared in Paris on April 13 that An Loc would be proclaimed the seat of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Viet Nam within ten days. Hanoi Radio also boasted that their troops would be in Saigon on May 19, Ho Chi Minh’s birthday.
A few times during the siege, NVA radiomen got into Binh Long Sector’s radio frequency and talked to Colonel Nhut. They told Nhut that he had no hope and urged him to surrender. Nhut told them to come over so he could help them fulfill their wish of “sinh Bac tu Nam” (to be born in the North, to die in the South). In these instances, Nhut tried to keep the conversation going but the NVA radiomen usually shut off their radio quickly because they were concerned about being detected and destroyed by artillery or air strikes.
In this regard, it is appropriate to elaborate on the enemy’s and the ARVN’s motivations. The VC’s and the NVA soldier’s behavior, indeed, was strictly conditioned by a sophisticated system of political indoctrination. The following radio debate between an RF soldier and a Viet Cong I once overheard during a sector-directed operation in the Mekong Delta, however, shows that this system was not without shortcomings.
“You, mercenary,” shouted a VC, “you should be ashamed to be the lackey of the U.S. imperialists.”
“You, bastard, listen to me,” retorted the RF soldier, “I can say ‘Down with Nguyen Van Thieu.’ Can you say the same about Ho Chi Minh?”
The VC radioman must have been confused because he abruptly stopped the debate. Maybe the political cadre of his unit hadn’t discussed such a thing as freedom of expression under a Communist regime. This impromptu debate, on the other hand, showed that the South Vietnamese soldiers didn’t need political indoctrination to understand that they were fighting for a good cause, and this strong conviction, in my opinion, had sustained ARVN troops throughout the inferno of An Loc.
The Communist system of political indoctrination is based on the psychology of hate and the politics of control. The VC and his NVA counterpart were taught to hate the “American imperialists and their Vietnamese lackeys,” the “Thieu-Ky-Khiem clique” and its “fantoche” government, the “reactionary” forces in the cities and the “cruel and oppressive” officials in the villages. To insure compliance with the party line, a party apparatus parallels the normal chain of command, from party cells in small units to the highest levels of command within the army structure.
However, all this can hardly be sufficient: in the battle of An Loc and also during the heavy engagements around Quang Tri in 1972, ARVN soldiers discovered bodies of tank drivers and antiaircraft gunners chained to their tanks and weapons. One can’t deny, however, that the VC and NVA soldiers, tightly controlled—mentally and physically—were able to incur hardship and generally performed well in battle.
The fighting ability of the South Vietnamese Army, on the other hand, was unequal among different units. Although some infantry divisions showed poor combat performance, the Marine and Airborne Divisions were probably the best fighting units of any army of the world. The 1st Division in Hue has been acclaimed by the U.S. news media as equal to any American infantry division. The variation of performance among ARVN units was primarily due to a difference in the quality of leadership and motivation. Although the average ARVN soldier in general fought well in most circumstances, quality leadership was often lacking and not equal to the task. Overall, I believe that ARVN units were better trained than NVA and VC forces; before 1973, when we still had adequate U.S. air support, the casualty ratio was typically one to three in our favor.
In any event, with regard to the Communist propaganda during the siege of An Loc, it was unfortunate that foreign radio broadcasting stations, by painting a gloomy picture of the situation in the city, had unintentionally helped the enemy’s psychological warfare campaign. The BBC, the most popular foreign broadcasting station in Viet Nam, for example, instead of condemning Hanoi’s aggression, commented day after day that the fate of An Loc had been sealed and that only a miracle could save the beleaguered garrison.
While the enemy’s psychological warfare campaign had little or no impact on ARVN soldiers who were determined to defend An Loc at all costs, the strangulation tactics—consisting of cutting off ground and aerial access, tightening the stranglehold on the garrison and causing maximum casualties by continuous artillery fire—seemed to be working in the enemy’s favor. The logistical situation in the city, indeed, worsened every day and would, in the long run, undermine the morale of the defenders. Small arms ammunition began to run low after one week of fighting. (Artillery ammunition was no longer needed as almost all ARVN artillery pieces in An Loc had been wiped out by enemy artillery counter-battery fire.)
The shortage of medical supplies forced Capt. Nguyen Van Quy, the An Loc Hospital surgeon, to resort to unorthodox medical practices to deal with the mounting number of wounded: Quy extracted nylon threads from sand bags, which he sanitized with quartermaster-supplied liquid soap; he then used these to perform surgeries and to stitch up the soldiers’ wounds. Captain Nghi, who commanded the airborne artillery battery at Doi Gio, was the first patient. Dr. Quy used nylon thread to close Nghi’s abdomen wound; Quy was happy that it worked very well. (Fortunately, in early June when the situation in An Loc had markedly improved, Maj. David Risch, former advisor to the An Loc hospital staff, returned to An Loc and brought with him the precious “cat gut” and other needed medical supplies.)
Quy was a unique son of a northern family who had emigrated to the South after the partition of Viet Nam under the 1954 Geneva Peace Agreement, and thus was entitled to a draft deferment. However, he volunteered to serve in the army. He was first assigned to the 43rd Regiment, 18th Division, under Col. Tran Van Nhut. Upon completion of a surgery course at the General Cong Hoa Military Hospital in Saigon, he followed Nhut to Binh Long.
An Loc Hospital—also known as the Binh Long Sector Hospital—was a combined military-civilian hospital. All three doctors were military and Quy was the only surgeon. A great part of the nurses and technicians were civilian, but most of them disappeared after the second attack. Fortunately, the 5th Medical Battalion, 5th Division, dispatched a small medical team that worked in tandem with the An Loc Hospital staff.
Because the hospital was located on a small hill in close proximity to the 5th Division command post, it was constantly bombarded by enemy artillery. Furthermore, Division artillery units, originally located in the soccer field, south of the city, had to move to Tao Phung Park, in the valley immediately east of the hospital, to escape devastating enemy counter-battery fire. For some, this may have caused the hospital to receive relentless artillery bombardment aimed at the above important targets. One should not forget, however, that the Communists—who were not known for their humanitarian concerns—also considered the hospital a valuable target because its destruction would help them achieve their strangulation objective sooner.
Also because t
he city of An Loc itself was situated on a chain of small hills, water was in short supply, even during quieter times. City electric power was also very weak. Rich residents bought their own generators. The power company that supplied electricity to the city planned to install more powerful generators. The project progressed satisfactorily when the war broke out; all four newly bought generators were totally destroyed. The two generators at the hospital were also destroyed during the first attack. In his memoir Hoi Ky An Loc: 86 Ngay Cua Mot Bac Si Giai Phau Tai Mat Tran14 (Memoirs of An Loc: 86 Days of a Surgeon in Battle), Doctor Quy reported that he often had to perform surgeries a mere 300 meters from the battle, wearing a flak jacket and a steel helmet. Also because of lack of electricity, it was not unusual for him to operate under a flashlight.
Fortunately, each district of Binh Long province had a small clinic and each rubber plantation had a small infirmary to take care of its own workers. In addition, each unit participating in the defense of An Loc at battalion and regiment levels had its own medical teams who treated lightly wounded soldiers. Only the seriously wounded who needed surgery were sent to the An Loc Hospital. As the number of civilian casualties increased every day due to NVA’s indiscriminate artillery fire, the hospital had to increase the original 103 beds to 160.
One effect of the war was that it rendered people callous to tragedies and calamities. Phan Nhut Nam, an army reporter at An Loc, related the tragic story of a father who, calmly and without apparent emotion, buried in a common grave his wife and five children killed by an 130mm shell by methodically collecting and assembling various body parts.15 Captain Quy recalled that at one time, there were up to 300 bodies lying in the hospital morgue, next to his operating room, and this made everybody sick.
Toward the end of May, as the situation in An Loc had improved and some enemy units in the neighboring villages had left, about 5,000 lightly wounded civilians sought refuge in a pagoda in the village of Phu Duc, southwest of An Loc. An Loc Hospital dispatched a medical team to provide first aid and cholera shots to the refugees.
Quy later commented that in An Loc, people died not only once, but twice and sometimes three times. The shellings occasionally hit a new grave and blew up the corpses, which had to be reburied. This was the case of a female nurse killed by artillery fire. Her friends buried her near the back wall of the hospital. She had to be reburied after a shell hit her shallow grave.
Because the two operating rooms at the hospital were heavily damaged after the two attacks, in early May Colonel Nhut provided Captain Quy and hospital personnel with two big underground rooms to be used for operations and for treating wounded soldiers. These underground rooms were located in the former B15 compound of the U.S. Special Forces and were equipped with generators. Colonel Nhut had also moved the sector headquarters to the underground U.S. Special Forces bunker. Quy was stunned to see that the prefabricated houses and other structures above the ground in the compound had been flattened. One watch tower was still standing, but it was blackened by smoke. In front of the compound, right inside the twisted barbed wire, lay the hulks of two burned-out tanks. Behind the compound, another tank lay on its side with its cannon pointed skyward. Farther south, on the edge of the rubber plantations, were three other tanks and the wreckage of a helicopter.
To prevent the spread of epidemic diseases, General Hung ordered Col. Bui Duc Diem, his assistant for operations, to conduct a mass burial in the front yard of the province high school. Colonel Nhut asked to move the burial site to a vacant lot between the high school and the hospital, because he did not think a high school was an appropriate site for a mass grave. Colonel Diem ordered the division engineer company to dig the burial site, using the only available bulldozer that was provided by the province’s Public Works department. The driver had just started the engine of the bulldozer when it was hit by a B40 rocket, causing light damage to its blade. Colonel Diem also used the LCDBs to perform the mass burial. Diem recalled that his men buried a total of 956 dead in one day and that after the siege had been lifted, these bodies—which included both soldiers and civilians—had never been identified. A few LCDBs, sickened by the horror of their task, tried to run away; Colonel Diem threatened to shoot them before they agreed to come back and finish the ungrateful job. Some LCDBs were also killed while at work by enemy artillery. Their bodies were thrown into the holes they had excavated; in other words, they had dug their own graves.16
Intense anti-aircraft fire made resupply of An Loc increasingly difficult. The logistical problem was compounded by the existence of the civilian population, which needed to be fed. It had been estimated that 200 tons of supplies daily were necessary to sustain ARVN units and the civilian population which, by that time, had swelled to over 15,000 due to the influx of refugees from surrounding villages. Water was also badly needed. Army advisors estimated that the civilian population could survive with sixty-five tons daily. This was about a third of what had been previously estimated as some brackish wells had been discovered inside the city.17
From the beginning of the enemy encirclement of the city on April 7, aerial resupply was the responsibility of VNAF 237th Helicopter Squadron. However, since a Chinook that attempted to bring supplies to An Loc was shot down on April 12, the resupply mission was assigned to VNAF fixed-wing aircraft. On that same day, C-123s and C-130s from the Tan Son Nhat-based 5th VNAF Air Division began dropping supplies to the city at an altitude of around 700 feet. From April 13 to April 16, a total of twenty-seven VNAF cargo planes dropped 135 tons of supplies into An Loc but only 34 tons were collected by the defenders; the rest fell into the enemy-controlled areas.18
In a renewed effort to cut off aerial resupply, the enemy rushed additional anti-aircraft weapons around the city. On April 17, all six VNAF C-123s and C-119s on a resupply mission were hit by enemy anti-aircraft fire; one C-123 exploded above An Loc, killing all people aboard, including Lt. Col. Nguyen The Than, the squadron commander.19 On April 19, another C-123 carrying ammunition was hit and exploded in midair. From that point, VNAF cancelled resupply missions and the U.S. Air Force picked up the job.20
In actuality, the USAF was already prepared to assume the responsibility of resupplying An Loc the day the second South Vietnamese cargo plane was shot down. On April 15, two U.S. C-130s, in fact, were sent to An Loc to resupply the defenders, using a new computerized dropping system known as CARP (Computed Aerial Release Point). The pilots were instructed to follow Route 13 and as they were approaching the soccer field, the computer would take over, releasing the cargo at the prearranged point. The first C-130 dropped the pallets of food and ammunition without incident although it did receive two bullets in its fuselage. The second C-130 was hit at the cockpit compartment; the flight engineer was killed, the navigator and co-pilot were wounded. Fire broke out in the cargo hold and another one ruptured the hot air duct causing intense heat in the cargo compartment. As the pilot tried in vain to release the cargo, the loadmaster had to cut the ropes by hand. Fortunately, the crippled C-130 was able to limp back to Tan Son Nhut.21
On April 18, another U.S. C-130 was hit by machinegun fire on its approach to the soccer field. The pilot succeeded in dropping the supply before he was forced to perform a crash landing on an open field near Lai Khe. Miraculously, the entire crew was rescued with only minor injuries.22
Because this type of delivery was too costly, by April 20, the USAF used the low-altitude drops for both day and night flights. The cargo planes would approach the city at tree-top level and at a distance of three miles from the drop zone, they climbed to about 500 feet and released the supplies through the rear cargo door. This technique was relatively safe but about 70% of the supplies landed on the area controlled by the enemy.23 An NVA lieutenant was captured by that time by ARVN troops. When his interrogators promised to give him rice and dried fish if he would inform them of the strength and identification of the attacking forces, he instead asked if he could have “fruit cocktail.” Noticing the startled looks of his interrogat
ors—who were themselves on a rather austere diet—he went on to explain that he had taken a liking to fruit cocktail after his men retrieved it from wayward drops that fell into his area.24
With an unacceptable accuracy rate and mounting casualties, the Air Force attempted night drops, but accuracy remained a problem. Moreover, not many soldiers volunteered to search for errant bundles at night amid relentless enemy artillery and mortar shelling.
After another C-130 was lost on the night of May 2 due possibly to pilot miscalculation, the USAF decided to adopt a new drop technique known as HALO (High Altitude Low Opening) system that had been in the experimental stages. Early in the battle of An Loc, the U.S. Air Force was forced to execute air drops at high altitudes due to numerous anti-aircraft positions, including SA-7 (Surface-Air) rocket batteries. However, parachute drift had caused many of these drops (mostly ammunition and C-ration packages) to land outside the perimeter of defense and fall into enemy hands. One ARVN officer recalled that every time there was an air drop, thousands of guns, enemy as well as friendly, were firing in unison. The enemy fire was aimed at the aircraft, while the friendly troops fired for different reasons. First, the South Vietnamese troops fired at the parachutes that were about to drift away from the perimeter of defense. (The parachutes torn out by bullets would fall straight into friendly positions.) Second, ARVN soldiers aimed directly at the packages that were about to fall into enemy territory in order to destroy them before they fell into the enemy’s hands.
On May 8, the HALO technique was finally developed and adopted by the USAF. Under this new method, the parachutes were released at about 10,000 feet. A series of cords caused the parachutes to deploy only partially, thus slowing the fall rate to about 130 feet-per-second. At 500 feet above the ground, a timing mechanism allowed the parachutes to fully open. The HALO technique was a great improvement over past drops. Until June 25, when cargo aircraft could finally land in An Loc, the US Air Force flew 230 sorties delivering a total of 2,984 tons of supplies. The garrison recovered 2,735 tons, or about 90% of supplies dropped.25