VIETNAM -- A JOURNEY
March - April 2005
by
Bill Haponski
In 1968 - 1969 Bill Haponski served as S-3 (Plans and Operations), and XO (Executive Officer) of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, and commanded the 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry, 1st Infantry Division ( Big Red One). The following is a report of his visit to modern day Vietnam.
PREPARATIONS
As a career soldier I was not done with Vietnam when I
returned stateside in 1969. In the English Department at West Point I answered
the questions of my cadets and, beginning two years later, my ROTC cadets who
very much wanted to know about the war they might soon fight. I tried to give
them objective, non-emotional answers. I replied too, to the questions of fellow
vets - "Where were you, what unit were you in, what was your job?" -
the usual kind of thing. Beyond that, though, I did not want to talk about
Vietnam. I certainly could not have imagined in those days I would ever want to
return.
But I did return, in late March and early April of this
year.
By 1965, when our massive military and financial aid
mission of four years, preceded by seven years of increasing commitments,
clearly had failed, I believed our country made a tragic mistake by committing
American ground combat units. My journals of that time show I recognized it. By
1968, my company mate during four years at West Point, Ray Celeste, had been
killed. My Beast Barracks roommate, Bob Stewart, who told me on the first day I
met him he was determined to graduate first academically in our class, and did
so, was flying F-100s and had disappeared over Indo China, never to be found. On
the first day of Tet, 30 January 1968, my dear, dear friend, John Martin, was
aboard a helicopter at Hue when it was shot down, killing all aboard. John left
a wonderful wife without a husband, and five beautiful children without a
father.
But strategic thinking is for oval offices. Soldierly
thinking is for battlefields. The soldier's enemy is the person who's shooting
at him. The soldier's concern is to protect himself and his buddies, and kill as
many of the enemy as he can.
I had been trained on a war that absolutely had to be
fought, World War II. Many of my tactical officers and instructors during my
cadet days at West Point were veterans of that war or another war which could
not be avoided if we were to live up to our commitments -- Korea. I hugely
admired these soldiers and was profoundly grateful for what they and America
did. I hoped I could measure up. I wanted to serve my country well. As a cadet,
in a boring moment in class, I whimsically sketched a picture of myself in my
textbook. I put stars on my shoulders - not a measly two, three, or four, or
even five as General of the Armies, not six as Commander of the World, but seven
- Commander of the Universe!
By 1968 I had gotten my Ph. D. During the course of my
humanities studies and teaching at West Point I had encountered much of what
art, literature, and philosophy had to offer. The best of life is creation,
love, life itself. My small family had been living the best of life. One of our
visiting lecturers posed a challenge to the cadets: As a soldier, he told them,
you must consider the value of that which you might have to destroy. So I had to
answer some very tough questions. Vietnam forced a reevaluation of what my life
was all about. The answer was clear: Just as my career was on a swift rise it
was over. But I was a professional soldier and knew I had skills that were
needed by our soldiers. On my volunteer form for Vietnam I wrote that I wanted
to serve at the lowest possible level for my rank in an armored combat unit. I
did.
In Vietnam there were only two staff positions for a
lieutenant colonel (armor) in a combat unit. They were S-3 (Plans and
Operations), and XO (Executive Officer) of 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. In
addition, there were twelve armored cavalry squadron or tank battalion commands
country-wide for armor lieutenant colonels. In the year from mid-1968 to
mid-1969 I first held both staff positions in 11th Cav and then took command of
1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry, 1st Infantry Division ( Big Red One), thus holding
all three possible positions, a record. In those assignments I got a unique
perspective on the war. Because of the helicopter I could be at one moment among
the generals doing the directing, and in the next among the troops doing the
dying. From the first moment I saw those 11th Cav troopers, grimy, tired, scared
but able to laugh at the same time, my consuming passion was to do my job well
so I could help bring as many of them back as I could.
When I took command of 1-4 Cav, I had two inseparable
goals: Kill as many of the enemy as I could, and save as many of my men as I
could. My whole existence, virtually my entire concern was to do just that. I
took the mutilation and death of my men very hard, and I was determined to be as
smart and efficient a commander as I could be. Successful command of an armored
unit requires quick thinking and aggressive action during every waking moment
except for the precious few you can squeeze out for some rest and a good laugh
or two. Intensive thinking and planning, always anticipating, and then acting
decisively becomes a way of life. I believe I was very good at killing the
enemy. I know I wasn't nearly as successful as I had hoped to be at saving my
men.
In the11th Cav I was responsible for planning and helping
to execute operations of a large force of tanks, armored cavalry assault
vehicles, artillery, and helicopters. We had about 3600 men organic to the unit,
and with attachments to include US and Vietnamese battalions, our strength
sometimes reached 6500 or so. The fighting during my time with 11th Cav was
always small unit in nature - a squad, platoon, sometimes a company or troop in
contact. Original unit records reflect that my memory is correct: During the
last half of 1968 we never had a whole squadron or battalion engaged at one
time. Our area of operations was the relatively open terrain just north and east
of Saigon and the limitless jungle of War Zone D north of Bien Hoa. The fighting
was frustratingly brutal - men killed and maimed by mines and booby traps, often
with few or no enemy killed. Or they were injured and killed by horrific
accidents of war -- friendly fire, overturned vehicles, falling trees during
jungle-clearing operations. My persona
Our war was terrible too in terms of the toll of
innocent civilian lives - those taken deliberately by the enemy to terrorize the
population, such as when they threw phosphorous grenades into the choir loft as
the children were singing Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, those taken
accidentally by us in countering enemy movements, and those taken in cases of
mistaken or questionable identity.
One of the accidents profoundly affected my life. In
September 1968, one of our 11th Cav troops was in a night defensive position
outside a tiny hamlet, Binh Co, way out in the boondocks, hard up against the
jungle of War Zone D. I did not know at the time but many years later during my
research learned that this hamlet and its sister hamlet to the north, Binh My,
were in fact the center of the Viet Minh resistance movement against the French
in Cochin China (the southernmost of the three subdivisions of Vietnam). This
area remained an important command and control and supply point for the enemy
during American times and beyond, and also served as the jungle headquarters of
the Dong Nai Regiment. On that night in 1968, a small probing attack by an
element of this enemy regiment resulted in our unit firing illumination rounds.
One of the flares failed to burn out and landed in the thatch of a mud-walled
house belonging to a very poor family - the poorest of the poor, which by Binh
Co standards was poor indeed.
The woman
was a widow with four girls, ages 18, 13 , 9, and 8. As was characteristic with
rural people, the girls seemed much younger than their true ages and their
mother much older. The widow's house and the one next to it burned to the
ground.
As I researched, I relearned much I had forgotten, and discovered much I had not
known. I felt compelled now to write about it. Most of what had been written was
published before or soon after the Communist Spring Offensive of Tet 1968, that
shock to the American psyche when Vietnam erupted and a few VC even briefly
penetrated the US Embassy Compound in Saigon. Books published for years
afterward read as if the war had ended with Tet 1968. Apparently, after the
national and international shock from Tet 68 subsided, no one wanted to hear any
more about the war. But it went on. In fact, it did not peak at 549,000
Americans serving in Vietnam until almost a year and a half later, just before I
left in July 1969. During my year, with Tet 68 behind us, much of the war was
still ahead. In fact, by the spring of 1969 the war had reached a stage north of
Saigon from which it largely had retreated since the highpoint of Tet a year
earlier. Again, whole battalions or armored cavalry task forces were being
committed against enemy main force units of regimental size and larger. My
troops would do much fighting and considerable dying during the new war, the one
no one wanted to hear about.
Still I could not conceive of going back. My guilt at
not being able to help Nhan and her family was overwhelming. Although for the
first 28 years of my life I was Methodist and not Catholic as I since have been,
I was able to feel guilty. Guilty about Nhan, about everything. (Isn't a
Catholic obligated to feel guilty ?? I had missed a whole 28 years of feeling
guilty, and maybe was trying hard to make up for it.) If I returned, what would
I find? Would she have died, and under terrible circumstances? Would she be
maimed or sick? If so, what could I do about it? Would I find a 49-year-old
woman looking like the forty- and fifty-year-old women I remembered from Binh Co
- looking as if they were 89 not 49, broken by a lifetime of peasant labor,
teeth missing and the few remaining ones beetle nut-stained? Would she remember
me? If so, would she resent me?
The trip from Orlando to Los Angeles, where I would stay
overnight and meet Maura the next morning, was - well, interesting. I boarded
for Atlanta, the first leg, on time. Then we all sat in the plane, grounded,
waiting out tornados between Jacksonville and Atlanta. And we sat. When we
finally took off, the seat belt light never was turned off, the plane bounced
around a good deal during the flight, and we landed hard. I had missed my
connecting flight. A few hours later I was off again, plane loaded to capacity.
Next to me, against the window, was an enormously fat man who took up all of his
seat and much of mine. He fell asleep instantly and snored and snorted all the
way to LA. I didn't try to sleep, just survive. When we landed 8 very long hours
later, and hours behind schedule, I managed to get out from under him and drag
my baggage to the curb to await my shuttle from the hotel. It was scheduled to
arrive 24/7, every 15 minutes. But no shuttle. Then, after I had waited a long
time, suddenly security men
We crossed the Saigon River on one of the dozen or so
major bridges for which I had provided ready reaction forces in 1969. From my
predecessor in command of 1-4 Cav, Jack Faith, I inherited the 1st Division
warning that if one of those bridges goes down I had better be on it.
We were headed north on the east bank of the river,
through the heavy palm frond area along the lowlands.. Here in 2005, squalid
houses and small businesses intermingled carelessly with nicer ones, and the
route was crowded, unlike the old days in which the foreboding presence of a
building along the road was much more occasional. [From letter to my wife Sandra
and daughter Maura, 20 January 1969:] "Today I had a pleasant drive in a
new area, from the outskirts of Saigon north along Route 13 to Phu Cuong,
paralleling the Saigon River. This is a lowlands area of rice paddies, green
even now during the dry season, and of napa palm. During the wet season, water
rises to several feet in the houses. I've seen them under water except for the
roofs, yet the people seem somehow to come back and live in them. Apparently
it's all in what one gets used to."
In my letters to my family I never spoke of the terrible
realities of the war, only the unusual things and the pleasant moments I could
find in it. This is reflected in my journal entries, made only for me, not
shared with anyone until now. [From my journal, 22 January 1969:] "I drive
the roads in the heat of midday, a lazy somnolence settled over the land, and I
think lazily, with nothing particular in mind. I don't think much of danger
except perhaps at some turns in the road or during long stretches when the palm
fronds and vegetation close right up to the shoulders of it. Then I finger my
weapon and watch the sides of the road. Otherwise, the sights are interesting,
enough to ward off drowsiness, and life goes on. It was not so long ago that a
drive up Highway 13 from the outskirts of Saigon to Phu Cuong, an old provincial
capital, was unheard of unless one went in force. Yet, a few days ago I made the
drive with only myself, driver, and operations officer in the jeep."
What I did not realize in 1969 was that the area along
the river through which I was driving was at that moment being prepared on both
sides of the road as a huge enemy base camp. It was planned to be the closest
one to Saigon for the enemy's 1969 Tet Offensive. I was not to discover this
until over thirty years later when at National Archives I read interrogation
reports by MACV, the major headquarters of US operations in Vietnam. The enemy's
advanced parties were already building the bunkers only yards off the road as I
made my leisurely drive that day. On 6 January 1969, my first full day in
command of 1-4 Cav, we had captured an officer who said he was a lieutenant in
the Dong Nai Regiment. Nice to get a lieutenant, but no big deal. The MACV
interrogation reports revealed, though, he was in fact a lieutenant colonel
charged by COSVN, the enemy headquarters for South Vietnam, with planning the
next massive attack on the capital, scheduled for late February. As a result of
our capture, combined with the reports of a double agent, General Abrams was
able to anticipate enemy moves and easily defeat the attempt. (It would have
been nice for us in 1-4 Cav to have known this in 1969, but sharing intelligence
information with the units that first seized it was not a long suit of any
headquarters, division and above.) Lucky for me and my two other troopers on
that balmy day in late January 1969, the enemy had no intention of endangering
their preparations for a major attack by killing three insignificant Americans.
BACK INTO THE MICHELIN
The enemy's Spring Offensive 1969 was seriously
disrupted when its plans were discovered, but nevertheless they launched it with
widespread attacks and modified objectives on 23 February 1969. By early March
they were moving large forces into the Michelin Plantation and the surrounding
jungle. American Operation Atlas Wedge was designed to counter the offensive by
striking into the 7th NVA Division and other main force units. Task Force
Haponski, as it was called, was part of the thrust into the plantation,
beginning 18 March. At first the 11th Cav did the bulk of the fighting, then
withdrew on 23 March, leaving the plantation and Fire Support Base Doc at its
eastern edge all to us. (The FSB was named after John "Doc" Bahnsen,
my West Point classmate who had made the first contact of Atlas Wedge with his
air cav troop over the Michelin near this spot). My task force had worked the
rubber from 22 March through 25 March. We had scattered contacts and came across
a few small to moderate-sized base camps and finally, one enormous bunkered
complex in the plantation. But there was no major fighting. During those first
days in the rubber, we found the plantation to contain only VC caretaker units
and NVA reconnaissance teams. The 11th Cav's big battles several days earlier
had driven out the major units.
We stopped for lunch at a restaurant the driver
obviously knew well, traveling back streets without hesitation to reach it. I
was tired and wasn't hungry. Then we entered the rubber itself. I found that the
essentials of the Michelin as defined by its road networks and sectors of trees
had not changed since it was first planted in 1925. (I have maps from those
early days and the 1940s to confirm it, as well as my 1960s era maps). Now,
though, the two main roads through the trees, Routes 239 and 245, were paved and
so were a few others. In 1969 the worker hamlets throughout the rubber, at least
in the north where we fought, had been largely deserted and the plantation had
fallen into disrepair. Undergrowth had gained a foothold among the trees in
several places, and the trees themselves were not regularly attended and
fertilized. Battles of the 11th Cav before us had severely damaged many of the
plots of trees, and when I first set foot in the rubber on 22 March 1969 we were
entering a recently vacated battlefield on a hot day. Even though most of the
bodies had been removed or buried by the enemy, the Michelin smelled of death.
I now stopped and found the spot, or at least within a
few yards. It was an unreal sensation, walking again on this ground along the
deep gully. I stood a long time. Today was Good Friday. I prayed for my
infantryman, whose name is unknown, so seriously wounded on that day. He had
survived for sure since no KIA is recorded in his unit of 1st Infantry Division.
I prayed too for the enemy dead -- three young men -- and for me. And I cried.
From a small plastic bag I emptied a handful of soil from my back yard in
Florida and in its place scooped up a handful of soil to bring back home.
Now heading back toward Thu Dau Mot by another route, I
was not paying much attention but suddenly realized that the driver had turned
onto a road, Route 239, that led to the scene of another major incident. This
was the attack on my Fire Support Base Doc during the night of 27/28 March 1969.
Here I was, among houses - in fact, at a corner restaurant and small store -
where there had only been barren ground. I first arrived at the spot just across
the stream on 22 March 1969. By that point in the war this place had been left
raw and ugly by the resettlement of the villagers of Thi Tinh, bulldozed flat in
President Diem's Strategic Hamlet Program of the early 1960s. Thi Tinh was a
crossroad of three routes - 239, 240, and an unnumbered route, now called Route
302. It was an important piece of terrain. All three routes eventually
intersected Route 13 to the northeast, the east, and southeast. Beginning on 18
March 1969 this ground located at the eastern edge of the rubber became a
temporary fire support base of 11th
Cav. I took it over when my task force remained behind as the Cav withdrew,
leaving us as the most exposed unit in that area. Now in 2005, Thoan, Minh, and
I were drinking cold drinks just across the bridge over the Thi Tinh stream, not
more than a hundred or so yards from the center of my old fire support base. The
stream was lower and not as clear as I remembered it in 1969 when during the
transition period to the wet season we had had a few spots of rain. I remembered
the pool in the stream, cool, delightful when we could spare a few moments from
important business. We did not know at the time - I did not know until I got the
records years later - that bodies of North Vietnamese were beginning to bloat
and surface farther up the stream in which we swam.
As word spread, inhabitants began showing up, young and
old, hurrying in, two or three at a time, and I bought drinks for them: beer for
the adults, soft drinks for the younger ones. They had come to see an American,
something they did not see out here in the boonies, not ever. But if we were to
do some other things on our return trip to Thu Dau Mot, we could stay no longer,
so I told the woman I would return on the 28th, as I had planned on my
itinerary. This would be the anniversary of a night I will never forget, nor
will any who were there, at what was then a God-forsaken spot a hundred yards or
so east of this corner store where I now drank a coke near the stream that would
become a river that would become as well known to the Americans as it was to the
French who fought along its banks to the south some twenty years earlier.
Private First Class Arturo Carrasco,
A/1-16 Infantry (Mech)
Private First Class Johnnie J. Carraway, Headquarters and
Headquarters Troop 1-4 Cav
Sergeant Donald R. Smith, A/1-4 Cav
Private First Class Larry R. Jenkins, A/1-4
A few weeks earlier Jenkins had survived a mine
explosion with minor wounds.
DI AN AREA
Several of the main streets of Di An were torn up, being
improved. The old French watchtower was still there but soon will be demolished
to make way for an industrial site. (Di An, French
Watchtower Ruins) I asked Thoan about salaries and wages. He said that the
average blue collar factory worker in Binh Duong Province gets about $85 a
month, the white collar worker about $150, and the managers much higher. Some
individuals are extremely wealthy. Taxes are paid by workers making more than
$300, and Social Security payments are deducted from the pay of all workers.
On the dock at Thu Dau Mot we entered not a romantic
sampan but a rather ordinary sightseeing boat. The owner of the boat service
indeed had a sampan but preferred to use the bigger boat for safety. A look at
the sampan was enough to convince me he had good sense. As we sat perfectly
still at the dock before departure I got a weird sensation that we were moving,
and fast, down river when in fact we were still tied to the dock. The illusion
was created by an enormously powerful tide flowing upriver, carrying huge masses
of some kind of floating, living vegetation fast upstream. The Vietnamese author
may have been exaggerating the severity and frequency of the events he says he
witnessed, but he had pegged the nature of the river correctly. At this point in
the river we were 12 miles upstream from Saigon, and the river at Saigon still
had forty miles to wind its way southeast before it emptied into the South China
Sea. A strong tide over fifty miles upstream from the sea to me is remarkable. {
Saigon River South of Phu Cuong (Thu Dau Mot),
with Tide Incoming}
We had gone only about half way down to Lai Thieu when,
by mutual agreement, Steve, Maura, and I chose to cut short the boat trip and
return to Phu Cuong. In our three miles or so down river we had experienced
enough of the sensation that the riverine forces must have had as they peered at
dense foliage along the banks, expecting at any time to be shot at from shore.
Frankly, we were pooped from our long journeys, and I decided I did not need to
see the bridge which had been another one of my ready reaction force
responsibilities. Instead, at the advice of the pilot, we pulled into a wide
stream which entered the river to visit a pagoda. Here the creepy feeling was
worse - no habitation of any kind, and dark green underbrush down to the water
on both sides, close in. We docked upstream at the Buddhist temple. { Buddhist
Temple on Side Channel to Saigon River} There we were greeted by the
caretaker, a 69 year-old man who had been a South Vietnamese soldier in the Long
Thanh rubber plantation a few miles east of Saigon. The head monk joined us. A woman who seemed to be the old man's
wife served us tea and scrumptious little bananas. After this we removed our
shoes, entered the temple, lit incense sticks, and paid respects to those who
had suffered and died on both sides during the war.
That night we had a delicious dinner for three people at
our hotel. Quan had been hesitant to have us eat there, saying that the
restaurant was not a professional one, meaning apparently it was not officially
open for dining in the evening although it would serve meals to hotel guests. We
found it to be consistently among the best places to eat. Our delicious dinner
for three, including three beers and one water and fresh fruit for desert, came
to a whopping $8. (Tipping seems not to be the custom for meals in Vietnam.)
The next day, the 27th, was Easter Sunday. I had hoped
to go to Mass at the large, beautiful church a few blocks from the hotel, but
faced an especially demanding schedule that day and had to content myself with
the idea that under intensive travel conditions a simple prayer would have to
suffice. People, dressed in their best clothes, were entering church.
Today was the day I would head for Binh Co to search for
Nhan.
The weather was wonderful -- clear skies, moderate
temperatures. We headed north on Local Route 14 and soon were in Chanh Long,
known in the old days to everyone who looked at a map as Dog Leg Village, the
outlines of which suggested a fairway that, after the tee shot, hooked left
toward the green. I was astonished at the development of houses and factories in
what had been a rural area, quite close to Saigon, yes, but nevertheless as
isolated from urban living standards as the moon is from the earth, or so it
seemed in those days. Most of all, though, I was amazed at the rubber
plantations. Small and moderate sized plantations, mostly privately owned we
were told, were everywhere. The foreboding look of this brush and tree-covered
VC country had disappeared, and it was a lush vibrant green. I did not even try
to locate the fire support bases, NDPs, and field positions I had flown into
almost every day while in 11th Cav to check on operations. I would have seen
nothing there but new development. Along the road were gas stations and electric
and telephone poles. We had to look hard to find a very few mud-walled houses,
and we could find no thatched roofs except on a few small outbuildings.
The rest was a swirl. People began arriving and
chattering, looking at the pictures I had brought, and excitedly pointing this
way and that. { Binh Co. We Know Her !!} {Binh
Co, November 1968, Tuong, Nhan Holding My Hand, Luong} {Binh
Co, November 1968. Toung, Bill, Nhan, Loung, Nghanh}
Thoan had a hard time keeping up with them, translating
for me in fragments. Nhan lives in Bien Hoa with her husband. She is well. I
couldn't believe it. I had found her!
Maura and Steve were overjoyed, and Maura hugged and
kissed me as Steve and Thoan shook my hand. Only later did I remember it was
Easter Sunday. What a wonderful, wonderful day.
For the moment, I was in a daze. I met Luong's two sons,
one age 17 and the younger perhaps 14. Where was Nhan's house? The one I had
often visited? The two ladies, both of Nhan's age, in their late 40's or early
50's, both of whom knew Nhan, led me only the few yards away into a plot of
ground which was a young rubber plantation, planted with trees about three years
old. I came to the spot where the house had stood and was told that the trees
did not grow well there. I noted the stunted growth. { Nhan's
House Site} In time I learned that the two houses and school we had built of
pine lasted only about ten years before they had been almost completely devoured
by termites. (Their mounds are everywhere throughout the countryside, and the
American-acquired lumber must have been a big treat, drawing quite a crowd..)
One of the men, though, would show us something. He came back in a few minutes
lugging a rusted, cement-caked steel post that had been one of the piers the
engineers had sunk for Nhan's house.
Why anyone
would keep such a thing for twenty-five years I have no idea, but I'm glad he
did. {Binh Co, Rusted Steel Anchor Post}
Luong's son looked for Nhan's telephone number -
telephones in Binh Co?? Nhan's telephone number?? - but he couldn't find it. No
problem. One of the women who was Nhan's girlhood friend sent him to her house
to get it. Thoan called on his cell phone and Nhan answered.
We were soon on our way toward the large city of Bien
Hoa, and I was having difficulty looking at the hamlet of Binh Co, trying to
absorb everything in and south of it while my mind was elsewhere.
NHAN
We stopped briefly four miles west of Tan Uyen to
remember Specialist Fourth Class Frank J. Marconi, C/1-4 Cav, killed by a mine
on this road, 23 January 1969 while opcon to another unit.
Everybody else was famished so we pulled off at a
riverside restaurant below Tan Uyen on the west bank of the Dong Nai River.
Fishermen were taking shrimp from the water just yards from where we were eating
their earlier catch. I ate two or three -- huge, delicious, fresh, whole shrimp
- but I had little appetite for more.
Back in the van we drove only a few minutes before Thoan
was telling the driver to pull over. He had done this on previous days to ask
for directions, but I wasn't sure why he was stopping here since the large city
of Bien Hoa was across the river to the east. As the van slowed I saw a woman
standing on the walk beside the road, waving. Nhan!! I would have known her,
I'm sure, even in a crowd. She was laughing, crying, and I got out and hugged
her, and we kissed and laughed and cried. Before I came back to Vietnam I had
hoped to find her alive, and if so, was prepared to find a peasant woman.
Instead, here was a sophisticated lady. Maura said, "She's beautiful,"
and indeed she was -- my beautiful Nhan !! {Easter Day
at Nhan's House. Bill's Two Daughters, Nhan 49 and Maura 48} { Maura
and Nhan} { Bill and Nhan} {Nhan
Holding 1968 Picture}
We talked for perhaps two hours. Thoan, wonderful Thoan, had a difficult time
translating through his tears. I can remember little of what was said at this
first meeting and can't separate it from what I learned later. Everything poured
out in a gush. We found that Nhan's mother had died in 1978 and Nhan
had an even more difficult life. Soon, though, she met the man who was to become
her husband, Sung. This was a good man I could tell immediately without
understanding a word he said as he excitedly tried to tell us everything. He
loved her deeply and she loved him. They had married in Binh Co and he had gone
to work in a brick factory in Tan Uyen, a few miles to the south. By 1984 he had
been able to save enough money to move another few miles south to their present
location. Their small building was both their home and business establishment,
accommodating Nhan's refreshment cafe and Sung's motorcycle repair shop. {Sung,
Bill, Mother-in-Law, Nhan, in Sung's Repair Shop} {Their
Business, Repair Shop on Left, Nhan's Refreshment Café on Right. They had a
25 year-old daughter, Minh Thanh, and a 21
year-old son, Tot, who was serving his two years
in the army. Street noise made it difficult to understand Thoan's
translations. Vehicles were going by, many with blaring exhausts, and all of
them, it seemed, honking their way. After perhaps two hours we decided that as
soon as we could we would meet in a quiet place for lunch. With teary eyes Nhan
and I made "happy faces" and parted.
I did not.
By the 27th, my task force was well into the operation.
On 18 March we had departed Di An never to return and attacked west from Route
13 north of our division headquarters at Lai Khe. In the first few days we made
only a few small contacts, and on the 22nd, entered the Michelin under
operational control of Patton's 11th Cav on the heels of their large fights.
Then Patton took his two squadrons back toward War Zone D far to the east and
left FSB Doc and the Michelin all to me. By the 25th, the day of my encounter
with the NVA reconnaissance team, we had been in the Michelin four days. Then we
were abruptly ordered out so it could fill up again with enemy, at which time I
would attack. Because of these orders we lacked time to blow bunkers in a huge,
prepared but as-yet unoccupied, enemy base camp we had discovered, and we left
them behind us.
Just before dark on the evening of the 27th I walked
around the perimeter of the fire support base to assure myself that the men knew
what to do during an attack. The enemy had had plenty of time to observe, get
approval from higher command, calculate mortar data, prepare rocket positions,
and make their ground assault plan. The attack, if indeed it came, would be a
cover for the movement of a large enemy force into staging areas in the rubber.
I thought of the bunkers waiting for them, enough for a regiment. A B-52 strike
would be in order, but was forbidden in rubber plantations.
As I walked the perimeter I again thought through my
Michelin attack plan. We had worked the rubber, and we knew the location of
gullies and crossing points, and we knew where those fresh bunkers were located,
and where others were most likely to be. I had gotten approval for
reinforcements to be brought up. Everything was ready.
But tonight would be the enemy's turn.
From my journal, written on 17 April 1969:
At 0200 all hell broke loose. We were hit all at once by
mortars and rockets, then small arms and machinegun fire, followed immediately
by the ground attack. The sound of mingled explosions and screams is
indescribable. We fought back from inside the perimeter, and the cav platoon
went to work immediately outside, wheeling and cutting into them before they
could get going. They never got within 75 yards of the concertina wire
surrounding the perimeter. When daylight finally broke just after 0500, we had
lost four dead and over four dozen wounded, medevac'ed during the night. Our
fires support base was a mess, anti-RPG screens blown to pieces, bunkers
destroyed, antennas knocked down, vehicles scarred. The division damage
assessment team that flew in later that morning counted over 400 explosive
impacts -- 150 mortar rounds, 3 rockets, and the rest RPGs. Steel fragments lay
on the top of my command track. I was pissed to discover when I needed him that
the officer who had been at my side for part of the night operating radios had
medevac'ed himself on the last flight out with hardly more than a scratch on his
chest for a wound. Our courageous squadron surgeon, Doc McGeady, who had been
treating the wounded all night, could have put a Band-aid on it. Outside the
perimeter were only 12 enemy bodies, the rest of the dead and wounded having
been dragged away in every direction during darkness, leaving gruesome blood
trails behind.
[From 7th Division: A Record, the official report of the
7th NVA Division, published in Hanoi, 1986:]
NVA histories are not noted for accuracy or modesty in
assessing the results of battles, and the author confused 11th Cav with 1-4 Cav,
and we only had one cavalry troop that night, and Atlas Wedge was anything but a
defeat, but you get the idea.
We walked the hundred yards or so back to the bridge
past another corner store, this one on the east bank of the Thi Tinh (competing
corner stores at FSB Doc ??). Two interesting historical events involving
General Tran Van Tra occurred here near the original bridge which now lay in the
water beneath the current one. I told Steve and Thoan what had happened. (Thoan
already knew about this general, famous among the South Vietnamese, but he did
not know the history of this place.)
Cam continued, "I hurried off to brief Tran Van Tra
[military commander for COSVN] on the situation. At that time Tra was staying
near the Thi Tinh Bridge at the base camp of the Binh Duong Province Party
Committee.
Because he had forced us to both anxiously monitor the
developing situation at this turning point in the war as well as to hold
planning discussions with all our units about how to deal with the increasing
level of B-52s attacks, when he saw me walk up, Tra immediately asked,
"Have you fought yet?"
"We've fought, and it's over," I replied.
"Why was the battle over so quickly?"
"They were Americans, after all!"
"What were the results?" Tra asked.
"Very good."
Tra laughed out loud, grabbed my hand and shook it
again, and said,
"Then we must go back to brief [General Nguyen Thi]
Thanh."
"When do we leave?" I asked.
"Right away. Get your things together for the trip.
We will have to travel all night so that we can meet with Thanh tomorrow
morning.
We set out - Tra, me, Hai Chan, and two bodyguards, each
of us riding a bicycle [through the Michelin Plantation]. By now the sun had set
and the night had begun to spread its dark curtain across the land. Along the
way Tra urged us along, telling us that when we reached the COSVN command post
he had a chicken waiting to fix a bowl of chicken and rice soup for us to eat
before continuing our journey."
When I read that passage I cannot help but compare Tra
on his bicycle with Westmoreland in his spit-shined helicopter, returning to his
headquarters after a long day in the field, striding into his air-conditioned
dining room with a meal fit for a king laid out before him. I think, too, of the
flaccid Major General Thuan, Commanding General , 5th ARVN Division and the very
young, very mini-skirted girl seated next to him during the luncheon I attended.
Could the North possibly have lost this war????
The second incident involving General Tra occurred on 30
April 1975, the day Saigon fell. He made his Victory Drive on the capital,
leaving his headquarters near Chon Thanh on Route 13 and driving down Route 239
and through the site of FSB Doc where he forded the Thi Tinh stream a few yards
downstream from the bridge site where we now stood. This was the same ford site
we had used several times in 1969 to get into the Michelin. Tra had continued on
Rte 239 west through the plantation on the road we had just traveled eastward in
order to get here. { The Road General Tra Traveled}
Tra, greatly respected as a battlefield commander who
had fought the French and now the Americans, like so many Southerners after the
war, was soon pushed aside by the Northerners in the Party. He got one book
published on his experiences, many of them in our area of operations, but his
other publishing attempts were squelched by the Party. He came to the United
States on at least one occasion after the war to speak at Cornell University
where I was a freshman in 1951 while he was fighting the French, and where I got
my doctorate degree in 1968 while he was fighting the Americans. He died in
1996.
Back at the corner store across the bridge, I met Nguyen
Van Banh, an 80 year-old male former VC, and Tran Thi Dieu a 50 or so year-old
woman who also was VC. Banh served with a local area unit but said he never
fought against Americans, only South Vietnamese solders, from 1945 to 1975. The
woman was a farmer near Ben Cat on Route 13, some 14 miles to the southeast. She
said her job was to watch Route 13 and report on acivity. She said, "We
knew everything the Americans were doing." The old man laughed and said,
"Yes, we knew everything you were doing, but most of the time we didn't
have the means to do anything about it." We exchanged jokes about how glad
we were that the other guy of us wasn't such a good shot. We laughed about how
thin we were then and how paunchy we are now. In that category, I easily won the
contest. { Bahn, Dieu, Maura,
Bill, and Tiger Beer} Another soccer ball went
to the Thi Tinh school. {A Tinh Tinh Future Soccer
Star}.
Just a few feet across the corner was a small fuel
processing business owned by Bahn's son. The young man cut up pieces of rubber
trees and processed them for firewood or charcoal which, in turn, was used by
small plantation factories to dry their pressed sheets of latex before baling
them for shipment. He gave me a small piece of rubber tree from the plantation.
Along with a ceramic collection bowl and steel spigot and the packet of Michelin
Plantation soil, it is sitting now on a shelf in my bedroom.
We drove south to Ben Suc, another target in the
Strategic Hamlet Program, but unlike Thi Tinh, which hardly anyone knows about,
it became famous. Early in the war during the enormous American military
operation, Cedar Falls, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander M. Haig commanded the 1st
Infantry Division battalion that provided the seal for the village and the meat
for the book, The Village of Ben Suc, by Jonathan Schell. No other village in
Vietnam had the dubious honor of having a future NATO Commander, White House
Chief of Staff, and Secretary of State play so prominent a role in its
destruction.
We went across the river to the Tunnels of Cu Chi, now a
favorite site for tourists. We saw no Westerners, just a handful of Vietnamese.
In the pagoda at the site was a sobering testimonial to the fallen
Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers - name plaques on virtually every wall,
dozens upon dozens, hundreds upon hundreds, thousands upon thousands. 1969
was a prominent year among them. }.
We had a fine lunch at the Tunnels restaurant on the
Saigon River, topped by grapefruit. (If I were younger and had any business
sense at all I would try to grow Vietnamese style grapefruit in Florida. I had
forgotten, but they are so sweet and delicious that Florida grapefruit and even
oranges would not have a chance against them.) This time the floating
greenery was headed fast downstream. Our 28 year-old tunnel guide was
a delightful treat with his good humor and quips as we probed a short stretch of
the tunnel, widened to accommodate Americans (barely, as Maura found. She
told me not to make any big butt jokes.). His mother and father had
both been VC.
THUNDER ROAD
On the trip up Route 13 we would stop at all the Thunder
Fire Support Bases -- I, II, and III. I also stopped at the center of the
largest of the convoy ambushes during my time, that of 6 June 1969.
On 28 April I had picked up responsibility for Thunder
Road and the large area east and west of it after having worked mostly in the
Michelin Plantation and Trapezoid to the south of the Plantation and in the Long
Nguyen Secret Zone north of it for six weeks. Overnight I acquired nine major
field installations to add to my Rome Plow NDPs in a way I have never quite
understood even after studying the original records. My assigned strength of
1,000 men was at least doubled. (On one brief occasion, it rose to about 3500
men, American and Vietnamese.)
How my 1969 mission on Thunder Road came about is
unusual.
On the 27th, in the jungle, I had received this message,
recorded in our squadron log: "1006H. People of Di An District would like
W55 [Haponski] to dedicate new school [Tan Hiep] in this area." We had
started this school, one or two others, and similar projects while I had my
headquarters in Di An and was working closely with Major Chau. Now that this
school was finished he wanted me to be present at its dedication. Never did I
receive a more welcome invitation, a night in my old hooch back at Di An, in a
bunk - a real live bunk with a fan beside it - instead of on the twelve-inch
wide bench mat placed on top of ammo boxes in my sweltering ACAV. On the mat I
could sleep only on my left side or right side, take my pick, but not flat on my
back because there was no room.
[From letter to my wife, 28 Apr:] "We're still
operating northwest of Lai Khe, but right now I am in Di An, having returned to
attend a school dedication and sewing center dedication, two of our civic action
projects. I had a big lunch and am now sleepy. . . ."
After I wrote the letter and was flying lazily and
somewhat reluctantly back north in a loach (Light Observation Helicopter,
OH-6A), I was startled fully awake by an urgent call from Danger 5, BG Smith,
the assistant division commander, now commanding while MG Talbott, the division
commander, was on leave in the US. He told me a convoy had been ambushed on
Thunder Road north of Lai Khe and I was to take command at the ambush site. It
was well outside my assigned area of operations and I had no units anywhere near
the site. Why didn't the commander who had the responsibility act? I didn't ask.
I just operated the dials on the one radio net available to me, quickly
switching back and forth to try to determine which units were on the ground and
what was going on, all the time prodding my pilot to step on the gas..
[From my journal, 15 May 69, referring to 28 April:]
"I have written nothing for a long time, having had no time, or when time
was available, no desire. . . . Everything is the same, there are no new
experiences to record. I live in repetition; only the details of the horrors
change, the pattern is the same. . .
This was the beginning of a series of ambush attempts on
Thunder Road, the first in over a year. Why the acting division commander had me
take command that day when none of my units was involved I have not been able to
fathom from the records, and apparently was too busy at the time to have
remembered or cared. What was clear was that I had suddenly inherited Thunder
Road and a large piece of real estate around it.
Now I said a prayer for men killed within sight of the
road:
One soldier Unknown, C/2-28 Infantry, 2 May 1969 Ambush
[Will continue to research]
Staff Sergeant Richard C. Garcia, C/2-28 Infantry, 3 May
1969 Ambush
Warrant Officer 1st Class James K. Ameigh, D/1-4 (Air
Cav), Air crash, 24 June 1969
Specialist Fourth Class James A. Slater, D/1-4 (Air),
Air crash, 24 June 1969
As we drove through the plantation, in some gulleys, dry
during this transitional period to the monsoon season, we saw bomb craters where
it made little sense to expend the effort to fill them. On the productive land,
however, the craters had long since been leveled and we saw only healthy young,
producing rubber trees, and among the rows, the ubiquitous termite mounds. { Termite
Mound} These mounds were not as large as the six foot high
mounds we had encountered in the Michelin in 1969, presumably because this
plantation was well tended, devoid of any underbrush and knocked down trees such
as we had encountered so many years ago.
The owner was very proud of his little plantation. {Owner of Small
Plantation} He showed us the old vats and machines he
used and explained the process. The latex was treated with chemicals and allowed
to coagulate into a mass which was then cut into blocks and rolled into sheets.
{ Rubber Processing Machinery}. The latex sheets were then dried by a
blower forcing the warm air from a charcoal fire into the drying shed where the
sheets hung until baled for shipment. {Charcoal
Furnace}. His trees
looked healthy, and the ones that were tapped were running with latex. We
learned that in a simple ceremony, incense sticks would be attached to a tree
near the factory and lighted to thank the grove of trees for good production. {Incense Sticks on a
Tree}
(I have studied rubber production in Vietnam from its
inception in 1897 and will include some of this in my book on backgrounds to the
conflict. I have many French books, articles, maps, etc., and am in contact with
a French rubber planters association. If anyone has specific questions, I might
be able to answer them. In this part of Vietnam, rubber was, is, and quite
certainly will remain the most economically important agricultural product,
ahead of even rice. White gold, it was called. in the early days.)
We returned east onto Thunder Road and drove up to
Thunder I where the village of Ap Bau Bang had been bulldozed and the
fire support base built in its place. Ap Bau Bang was the scene of the November
1965 "victory" that so pleased the 9th Division commander and General
Tra. {Ap Bau Bang , Monument to the "Victory" Over the
Americans.} After the battle the rats got into the graves of his dead and fed
upon them. Even three years later, the tracks of my armored vehicles would turn
up skulls and bones near Thunder I as they made sharp turns maneuvering into
position.
At one time or another, from 28 April until the end of
my tour in July, I had my headquarters at all three fires support bases,
Thunders I, II, and III, depending on my mission. During this period we not only
secured convoys along Thunder Road, and the Rome plows working beside it, but
also secured two other routes, from Ben Cat northwest toward the Michelin, and
from Ben Cat northeast toward Song Be. At the same time we had Rome plow
security missions in the jungle around Lai Khe, conducted air assaults, and went
on many nearly fruitless and always frustrating jungle-busting missions to the
east and west of Thunder Road. The rains came in torrents. Our fire support
bases resembled the Verdun trenches of World War I. Our bunkers filled with
water so deep we often had to sleep on top of them, rolled in our ponchos.
Between rain gusts, we swatted at hordes of mosquitoes. At night the rats would
jump from one sleeping body to another to another to traverse the base.
Apparently they didn't like wet, muddy feet. I
We drove to Thunder II { Thunder Road Between
Thunders I and II}, stopped and looked at the nondescript spot, and then went on
into the village of Chon Thanh. This had been an important ARVN installation as
well as the regional US Special Forces camp. We supported Chon Thanh with
artillery fires from our Thunder fire support bases and reinforced them with a
cavalry platoon on those nights when they had probing attacks.
Our driver seemed to know every little side road
restaurant in every out of the way spot in the province (and beyond - we were
now just north of the province border). He drove us unhesitatingly to one and we
had a delicious lunch in the outdoor, thatched roof dining area. (I am told that
in Saigon, one can dine expensively at famous restaurants. Otherwise, most
restaurants are inexpensive and outdoors. A few, such as the one at our hotel,
which was consistently excellent, offer both a dining room and an outdoor cafe
or cabana-style dining area.)
I went to the men's room -- a euphemistic term. The ones
I had used to this point were clean but this one smelled of urine, and as I
turned from the trough to wash my hands at the sink at my elbow, I almost hit a
chicken. It had silently hopped up there while I was occupied and unobservant.
Not anxious to catch Avian flu, I retreated and instead used the handiwipes we
always carried.
The Vietnamese are an immaculate people in most
respects. How they can remain so clean and keep their clothes unsoiled,
especially in such dusty driving conditions, is a mystery to me. Their houses
and the yards immediately up against them are neat. Even in the old days of
hard-packed earthen floors, they were well swept and tidied up. The farther one
gets from the house, though, the messier the environment. Debris that flies off
trucks remains uncollected along the roadways. Restaurants are immaculate when
they first open for the day but become increasingly messy as some of the table
remains are casually swept onto the floor, there to remain until the restaurant
closes and is again cleaned.
We continued north six miles from Chon Thanh, stopping
briefly at Thunder III, and then on to the center of the 6 June
ambush site, the biggest one I had experienced or heard about during my time in
Vietnam. On this day in 1969 the 101D Regiment of 1st NVA Division was dug in
for two miles along Thunder Road with units on both sides of the road. They were
part of a multi-division NVA attempt to hit Americans hard along Route 13 and
north of it at the opening of their Summer Offensive.
[From my journal 7 June 69:]
"Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of D-Day, a day
I remember well, though I was only twelve. A quarter of a century has passed. In
those days men were engaged in a gigantic cooperative enterprise designed to
make decent living possible for everyone. Yesterday we fought a large battle,
from noon until dark, killing 49, capturing 2, this time with light casualties -
3 wounded. But this battle was not the first step in liberation of a continent,
and it will never be cheered, a measure of the difference in times and
circumstances. It was a dirty little fight in which we confused the enemy
hunched all night long beside the road, waiting for our convoy. His first rounds
were hardly out before I rolled my chopper in and laced down the sides of the
road, and followed it with gunships and artillery. I was shot at many times by
RPGs - a new experience - 51 cal antiaircraft machinegun, and AK's. This fight
was costly to the enemy. Had he been better organized and disciplined, things
would have gone much worse for us.
. . . I feel no sorrow at this battle, content to take
the praises for a 'good job.' . . . How can I kill 49 people and be indifferent?
Strange. Quite strange."
In fact, probably over 100 enemy died in that action and
many more were wounded. After the battle close to the road was well in hand I
had tried to maneuver my ground elements into position to pursue and cut off the
enemy. The regiment had selected their escape routes well, though, and our armor
had a difficult time jungle busting as they moved east and west from the more
open strip along the road, and they lost contact. Night was coming on and the
best that my artillery forward observer, Air Force forward air controller (FAC),
and I could do overhead in our separate aircraft was to bring artillery fire and
air strikes onto the retreating columns, glimpses of which I could see as they
cut across jungle clearings. Intelligence reports I found at Archives over
thirty years later contained one striking report, that of an agent who, the next
day in the jungle, observed a long column of enemy dead and dying being carried
on makeshift litters away from the battlefield toward their base camps even
deeper into the ju
Now in 2005 in some places the trees grew close to the
road instead of having been Rome-plowed back 200 meters on either side as they
were in 1969. Back then we had used work crews of Montegnards to cut by hand in
the gulleys and other hard-to-reach places along the road, and I hoped we would
see some of the people or their charcoal kilns, so prevalent in the old days. I
did not, but may have missed them.
I looked at the area of the 6 June ambush. About where a
radar-controlled antiaircraft gun had locked onto my helicopter each time we
made the elliptical orbit above the battle (probably 37mm -- which never fired
on us so far as I know), an industrial park was cut in among rubber trees. The
road, black-topped now, went straight north-south as I remembered it, and the
land was flat on both sides where the enemy had prepared their hasty positions
among the waist high clumps of brush. Although we had lost no one in this
battle, we did along the road in other places on other days. I said a prayer for
the several KIAs unknown to me because they were from support units - air crews,
drivers and vehicle crews we were trying to protect along that long, lonely
stretch, the 33 miles of Thunder Road from Lai Khe to An Loc to Quan Loi. I
remembered too the many enemy dead and felt the waste. {Bill at Center
of 6 June 1969 Ambush Site, Now Plantation.}
Back in the van we passed semi-permanent NDP Lussi north
of Thunder III which I had established because I needed to cover 12 miles of
barren road between Thunder III and An Loc. I named it after Maura's figure
skating coach in Lake Placid where she and Sandra spent the year of my tour. (On
the radio Lussi comes out as "Lucy," and that's how it is spelled in
division reports.) Like the other installations, it had changed. All were now
fields, plantations, or hamlets.
As we continued north I expected to go at least to An
Loc. Thoan, however, had someone he wanted to visit down a side road along what
used to be the edge of the rubber just south of the village. Whereas up until
now we had seen many plantations where in 1969 there had been just scrub land
and cut-over forest, now we saw the opposite: Where there had been a plantation,
none now existed. Perhaps had we continued north into An Loc we would have come
upon the rubber, but the hour was late. At the request of one of our troopers I
silently recalled the 23rd Psalm in memory of Staff Sergeant Roosevelt Williams,
KIA near the edge of the rubber 6 October 1968 (before I was in command). After
Thoan finished his unrevealed mission in the woods, we turned south.
As we reached Ben Cat on the return trip we saw a
Russian T-54 tank being pulled on a lowboy. It looked old but undamaged and
still in decent shape - perhaps even operable, who knows? In the days after 1970
when 1st Infantry Division had been withdrawn to the states, ARVN took Lai Khe
for its 5th Division headquarters and was responsible for Route 13. In 1972 the
area from just north of Lai Khe to An Loc became the scene of the enormous NVA
Spring Offensive against the South Vietnamese who, once again, had only some US
advisors to assist them. General Tran was still commanding the COSVN troops. The
same 7th Division we had fought in the Michelin and along this road in 1969 was
back, this time cutting the road between An Loc and Chon Thanh where we had
fought on 6 June 1969. They dug in and held their positions for weeks. North
Vietnamese tanks -- maybe including the one I saw -- had forced their way into
An Loc and fought pitched battles against the stubborn, courageous South
Vietnamese troops. Finally Abrams
On two earlier days in the trip we had traveled the
roads north from Thu Dau Mot to the Michelin, the same roads the French had
tried to keep open with outposts and watchtowers. We had entered and exited the
Iron Triangle across the Ong Co bridge, which had been destroyed in our times.
We had traveled Route 240 on the eastern side of the Triangle between Ong Co and
An Dien and had crossed the Thi Tinh bridge, critical in 1969 because it was the
only remaining access to the Triangle. A/1-16 Infantry (Mec) had been opcon to
me and, with one of our cav platoons, was tasked to secure the bridge as well as
provide road sweep and convoy security north along Route 240 toward the
Michelin. Convoys needed to reach our series of Rome plow NDPs and fire support
bases Lorraine and Picardy which had remained after we evacuated and leveled FSB
Doc on the last day of Atlas Wedge.
We had traveled, too, the main road, Route 14 on the
western side of the Triangle, which in several places came close to the winding
Saigon River. Now again on 30 March 2005 I was headed back into the Michelin.
This time though - my last -- I was leaving a comfortable hotel room behind me
to which I knew I would return, and instead of Sergeant Towers riding shotgun on
the top of my command track, I had a marvelously supportive, loving daughter and
son-in-law behind me in the van.
Ben Chua, the next village north of Ben Suc, had been
spared, perhaps because the South Vietnamese government had reached the limits
of its ability to continue the Strategic Hamlet Program in this area. Ben Chua
was the most hostile village I encountered during my year in Vietnam. The
residents would not look at you, except surreptitiously, they would not talk
with our interpreters. They were sullen. Were we interrupting their gardening
which seemed to consist mostly of planting mines? On 27 May 1969 we sealed the
village for a morning search next morning. For twenty four hours I was the
commander of a navy. A few river assault group (RAG) boats were sent up river to
me and I loaded some infantry on them to seal the waterfront along the Saigon
while we maintained the rest of the seal with a portion of my ground task force.
We stopped at the spot and Steve took some pictures. { Site of 500# Command-Detonated
Bomb}. The original small bridge had
been rebuilt and cows grazed peacefully nearby. {Calves at Site of
Blast} I said a prayer for Sergeant First Class Merrill Barnes, killed in action
26 May 1969, and we headed north.
In a little over two miles we were at Ben Tranh, the
site of a 25th Infantry Division fire support base attacked by the NVA on the
night of 23 February 1969 in the opening hours of the enemy's 1969 Spring
Offensive. The detailed plan for the 141st Regiment, 7th NVA Division attack,
contained in the official history of the division, was followed almost to the
letter a month later by its sister regiment, the 165th, which attacked us twelve
road miles away at Fire Support Base Doc. These attacks had a pattern. The enemy
would recon the target carefully, plan and practice the assault, then launch it,
always with the US commander's vehicle or bunker the primary target. They would
penetrate the base if they could, cause as much destruction as possible, then
withdraw before daylight. The 141st had succeeded in penetrating the fire base
at Ben Tranh but were soon ejected.
In a few minutes we were back in Dau Tieng, passing the
new rubber factory and the old French watchtower near it.
The shortest route to where I wanted to go passed the scene of my encounter with
the three NVA. We stopped and this time took some pictures, and I explained
briefly to Steve and Maura what had happened. { The Site.
Where I
Threw Grenades. Impact in Gully. 36 Years Later, Rubber Tree Branches
Shade the Spot. And the Trees Produce Rubber}
It was easy, shortly after that, to find the scene of
the most ferocious fighting on 30 March 1969. { Ford Site at Stream
Where C/1-4 Cav, D/1-11 Cav, and later B/1-4 Cav Crossed Heading West (to
Right)} { Mission for D Troop (Air Cav) was to Place Fires Along This
Gully Running North South}
[From my journal, 17 April 1969:]
"On 28 March the battle of FSB Doc had ended.
"But this was not to be the worst.. That came on
the morning of the 30th when we dashed into the Michelin . . . . They were tough
bastards, the kind who stood up to tanks and ACAV's with their RPG's."
I had tasked the medical platoon to move with C Troop,
the lead element in our approach to attack.
From the journal of our squadron surgeon, Doctor Steve
McGeady:
30 March. Palm Sunday. The day Christ rode an ass into
Jerusalem to be hailed king, we rode iron horses into the Michelin to trap the
NVA. The big strategy was that we would surprise the enemy by using an AVLB. . .
. The Col wanted to put [it] across at the base camp & Charlie would find us
in his lap before he knew what had happened. At 0600 we left Doc & were in
Michelin by 0700. The AVLB was moving toward the launch site & a mine sweep
team was out in front clearing the path when suddenly the NVA began to pull out
across the stream about 200 m[eters] into the rubber & they began moving
north across the road. One of the Big Boys [tanks] fired an HE round & we
saw it impact over in the rubber. Suddenly they called for a medic. Nobody knew
what had happened. When I got there the 5 men on the mine sweep team were lying
in the trail. I ran from one to the other seeing how badly they were hurt. The
first lay still with his eyes closed; there were 2 ragged holes in his chest
heart high & his eyes were glassy with
In the plantation, 36 years later, I said: "On
behalf of all Task Force 1-4 Cav soldiers, especially [I read the names of
soldiers, family members, and others who had specifically requested a prayer],
and all the families and loved ones of task force members who died in this
plantation during Operation Atlas Wedge and a short time later, we offer prayers
for the following men:
Killed in action at Fire Support Base Doc at eastern
edge of this plantation, 28 March 1969
Private First Class George K. Golden, C/1-4 Cav
Sergeant First Class Alvin F. Gunter, C/1-4 Cav
Sergeant Gary L. Pollack, C/1-4 Cav
Specialist Fourth Class Robert L. Weiher, A/2-28
Infantry
Killed in action on or near this spot, 30 March 1969
Private First Class Lamarr L. Johns, C/1-4 Cav
Private First Class Donald L. Nixon, C/1-4 Cav
Private First Class Melton E. Smith, C/1-4 Cav
Specialist Fourth Class Lyle G. Aston, D/1-11 Cav
Specialist Fourth Class Raymond D. Brown, B/1-4 Cav
Private First Class Daniel J. Curran, A/1-4 Cav
Sergeant Benito Diaz, Jr., B/1-4 Cav
Sergeant Jerry T Driggers, B/1-4 Cav
Staff Sergeant Jerry A.Garrick, B/1-4 Cav
Specialist Fourth Class Russell L. Johnson, B/1-4 Cav
Sergeant Paul B. West, B/1-4 Cav
Killed near this spot in accidental main gun discharge
in proximity to enemy, 1 April 1969
Specialist Fourth Class James H. Rodgers, B/1-4 Cav
Staff Sergeant Gary L. Duggan, B/1-4 Cav
Specialist Fourth Class Wiley B. Moss, 1st Logistics
Command
Killed in action near this spot, 11 April 1969
Second Lieutenant William L. Owen Jr., HHC/1-18 Infantry
Specialist Fourth Class Lawrence E. Zapolski, B/1-18
Infantry
"On behalf of Colonel Wood R. Deluil we offer
prayers for the many US members of his advisory unit and South Vietnamese
soldiers of his battalion who were killed in action in this plantation in
November 1965.
"I offer prayers also for all other French,
Vietnamese, and other nationalities who died in this plantation during the Indo
China Wars.
"On behalf of Alice Celeste Marson and her family,
we offer prayers for Major Raymond Celeste, Jr., killed in action in South
Vietnam, 22 November 1965.
"For myself, my family, and his family, I offer prayers for Lieutenant Colonel John F. Martin, killed in action over Hue, South Vietnam, 30 January 1968.
I then read the Twenty-Third Psalm, King James version,
"The Lord is my shepherd . . . . Though I walk through the valley of the
shadow of death. . . . I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."
As we were returning to our van, a young man walked
toward us through the trees. He was the manager of that section of the
plantation. Thoan explained why we were here, and expressed my regret at the
damage that had been done to the plantation during the war, and how pleased I
was to see how healthy and beautiful it was today. The man was gracious and
thankful we had come here to visit. In the van I had some inexpensive necklaces
and I tried to give two of them to him for his daughters but he would not accept
them until I assured him they were "cheap." Vietnamese do not wish to
accept expensive gifts but are grateful for token expressions of friendship. He
thanked us again and we left.
As we drove back south through the beauty of the rows
upon rows of rubber trees on this gorgeous day, never to return, I saw people
along the road going about their life, perhaps not knowing what had happened
here, with their futures ahead of them. I too had a future and was pleased for
them and for me.
We exited the rubber and, not being able to tour the modern factory of the Dau Tieng Rubber Company because it was closed for renovations , we went across the road to its museum. I wish we had discovered it earlier in our trip, but if we had, I might never have emerged. It had walls covered with pictures and what appeared to be a research room. {VN239, 240, 241, 246} I would have liked to explore, but now my business with the Michelin Plantation was finished, except for writing about it. The two museum employees were most helpful, and I was astonished when they presented me with a book, "History of the Dau Tieng Rubber Workers Movement, 1917 - 1997," by Workers Publishing House 2000, which my friends, Merle Pribbenow and Thoan are now translating for me. I was asked to inscribe the museum's guest book, and I did.
We left and drove west across the bridge over the
Saigon. The old French docks and rusting hoist machinery for the rubber bales
were off to our left. The bridge over which we drove was the key target for the
enemy 9th Division in the last days before the fall of Saigon. When we had first
entered the plantation on Atlas Wedge we had found some documents that belonged
to the 9th Division. Near the end of the war in 1975, in base camps in the
Michelin, on the site of the ones we had attacked in 1969, the division had
rehearsed its planned attack on this critical bridge which would clear the way
for the western pincer of the movement on Saigon.
Over the bridge, on the west bank, lay the Ben Cui
Plantation, scene of events similar to those in the Michelin. Along the road old
trees had been cut down and their stumps now lay on top of the ground, ready to
be hauled away. A living plantation is wonderful for the environment,
contributing what is necessary for life and growth. When refurbishing time
arrives, nothing is wasted. Rubber trees are cut at about the 25 year mark when
they have lost productivity. The trunks are used for furniture and the limbs and
stumps for firewood or charcoal. The trees in the Michelin were not the ones we
fought among, but ones planted since the war, as if the war had never existed.
I had never been on the western side of the Saigon River
except in and over Saigon. We were now in the 25th Division's area of operations
of 1969, headed toward tourist attractions, the Cao Dai
Temple at Tay Ninh , and Nui Ba Den, the mountain that juts up for no apparent
reason out of the flatlands surrounding it and is prominently visible from the
air throughout much of South Vietnam and Cambodia.
During the war the
US and South Vietnamese owned the top of the mountain where we placed an
important communications station, and the VC owned everything else down to the
base of it. I have an interesting account of a visit to the top of the mountain
by a Frenchman in the late 19th century and would like to have taken the cable
car ride, installed for tourists some years ago. But we could not make time for
everything so we contented ourselves with a short visit to the temple. It had
been a long day, and I was exhausted when we finally arrived back at the hotel,
too tired to eat dinner. Ma
THE LAST DAYS
On the 31st we would meet Nhan and her family again,
this time at a quiet restaurant. I was to learn that the correct pronunciation
of her name sounded like "Nyea," a very nasal "yeah" with an
"N" in front of it. I will probably always remember her as
"Non" as I had all these years.
Unfortunately, a few days earlier I had begun to cough.
Just the road dust, I thought. However, it had developed into something worse,
and I had no doubt what it was. Since I almost died as a one-year-old from
pneumonia, throughout my life I have had bouts with it, a nearly fatal one
twelve years ago. I had become an expert on the symptoms. If I got a fever and
but had no sickness to my stomach it was merely bronchitis and I would get over
it. If my temperature did not perceptibly rise (in fact it drops slightly) and I
were to become nauseated, I was into the early stages of pneumonia, and that was
not good. The antidote was a very strong antibiotic, administered as soon as I
knew which way the thing was going. Of course I had prepared for the trip
carefully, bringing everything I needed and some things I didn't, but no
antibiotics for a "just in case" situation. The prospect of going to a
Vietnamese hospital was not a happy one, nor was the idea of being quarantined
while they determined whether or not I had picked up
the deadly Asian flu virus. In the middle of the night I woke Maura and we
discussed the difficult (perhaps impossible and certainly enormously expensive)
change in trip plans so I could leave on the next flight.
Steve is a much smarter guy than I, and since he had
gone to Australia to consult on Aborigine affairs with potential trips such as
he had made on earlier visits deep into the interior, he thought it prudent to
get a prescription and take along the miracle drug Cipro. It is administered to
anthrax victims and others who need immediate and drastic treatment. (You see
why I love him?) Although I spent the last two days of my trip in bed while
Steve and Maura visited Saigon and did some shopping, it was apparent within 36
hours that the drug had worked. I continued (with extreme discomfort) to
disguise my lingering cough as well as I could until we got back stateside and
through customs and immigration, by which time it was okay to let loose. The
prospect of quarantine in the US I could manage. Back home I soon returned to my
normal ornery self.
During my seven days in which I had been able to visit
battlefield locations I had gone to the location of 33 of the 40 KIAs from all
of my units, either 1-4 Cav or those opcon to me. The seven sites I could not
visit because of inaccessibility or other reasons were those of:
Staff Sergeant Gary W. Willis, M/3-11 ACR, 7 April 1969
Staff Sergeant Gerral A. Smith, A/1-4 Cav, 8 April 1969
Unknown, probably Staff Sergeant George Coody A/1-16
Infantry (Mech), 6 May 1969 [Will continue to research]
Private First Class Walter Elam, C/1-16 Infantry (Mech),
6 May 1969
Specialist 4th Class Michael S. Nakashima, A/1-16
Infantry (Mech), 11 May 1969
Private First Class Thomas E. Gray, A/1-16 Infantry (Mech),
11 May 1969
Specialist 4th Class Michael L. Lickey, A/1-16 Infantry
(Mech), 11 May 1969
They, as well as all soldiers killed who were not in my
unit or under my opcon, but nevertheless within my area of operations, received
my prayers. While in Vietnam I felt a special kinship with our South Vietnamese
comrades in arms who had borne such a burden, and sadness at their loss of life
and freedom. I felt the tragic waste of the Vietnamese who fought against us. I
felt a renewed sense of brotherhood with all my soldiers who had made it safely
home, and a renewed obligation to those among them who still need help in
overcoming their emotional disorders.
The ride to Tan Son Nhat airport almost at midnight was
a last, treasured time. I had Nhan beside me, holding my hand, looking up at me,
hugging me. Maura was seated behind me, putting her hand on my shoulder, patting
me, loving me.
After I returned home I got an email from my new friend
Thoan: "I have got emotional when seeing your reunion with Nhan, too. And
you know, when we saw you to Tan Son Nhat airport, I tried to talk all the time,
so that you and we did not cry. I believe that you and we tried to refrain from
weeping. I always wonder whether it is better for you and us to refrain from
weeping (I tried to talk all the time, so that we did not have time to
weep)."
When we lifted off I looked down. Thirty-five men in my
task force had died down there, and five assigned but not under my command. I
had been able to visit the sites of thirty-three, and I had prayed for the
others. People had asked me why I wanted to go to Vietnam. They wouldn't have
understood all of it, so I said I wanted to see a rubber plantation fresh with
new foliage. I wanted to see flowers growing and children playing. I did. And I
found Nhan. Just as when I had landed ten days previously, I could again see the
bend in the Dong Nai River. She would be returning to her home on the bank of
that river. Maybe she was already there. I knew she would be okay. Maura, who
had shown such loving concern for me and had encouraged me to return, was beside
me. Sandra was waiting for me. We had lifted off from the airport in the
darkness of a new day and I had soon fallen asleep. When I awoke the sun was
shining through the window and we were headed home.
