Hell in An Loc Read online

  The 5th Division combat engineer battalion had previously built a Division Forward CP with steel plates and sandbags in the eastern area of An Loc, near the railroad station. Colonel Miller, 5th Division senior advisor, told General Hung that this CP couldn’t withstand 130mm artillery shells and 122mm missiles and that, due to inadequate protection, the 5th Division advisory team would leave An Loc and return to Lai Khe. General Hung invited his advisor to inspect an underground compound situated in the center of the city. This fortified structure of reinforced concrete was built by the Japanese Army to protect against Allied warplane bombardments during World War II. Named after Gen. Do Cao Tri—the former III Corps commander killed during the previous year’s Cambodia invasion—this compound was located near the Binh Long hospital and was previously occupied by Sector Headquarters. When the U.S. units in An Loc withdrew in 1971, Colonel Nhut moved his headquarters to the more spacious and more comfortable U.S. compound in the south area of the city. Colonel Miller was satisfied with the new compound and agreed to stay at An Loc.18

  In early April, when intelligence reports indicated an impending enemy attack on the district town of Loc Ninh, Colonel Miller, described by Willbanks as an “advocate of the offensive,” strongly urged General Hung to seize the initiative by reinforcing Loc Ninh and to make a stand in that district town. Colonel Miller believed that if the 5th Division could mass their forces in Loc Ninh, the South Vietnamese would be in a position to defeat the NVA there and prevent a battle further south at An Loc.19

  General Hung refused to follow Miller’s recommendation and openly criticized U.S. advisors for “meddling in South Vietnamese affairs.” Miller later commented that General Hung was “almost paralyzed” and couldn’t make any decisions when he realized that the NVA were attacking Binh Long and not Tay Ninh province.20 In retrospect, I believe General Hung was correct in refusing his advisor’s suggestion for the following reasons: First, he didn’t have time to mass his troops in Loc Ninh (the war council in Saigon didn’t release the 1st Airborne Brigade and the 21st Division until the seventh of April, the day Loc Ninh fell); second, the lifeline would have been considerably extended and thus would be more difficult to secure and protect; third, even if Hung were able to bring some troops to Loc Ninh, the enemy could have massed far more superior forces to overrun the district town and then would have been home free to take the defenseless city of An Loc.

  Similarly, Gen. Ly Tong Ba, former 23rd Division commander, mentioned in his memoir that when he was preparing to defend Kontum, John Paul Vann, the outspoken and aggressive II Corps Senior Advisor, strongly urged him to mount a general offensive to retake some border outposts which had been overrun by NVA forces in early April. Ba refused, arguing that, instead of embarking on risky ventures into the deep and murderous forests and mountains of the Central Highlands, he preferred to adopt the well-known strategy of “dieu ho ly son” (or to “lure the tiger to get out of the mountain”) and to beat the enemy in one single battle. After he destroyed the NVA 320th and 10th Divisions in a well-planned bataille rangée in the city of Kontum, John Paul Vann acknowledged that Ba was right after all.21

  Liddell Hart, the British military strategist who developed the theory of indirect approach, wrote:

  In strategy the longest way round is often the shortest way there; a direct approach to the subject exhausts the attacker and hardens the resistance by compression, whereas an indirect approach loosens the defender’s hold by upsetting his balance.

  Generals Hung and Ba, by deciding to make a stand at An Loc and Kontum respectively, while conducting delaying actions and disrupting enemy advances with airpower, had probably unknowingly adopted a corollary of Liddell Hart’s strategy of indirect approach, in which the defender, facing a direct attack, can take necessary measures to exhaust the attacker and “harden the resistance by compression.”

  In war, the offensive is not the universal answer to all situations. According to Sun Tzu, before making a decision, a commander must carefully consider the three factors that directly impact the outcome of the battle: weather, terrain, and people. A comparative military analysis of Loc Ninh and An Loc would show that, the weather being the same for the two towns, the open terrain around An Loc with good fields of fire and observation was more favorable to the defense, and the civilian population in the Binh Long capital city was much more anti-Communist and pro-government than the Montagnards of Loc Ninh, who just wanted to be left alone. Prussian military theorist Carl Clausewitz also stressed the importance of the role of the people in war; in his view, the passion of the people is necessary to endure the sacrifices inherent in any important conflict. As will be seen later, the people of An Loc had endured tremendous sacrifices with great courage and determination.

  Meanwhile, at Loc Ninh, enemy artillery, mortar shells, and rockets continued to fall on the beleaguered garrison. Late on the evening of April 5, two T-54 tanks tried to roll through the barbed wire but were engaged by ARVN 106mm recoilless fire and also by AC-130 Spectre gunships. One tank was destroyed; the other was forced to withdraw. At nightfall, things quieted down a bit, but sporadic shelling continued throughout the night. All night long, Captain Smith, although wounded, continued to coordinate air support, directing Spectre gunships on suspected enemy positions around the compound.

  To reinforce the capital city of Binh Long—the true objective of the NVA’s 1972 offensive in MRIII—General Hung ordered the 7th Regiment back to An Loc—which was at that time defended only by the territorial forces of Binh Long province. The 7th Regiment, minus one battalion, supported by two 155mm howitzers and four 105mm howitzers, was operating around FSB1, located six kilometers west of An Loc. The 1st Battalion, supported by a combined 105mm and 155mm battery, was operating in Quan Loi airport east of An Loc. (Quan Loi also included the rear base compound of the 9th Regiment.) The 7th Regiment had just come under attack and could be overrun by NVA’s 9th Division units if left at FSB1.

  On April 6, as the situation in Loc Ninh was rapidly deteriorating, General Hung ordered Lt. Col. Nguyen Ba Thinh, commander of T-52 at Hung Tam, to send one battalion to Loc Ninh to reinforce the 9th Regiment. Since April 1, TF-52 had received increasing mortar and rocket fire. Colonel Thinh ordered the 2nd Battalion of his regiment to attack in the direction of Loc Ninh and to link up with the besieged garrison. However, the battalion ran into a strong ambush near the junction of RN13 and IPR17. Because all air support was directed at Loc Ninh, the regiment used its organic artillery to support the counter-attack. Unable to break through the ambush, the battalion had to withdraw to Hung Tam Base.

  Meanwhile, both fire bases at Hung Tam came under heavy artillery and rocket attacks. As the shelling continued the next day and NVA troops were on the verge of completing the encirclement of Hung Tam, General Hung, on the morning of April 7, finally ordered the immediate withdrawal of TF-52 to An Loc. General Hung also recalled the two companies from the 2nd Battalion, 9thRegiment, at Can Le Bridge south to the capital city. These two companies were also under heavy attack and were forced to destroy all their artillery. The South Vietnamese troops also destroyed the Can Le Bridge to delay the advance of NVA tanks toward An Loc.

  TF-52 left Hung Tam base around 8:00 A.M. The column was led by the 1/48 Battalion. The 2/52 Battalion continued to occupy Hung Tam base to block the NVA’s efforts to pursue and destroy the retreating units.

  As TF-52’s column was heading toward An Loc on IPR17, it ran into a large enemy ambush only a few hundred meters from Hung Tam base. The 1/48 Battalion repulsed the enemy attack near the junction of IPR17 and RN13. In the meantime, the 2/52 Battalion, which was protecting the rear of the column, was attacked by enemy forces east of Hung Tam; the battalion was able to rejoin the T-52 column after a furious close-quarters engagement.

  Three 105mm howitzers were captured by the NVA during the above ambush. General Hung ordered Colonel Thinh to destroy all equipment and to continue to move southward by foot. Because the embattled task force was
unable to disable all heavy equipment during the break out, General Hollingsworth later ordered an air strike to finish the job.22 Around 1:00 P.M., the column reached an area just north of Can Le Bridge on Route 13. By that time, both Colonel Thinh and his deputy commander, Lt. Col. Hoang Van Hien, were wounded. (Col. Hien later died from excessive bleeding while being evacuated by helicopter to An Loc.) All three U.S. advisors were also wounded, including Lt. Col. Walter Ginger, the senior task force advisor. Colonel Ginger refused to be evacuated and continued to provide effective close air support to the column. In the view of many ARVN officers, Colonel Ginger was credited for having saved TF-52 from possible annihilation.23 In the meantime, Colonel Thinh tried to push on but the column was subjected to heavy direct fire when it attempted to cross a large open area north of Can Le.

  Finally, during the morning of April 8, U.S. helicopters, supported by powerful close tactical air, succeeded in extracting the American advisors from the beleaguered TF-52. Colonel Thinh and the remainder of the beleaguered TF-52 continued to move south. Of the original effective force of about 1,000 men, only about half reached An Loc and prepared themselves for the upcoming attack.24

  While all this transpired, the situation in Loc Ninh continued to worsen. In the early hours of April 6, NVA infantry and tank formations began to launch probing attacks on ARVN positions. At one point, one enemy infantry company succeeded in getting inside the compound, but it was quickly dispersed by U.S. Air Force fighters and well-placed Spectre gunship fire. However, by noon, the situation in Loc Ninh became hopeless. What was left of the rapidly dwindling 9th Regiment was barely able to hold out. To prepare for new enemy assaults, the tireless and hard-working regiment surgeon sent back some of the less seriously wounded soldiers to their foxholes on the regiment perimeter of defense. By that time, however, the survivors of the two companies attached to TF 1-5 and the survivors of the 74th Border Ranger Battalion had made it into the compound of the 9th Regiment.

  During the night, enemy artillery and rocket fire hit the regiment hospital bunker, killing a large number of wounded. The artillery compound, including the ammunition depot, was also hit: some gunmen were killed or wounded, a few guns were damaged, and the ammunition in storage was destroyed. An NVA unit also launched a ground attack across the airfield. The defenders repulsed the attack but, in the process, expended their last 106mm recoilless rifle ammunition.

  At 7:00 A.M. on April 7, the NVA launched another assault, supported by artillery, recoilless rifles, rockets, and tanks. One tank was destroyed when it reached the barbed wire surrounding the perimeter. The situation reached a critical point and the defense began to crumble in certain sectors.

  Willbanks, based on Captain Smith’s account, reported that at about 8:00 A.M., Colonel Vinh, the 9th Regiment commander, and his bodyguards rushed through the compound gate to surrender to the enemy, while inside the compound, the regiment executive officer lowered the South Vietnamese flag and hoisted a white T-shirt on the flagpole as a symbol of surrender. Smith reportedly subdued the executive officer and ran the national flag up the flagpole. He also exhorted several soldiers who were ready to surrender to go back to their defensive positions.25

  The battle raged until 9:30 A.M., when another wave of attack caused what was left of the 9th Regiment to disintegrate. However, the regiment command bunker and a few adjoining bunkers still held out, thanks to continuous AC-130 gunship and other tactical air support.

  In the afternoon, NVA soldiers began to attack the command bunker by throwing satchel charges in the door. According to Captain Smith, Lieutenant Colonel Schott, who had sustained a severe head injury in earlier combat, decided to commit suicide with his .45 pistol to avoid being a burden to the other members of the regiment advisory team.26 (By that time, Colonel Schott, Captain Smith, and Sergeant Howard B. Lull were in the command bunker, while Maj. Albert E. Carlson, Sgt. Kenneth Wallingford, and a freelance French photographer named Yves Michel Dumond, were holed up in another bunker.)

  It should be noted here that, due to the lack of ARVN’s records relative to the battle of Loc Ninh, most of the description of this battle comes from the two books, America’s Last Vietnam Battle and The Battle of An Loc. These books in turn relied mainly on Captain Smith’s account. 27 In fact, since both Colonel Schott and Sergeant Lull were reported “Killed in Action. Bodies Not Recovered,” Captain Smith was the only American who survived to tell the story. Further, because Smith was located at the command center and had radio contact with the division headquarters, the Forward Air Controllers (FACs), U.S. pilots, as well as ground units, including the district headquarters, he was practically the only source available to American historians and authors who want to study or write about the last—and chaotic—hours of the battle of Loc Ninh. It should also be noted that, according to Willbanks, Captain Smith’s account was not free of controversy and that “Smith and the army are at odds about what happened that day in the bunker.”28

  From the South Vietnamese side, fortunately the key player in this drama, Colonel Vinh, the former 9th Regiment commander, also survived. As a young man, in the early 1950s, Vinh, like many of his contemporaries, had joined the Viet Minh in the maquis to fight against the French. Disillusioned with the Viet Minh’s policy of hatred and class warfare, Vinh decided to enroll at the Dalat Military Academy to serve in the newly created National Army. He rose through the ranks and commanded a regiment of the 18th Division before assuming the command of the 9th Regiment. However, in his memoir titled Cau Chuyen Suy Tu Cua Mot Cuu Tu Nhan Chanh Tri 29(Reflections of a Former Political Prisoner), Colonel Vinh had only this to say regarding Loc Ninh: “With the intention to seize the capital city of Binh Long province to use it as the seat for the National Front for the Liberation of South Viet Nam to improve its standing in the four-party Paris Peace Talks . . . The communist troops were able only to overrun the district town of Loc Ninh after three days of attack supported by tanks, and after the 9th Infantry Regiment Task Force had disintegrated. After one day of rest and regrouping, they rushed their grand army toward the capital city of Binh Long.”30

  In a telephone interview in May 2006,31Colonel Vinh denied Captain Smith’s allegation that he surrendered to the enemy and that his executive officer had hoisted a white flag on the regiment compound flagpole on April 7. Vinh said he was taken prisoner when he tried to escape after his compound was overrun by NVA troops.

  In a subsequent letter to this author, Colonel Vinh reported that during the week prior to the attack on Loc Ninh, the 1st Battalion captured an NVA artillery captain, who was surveying artillery positions in preparation for the incoming attack. The NVA officer had lunch with Colonel Vinh and the U.S. senior advisor; he was then sent to TF 1-5 for further interrogation. Patrols from 9th Regiment also detected new traces of tracked vehicles on forest trails leading toward Viet Nam; they even reported hearing the roaring noises of tank engines. Underwater bridges built with logs were also discovered in certain upper stream locations on the Song Be River. According to Colonel Vinh, all this information had been promptly reported to the division headquarters, but 5th Division intelligence still didn’t believe that the enemy had tanks. This seems to confirm Nhut’s statement that upon hearing the Loc Ninh district chief’s report of the possible presence of enemy tanks around Loc Ninh, he contacted General Hung and was told there was no evidence of that and that some of TF 1-5’s tanks instead may have been captured by the enemy at Loc Tan.32(In his report The 1972 Easter Offensive, Gen. Ngo Quang Truong disclosed that General Minh, III Corps commander, also didn’t know the enemy had tanks despite the fact that intelligence reports in October 1971 indicated the presence of enemy tanks in Kratie, Dambe, and Chup in Cambodia and that in December 1971, the Cambodian Army Joint General Staff confirmed the presence of thirty enemy tanks in Base Area 363, north of Tay Ninh.)33

  Vinh noted in his letter that four M-113s from TF 1-5 made it to Loc Ninh on April 6, but instead of reinforcing the defense of the beleaguered garr
ison, they continued to move south toward An Loc and it was his understanding that only one APC succeeded in reaching its final destination. In fact, one M-113 armored personnel carrier did reach An Loc on April 7. And if Vinh’s statement was true, then the other three APCs must have been destroyed or captured by units from the NVA’s 9th Division around Can Le Bridge, north of the city.

  Colonel Vinh also reported in his letter that on April 7, the NVA unleashed a very heavy and sustained artillery barrage on his compound. Afterward, they sent four teams of T-54 tanks—with two tanks in each team—to mount a direct assault on the regimental task force headquarters. First, his soldiers thought that these tanks belonged to the TF 1-5 mechanized task force, but the tanks kept attacking, causing the defensive positions and bunkers to collapse. Colonel Vinh said he was captured by NVA troops when his command bunker was overrun. He was taken to NVA campaign headquarters in the district of Mimmot in Cambodia. The headquarters consisted of a number of underground fortified bunkers hidden inside a rubber plantation. There Vinh met Lieutenant Colonel Duong, the TF 1-5 commander. They were subsequently blindfolded and transported to a prisoner camp deep inside Cambodia on a Chinese jeep.