Part 16 (1/2)
”Didn't they get a copy of my message last week?” Westmoreland interrupted. He was referring to his message of 22 January to the Army Chief of Staff in the Pentagon stating he expected a multibattalion attack on Hue before or during Tet.
”Apparently not, I'm sorry to say,” the brigadier said. ”It, ah, went to the Headquarters of the Third Marine Division, but, ah, neither they nor our headquarters pa.s.sed it on to the men in the MACV compound.”
”What's the latest situation there now?”
”Sir, elements of the First Marines from Phu Bai have reached the compound to a.s.sist the men.”
:'a.s.sist,” Westmoreland said. ”Rescue is more like it.”
'Yes, sir,” the brigadier said.
The Marines had taken heavy losses getting to the MACV compound and were really p.i.s.sed when at first the Army colonel in command of the compound would not share ammo and weapons. in fact they had found him a pompous staff type who had been there only one week and had no idea of what to do. Fortunately his junior officers had disregarded his commands to h.o.a.rd ammunition and stay in the compound. They had consolidated fighting positions within the compound and charged out with the Marines to rescue buddies that were pinned down. They were Army fighting men and no paper-shuffling REMF (Rear-Echelon Mother f.u.c.ker) a.s.s-kisser was going to keep them from doing what was right and proper.
The brigadier continued. ”Then the Marines were ordered by their headquarters to a.s.sault the Citadel. In concert with Vietnamese paratroopers and armored units, they crossed the Perfume River and were repulsed.” The brigadier spoke in a monotone, his voice flat.
”What is it you're not telling me, Phil?” Westmoreland asked.
The brigadier swallowed, then set his jaw. ”Sir, the Marines have a s.h.i.+t sandwich up there. Third MAF at Da Nang has ordered them across the Perfume River and into the old city without any arty prep, aerial recce, or intelligence of any sort. They don't know the enemy strength or disposition. I think Third MAF believes Hue is a palm-frond-and-straw hut kind of village. In reality it's steel and concrete and narrow pa.s.sageways. A terrible place for street fighting.
Further, unofficial reports have it that the ARVN armored troops are not helpful. In fact they are not engaging when ordered.”
”Get somebody up there to Da Nang and straighten this mess out. Better yet, I'll go. Check my schedule. I have a lot of people up there I want to talk to.” COMUSMACV looked grim. ”Right now I have some tough news. All the corps areas are under operational control of the South Vietnamese. The entire Eye Corps area of operations is under control of Lieutenant General Hoang Xuan Lam in Da Nang. Here is the really tough part. He has ordered us not to use artillery, bombs, or napalm in Hue.
For the moment, anyhow, I agree. I don't want the old city destroyed.
No air strikes into the Citadel, no artillery into the Citadel, no offsh.o.r.e naval bombardment. Make sure all responsible commands understand that.”
The liaison officer from the Marine Corps started to say something and decided against it. Ever since a newsman made up the quote (some said it was some guy named Dan Rather) from a Marine about a village, ”We had to destroy it to save it,” the Marines had been very touchy. Besides, he mused, Marines could fight house-to-house. Marines are Tough and like to do things The Hard Way.
The USAF segment kept their mouths shut. They had been avoiding city strikes, and when they had to, they used Soft munitions. But if ordered to do so they could level Hue or any other city with conventional bombs.
Few civilians knew it, but the American military had stopped city bombing in World War Two. The Allies had bombed Dresden and Hamburg in retaliation for Hitler's bombing of London and other cities. In neither case had the tactic worked. They were not city-bombing in Vietnam. Not Hanoi, not anyplace.
”Now, what about the American civilians in the city?” Westmoreland asked.
”Sir, the Marines rescued several from the CORDS building south of the river. That's all they could find. Then they ran across twenty nuns and forty children and brought them into the MACV compound also. Early this morning we received a message through the Agency's net that several civilians were trapped in a villa north of the river in the old city.”
The brigadier looked slightly uncomfortable.
”Well, the Marines can't make that run from where they are,”
Westmoreland said. ”Who can we send in? Who is available?”
”Ah, sir, just a few hours ago I took the liberty of already sending a team in.”
”You look strange, Phil. What's going on?”
”Sir, I sent Wolf Lochert. He, ah, was closest.”
Westmoreland sighed. He and his G-2 brigadier, Phil Davis, had just the day before pondered over a cla.s.sified backchannel from the Secretary of the Army concerning LTC Wolfgang X. Lochert. He was in trouble, big trouble.
He nodded to the brigadier.
”Continue,” he said.
The brigadier flipped to a new chart. ”Sir, in the Saigon area the Viet Cong attacks on the American Emba.s.sy, the Presidential Palace, the Vietnamese Naval Headquarters, Radio Saigon, and National Police Stations have all been repulsed. There is, however, heavy fighting in the Cholon and Phu Tho area.” He checked his notes. ”The final Emba.s.sy report states that nineteen guerrillas of the C-10 Battalion of the South Vietnam People's Liberation Army, the Viet Cong, had attacked the U.S. Emba.s.sy complex on Thong Nhut Street in Saigon by blowing a hole in the surrounding wall at 0245 hours LOCAL, 31 January. After a sixhour battle the nineteen attackers had been killed.” He put up another chart.
”Here at Tan Son Nhut the men of the 377th Security Police Squadron did the best they could.” He tilted his head in appreciation to Commander, 7th Air Force. ”They had their bunkers manned. They had rigged up two M-54C armored vehicles, with four .50-caliber machine guns each, to use as a mobile reaction force. Still, they took some heavy hits. Just before the attack a number of Vietnamese from the ARVN 2nd Service Battalion a.s.signed to base defense had abandoned their posts.” He used a long pointer to tap a chart. ”All in all, the VC and NVA threw four infantry battalions and one sapper battalion at us yesterday morning.
The main a.s.sault was against the southwest perimeter between Gate 51 and Bunker 51, manned by USAF Security Policemen. The sappers approached the perimeter fence along National Highway I in a Lambretta taxi-a taxi, for G.o.d's sake.” The brigadier was losing his briefer's cool. He started telling of the attack as if it were a story to friends at the bar and not in the formal briefing room of a four-star general. General Westmoreland leaned forward, entranced.
The brigadier continued.
”The VC leaped out of the taxi and blasted through the fence with a bangalore torpedo. The Air Force men in the bunker attacked, but there were too many VC. The last radio transmission from the SPs came an hour later. The Viet Cong had overrun the bunker. By noon USAF Security Policemen and members of the 25th Division from Chu Chi had closed the hole in the fence and taken back the bunker.”
He inhaled deeply. ”The attack had been a complete failure for the VC and NVA. Although by last count we lost four SPs killed, and nineteen Army troopers dead, we counted over nine hundred VC bodies. We captured nine of the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. That's how we got their order-of-battle information.
We were lucky. Only thirteen airplanes on the base were damaged, and lightly at that.”
The brigadier stopped. He realized where he was and looked painfully fl.u.s.tered. ”Ah, sir-” he began.
General Westmoreland cut him off with a wave of the hand. ”You tell a great story, Phil. Maybe you should do it more often.” He chuckled.
”Sometimes your briefings are a bit dry.”
”Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” The brigadier was clearly relieved. He glanced at his notes and continued.
”President Thieu has declared martial law and press censors.h.i.+p throughout all of South Vietnam, and a twenty-four hour curfew in Saigon. Late yesterday the Viet Cong consolidated positions in the Cholon area, the An Quang PaG.o.da, and near the U.S. PX. VC members slipped through portions of the Fifth and Sixth districts of Saigon, distributing propaganda leaflets urging civilians to join them and rise up against the government. We have reports of this in other communities as well. So far it doesn't seem to have worked.
There is no popular uprising taking place.”
”Is the TV coverage still the same?” Westmoreland asked.
”Yes, sir. They do not have the whole picture. And of course they slant it their way. Your conference yesterday, and pictures at the Emba.s.sy, did not come out well.”
After a six-hour battle, the VC who had blasted through the wall surrounding the American Emba.s.sy in Saigon had been killed. Westmoreland had toured the Emba.s.sy and the compound shortly after the battle, p.r.o.nounced it secure, and had gone on to say that by coming out in the open as they had during the Tet offensive, the VC were exposing themselves to tremendous casualties and inviting defeat. As luck and American newsmen serendipity would have it, the newsies and their cameramen lived in the plush, tree-lined area close to the Emba.s.sy, so that during and after the attack they swarmed over the grounds.
”They were repeating Westmoreland's words while showing scenes of the fighting and the destruction-but they did not always have their facts straight.” The brigadier flipped over another chart. ”In summary, the attacks in the SaigonCholon-Tan Son Nhut area are under control. In Saigon the twelve-man team attacking the Viet Navy HQ was wiped out, the battalion sent to raid the Saigon jail got lost and wound up being decimated in a cemetery. The VC do, however, have full control at the moment of the Phu Tho racetrack outside of Cholon. Meanwhile, here within the confines of Tan Son Nhut, while we have over three hundred enemy dead, we lost nearly twenty Military Policemen defending BOQ Three, which houses many of our senior officers.”
”What is surprising,” Westmoreland said, ”is that so few American officers' quarters were struck. Either Giap didn't think of it or he was afraid it would inflame public opinion.”
He turned to Commander, 7th Air Force. ”You did well in that respect.”
He was referring to the fact that Commander, 7th Air Force, would not allow his men to live off the air base. As a result, when the attack came they were not cut off from their place of duty by the street fighting. As it was, most senior Army officers were very fortunate.
They lived by twos and threes in villas throughout Saigon that were not attacked by Viet Cong squads. Their protection varied from eight-man American MP squads to Vietnamese watchmen, who disappeared the night of the attack. Some were protected by Nung guards, who would fight to the death. VC units never tried to kill or capture these officers, which would have nearly paralyzed MACV's response to the offensive.
Westmoreland thanked the brigadier and signaled for Major General Milton Berzin to begin. Westy appreciated what air power could do ever since it had broken the siege of two hard-core NVA battalions on the Marines at Con Thien near the DMZ in October 1967. Even before they had started the shrill defeatist headlines with Khe Sanh, the newsies had been calling Con Thien another Dien Bien Phu.
True, Con Thien was a dismal place. But under a concept called SLAM, put together by USAF General Spike Momyer, the NVA had suffered defeat, with over 2,000 dead.