Losing Vietnam (11 page)

As in the past, however, the communists continued to rely on shellings, road mining, and other techniques that did not require precision targeting to eliminate low-level government officials and PSDF troops in communist-accessible areas. Hamlet and village officials were being killed, abducted, and wounded in much larger numbers since the cease-fire. More fell victim during September 1973 than in any other month.

Urban terrorism had become almost nonexistent in 1973. According to the Pacification Statistical Analysis System, the number of urban respondents nationwide who had observed no terrorism in their own subwards or precincts rose from 27 percent in January to almost 100 percent in September.

One explanation for the decline in terrorism was implicit in the analysis system responses about the VCI. Of the September 1973 urban respondents, 98 percent rated the VCI ineffective or nonexistent. In rural areas, nearly 50 percent of the respondents offered the same assessment (compared with only 23 percent in January 1973). In September, only 4 percent of the total respondents believed that the VCI had become more effective during the previous year, whereas 16 percent had given this response in January.

The falloff of terrorism reflects on the performance of three elements of the VCI in particular: the armed reconnaissance teams, which conducted assassinations for the security sections of province and district party committees; the armed propaganda units of the propaganda sections; and the sapper (sabotage) units under the control of the military affairs committee or military headquarters of each party echelon. These specialized agencies were largely responsible for the enemy's terrorist campaigns.

The number of civilian casualties reported by the military increased each year after the cease-fire, and the number of incidents primarily against civilians also remained high in 1975. In fact, the 1975 casualty rate exceeded those of all other years. In all, since the cease-fire there were 44,296 reported civilian casualties—and the actual number was undoubtedly much higher.

When incidents occurred in the field, the friendly element involved in the incident filed a report, often hourly, with its operation center, which forwarded the report to the JGS (see
appendix A
, section 2). The JGS formatted the information contained in these field reports in a “Daily Results of Ceasefire Violations” form and transmitted it daily to USSAG, where our staff analyzed the data received and presented it weekly in a myriad of useful statistics. USSAG reported weekly summaries of twelve parameters relating to combat activities in South Vietnam: friendly-initiated contacts; enemy-initiated contacts; the ratio of friendly-initiated contacts to total contacts; total incidents; friendly killed; enemy killed; the ratio of enemy killed to friendly killed; friendly killed per enemy-initiated contact; number of attacks by fire; enemy rounds; rounds per attack by fire; and occurrences of terrorism, sabotage, and political events. USSAG utilized the combat data to compute the weekly intensity of combat for all regions. (See
table 15
.)

In addition to the detailed daily reports, the JGS compiled a “Summary of RVN Activity,”
⁴⁴
which was immediately transmitted to the DAO, where Col. William LeGro, its operations and plans division chief, transmitted it to me at Headquarters USSAG. Additionally, a JGS compilation of major and minor incidents was also forwarded daily to Headquarters USSAG.
⁴⁵
These two summary reports enabled USSAG to focus on the major conflicts on a daily basis. Consequently, we were privy in near real time to all the combat activities in South Vietnam.

In May 1974, after the JGS attempted to determine the causes that made the territorial units in sixteen sectors of MR-4 downgrade in operational effectiveness, the JGS instructed IV Corps to initiate a plan
to improve and upgrade the territorial forces. The plan was to enhance the combat effectiveness of territorial units, make the outpost system effective, and develop leadership, the spirit of anticommunism, and the capabilities of the cadre and troops.

A most remarkable aspect of the IV Corps implementation had to do with the redeployment of forces. To withstand the incessant enemy attacks, the army had to consolidate its positions. Between June and September, MR-4 abandoned 752 static positions out of 3,335 organic positions. Those abandoned included two fire bases, seven bases of operations, forty company-level outposts, 527 platoon-level outposts, and 176 watchtowers. This suggests the dispersion of troops necessary to ensure territorial integrity. The RVNAF's hanging on to so many minor positions had allowed the enemy to mass troops, ensuring its local troop and fire superiority in attacks.

An important aspect of JGS planning was upgrading regional force units into mobile units. The regional force battalions and the territorial artillery battalions were to be consolidated into group commands, providing a mobile combat capability. The JGS placed these group commands under the direct control of the corps commanders and they were no longer restricted to deployment within provincial boundaries. By 30 September 1974, MR-4 had seventy-eight mobile regional force battalions and fifty-two separate companies, compared with seventy-two battalions and twenty-nine companies previously.

One may ask why the joint staff was so concerned with the performance of the territorials in MR-4. Most observers focused on MR-1, where the communists continually maintained pressure, which they could do easily because of their internal lines and huge logistical bases in North Vietnam, and on MR-3, where, from their sanctuaries in Cambodia and large border base camps, the North Vietnamese also kept moderate pressure on the approaches to Saigon. For those reasons the JGS positioned five divisions of 87,000 ARVN/Marines in MR-1 and 55,000 regulars in MR-3—over two-thirds of the regular forces. But the war for South Vietnam was being fought daily in the delta, with its population of 7 million and preponderance of arable land. The communists kept maximum pressure on the delta with the goal of affecting the pacification program by controlling the rice-producing areas and thereby disrupting the South Vietnamese economy, which
was so dependent upon rice. As a consequence, the largest RVNAF contingent, three divisions with 246,000 troops, was located in MR-4, although only 40,000 were regulars. The remaining 206,000 were territorials. The distribution of the troops in the other regions was as follows: in MR-1 there were five divisions, with 87,000 ARVN/Marines and 70,000 territorials, 157,000 personnel total; in MR-2, two divisions, 28,000 ARVN/Marines and 116,000 territorials, 144,000 total; in MR-3, three divisions, 55,000 ARVN/Marines and 108,000 territorials, 163,000 total. In all four regions, the forces included thirteen divisions of 210,000 ARVN/Marines and 500,000 territorials, 710,000 total.
¹⁸

Obviously there were major differences in the effectiveness of the components (ARVN/Marines, RF, PF, and PSDF). The ARVN, which was better trained and equipped than the others, had comported itself very well in the war. However, the performance of the RF/PF, particularly in MR-4, was poor. Improvements had to be effected! And they were.

Upon review of the daily combat reports and the weekly compilation of combat data, it became obvious that there were many more enemy initiatives in MR-4 than anywhere else in the country. This was not surprising, since the communists' objective was to conquer people and territory and the delta had the most arable land and the largest population. In MR-4 there were more incidents, more friendly killed and wounded, and more enemy killed. Additionally, more large battles (arbitrarily defined as those having fifty or more casualties) were fought in MR-4 than in any other military region. No doubt about it, the war was lost in the northern military regions—but major battles were waged in the delta, off the radar screens of most observers.

In the last analysis, the JGS's Territorial Force Improvement and Upgrade Plan
⁴⁶
did greatly increase the combat effectiveness of the regional force mobile units in MR-4; during the final weeks of the war I observed that they performed very well under heavy enemy pressure.

On 11 October 1974, General Vien published a memorandum about assessment on friendly and enemy activities after the cease-fire, which was distributed to all corps and divisions. This memorandum, included in
appendix B
, recognizes that the North was launching large-scale, division-level campaigns with “tremendous intensity” and
notes the increasing tempo of attacks by fire and the continued casualty toll. The data enables gross comparisons between military regions. The memorandum concentrates on regular force (ARVN) activities. The strategies included in its summary emphasized ARVN weaknesses: study enemy habits so as to preempt attacks, be vigilant, take effective measures to counter enemy attacks by fire, conserve weapons and equipment, and increase and improve unit activities at night.

Because of the disparities in terrain, weather, population, and the makeup of the friendly and enemy armed forces, there were still four different conflicts ongoing in the military regions. However, the joint staff now had a much greater understanding of each corps' efficiencies and effectiveness, as well as those of the enemy. It was obvious from General Vien's memo and other joint staff actions that our operational analyses provided important information, useful in making decisions to improve military operations.

One of the foundations of U.S. policy in Vietnam was the pacification program, the purpose of which was to extend the control of the government to the maximum throughout South Vietnam. The Hamlet Evaluation System (HES)
⁴⁷
was designed specifically as a means of evaluating the effects of insurgency upon the people of Vietnam. Essentially, the system permitted a set of questions to be asked about the people and their environment and evaluations to be derived from the responses. The system provided information in three fundamental areas encompassing pacification—military, political, and community development—from a set of 165 multiple-choice questions. HES data originated at the hamlet and village level with information gathered monthly from various sources. It was designed to meet several objectives: monitor the progress of the pacification effort in hamlets and villages throughout South Vietnam; provide the capability of analyzing trends in various aspects of projects within the pacification program; make available analytical reports that reflected the military, political, and community development aspects of the pacification program; and supply a geopolitical profile of South Vietnam.

Figure 4. Hamlet Evaluation System Model Hierarchy. (Source: MACV Document, DAR R70-79, Hamlet Evaluation System [HES], 1 September 1971, Saigon, South Vietnam.)

The general types of inputs to the system are shown in
figure 4
. The output of the system was a rating for each hamlet/village in the country. There were five basic alphabetic ratings forming a progressive scale, from best to worst. An “A” rating represented the best situation; an “E” rating represented the worst. An “N” rating was assigned if there was insufficient information to evaluate a hamlet, and a “V” rating was assigned when the hamlet was considered under Viet Cong control.

The 9th Infantry Division, the only major U.S. unit in the populated delta when I was chief of staff in 1968–1969, utilized the HES extensively to integrate our combat operations with our pacification efforts to ensure the optimum support for the pacification program. When the Accelerated Pacification Program was initiated in late 1968, it had clear-cut objectives, the most fundamental of which was to choose key hamlets and villages in a contested status with the Viet Cong and, through security and civic efforts, raise these hamlets to a more secure status. We initially had little faith in the HES, since it appeared that it could be a pencil exercise with little validity. Therefore, we undertook a detailed hamlet evaluation survey for all the hamlets in one district of Dinh Tuong Province. We told our G-2 to be hard-nosed in his evaluations. At its conclusion, we compared our survey with the MACV advisory-team survey and were amazed to find a difference of less than 10 percent between the evaluations. This gave us new and substantial confidence in the hamlet evaluation survey. With the peace accord, the responsibility for the HES was transferred from MACV to the Saigon embassy, and the tasks of supervising the recording of data were transferred from U.S. district advisers to South Vietnamese district local personnel. Between 1973 and 1975, the survey became less reliable, primarily because the local personnel were not as capable or as well trained. The special assistant to the ambassador for field operations, Col. G. D. Jacobson, was responsible for publishing the HES, and he did so through a U.S. contractor. Sorting through the surveys for more than ten thousand hamlets each month and portraying meaningful outputs depicting the effects of insurgency on the people of Vietnam was extremely complicated and difficult. Because of the complexity, the contractor considered himself irreplaceable. In 1974, when the contractor pulled out over a disagreement, Jacobson asked me if Headquarters USSAG could produce the hamlet evaluation
survey. We had the computer capability and many hard-working young officers, so we took on the job. Maj. Leonard F. Vernamonti (USAF) and his associates not only had the survey up and running but greatly improved the output and its timeliness. We had already become the collator and analytic focus for military combat data for Cambodia and South Vietnam. Consequently, USSAG was the periodic recipient of almost all of the vital Southeast Asia data inputs.