Vietnam (7 page)

Operation Starlite began on the morning of 18 August, when the giant forty-ton amtracs of the 3rd Battalion of the 3rd Marines clawed their way up the soft sand of the beach at An Cuong. As the Marines rushed the thatched huts of a nearby hamlet, they found themselves halted by a wall of fire. Mortars rained down and the VC raked the area with murderous machine-gun fire. The Marines called in support from the guns of the light cruiser USS
Galveston
. Six-inch shells bombarded the hillside where the VC were dug in. When the smoke cleared, the Marines advanced through the shattered trees, only to be pinned down once more by withering VC fire. A pitched battle developed until the Marines pushed forward into the VC complex of trenches and bunkers. After hours of savage, hand-to-hand fighting, the hillside was secured.

To the west, HH-34 helicopters landed H Company of the 4th Marines at LZ Blue almost on top of the 60th Vietcong Battalion, who were dug in on a low hill. The VC held their fire until the Marines landed, then poured machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades into the landing zone. UH-1B helicopter gunships – Hueys – tried to suppress enemy fire. A Marine platoon tried to make it up the slope, but were beaten back; only with the help of tanks and massive air strikes did they manage to take the hill.

At LZ White, the incoming HH-34s carrying E Company were hit by rifle and machine-gun fire from a ridge overlooking the landing zone to the east. The Marines that landed took heavy casualties as they tried to make their way up the slope. Again, navy firepower had to be brought to bear and the battlefield was littered with dead and wounded before the Marines reached the crest.

As they closed in on the enemy's main force, the Marines faced heavy fighting around the villages of An Cuong and Nam Yen. An armoured column on its way to resupply I Company got lost and was knocked out in an enemy ambush. When I Company sent a detachment to relieve it, they found themselves under furious attack from hidden fortifications, but managed to hold out. The following day, the Marines began clearing out the complex of tunnels, bunkers, and trenches in the area. Often they literally had to dig the enemy out and came under regular harassment from snipers. But by nightfall, the Marines were claiming victory. The body count was 614 VC with forty-five Americans dead. As a consequence Westmoreland's strategy of search and destroy won out over the counter-insurgency techniques that had been used in Vietnam up to that time.

The proponents of counter-insurgency urged the close coordination of political, military, and social programmes to isolate the guerrillas from the general population. Once the allegiance of the local people was won, it was argued, the guerrillas could then be defeated. The British had used counter-insurgency effectively during the Malayan Emergency, from 1948 to 1960, establishing 'New Villages' where the local population could be protected from intimidation by Communist insurgents. Sir Robert Thompson, who headed the British Advisory Mission to South Vietnam, had persuaded President Diem to establish 'strategic hamlets'. Diem established over 3,000 of them but used them to intimidate the populace himself. Nor were they adequately defended. The government's showpiece strategic hamlet at Ben Truong was burnt down by the VC in August 1963. This destroyed the people's confidence in the whole concept. The Marines had their own counter-insurgency strategy called the Combined Action Program with specially trained teams providing protection, along with medical and civic aid, a strategy used successfully in the Caribbean and Central America. Westmoreland, however, was eager to fight a conventional war against large concentrations of enemy troops. The success of Starlite silenced those pushing counter-insurgency. The US would now put all its eggs in one basket and depend exclusively on search-anddestroy operations, supported by the massive destructive power of American military technology. The Vietcong had learnt a lesson from Starlite too. They went back to small guerrilla actions in the jungles, villages and paddy fields, using ambushes and booby traps.

In October 1965 the first draft-card burning took place during an anti-war demonstration in New York, though President Johnson had already signed into law a bill making it a crime to mutilate or destroy a draft card with a penalty of up to five years in prison and a $1,000 fine. This was to become a symbol of resistance to the war.

October also brought the first serious clash between the North Vietnamese and US Armies. Two regiments of the NVA came across the border from Cambodia and attacked the Special Forces camp at Plei Me, inland in the central highlands. Their aim was to drive to the coast, cutting South Vietnam in two. Plei Me held out, but found itself surrounded. Westmoreland sent the newly arrived First Cavalry Division (Airmobile) to relieve the base. As the Air Cav's helicopters swooped in to break the siege, the NVA pulled back towards Cambodia, but Westmoreland did not want them to get away and ordered the Air Cav to go on the offensive. The NVA had regrouped in the Ia Drang valley, a dense jungle area near Pleiku, fifteen miles west of Plei Me. On 14 November a battalion of the First Air Cavalry landed at LZ X-Ray in the valley and began searching for the enemy. They quickly came under heavy fire and a close-quarters battle developed. They were heavily outnumbered, but they held on with support from artillery, gunships, and massive B-52 Stratofortresses, until then used for strategic bombing, not tactical support of ground forces.

The ground troops were reinforced by another battalion the next day. Heavy fighting continued until, several days later, the NVA fled back into Cambodia or melted into the jungle. When the First Air Cavalry returned to their base at An Khe they had lost 300 men, but claimed 1,200 NVA dead. Again Westmoreland seemed to have demonstrated that, by throwing large units into full-scale engagements and exploiting the superior mobility of helicopter-borne troops and massive air support, the US forces could win the day. However, the Communists did not seem to get the message. The Vietcong continued their attacks on American outposts and airfields, and the American forces began to realise that they did not know who to trust. On 13 October, 56 Vietcong had been killed by Marines in an assault ten miles from Da Nang. Among the dead they found a thirteen-year-old boy who had been selling them drinks the previous day. On his body was a sketch map showing their positions. The Vietnamese did not know who to trust either. That same day, the Americans bombed a friendly Vietnamese village, killing 48 non-combatants and wounding 55 others. The following month the Vietcong attacked an ARVN regimental headquarters in the old Michelin rubber factory, inflicting heavy casualties. And, on 4 December, the Vietcong blew up a hotel in Saigon used by US soldiers, killing eight servicemen and civilians and wounding 137.

Once again the Pentagon asked for an increase in men, from 120,000 to 400,000, but Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was growing pessimistic. He warned that there was no guarantee of victory and that casualties would mount.

'US killed in action can be expected to reach one thousand a month,' he cautioned, 'and the odds are that we will be faced in early 1967 with a “no-decision” at an even higher level'.

He warned President Johnson that the NVA and Vietcong had settled into a war of attrition. 'They continue to believe that the war will be a long one,' he said, 'that time is their ally and that their staying power is superior to ours'.

Indeed, the Vietcong were waging what they called the 'war of the flea'. Like dripping water, they believed that they would wear away stone. They attacked at night, appeared from nowhere, killed, and vanished. They would try and achieve overwhelming superiority in numbers, typically five to one. If necessary they would use 'human wave' tactics to overwhelm defences before the enemy could call in artillery or air support. Their orders were to kill as many Americans as possible. The war was unpopular in America, they were told, and if the US death toll continued mounting the American people would rise up and overthrow their government. However, they had to avoid large-scale engagements which risked the superior American firepower. The Vietcong had no defence against artillery and air strikes, but in a fire-fight at close quarters their legendary Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle – made in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, or China – was more than a match for the US standard issue M14, later replaced by the lighter but chronically unreliable M16 Armalite rifle.

It was easy for the US military to dismiss the Vietcong as a ragtag peasant army. They found it laughable when, in November 1965, the VC – Victor Charlie, or just Charlie to the grunts – attacked the air base at Qui Nhon with bows and arrows dipped in rancid fat. It is easy to laugh at people who fire arrows at helicopter gunships, but on the other hand it is not so easy to defeat people who are willing to fire arrows at helicopter gunships.

The Vietcong were highly organised. Their strategy was summed up as 'one slow, four quick'. The one slow was meticulous preparation. Local Vietcong irregulars would make repeated reconnaissance of the target. Back at base camp, they would build a scale model of the objective, so every soldier could recognise every feature of it. Detailed plans would be drawn up and the action rehearsed repeatedly so that every man knew exactly what was expected of him. Then the four quicks began. The main force would be infiltrated into the area in small groups, guided by local irregulars. They could pick up arms and food supplies from caches hidden along the way. The strike force would only reassemble shortly before the attack. The attack itself came swiftly, without any warning. Only rarely did the Vietcong bombard enemy positions with mortars before attacking. Usually they depended on their superiority in numbers and the element of surprise. As soon as the objective had been achieved, they would withdraw before there was time for the enemy to call in a counter attack. As they retreated they would pick up weapons from the battlefield. The Vietnamese considered it important to be buried with their ancestors, so the dead were hauled off the battlefield with a wire tied around the ankle or looped through the special leather thong Vietcong soldiers wore around their wrist. The fourth 'quick' was the retreat to their reassembly point which was usually about twelve hours march from the scene of the attack. From there they would either return to their base in the central highlands, the Mekong Delta, or across the border in Laos or Cambodia, or they would be sent back into action in support of some other unit.

What made the Vietcong such a formidable fighting force was that, once they had been inducted, willingly or not, they had no choice but to see the fighting through to the bitter end. Unlike US troops, they were not rotated home after a year. They had total confidence in their commanders, particularly Ho Chi Minh and General Vo Nguyen Giap, who had led previous generations to victory against the Japanese and the French. Many Vietcong soldiers were highly motivated, fighting against a corrupt regime who oppressed them, then against Americans who had sprayed defoliant Agent Orange on their crops and burnt their villages. Another powerful motive for men to join the Vietcong was 'shrinking bird disease'. South Vietnam was being overrun with huge American soldiers whose free-spending ways turned many traditionally moral Vietnamese women into prostitutes. Vietnamese men came to believe that their penises would slowly shrivel up after sexual contact with a woman who had slept with an American. The VC used this belief to their own ends, spreading rumours that US troops were abducting Vietnamese women and forcing them to become concubines. American chaplains warned their men to refrain from sleeping with Vietnamese women, believing that it gave the VC a strong incentive to fight. 'It is one thing to fight for political principles,' said one padre, 'another to fight to vindicate your manhood'.

Large numbers of women also joined the Vietcong and the NVA. In the North, they were conscripted at eighteen like the men. Women ran most of the supply convoys down the Ho Chi Minh trail.