Hell in An Loc Read online

  In the evening of April 7, NVA units from the 9th Division overran the 1st Battalion of ARVN’s 7th Regiment defending Quan Loi airstrip east of An Loc. The defenders were ordered to destroy all their equipment—including the artillery howitzers—and withdraw to the city. The battalion commander was killed during the enemy attack; only two companies made it to An Loc.13 With the interdiction of Route 13 by elements of the NVA’s 7th Division and the loss of Quan Loi airstrip, An Loc was effectively cut off from the outside world. By taking Quan Loi, the enemy also captured a great number of 2.75mm rockets left by the 1st U.S. Cavalry Division. These rockets were very effective against enemy tanks and were the main weapon of the Aerial Rocket Artillery batteries of the 1st Cavalry Division. The NVA fired these captured rockets at the garrison of An Loc from Doi Gio Hill.14

  In the morning of April 8, Colonel Biet, 3rd Ranger Group commander, directed the 36th Ranger Battalion to execute a reconnaissance in force in the direction of Quan Loi. At a location about one kilometer east of An Loc, the rangers saw many people racing toward them from Quan Loi. They were followed by NVA units that kept shooting at them. Many were killed before reaching the 36th Ranger line. Major Lac, the battalion commander, requested the artillery batteries at An Loc to fire smoke ammunition between the fleeing population and the pursuing NVA troops. Then, as the enemy took cover on both sides of the road, he concentrated artillery fire on them. The enemy withdrew without engaging the rangers.15

  Although the presence of the units of the 9th NVA Division around An Loc had been reported on April 5 and the shelling on the capital city had begun on that date, except for the attack on Quan Loi airport, there were no other attempts to launch ground assaults for several more days. Captured prisoners later reported that the enemy failed to mount an attack on An Loc immediately after the fall of Loc Ninh because logistical preparations were not keeping pace with the planned offensive. According to Gen. Ngo Quang Truong, the enemy’s plan called for harassing and attacking ARVN’s outposts along the Cambodian border during the first week of the offensive and—coincidental with these diversionary actions—moving supplies to the frontline in preparation for the attack on An Loc. However, the premature evacuation of the border outposts by ARVN III Corps had upset the enemy’s plan and logistical preparations; as a consequence, the 9th NVA Division had to postpone the attack after it had occupied its forward positions.16

  In any event, the lull after the fall of Loc Ninh allowed the South Vietnamese to quickly reinforce the garrison with—successively—the 3rd Ranger Group, the 7th Regiment (-), and the 8th Regiment. By April 8, the remnants of TF-52 also began to arrive at An Loc. It had lost about one-half of its effective force during the withdrawal.17 All heavy equipment and artillery had been destroyed or abandoned. General Hung assigned to TF-52 the mission of defending the small central area of the city, where the 51st Artillery Battalion and one 155mm artillery battery were located.

  Amidst the chaos following the collapse of Loc Ninh, Col. Truong Huu Duc, commanding the 5th Armored Squadron—which was attached to the 5th Division—was killed by enemy anti-aircraft fire while on an aerial reconnaissance mission north of Chon Thanh. The news of the death of Colonel Duc, a classmate of Colonel Nhut at the Vietnamese Military Academy, came at a time of growing concerns about the grim tactical developments in Binh Long province. When his remains were brought to Lai Khe, Vietnamese reporters misidentified him as Colonel Nhut (both were tall and grew a mustache) and the announcement of Nhut’s death on Saigon newspapers the following day caused a lot of commotion for Nhut’s family and friends.18

  In the early morning of April 9, the enemy launched small ground probes on the western, eastern, and northern sectors of An Loc, obviously with the intention of identifying the perimeter of defense. These contacts lasted about four hours. ARVN forces captured four prisoners who belonged to Regiments 95C, 271st, and 272nd of the 9th Division. The next day, the enemy attacked again at 5:30 A.M. but broke off after about two hours of contact.19

  While the An Loc garrison was bracing for an imminent enemy tank-supported assault, the defenders were encouraged by good news from Quang Tri. On April 9, the 6th Marine Battalion, using only M-72 weapons, had destroyed a dozen NVA tanks around Quang Tri city. This victory, which had been largely broadcast on the national radio, boosted the confidence of the defenders in the effectiveness of the M-72 against enemy tanks. ARVN unit commanders in An Loc also took advantage of this good news to conduct on-the-spot training in the use of this powerful weapon.

  On April 10, General Minh asked Col. Mach Van Truong, 8th Regiment commander, to report to him at III Corps Headquarters at Bien Hoa immediately. General Minh told Truong he believed An Loc would be attacked in the next few days and that General Hung could not defend the city with only the 7th Regiment, the 3rd Ranger Group, and the depleted TF-52. As the JGS general reserve units had not arrived, he (General Minh) decided to commit the 8th Regiment, which would be heliborne into An Loc the following day. “The situation is very difficult and grave, try your best to bring your troops to An Loc safely. Hung is waiting for you,” Minh said.20

  In the morning of April 11, while the 8th Regiment was waiting to be picked up at Dau Tieng airstrip, Lieutenant Colonel Abramawith, the senior regiment advisor, came to tell Colonel Truong that the U.S. advisory team had received orders not to go to An Loc, and that they would return to the U.S. compound at Lai Khe.21

  As Colonel Truong’s C&C helicopter and the first lift (10 helicopters transporting 100 men) were approaching An Loc, enemy artillery was firing from all directions, interdicting the airstrip, the soccer field, and the helipads within the city. Fortunately, Truong saw a small clearing in the middle of the forest about three kilometers south of An Loc; he decided to land his troops in the clearing that had not been targeted by enemy artillery. Truong and his light headquarters landed with the first lift. During the day, two battalions landed safely. The last battalion and 400 convicted deserters, also known as lao cong dao binh (or LCDB)—who were assigned to the 5th Division—were brought in safely the next morning. (The LCDBs, army deserters, were assigned heavy manual labor/construction work on the frontline. Contrary to the enemy deserters who rallied to the South Vietnamese government, the ARVN’s LCDBs didn’t join the enemy ranks; most of them returned to their hometowns to reenlist in the local territorial forces, usually under different names.)

  When Truong arrived at the 5th Division headquarters, General Hung asked him about the strength of his regiment. Truong reported that, because the 9th Regiment had been overrun in Loc Ninh and the 7th Regiment was under constant enemy attack, all division replacements had been channeled to his regiment, and as a consequence, each of his battalions had an effective strength of more than 600 men. Truong also informed General Hung that he had all his recoilless rifles, but he didn’t have the rockets; he disclosed, however, that he had brought along the 2,000 or so M-72s that he had discovered at the old U.S. base of Dau Tieng. General Hung was elated; he asked Colonel Vy, his deputy, to tell all units in the garrison to contact the 8th Regiment if they had a need for these God-sent antitank weapons.

  General Hung then took Truong to the division operation room. Using a grease pencil, Hung drew new boundaries in the defense plan and told his deputy: “The 8th Regiment is still fresh, well equipped and up to strength; thus, it will be assigned the northern sector. The 7th Regiment will take care of the western sector. The 3rdRanger Group will hold the east and Binh Long Sector will defend the south.”22

  While waiting for the operation order, Truong suggested to Colonel Vy to lay antitank mines on Route 13 because the latter obviously constituted the main avenue of approach for NVA tanks. Vy said he had discussed this matter with Colonel Nhut, but Nhut disagreed, arguing that it would hamper the traffic of the vehicles of surrounding rubber plantations.

  Colonel Vy also expressed his concern about the balance of forces. The enemy had many tanks while the defenders had none. With regard to artillery, the 9th Re
giment and the 52nd Regiment had lost all their artillery pieces at Loc Ninh and Hung Tam base. The 8th Regiment had been unable to bring in its own artillery. As a consequence, the only artillery units available for the defense of An Loc were the 51st Artillery Battalion—which normally provided direct support to the 7th Regiment—and one 155mm artillery battery. These artillery units had been subjected to constant enemy artillery bombardments the last few days and had suffered heavy damage. The Division was now using them in general support for the garrison with priority for those units that were in heavy contact with the enemy.

  Following the new defense plan, Colonel Truong deployed two battalions on the northern perimeter. During the night, the troops dug their foxholes and bunkers and erected overheads to protect against enemy artillery. Their work was hampered by the thick layers of solid underground rocks that were characteristic of this area.

  The next morning, Colonel Truong directed the newly arrived third battalion to occupy the high-rise buildings along Route 13. This battalion provided the defense in depth and also constituted the regiment reserve. Per 5th Division’s request, the 8th Reconnaissance Company established an outpost on Dong Long Hill that was occupied by a ranger company from the 31st Ranger Battalion.

  On April 11, while the 8th Regiment was landing south of An Loc, NVA forces supported by tanks attacked the 36th Ranger Battalion’s position one kilometer east of the city from the north, east, and west. At one point, the rangers had to direct artillery fire only fifty meters in front of their frontline, where enemy assaults were pinned down by the rangers’ machineguns. Lt. Dong Kim Quang, 4th Company commander, reported seeing enemy bodies jettisoned into the air under the impact of artillery fire. Then, he saw about ten enemy tanks racing toward his company from the east. He directed his men to fire their M-72 rocket launchers at the approaching tanks. One T-54 tank was destroyed and the rest of the T-54 tank column turned around and disappeared.23

  Around noon, April 12, NVA artillery destroyed a storage facility near the airstrip. This storage and the adjacent supply depots were established by III Corps to support previous border operations. Concerned about the safety of this logistical complex, General Hung ordered all units in the garrison to get the maximum amount of ammunition from the depots so they would be able to fight many days without being resupplied.

  In the meantime, the escapees from Loc Ninh were streaming back toward An Loc. During the first few days after its arrival in An Loc, the 31st Ranger Battalion, which was at that time defending the northern sector of the city, had received several soldiers from the 9th Regiment who had fought their way back into friendly lines after the collapse of the district town of Loc Ninh. The company, which was securing the portion of Route 13 from An Loc to Can Le Bridge, screened them very carefully before letting them through. On April 11, Phuoc’s company received two important escapees: Maj. Nguyen Van Thinh, Loc Ninh district chief, and Maj. Thomas Davidson, along with Davidson’s interpreter. The three men arrived at the same time. The rangers watched them carefully, kept them at a safe distance, and ordered them to give their name, rank, and parent unit. The rangers later recounted that the three men were so terrified that they would be shot by friendly troops when they were so close to freedom that they shouted their names, ranks, and parent units at the top of their lungs. The escapees were so happy at having reached friendly lines that they cried and effusively hugged Lieutenant Phuoc, the company commander.24 Colonel Nhut sent a jeep to pick them up and personally thanked Phuoc for having taken care of the district chief and Major Davidson. Nhut was not only happy to know that his district chief was alive, but he was eager to debrief him on the NVA forces attacking Loc Ninh and, more importantly, on the tank formations involved in that attack.

  The first few days after the fall of Loc Ninh, a unit of the 5th Medical Battalion at Dong Long had received about 200 wounded soldiers from the above district and from other units that were attacked by NVA forces around Loc Ninh. The most seriously wounded were evacuated to Lai Khe or Saigon.

  A few days after the rangers arrived at An Loc, Capt. Nguyen Quoc Khue, Assistant S-3, climbed to the top of the 3rd Ranger Group Operation Center to observe the situation in the surrounding area when he heard the city’s loudspeakers appealing to both sides to cease all fire to let the civilians leave the area. Then a large number of people, led by Catholic priests and Buddhist monks, appeared to the east of the Ranger Group headquarters. The column of civilians, waving white flags, walked toward Route 13 to the south. As they moved past the southern sector held by the provincial forces, Khue heard heavy artillery explosions in that direction.

  “The civilians in the column, hit by one heavy artillery round after another, screamed in terror,” Khue later recalled, “and the sounds of crying children echoed all the way to the place where I was standing . . . This time the enemy seemed to have forward observers adjusting fire, because the shells all landed right in the middle of the column of civilians, sending bodies flying in all directions. Arms and legs could be seen hanging from the trees alongside the road. Because this was an open area bordering the road leading toward the city, there was no cover the civilians could use to escape the shelling, and a number of them were forced to seek shelter behind the trunks of large trees. After the enemy stopped their artillery barrage, the civilians, and even the priests and the Buddhist monks, dispersed and returned to their homes and their former places of refuge, because the enemy shelling clearly demonstrated the enemy’s vicious intentions toward them.”25

  The above-described carnage was not an isolated incident. Indeed, it had become a pattern that whenever the NVA saw people fleeing a town under siege, they brought upon them all their firepower to kill these crowds of “puppet civilians.” The massacre of innocent refugees would be repeated by the carnage in MRI in May 1972, where thousands of refugees perished under artillery and missile concentrations along the section of Route Nationale 1 (RN1) south of Quang Tri, which was subsequently littered with charred corpses and burned vehicles. That section of RN1 was later known as “The Freeway of Horror.”

  Not only were the NVA targeting fleeing refugees, but they also sought to destroy medical centers to create additional logistical burdens for a city under siege. On May 8, for example, an enemy artillery shell hit the An Loc hospital, killing and injuring hundreds of people.

  After the war, Khue was sent to re-education in North Viet Nam. One day, during a self-critique session, he mentioned the shelling of the civilians in An Loc to the Communist officials in the camp. The political cadre explained, “The revolution shelled this civilian crowd because this was a crowd of puppet civilians, filled with reactionaries and counter-revolutionaries. We could not exempt them, and we had to teach them a lesson.”26

  As the shelling increased in intensity, a large number of civilians fled their homes to seek refuge inside the troop bunkers and fortifications because the latter were larger and better built. Some ARVN units also occupied public buildings, which all had large concrete bunkers to protect government employees against occasional enemy mortar fire, even during periods of relative calm. The civilians cooked and ate with the soldiers, and the soldiers, in return, tended the civilians’ wounds and provided them with medicines.

  In the middle of this tense situation, the 3rd Ranger Group advisory team suddenly left. One morning, Captain Khue, the Ranger Group assistant S-3, noticed that the U.S. advisors were packing their belongings as if they were about to move out. He asked an American sergeant about it and was told that the team had received orders to be prepared to be picked up by a helicopter. Khue reported this to Colonel Biet, who in turn asked the group senior advisor. Biet received the same answer without further explanation. A few minutes later a helicopter flew in from the east at tree-top level above Quan Loi plantation. It turned toward the Ranger Group headquarters and landed on a nearby helicopter pad. The entire advisory team rushed toward the helicopter and jumped in; the helicopter took off and disappeared in the east toward Quan Loi. />
  The Ranger Group staff was shocked and worried that the American advisors had abandoned them to their fate and that it would be more difficult in the future to request air support in case of emergencies. Colonel Biet grabbed a telephone and called the 5th Division headquarters to inquire about the precipitate departure of his advisors, but the telephone was dead because the lines had been cut in numerous places by artillery fire. Finally, after communication had been restored, the 5th Division informed Colonel Biet in the evening that it had checked with III Corps Headquarters and was told the Ranger advisory team had completed their tour of duty and therefore had to leave. The division also informed Biet that a new team was scheduled to arrive the next day.

  Sure enough, at dawn the next morning, a helicopter suddenly appeared from the direction of Quan Loi and landed on the Ranger helipad. Four American advisors leaped out and ran toward the Ranger Group Operation Center while the helicopter immediately took off and disappeared in the southeast. The new team, consisting of Lt. Col. Richard J. McManus, a first lieutenant, and two NCOs carrying radios, was warmly welcome by Colonel Biet. The new senior advisor to the 3rd Ranger Group apologized for the sudden rotation of the Ranger advisory team. He said the change was not announced in order to preserve secrecy. He also informed Colonel Biet that three NVA divisions were converging toward An Loc, but he assured Biet that the Americans would support the garrison with all strategic and tactical air resources available to defeat the enemy offensive. Everyone in the Ranger Group command post breathed a sigh of relief.