Hell in An Loc Read online

  Finally, at 1:00 P.M. on April 17, Colonel Luong, the airborne commander, in probably the most memorable moment of the battle of An Loc, shook hands with the man in charge of its defense: Brig. Gen. Le Van Hung. General Hung opened his last bottle of beer and gave it to the young paratroop commander; he then briefed the latter on the friendly and enemy situation in An Loc and assigned the southern sector to the 1st Airborne Brigade. After the briefing, Luong visited Colonel Nhut, the province chief. Both were former high school classmates; they were happy to meet, albeit under rather unusual circumstances.17

  Colonel Luong decided to establish his headquarters at the sector headquarters to facilitate coordination with provincial forces in the defense of the southern area. To retain tactical flexibility and to be able to launch counter-attacks anywhere in the city, Luong decided to conduct a mobile defense outside the southern perimeter.

  On April 14, the day the first elements of the 1st Airborne Brigade landed in the Doi Gio area, the 81st Airborne Commando Group, which was operating southwest of Xa Mat along the Cambodian border, was extracted to Trang Lon in Tay Ninh province. From there, it was transported by Chinook helicopters to Lai Khe on April 16. Around noon, while Lai Khe ammunition depot, attacked earlier by enemy sappers, was still exploding, the entire 81st Airborne Commando Group was ready at Lai Khe airport to be heliborne into An Loc.

  The 81st Airborne Commando Group—originally named the 81st Airborne Commando Battalion—belonged to the Vietnamese Special Forces. In 1970, the Special Forces was deactivated and most of its personnel were transferred to the various ranger battalions or assigned to the Airborne Division. The 81st Airborne Commando Battalion, on the contrary, was upgraded to become the 81st Airborne Commando Group and was allowed to retain its uniform and its green beret.18 This unit was expert in night operations and close combat techniques. It had, on various occasions, proven its effectiveness in the destruction of the enemy “chot” and “kieng” (or reinforced blocking positions) which, as we shall see later, had inflicted heavy casualties to the ARVN 21st Division during its linkup operation along Route 13. (In hindsight, the securing of Route 13 could have been more speedy and less costly, had the 81st Commando Group been assigned that task in conjunction with elements of the 21st Division.)

  The Commando Group, with a combat-effective force of 550 men and consisting of one reconnaissance company and four infantry companies, was transported by a total of forty-five helicopters; it landed in two waves in a small plot of dry rice field one kilometer southwest of Doi Gio. Soon after their landing, the commandos were joined by forty-seven soldiers from the 3rd Ranger Company of the 52nd Ranger Battalion, which was defending Hill 169. The ranger company had been attacked by NVA troops five days earlier and had suffered five killed and a few wounded. The above forty-seven rangers were separated from their parent company after the enemy’s attack. The wounded rangers were treated by Doctor Chau and Master Sergeant Tung from the 81st Commando medical team and were evacuated by the helicopters that had brought the commandos into the Doi Gio area. The rangers had not been supplied for many days because of heavy enemy pressure. Hungry and exhausted, they were happy to be able to join the commandos in order to return to their unit. The heliborne operation was completed by 4:00 P.M. The commandos then moved west along a small ravine located between Doi Gio and Hill 169.19

  As the commandos were approaching An Loc, they were bombed by mistake by a jet fighter. However, due to their dispersed formations, only two commandos were wounded, including Lt. Le Dinh Chieu Thien. Captain Huggins and Master Sergeant Yerta, the two remaining American advisors, were able to request medical evacuation from the U.S. 17th Cavalry Brigade.20

  After the medevac was completed, the commandos continued their march in a northwesterly direction. As they reached the Phu Hoa rubber plantation, they heard a heavy firefight in front of them. A reconnaissance team was sent forward to study the situation. The team met with elements of the 5th Airborne Battalion, which were engaging a regiment of the NVA 5th Division. “There are too many of them, they are like a band of ants,” said Lieutenant Colonel Hieu, the 5th Airborne Battalion commander, “they stuck with me like hungry leeches.”21

  As night fell on April 16, the 81st Commando occupied what was left of Soc Gon, a Montagnard hamlet, which had been abandoned by the enemy after their early engagements with the 5th Airborne Battalion; the hamlet, partially destroyed by tactical air strikes, was deserted by the Montagnards, who had sought refuge in the city of An Loc or moved deeper into the forests to evade the Communist troops. The following day, the commandos entered An Loc without incident.

  Because of interrupted shelling, the commandos had to run, each man thirty meters apart, to their assigned positions on the northern area of the city. General Hung, in fact, had asked Lt. Col. Pham Van Huan, the 81st Airborne Commando Group commander, to coordinate the defense of the northern sector with the 8th Regiment and the 3rd Ranger Group. (It is noteworthy that the airborne commando units, as their name indicates, specialize in conducting small unit long-range reconnaissance patrols deep into enemy territory, capturing prisoners, and destroying enemy rear base installations and infrastructures; they normally were not engaged in conventional warfare. Their static defense mission in the battle of An Loc was a dramatic departure from this concept.)

  Sergeant Do Duc Thinh, from the 81st Commando headquarters, recalled that when the commandos entered An Loc, he saw corpses of NVA soldiers and civilians scattered all around the streets. And when he approached An Loc Hospital, he saw hundreds of bodies piling up inside two big holes and the stench of these unburied corpses almost caused him to throw up. The hospital itself was in ruins, most the roof had disappeared, the collapsed front wall revealed a row of empty beds with bed sheets and blankets lying around on the floor.22

  Under the new defense plan, the 81st Commando was responsible for the central northern section between the 3rd Ranger Group and the 8th Regiment (from Nguyen Du Street in the east to Ngo Quyen Street in the west). Colonel Truong, 8th Regiment commander, briefed Lieutenant Colonel Huan on the tactical situation and the terrain in the northern sector. The coordination and mutual support between these two units was made easy by the fact that Truong and Huan, as well as their respective executive officers, were all graduates of the Dalat Military Academy, and in ARVN—as in most other armies—there exists a very special bond among academy alumni.

  With new reinforcements, General Hung decided to counterattack to regain the terrain lost to the enemy. On April 17, the 8th Airborne Battalion was ordered to seize the rubber plantation west of the city. The 8th Battalion moved westward along Tran Hung Dao Boulevard, the main lateral thoroughfare of the city. After it passed the Phu Lo Gate and reached a point about 700 meters from the city limit, it received heavy 75mm recoilless weapon and mortar fire. In the first few minutes, the paratroopers suffered twelve KIA and sixty-two wounded.23 Lieutenant Colonel Ninh, the battalion commander, regrouped his men and launched the counter-attack. The enemy withdrew with heavy losses. The paratroopers captured three prisoners. The western perimeter of defense was expanded after this bloody encounter.

  In the morning of April 17, while the paratroopers were attacking west of Phu Lo Gate, the enemy unleashed a violent artillery barrage on the city. Around 11:00 A.M., Colonel Truong, 8th Regiment commander, was wounded by shrapnel in the neck and became unconscious. The 5th Division surgeon reported to General Hung that the wound was very serious and they had to wait twenty-four hours to know if Truong could survive. Truong did survive despite the fact that Binh Long Hospital didn’t have the technical skills nor the means to perform surgery on his neck. Because he couldn’t be evacuated, Truong remained in command of the 8th Regiment until the end of the siege.24

  Like General Hung, Truong was a product of the “Delta Clan.” After graduation from the Dalat Military Academy, he served in various staff positions at the 21st Division and IV Corps. He rose to the occasion as 8th Regiment commander and was in great part i
nstrumental in the successful defense of An Loc.

  A few days later, Colonel Luong paid a visit to Col. Mach Van Truong. The latter, who had recovered from his wound, briefed Luong on the heavy pressure exerted by enemy tank-supported forces in his sector. Luong suggested that the 8th Regiment commander make improvised antitank mines by coupling two 155mm shells and inserting an explosive fuse into one of the two shells. Colonel Luong told Truong he had used this “home-made” explosive device with great success in previous battles. Sure enough, the 8th Regiment later used this improvised antitank mine to destroy a number of tanks during subsequent NVA attacks.25

  That same night Colonel Truong was wounded, Lieutenant Colonel Huan, of the 81st Airborne Commando Group, called the 5th Division command post and asked that no illuminating flares be used that night. It was time for the airborne commandos to swing into action. Huan had earlier reconnoitered the area to be reoccupied. Most of the buildings had collapsed, many bunkers previously built by the residents were being used by the enemy, and barbed wire fences surrounded almost every house in the sector. As a result of his reconnaissance, Huan instructed his men to move slowly in small formations to avoid making noise and to use only knives and hand grenades to kill the enemy in their foxholes. From midnight to about 3:00 A.M., the commandos pushed northward and, using their traditional close combat techniques, succeeded in regaining a small enclave of 400 meters from the line of departure. “This was a short segment of the street leading toward An Loc, but it was a giant step by the 81st Airborne Commando Group toward relieving An Loc from Communist troop pressure,” wrote Tran Van Nhat.26

  Although most of the northern sector had been recaptured by the commandos during the night, the enemy still held the Field Police headquarters, whose underground bunkers were fortified with fuel barrels filled with sand, and whose roof consisted of steel plates reinforced with three layers of sandbags. The commandos from 2nd Company launched a few assaults to retake the police campus, but were pinned down by intense recoilless rifle fire from Dong Long Hill. Captain Huggins, the American advisor, requested air support. Two AC-130s responded and fired their 105mm guns on the target designated by the advisory team. Sergeant Yerta, in disregard for his own safety, stood in the middle of the street to direct the Spectre fire, which scored a few direct hits, causing the roof of the bunkers to collapse. (Yerta later received the Distinguished Service Cross for this action.)27 After thirty minutes of uninterrupted air support, the enemy fell silent. The commandos launched their assault and recaptured the objective at 4:00 P.M., but the following day, the enemy still occupied some small pockets of resistance and, as a consequence, the positions of both sides in the northern sector were intertwined in a leopard spot pattern.

  Although air support was very effective and was instrumental in the 81st Commando’s early successes, the latter still needed mortar fire support in close combat situations. The problem was that the 81st Commando Group was not equipped with 81mm mortars because the commandos normally conducted long-range patrols behind enemy lines and were thus equipped only with light weapons. On the other hand, in case of engagement with the enemy, the commandos, operating out of range of friendly artillery range, usually relied on helicopter gunships and air support. Further, the ammunition pallets dropped on the soccer field south of the city contained only 81mm mortar ammunition, thus making the commandos’ 60mm mortars useless.

  Captain Doan had an idea. He went to the 8th Regiment and borrowed an 81mm mortar from that unit. There was one problem, however: the borrowed mortar had no sight instrument. Sergeant Yerta requested a sight through U.S. channels and obtained a brand-new M-14 sight, a sophisticated new version that was not yet available in the South Vietnamese army. Even Captain Huggins and Sergeant Yerta were not familiar with the new instrument. Fortunately, the box containing the sight also contained the instructions regarding its use. Huggins and Yerta studied the instructions and explained them to Major Lan. Lan, a graduate of the Dalat Military Academy, translated these instructions to the new 81mm crew.28

  Sergeant Thinh, the crew chief, installed the mortar in the backyard of a deserted pharmacy surrounded by high walls. From there, Thinh provided accurate fire support to the advanced commando elements conducting house-to-house fighting. The problem of ammunition resupply was more acute than Thinh had originally thought. First, he used a three-wheeled lambretta abandoned by the residents to get ammunition pallets dropped by parachute at the soccer field, a two-kilometer trip undertaken under constant enemy bombardment. After the lambretta was destroyed by artillery fire, Sergeant Thinh had to use wheelbarrows to make the soccer trip under extremely hazardous conditions.

  The enemy also had pinpointed the commandos’ 81mm mortar site. One day, as Thinh was eating his lunch, he was called to the headquarters to take new fire instructions; a few 82mm mortar rounds landed in his mortar pit. When he returned to his mortar position, he saw a severely wounded white dog lying on the ground in pain. The dog had come to eat Thinh’s ration. Tung, from the 81st Commando medical team, gave the dog the coup de grace because it could not be saved.

  As the commandos kept moving forward, Lieutenant Colonel Huan, the 81st Airborne Commando Group commander, concerned about his exposed flanks, called the 5th Division and requested that friendly units be ordered to progress on both sides of his unit so that it could advance farther and expand its area of control; however, the 5th Division answered that it might not be able to satisfy that request because all units had suffered heavy casualties and were unable to keep pace with the commandos. Col. Mach Van Truong, 8th Regiment commander, was in particular reluctant to expose his critically depleted units to murderous direct enemy recoilless rifle fire from Dong Long Hill if he were to attack on the left side of the commandos as the lightly built houses in that area had been burnt to the ground by NVA artillery barrages and thus offered no concealment nor protection to his attacking units.29

  When the 5th Division asked Lieutenant Colonel Biet whether he could move forward to cover the right flank of the 81st, the Ranger Group commander said he would try, because he also wanted to expand his own area of responsibility. Biet directed Major Lac, the 36th Ranger Battalion commander, to attack in the northeasterly direction with two companies. These companies were to occupy the high ground near the airfield to protect the right flank of the 81st Commando Group. One company of the 36th Battalion rapidly seized the assigned objective without difficulty, meeting only scattered resistance from enemy soldiers, who quickly fled to the jungles bordering Quan Loi plantation.

  Taking advantage of the western gap, the enemy launched a two-pronged attack on the commandos: the first attack, coming directly from the north, was supported by mortars and 75mm recoilless rifle fire from Dong Long Hill; the second attack, more powerful, was directed at the left flank of the 81st Commando Group. Facing possible encirclement, the commandos retreated to the New Market area, but left a company to defend the strategic Field Police headquarters. The rangers, with their left flank exposed, withdrew also toward the center of the town.

  The failure of the 81st Commandos to expand northward was obviously due to the lack of coordination with and support from the 8th Regiment. Although the open terrain to the left of the commandos would not provide protection to the attacking troops, the 8th Regiment, in retrospect, could have helped the attack of the commandos by establishing blocking positions to ward off the enemy’s counter-attacks on the latter’s left flank.

  During the night, the commandos started to dig graves in a vacant lot near the city bus station to bury their dead. The commandos took pride in the fact that they braved artillery fire and took time during the battle to provide their fallen comrades with a decent burial. It had become a routine for the commandos to fight during the day and to bury their dead at night. “Some nights, when torrential rains and artillery shells were falling in unison on the city, we had to fumble in the dark to dig small foxholes to avoid artillery fire, then to dig big graves to bury the bodies of our friends,”
recalled a commando.30 Soon, a well-kept cemetery emerged amid the ruins of a besieged city. Old ladies often came to the cemetery to burn incense at the graves and to offer prayers during quieter times.

  In the meantime, a new document captured on April 18 by the ever-resilient 92nd Border Ranger Battalion at the lonely outpost of Tong Le Chan, west of An Loc, not only confirmed that the NVA was ready for yet another assault, but also revealed the exact date of that assault. A company of the 92nd Rangers patrolling in an area west of the outpost, and inside the province of Tay Ninh, killed a number of VCs. In the pocket of one of the bodies, the rangers found a hand-written paper, which turned out to be a letter from the 9th Division senior political commissioner to COSVN. The letter detailed the plans for a new assault to be launched the next day, April 19. The letter attributed the failure of the 9th Division to take An Loc to the effectiveness of tactical air and B-52 strikes, but was also highly critical of the performance of the 9th Division and the coordination between armor and infantry.31

  In any event, the enemy was so confident of the success of the next attack that they announced on the National Liberation Radio that effective April 20, An Loc would become the seat of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Viet Nam. As planned, after unleashing a heavy pre-assault artillery barrage in the early morning of April 19, the NVA launched a powerful attack on the northern sector. Once again, the assault was stopped by effective close air support.

  As the enemy regrouped to renew the attack, the 81st Airborne Commando Group received the order to counter-attack. The commandos were specifically directed to cross Tran Hung Dao Boulevard and seize the New Market, the bus station, and Thanh Mau hamlet to regain the northwestern area that had been abandoned earlier by the retreating 8th Regiment. While advancing toward their assigned objectives, the commandos had to dig holes in the city walls to avoid being observed by enemy snipers. (These holes, later enlarged to about one meter high and one-half-meter wide, allowed the commandos to move speedily and safely from house to house.) During their advance, the commandos used hand grenades and M-72 rocket launchers to destroy enemy bunkers, forcing enemy units to withdraw to the north. But when the commandos were about to reach the pagoda and the Field Police headquarters, the enemy began to counter-attack by unleashing a barrage of all kinds of calibers and assaulting the left flank of the 81st Commando Group. Tactical air support temporarily blunted the assault. The 5th Division had to request that a B-52 mission be diverted from its preplanned objective and that its ordnance be unloaded instead on the enemy attackers only 200 to 300 meters from the commandos to prevent the latter from being overrun.32 The commandos regrouped and engaged in hand-to-hand combat to dislodge the last enemy pockets of resistance; at the end of the day, they had regained most of the lost territory.