Grunts (40 page)

In fact, just several miles away, in Laos and Cambodia, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) maintained an extensive network of infiltration routes and base camps generally known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Shielded by the dense jungles, the North’s courageous soldiers sallied forth from these routes into South Vietnam, often to fight as guerrilla warriors. In the fall of 1967, several regiments of these NVA regulars massed around Dak To, heavily fortifying many of the key hill masses. Their goal was to draw the Americans into a costly struggle for those hills. They hoped that the heavy jungle canopy, the dearth of roads, and the dizzying array of peaks would negate the firepower and mobility of American aircraft, artillery, and vehicles. The communists were planning a major offensive for early 1968 and they wanted to draw the Americans into such remote areas, away from population centers. If the Americans did not take the bait, then the NVA formations would push east, make common cause with Viet Cong (VC) insurgents, whose hidden supply caches would support the NVA, and fight a hit-and-run war near the country’s population centers.

The Central Highlands, and specifically Dak To, presented General William Westmoreland, the American commander in Vietnam, with a vexing problem. He could not sit back and let the NVA move unmolested from their base camps into the rice-producing regions and cities of South Vietnam. Nor could he go after them in the exact manner he wished. He yearned to attack and destroy the Ho Chi Minh Trail sanctuaries. But President Lyndon Johnson feared the international political ramifications of invading such ostensibly “neutral” countries as Laos and Cambodia. That the North Vietnamese and their allies in the VC had already done so hardly mattered in the forum of international opinion, which viewed any American cross-border operations as aggression. For fear of this sort of backlash, and the possibility that hitting the communists in Cambodia and Laos would provoke a larger world war with China and the Soviet Union, the Americans, as of 1967, had straitjacketed themselves into fighting the ground war primarily on South Vietnamese soil. For Westmoreland, this meant he had to react to enemy incursions of South Vietnam, rather than take the fight to the communist bases or even North Vietnam itself. His avowed strategy for victory was, of course, attrition—fight the enemy’s big units and savage them with overwhelming firepower until the communists could no longer continue the war.

Like most American commanders from World War II onward, Westy believed that aggressive attacks, the use of maximum firepower, and the relentless quest to annihilate the enemy’s forces in battle all led to strategic victory. By and large, this had worked in the Second World War and it had produced some results in Korea, too. So, in Vietnam, Westy liked the idea of fighting such decisive engagements in the out-of-the-way Central Highlands, where he could employ the full range of his firepower without fear of inflicting casualties on noncombatants. This, he believed, was the place to pile up the large body counts he so badly needed for his strategy to work. If he could not go after the communist bases themselves, he could essentially head the enemy off at the pass—taking on NVA units when they crossed the border, around the hills of Dak To, before they could push east, get into the towns and cities of South Vietnam, and cause even more serious problems. Better, he thought, to fight them in the remote areas first.

He understood that the suffocating jungles and peaks of the border areas negated some of the mobility he so badly needed to carry out his search-and-destroy concept. But he felt that helicopters more than made up for whatever he might lose in ground mobility for his foot soldiers and vehicles. “I believe when the enemy comes forth from Cambodia or Laos with his principal formations looking for a fight we must go out and fight him,” Westy once told one of his superiors. “We must strike him as soon as he is within reach, and before he can gain a victory or tyrannize the local population.”

All of these ideas made some sense, but they also led to serious problems that Westy either downplayed or did not appreciate. If the United States was unwilling to invade Cambodia, Laos, or, for that matter, North Vietnam, then there was almost no way that the Americans could control the borderlands. The NVA knew the ground quite well, far better than the Americans. The communists could always retreat to their sanctuaries, where they could devise new plans, reinforce their combat units, and come back to South Vietnam whenever they chose. Ominously for Westy’s attrition strategy, this also meant they could control the rate of their losses.

Westmoreland believed that by fighting the enemy in the border areas, he could “preempt his [the enemy’s] plans and force him to fight before he is fully organized and before he can do his damage.” This was highly questionable. One could actually argue that the NVA sought battle in exactly these spots and prepared accordingly. The thick terrain offered the perfect cover to conceal their movement. The “Land with No Sun” comprised the ideal place to construct well-camouflaged tunnels, bunkers, and spider holes that were often impervious to American bombs and shells. From here they would provoke American commanders, who they knew were so eager to find NVA units and pile up large body counts that they would do battle even when it was not necessarily to their advantage. As of November 1967, the NVA had fortified many of the hills around Dak To in just this fashion. Fighting there was more likely to play right into the enemy’s plans rather than disrupt or preempt them. Not surprisingly, Westmoreland’s in-house antagonist, Marine Lieutenant General Victor Krulak, opposed the commander’s notion of fighting big battles in the Central Highlands. “Those battles were fought too often on the enemy’s terms,” he later wrote, “where close-quarters combat in the fog-shrouded hills, forests, and vine-thick jungles, with which he was familiar, stretched our logistic system and diminished the effectiveness of U.S. supporting arms, particularly air.” Those indeed were the problems and, in the fall of 1967, they were about to coalesce in monumental fighting amid the unhappy hills around Dak To.
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The NVA blueprint at Dak To was similar to the Japanese inland defense at Peleliu. Both the NVA and the Japanese found ways to negate American firepower, mainly by digging deeply into favorable terrain and relying upon the willingness of their soldiers to fight to the death. They also both made use of the American tendency to overestimate the effectiveness of their firepower and engage in tactical assaults against heavily defended objectives of dubious strategic worth. They knew that, at times, the Americans squandered the incredible valor of their own combat troops for no ultimate strategic purpose (the Umurbrogol at Peleliu being a prime example).

In fact, even before the fall of 1967, the Americans had already fought the NVA in several sizable battles around Dak To. The most notorious clash took place on June 22-23, 1967, when the NVA succeeded in cutting off and destroying Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade, on a jungle hill in what the paratroopers called the Battle of the Slopes. Of the original 137 men in Alpha Company, 76 were killed and 23 were wounded. One post-battle examination revealed that 43 of the dead paratroopers had suffered fatal, close-in head wounds, indicating that the NVA had killed them execution style, probably as they lay wounded. Most of the Dak To fights were not this grim, but a clear pattern was set. The NVA sought to draw the Americans into close-quarters battles, in the roughest terrain, where air and fire support were negated. Often this meant luring the Americans into costly assaults on heavily defended bunker networks. The enemy also tried to cut off and annihilate platoon- and company-sized units. With the exception of the the Battle of the Slopes, they usually failed. The Americans generally inflicted heavy losses on the NVA, but they were never able to win the decisive victory of annihilation they so badly wanted. Instead, combat would taper off into skirmishes as the surviving communists escaped across the border to their sanctuaries.

In October, after several months of uneasy calm around Dak To, American intelligence detected the new NVA buildup. Photo reconnaissance flights revealed enemy movement and fresh bunkers. Special airborne sensors that the Americans called “people sniffers” were flown over the jungles. They detected, by the sound of foot and vehicle movement as well as the odor of human urine and feces, the presence of new enemy regiments. The best information came from small, specially trained teams of soldiers who conducted long-range reconnaissance patrols (LRRPs) deep in enemy country. Amid constant danger, they spent their silent days skulking around the jungle, observing everything the enemy did. Patrols that made use of local Montagnard tribesmen were especially effective since the Montagnards knew the terrain and the enemy patterns so well. “Putting all that together, we could develop a pretty good pattern of where the enemy was and what he was doing,” Major General William Peers, commander of the 4th Division, recalled.

In late October, based on this information, Peers moved his 1st Brigade to Dak To. Immediately the soldiers of this brigade detected even more NVA movement along the valleys around Dak To. On November 2, Sergeant Vu Hong, a member of an NVA artillery reconnaissance unit, turned himself in to an ARVN outpost. While operating as part of a scouting team that was plotting ranges and target information for mortar and rocket fire, he had apparently decided to defect. His knowledge of NVA plans was extensive (some thought suspiciously so for an NCO). Hong claimed that, in addition to his own 40th Artillery Regiment, four NVA infantry regiments—the 24th, the 32nd, the 66th, and the 174th—were positioning themselves for a major attack on Dak To, though many 4th Division senior officers were a bit leery of Hong, and suspected that he might be a plant, his information squared with what the Americans already believed. “All of our intelligence indicated that what he said was correct,” General Peers stated. The general immediately arranged for the 173rd Airborne Brigade to reinforce his own 1st Brigade. Together, the two units were to push west, depriving the NVA of the key hills and ridges that overlooked Dak To before the four enemy regiments could take them. Within a few days, the 1st Brigade soldiers and paratroopers were involved in bloody fights with the NVA for Hills 1338 and 823, thus beginning the Battle of Dak To.

Did the NVA deliberately plant Vu Hong? Many years later, there is still no definite answer to this question. Hong himself has disappeared into the mists of time. Communist sources are mum on the subject (and on most other aspects of Dak To). Peers and his staff seemed to think that Hong was legitimate, as did their ARVN counterparts. The information he dispensed was certainly accurate, but perhaps that was the point. He had nothing necessarily new to say. Everything he told the Americans simply confirmed what they already thought, and reinforced their desire—inculcated in them by Westy’s attrition strategy—to find the NVA regiments and fight them at Dak To. NVA commanders had so heavily fortified the hills around Dak To that it is hard to escape the conclusion that their goal was to lure the Americans into a major fight there. “The enemy continued . . . to choose the time and place in which decisive engagements would be fought,” Brigadier General Leo “Hank” Schweiter, commander of the 173rd, admitted. “Only when and where the tactical situation, terrain, battlefield preparation and relative strengths of opposing forces favored enemy action were significant contacts initiated.” In other words, at Dak To, the NVA commanders only fought where and when they wished to do so, leading to the conclusion that Hong might well have been a plant. As one grunt said, the area was “a lousy place to fight a war.” Like it or not, though, they were in for an intimate showdown with their mortal enemies in this “lousy place.”
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Ivy Leaves and Blood: Hill 724

The 4th Infantry Division had a proud history. Nicknamed the “Ivy Division” because of the way the number four looked in Roman numerals (IV), the unit had compiled a distinguished record in the Argonne Forest during World War I. Soldiers from the division had once stormed ashore at Utah Beach, liberated Paris, and struggled through the hell that was the Hurtgen Forest. By the fall of 1967, the division had been fighting in various locales throughout South Vietnam for over a year. Most of the 4th Division grunts were draftees serving a two-year hitch in the Army. This was certainly true for one of the division’s key infantry units, the 3rd Battalion, 8th Infantry, whose soldiers liked to call themselves the “Ivy Dragoons.” The vast majority of the riflemen were between the ages of nineteen and twenty-one. Following their basic training, most had received subsequent light infantry training at the Army’s Advanced Infantry Training Center, commonly known as Tigerland, at Fort Polk, Louisiana. These grunts came from all regions of the country. Whereas ground combat units in World War II had been all white, reflecting the racist segregation policies so prevalent in America at that time, in Vietnam infantry units were desegregated, with all races represented. This had been the case since the Korean War era, when President Harry Truman had signed an executive order mandating an end to racial segregation in the armed forces.

On the evening of November 8, two such companies of grunts, a couple hundred men, wearily settled into a knoll-side perimeter, not far away from Hill 724, their eventual objective. These troops from A and D Companies had been humping around this area for several days, engaging in periodic battles with the NVA. Most were carrying fifty to seventy pounds of equipment distributed among their metal rucksacks, their packs, and their web gear. They had already spent the better part of this day fighting hard to ward off enemy attacks before the shooting finally died down and they were able to cobble together defensive positions by hunkering down inside old NVA bunkers. These fighting positions were just over five feet deep and were reinforced with logs and sandbags. Both of the rifle companies were depleted enough by the fighting that they had trouble covering the whole perimeter. Forward air controllers arranged to cover the sparsely manned southern portion of the perimeter with their ordnance in case the enemy attacked there.