Hell in An Loc Read online

  Lewis Sorley attributed the above success in part to General Abrams’s “One War” concept which would integrate combat operations, pacification, and upgrading the ARVN. In place of General Westmoreland’s “search and destroy” concept, Abrams applied the “clear and hold” strategy under which the pacified areas must be permanently held by allied forces. “Contrary to most people seem to believe,” wrote Sorley, “the new approach during the Abrams era succeeded remarkably. And, since during these last years American forces were progressively being withdrawn, more and more it was the South Vietnamese who were achieving that success.”21

  Thus, as the waiting game continued and the thinly spread out South Vietnamese army was bracing for a new military invasion, President Thieu, seemingly undeterred, decided that, barring new dramatic developments, the government must conduct its business as usual.

  Three

  The Opening Salvos

  Toward the end of March, President Thieu, who was actively involved in the pacification process—and for this reason was dubbed “the number one pacification officer” by William Colby, former CIA chief in Saigon—setting aside intelligence reports of an impending NVA offensive, convened the annual meeting of all corps commanders and province chiefs to review the progress of the national pacification program. The meeting took place at the Rural Development Training Center at the seaside resort city of Vung Tau. While the convention was in progress, word broke out on March 30 that NVA regular divisions, supported by artillery and armored regiments, after having conducted heavy artillery preparations on ARVN 3rd Division positions in the northern area of Quang Tri province, had crossed the Ben Hai River—which separated the two Viet Nams under the 1954 Geneva Peace Agreement. What was known as the “Easter Offensive” had begun.

  The launching of this major offensive was planned to coincide with the dry season because of the difficulties in moving troops, equipment, and supplies for such large scale operations during the rainy season. The northern provinces of MRI are affected by the northeast monsoon and can expect good weather from February to September; the rest of South Viet Nam is affected by the southwest monsoon and the dry season generally lasts from October to May. Consequently, the good window for a large scale offensive in South Viet Nam was from the month of February to the month of May. Of course it would be ideal to start the offensive in early February in order to occupy as much territory as possible before the new monsoons began. The NVA, due to delays in moving their troops and heavy equipment, chose instead the day preceding the Easter festivities as their D-day.

  Meanwhile, the news from MRII was cause for concern: Coincidental with the attack on MRI, NVA forces, supported by tank units, had overrun the command post of the ARVN 22nd Division in Tan Canh, north of Kontum; Col. Le Duc Dat, the division commander, and many staff officers were reported missing.

  Expecting a concurrent offensive on the Central Highlands, President Thieu ordered both Generals Hoang Xuan Lam, I Corps commander, and Ngo Dzu, II Corps commander, and all province chiefs under their command, to return immediately to their posts to cope with new developments. The province chiefs in MRIII and MRIV were asked to stay on until the completion of the pacification workshop despite a surge in enemy attacks on ARVN outposts along the Cambodian border in Tay Ninh province and the loss of the important Lac Long Base on April 2.

  The attacks on Lac Long and other border outposts prompted General Minh, the III Corps commander, to pull all small isolated bases in the northern part of MRIII to more defensible areas to avoid becoming sitting ducks for superior NVA forces and also to protect more important population centers. As the ARVN unit defending Thien Ngon outpost about thirty kilometers north of Tay Ninh was pulling out, it was ambushed by Independent Regiment 274 and lost many artillery guns and vehicles. A rescuing unit from the 25th Division, which reached the ambush site the next day, was surprised to see that the lost equipment, including the 105mm and 155mm artillery guns, was not towed away by the enemy. More surprising was the fact that the enemy had left the area instead of setting ambushes to destroy the rescuing forces.1

  Maj. Le Van Ngon, commander of the 92nd Border Ranger Battalion at Tong Le Chon, about fifteen kilometers southwest of An Loc, decided to stay and fight in his outpost, because he was convinced his unit would be ambushed if he tried to pull out. Although the enemy was determined to remove this outpost, which sat on their lifeline to War Zone C and to their secret bases in the Fishhook area, Ngon and his men fought off many attacks and held out at the isolated base throughout the Easter Offensive and even in the post-Paris Agreement era—in which the NVA continued their attacks on isolated outposts in defiance of the agreement.

  Not until April 5, after the first NVA assaults on Loc Ninh, did III Corps Staff realize that the attacks in Tay Ninh were only a diversion to cover the enemy’s main thrust in Binh Long province. These attacks also helped to hide the movements of the 9th and 7th NVA Divisions into Binh Long. The 9th Division was to occupy positions around An Loc in preparation for the direct assault on the city in conjunction with the 5th Division already positioned north of Loc Ninh, while the 7th Division was to occupy blocking positions along Route 13 south of An Loc to interdict rescuing ARVN units.

  Finally, at around 11:00 A.M. on April 5, Col. Tran Van Nhut, Binh Long province chief, was asked to see Lt. Gen. Cao Hao Hon, Assistant to the Prime Minister for Pacification. General Hon told Nhut that President Thieu ordered him to return immediately to An Loc because of increased enemy activity in his province.

  In his book Cuoc Chien Dang Do2 (Unfinished War), General3 Nhut reported that during the pacification workshop, he regularly kept in touch with Lt. Col. Nguyen Thong Thanh, his deputy sector commander.4Colonel Thanh had reported sporadic contacts of RF units with the enemy north of Can Le Bridge and south of Tan Khai on Route 13. Reports from sector intelligence agencies regarding increased VC activities on Route 13 caused Colonel Thanh to order the provincial subsectors (districts) to increase night ambushes. As a result, RF and PF units had engaged the enemy during the nights of April 3 and April 4, and had killed over twenty VCs and captured an important amount of weapons. Of special importance was the fact that the enemy soldiers killed during these ambushes wore regular NVA army uniforms and didn’t seem to belong to local guerilla units as had been the case in the past.5

  Nhut also reported that Mr. E. Gaudeul, the French director of the Cexso rubber plantation in Loc Ninh, had indicated that many field telephone lines had been established by NVA forces northwest of Loc Ninh, but the 9th Regiment of the 5th Division—which was in charge of the defense of the district—was reluctant to send reconnaissance patrols into the area.

  Nhut and his driver left for An Loc right after he met General Hon. When they arrived at Lai Khe around 4:00 p.m., they were stopped by Lieutenant Colonel Thanh and Lt. Col. Robert E. Corley, sector senior advisor. Colonel Thanh reported that the sector headquarters at An Loc had been hit by enemy 122mm rockets and one building was on fire. The district town of Loc Ninh was surrounded by NVA forces, and the enemy had set up chot (fortified blocking positions) on Route 13, at Tan Khai. Colonel Nhut left his jeep at Lai Khe and flew by helicopter with his deputy and his American advisor to Chon Thanh to meet with the district chief, Lt. Col. Pham Quang My, to inquire about the situation in the district. The three men then headed toward An Loc where Nhut met with his staff to review the friendly and enemy situation within Binh Long Sector. After the meeting, Nhut and Lieutenant Colonel Corley left for Loc Ninh to meet with Maj. Nguyen Van Thinh, Loc Ninh district chief.

  When their helicopter took off, it drew anti-aircraft fire from enemy positions north of An Loc. The American pilot was unable to land at the district headquarters of Loc Ninh due to intense anti-aircraft fire. From above, Nhut saw the district town engulfed in dark smoke. The enemy artillery was bombarding the district headquarters and the headquarters of the 9th Regiment of the 5th Division without interruption.

  In 1972, Loc Ninh was a dusty small district
town of about 4,000. It sat on Route 13 on the edge of a small valley; its population consisted mostly of Montagnards of Stieng and Mien tribes. A small all-weather airstrip was situated about a half-mile west of the town. The district headquarters, manned by over 200 RF/PF soldiers, was located in a deep and fortified bunker in the north tip and west of the airstrip. The bunker, built by the Japanese during the Indochina War, provided good protection to the district personnel and allowed for uninterrupted radio communication with the province headquarters. The 9th Regiment occupied a former U.S. Special Forces compound located at the south end of the airstrip and the artillery compound was located between the district headquarters and the regiment compound. To the south of the fire base the terrain was relatively open and to the west the rubber trees and vegetation had been bulldozed within about 300 yards.

  On April 4, Col. Nguyen Cong Vinh, 9th Regiment commander, predicting an imminent attack on Loc Ninh, ordered Lt. Col. Nguyen Huu Duong, commander of Task Force 1-5 at FSB Alpha, ten kilometers north of Loc Ninh, to send one detachment of M-41 tanks and M-113 armored personnel carriers (APC) to Loc Ninh to reinforce the defense of the district town. (TF 1-5 was a mechanized unit consisting of the 1st Armored Squadron, two companies from the 2/9 Battalion, the 74th Border Ranger Battalion, and one artillery battery. On April 2, General Hung had directed Colonel Duong and his task force to move north to help evacuate the border ranger units manning the outposts on the Cambodian border.) The combined mechanized detachment under Lt. Le Van Hung left FSB Alpha during the night; it was ambushed and destroyed by an enemy force supported by T-54 (Russian-built medium tank equipped with a 100mm gun) and PT-76 tanks five kilometers north of Loc Ninh.

  Lieutenant Colonel Duong, TF 1-5 commander, called the 9th Regiment to report that he had lost contact with Lieutenant Hung, but by that time, the 9th Regiment communication center had been damaged by enemy artillery fire. Not until the next morning was radio communication restored. Colonel Vinh ordered Duong to move the rest of TF 1-5 to Loc Ninh immediately to shore up the defense of the district. TF 1-5 was again ambushed at the same spot where Lieutenant Hung’s detachment was destroyed the previous night. Colonel Duong broke out of the ambush site with two M-113s but was engaged by the enemy one kilometer south; Duong escaped but was captured with fifteen soldiers on April 7.6

  While all this transpired, around 3:00 A.M. on April 5, two regiments from the NVA 5th Division, supported by a tank unit, launched a coordinated attack on the 9th Regiment command post after a powerful artillery barrage.

  At first, the defenders panicked, they lay in their foxholes in horror: never before had they been subjected to such powerful and sustained artillery bombardment. Recovering from the initial shock and, with effective tactical air support directed by the American advisors, the defenders managed to beat back the first attack, destroying one tank. At one point, ARVN artillerymen had to lower their guns and fire directly at the attackers advancing through the rubber trees. Around noon, the enemy regrouped and launched another attack on the 9th Regiment compound but the attack was stopped by an AC-130 gunship. According to Major General Hollings-worth, III Corps Senior Advisor, the four-engine propeller-driven converted cargo aircraft armed with 7.62mm guns and one 105mm gun caught the enemy in the wire and destroyed “the better part of a regiment.” 7 Another assault across the airstrip was stopped cold by well-placed CBUs (Cluster Bomb Unit). (The CBU-87/B is a 1,000-pound, air-delivered cluster weapons system, designed for attack against soft target areas with detonating bomblets; a total of 202 of the bomblets are loaded in each dispenser enabling a single payload attack on an effective area of approximately 200 meters by 400 meters.)8 Another attempt succeeded in getting into the barbed wire of the eastern defense perimeter of the 9th Regiment command post, but was repelled by Cobra gunships. However, one gunship was hit by anti-aircraft fire and exploded on the ground. Both American pilots were killed.9

  Although the NVA’s major assaults were beaten back, the enemy kept bombarding the embattled district town with artillery and rockets. In addition, the defenders were hit by deadly recoilless rifle fire. One recoilless rifle round made a direct hit on the regiment command bunker, wounding both Lt. Col. Richard S. Schott, the senior regiment advisor, and Capt. Mark A. Smith, a member of the regiment advisory team. Captain Smith, who was proficient in the Vietnamese language, was most instrumental in the effective coordination of U.S. air support and was, for all practical purposes, the man in charge of the advisory effort during the battle of Loc Ninh.10

  While Colonel Nhut was circling the district in his efforts to contact Major Thinh, the district chief, American observation aircraft reported that many trucks towing artillery guns were heading toward An Loc; some of them were even taking position at the district bus station at the northern outskirts of the town. The American pilots requested permission to strike these trucks. Nhut told them to hold off because he suspected these vehicles may be civilian logging trucks escaping toward Loc Ninh. Major Thinh later confirmed that these vehicles were indeed civilian trucks towing logs mounted on two-wheeled trailers, which, observed from the air, looked like artillery trucks.

  Nhut continued to fly north to reconnoiter the Loc Tan area where the 1st Armored Squadron was ambushed in the early hours of April 5. Nhut was very concerned by what he saw: “The 1st Armored Squadron of the 5th Division was being shelled, assaulted, all tanks and armored vehicles were completely destroyed,” Nhut wrote in his memoir, “the charred wreckages of the destroyed tanks were scattered all around the ambush site.”11 This description seems to contradict the assertion contained in both America’s Last Viet Nam Battle12 and The Battle of An Loc13that the 1st Armored Squadron had already surrendered to the enemy, “willingly driving their tanks and armored personnel carriers toward the Cambodian border.” In fact, if Nhut’s observations were accurate, then there would have been no tanks or armored personnel carriers left to drive around.

  Further, according to Col. Bui Duc Diem, Assistant for Operations to the 5th Division commander, the 1st Armored Squadron was annihilated during an ambush north of Loc Ninh on its way back to the district town and Lieutenant Colonel Duong was taken prisoner during that ambush. Brig. Gen. Ly Tong Ba—whom I interviewed about the performance of the armored units during the Easter Offensive—categorically stated that not a single armored unit had surrendered to the enemy during the Viet Nam War. A recipient of both the French Croix de Guerre and the U.S. Silver Star, General Ba commanded the 23rd Division and distinguished himself in the Battle of Kontum during the 1972 Offensive. He assumed command of ARVN’s Armor Branch right after the Easter Offensive.

  In any event, Nhut was unaware that the two infantry companies from the 2nd Battalion, 9th Regiment, attached to TF 1-5, and the 74th Border Ranger Battalion, which had been put under the operational control of the task force, had broken out of the ambush and were fighting their way toward Loc Ninh. Although they ran into yet another ambush a few hundred meters north of Loc Ninh, the rangers and survivors of TF 1-5 were able to reach the district town the next day and join forces with its defenders.

  Nhut also worried about the inadequacy of friendly forces defending Loc Ninh. The 3rd Battalion of the 9th Regiment had been put under the operational control of Phuoc Long province. The previous day, April 4, the 1st Battalion, 9th Regiment, operating west of Loc Ninh, was almost wiped out by enemy forces: Major Son, the battalion commander, and only about 100 men from his battalion were able to make it back to the regiment compound.14 Two infantry companies from the 2nd Battalion, supported by two 155mm and four 105mm howitzers, were located at Can Le Bridge on Route 13, south of Loc Ninh. Thus, the 9th Regiment, supported by two artillery batteries, had only the 9th Reconnaissance Company, the Regiment Headquarters Company, and the survivors of the 1st Battalion at its disposal for the defense of its compound at Loc Ninh. Nhut ordered Major Thinh, the district chief, to maintain constant liaison with Col. Nguyen Cong Vinh, the 9th Regiment commander. He also decided to put the distric
t under the direct command of Colonel Vinh. Nhut then contacted Colonel Vinh on the latter’s radio frequency to confirm that fact.15

  Afterward, Colonel Nhut flew back to Chon Thanh to assess the situation in this district. There he met his administrative assistant and chiefs of various provincial departments, who had just returned from the pacification seminar in Vung Tau. They told Nhut that right after he left the meeting, all province chiefs and department heads in MRIII and MRIV were also ordered to return to their posts. After he was appraised of the situation in Chon Thanh district, Nhut and his administrative assistant and provincial department chiefs boarded his helicopter and headed back to An Loc.

  When he returned to his official residence, Nhut met Mr. Bui Huu Tai, the chief of the Public Works Department. Mr. Tai, known for his penchant for good French cognac, had just come back from Vung Tau—by road. As Nhut put it, “Tai drinks cognac like we drink water.” As soon as he saw the province chief, Tai jumped out of his jeep and complained that ARVN soldiers had shot at him when he drove by Tan Khai. Nhut told him that the enemy had established chot (blocking position) at Tan Khai since that morning and that he was the only man who was brave enough to have successfully broken through the enemy road block. Nhut asked Tai whether too much French cognac had prevented him from noticing the “No Traffic” sign on Route 13. Nhut then offered Tai a glass of cognac to celebrate his daring escape.16 In retrospect, Tai’s return was no small achievement, because the entire 21st Division, moving north from Chon Thanh, was unable later to do what he singlehandedly did that fateful day of April.

  In the afternoon of April 6, General Hung and Colonel Miller, Senior Division Advisor, and their respective staffs moved from the 5th Division Main Headquarters at Lai Khe to the division forward command post at An Loc. On his way to An Loc, General Hung stopped at Dau Tieng to meet with Colonel Truong, 8th Regiment commander. He informed Truong that An Loc was being encircled by NVA forces and would likely be the next enemy objective after Loc Ninh, and that he was going to An Loc to personally direct the defense of the city. In Hung’s view, the Saigon River was still an important avenue of approach for enemy forces to threaten the capital, and thus the 8th Regiment must temporarily stay at Dau Tieng until further order. However, after Hung arrived in An Loc, the 5th Division wouldn’t be in a position to support the 8th Regiment; consequently, he had requested that the regiment be put under the tactical control of III Corps.17