First Battle Part 1

First Battle.

Otto Lehrack.

INTRODUCTION.

LESSONS LEARNED.

During the summer of 1965, I was deployed with a Force Recon Platoon attached to BLT 2/6 in the Caribbean, and on a particularly long patrol. The BLT Commander (there were no MEU's in those days) sent a message to all widely scattered units directing that we reveal our positions, stop action, and await his arrival. For a young lieutenant on his fourth deployment, this was as serious as it got. Rumors flew, and I recall how my Marines were convinced we were being recalled in order to be s.h.i.+pped directly to the country most could not yet p.r.o.nounce: Vietnam. We were going to war and we were elated.

However, the scenario didn't play out that way. The cause of this remarkable pause of an entire operation was the C.O.'s intent to go to every single unit and explain firsthand the tremendous success our brethren had just brought about on a far off battlefield in Vietnam. While greatly motivated, we were also silently disappointed we would not, as we had supposed, soon be on our way to join them.

Otto J. Leharck's The First Battle is a graphic account of the first major clash of the Vietnam War. On August 18, 1965, regiment fought regiment on the Van Tuong Peninsula near the new Marine base at Chu Lai. On the U.S. side were three battalions of Marines under the command of Colonel Oscar Peatross, a hero from two previous wars. His opponent was the 1st Viet Cong Regiment, led by Nguyen Dinh Trong, a veteran of many fights against the French and South Vietnamese. Codenamed Operation Starlite, the battle was a resounding success for the Marines. Its result was cause for great optimism about America's future in Vietnam. The brutal and hot fight (both figuratively and literally) shocked the enemy as to what they could expect from Marines. With full reliance on fire support, artillery fire from Chu Lai air base north of the battlefield, naval gunfire (including an 8"gun cruiser), and constant fixed wing air support and tactical lift by helos, the enemy experienced for the first time what Marines brought to a fight. Starlite set the tone for what followed. In the unlikely event the Viet Cong could ever field an independent regiment after this, it would surely never enter a fight against Marines unless fully supported by the North Vietnamese regulars.

Several months later the American Army fought its first large scale battle in the Central Highlands at LZ X-Ray (as told in the book We Were Soldiers Once, and Young, by Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway). This battle was fought exclusively against NVA regulars (no Viet Cong took part). However, postwar interviews revealed the NVA changed their tactics to meet the Americans in this battle because of what had been learned during the Operation Starlite engagement.

For those expecting a book about Americans in battle, you will not be disappointed by the detailed descriptions of how the fighting unfolded. Leharck interviewed Marines from private to colonel during his research for this book. The battle is presented from the mud level by those who looked the enemy in the face. But The First Battle is not just another war story told exclusively from the American point of view. In researching the book, Leharck walked the battlefield and spoke with the men who fought with the 1st Viet Cong Regiment. All of them were accomplished combat veterans years before the U.S. entered the war.

Leharck plants his readers squarely in 1965 America-the year that truly began the U.S.'s long involvement in Indochina. Hardly anyone was against the war in 1965. Casualties numbered in the hundreds. The administration and the public thought it a n.o.ble little war in the continuing struggle against the Red Menace, and that it would be concluded quickly and cheaply. Operation Starlite propelled the Vietnam War into the headlines across the nation and into the minds of Americans, where it took up residence for more than a decade. Starlite was the first step in Vietnam becoming America's Tar Baby; the more she struggled to find a solution, the more difficult it became.

The subt.i.tle of the book is Operation Starlite and the Beginning of the Blood Debt in Vietnam. Blood debt-in Vietnamese hantu-means revenge, debt of honor, or blood owed for blood spilled. The Blood Debt came into Vietnamese usage early in the war with the U.S. With this battle, the Johnson Administration began compiling its own Blood Debt, this one to the American people. It was a fateful conundrum. Before Starlite, the Blood Debt to the American public was relatively low and relatively easy to write off. As this debit grew, Johnson and his successors came to resemble losing gamblers. They continued throwing lives and treasure into the game, hoping somehow their fortunes would reverse and the Blood Debt would be justified.

The First Battle also examines the ongoing conflict between the U.S. Army and the Marines about the way the war was fought. With decades of experience with insurrection and rebellion, the Marines were inst.i.tutionally oriented to base the struggle on pacification of the population. The Army, on the other hand, having largely trained to meet the Soviet Army on the plains of Germany, opted to search and destroy main force units. The history of the Vietnam War is decorated with many "what ifs." This may be the biggest of them.

A year later most of the men of the platoon who had heard the Starlite message from the BLT Commander would themselves be in Vietnam. Most would return again to Vietnam; several would never return home. Each of them, however, was influenced by this battle that set the stage for long years ahead while forcing the enemy to change his intent of dominating the population areas while telegraphing the eventual downfall of the Viet Cong as an independent military organization capable of open, large scale battle with American units.

Colonel John Ripley.

Director, Marine Corps Historical Division.

THE TRUMPET SOUNDS.

Chulai, Vietnam.

16 August 1965. Afternoon.

Major Andy Comer.

At about 1330 on August 16, 1965, Maj Andy Comer, the executive officer of the 3d Battalion, 3d Marine Regiment (3/3), was summoned by his commander LtCol Joe Muir, to the 4th Marine Regiment command post at Chulai. Muir told Comer that the amphibious a.s.sault on the Van Tuong peninsula, which they had frequently discussed and partially planned for, was to be executed. The 3d Battalion, 3d Marines, would make a landing from the sea while LtCol Joseph R. "Bull" Fisher's 2d Battalion, 4th Marines (2/4), would be inserted inland by helicopter. The operation was Top Secret, and information was pa.s.sed out in hushed tones and on a strict need-to-know basis.

When Capt Cal Morris, the commander of Mike Company, 3/3, was called into Lieutenant Colonel Muir's tent to be briefed on his company's role in the operation, he was admonished to not even tell his company officers their mission or destination.

16 August 1965. Evening.

Colonel Oscar F. Peatross.

The commander of the landing force, Col Oscar F. "Peat" Peatross, worked the Marine units all night long to get the operation up and going. About midnight, he sent his logistics officer, Maj Floyd Johnson, out to talk to Capt William R. McKinney, United States Navy, who would be the commodore of the amphibious component of the operation, to tell him to hold his s.h.i.+ps, because at that very moment some of them were about to leave for Hong Kong. One s.h.i.+p had already departed and another was up in Danang to unload elements from the 9th Marines just in from Okinawa. The commodore said to Johnson, "Now this is an unusual way to run an operation. In all of my career, I've never heard of an operation run this way before." Johnson replied, "I got it direct from Colonel Peatross, who got it direct from General Walt. We're going to use your s.h.i.+ps, and you'll get some sort of [written] directive for the operation later on." McKinney agreed and set his commanders and staff in motion.

16 August 1965. Evening.

Corporal Bob Collins.

Corporal Collins was on the U.S. Naval Base at Subic Bay in the Philippines when the call came. His unit, the 3d Battalion, 7th Marines, (3/7), was on liberty. Collins had just finished eating dinner at the enlisted club with his Filipina girlfriend and was walking to the base theater to see a movie when he heard trucks with loudspeakers mounted on them calling for all 3/7 Marines to return to their s.h.i.+ps. Collins quickly took his girlfriend to the main gate, signed her out, and went back to the s.h.i.+p, wondering what all the fuss was about.

16 August 1965. Afternoon.

Secrecy was the watchword. From the very beginning until all the units were underway, the Marines operated by word-of-mouth, and even then details were given to only a select few. Because the operation was so hush-hush, nothing was put to paper, and the operation wasn't named until word of it reached the 3d Marine Division headquarters. Once the division staff was briefed by Colonel Peatross's officers, Col Don Wyckoff, the operations officer for the 3d Marine Division, picked the name Satellite. He did so for two reasons: because NASA was about to launch a Gemini s.p.a.cecraft the same week as the operation, and because of the unusual manner in which two battalions from different regiments, 3/3 and 2/4, would be "satellites" of the 7th Marines headquarters during the operation. As the clerks labored late into the night typing the official orders, a generator failed, and the ch.o.r.e was finished by candlelight. In the shadowy bunker a clerk misread the handwritten instructions and typed in "Starlite" instead of Satellite. It has often been mistakenly spelled as "Starlight" by the press, and even in some official accounts.

16 August 1965. Afternoon.

Gunnery Sergeant Ed Garr.

Over in 2/4, GySgt Ed Garr figured this was not to be an ordinary operation, so he dug out a brown army-issue T-s.h.i.+rt that he had worn on a previous operation and which he considered to be lucky. Marines who have seen a lot of combat can be very superst.i.tious, and many will wear favored gear or go through certain rituals when they figure something big is in the offing.

17 August 1965. Morning.

Lieutenant Burt Hinson.

On August 17, 1965, Lt Burt Hinson got word from Capt Jay Doub, the skipper of Kilo Company, 3/3, to meet him at the battalion command post. Hinson was about two-and-a-half miles away. The terrain was soft sand, and being a mere lieutenant and without transportation, he was forced to hoof it, cursing Doub all the way. Once he got there, and because of the secrecy involved, Doub simply told Hinson that he wanted his platoon at the beach at a certain coordinate at a certain time, ready to board s.h.i.+p early that afternoon. Then he sent the lieutenant walking back across the sand once more, swearing at every step. Hinson had a love-hate relations.h.i.+p with Doub. "Jay Doub and I had a chemical dislike for each other. But he was the toughest man I ever met... tougher than a boiled owl." And ... "If I ever had to go into combat again, I would like to go with Jay Doub. If there was one person I modeled myself after later in my career, it was Jay Doub."

17 August 1965. Early Evening.

Lieutenant Colonel Lloyd Childers.

Lieutenant Colonel Childers and his pilots sat through a sketchy briefing about the operation. Helicopters from two squadrons were to support the initial insertion of 2/4 into the battle. The second squadron was to leave for other commitments after that, so the brunt of helicopter support was to be borne by Childers's Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron-361 (HMM-361). It was a squadron new to Vietnam but long in elan.

Colonel Childers was a U.S. Navy veteran of the Battle of Midway in World War II. He had been a tail gunner on one of two TBD torpedo bombers that had remained out of thirty-six TBDs launched against the j.a.panese during the battle. When his plane was fatally damaged, too, the pilot ditched the aircraft next to a U.S. Navy destroyer. Childers was badly wounded and barely conscious. Machine-gun bullets had ripped through both legs. Childers had been dragged first into a whaleboat, and then onto the destroyer, where the s.h.i.+p's doctor operated on him atop the dining table in the officers' mess. He was told he would never fly again. Nevertheless, by 1965 he commanded a Marine helicopter squadron and was widely regarded as an absolutely fearless and inspiring warrior. His squadron pilots and crews were proud of their daring and skill.

PROLOGUE.

AMERICA 1965.

For more than three decades America's war in Vietnam has been characterized as a tragedy. It was an event that tore apart the country, felled a presidency, and changed America's view of herself and the opinion of others about America. Almost no one born after the late 1940s remembers when the Vietnam War was regarded as a n.o.ble little war with scant promise of bursting the bounds of control and bearing tragic consequences.

It has almost been lost from memory that, in the late summer of 1965, the Vietnam War was not unpopular either with the American public or with the men who fought it. The men were nearly all young Baby Boomers, the sons of those who remembered the Great Depression. The Cold War and containment of communism framed the circ.u.mstances in which they were raised and which formed their beliefs. Most young males of this period expected to be drafted, or to volunteer, and to serve in their country's uniform. Their fathers had won World War II and their grandfathers had fought the War to End All Wars. It was their turn to face down evil wherever and in whatever form it appeared, and they did not shrink from the task. Having eradicated fascism in Europe and Asia, America was needed by the world to deal with the Red Menace. And an America that was just emerging from its chrysalis of innocence believed it was equal to the task. We had confidence in our government and our armed forces. We had yet to learn that democracy is not an ideology easily exported to a country where our indigenous high priests were avaricious and corrupt while the other side's, regardless of their political beliefs, were ascetic and nationalistic.

Moreover, at least to those who paid attention to such things, Vietnam had entertained us since the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. It was, after all, a small, quaint, tropical country with elephants and tigers, diminutive citizens in colorful dress, and-since the rather puzzling and fatal departure of our ally, President Ngo Dinh Diem, in November 1963-a land of rotating governments. We marveled at the fiery suicides of Buddhist monks, who all seemed to be named Thich something or other; and we wondered at the evil of the crafty Viet Cong, those barefoot, slightly built peasants who could surely be beaten with just a bit of American firepower and technology. True, the French lost to them, but who, these days, were the French? They had not seemed to amount to anything since the distant high tide of the Napoleonic Wars, and France certainly wasn't the United States.

By the spring of 1965 it was clear that American firepower and technology required Americans to apply it, so the first regular U.S. ground troops landed. By August of that year their numbers had grown from a couple of battalions to 88,000 men. Casualties were relatively few, but their rate and frequency were escalating. Since the beginning of our involvement in Vietnam in 1959, some 906 Americans had died there. For the families and friends of those nine hundred six, each death was a tragedy. For the rest of us, casualties were not yet important. No one in his darkest dream foresaw the day when more than fifty eight thousand names would adorn a black wall in our nation's capital. Mostly men, these were the names of America's sons, husbands, and fathers. Eight million of our young men and women would serve in our nation's uniform over the next decade, and five million of these would serve in Vietnam itself, in the skies over Vietnam, or in vessels offsh.o.r.e. It was to pa.s.s that all of us would be affected, one way or another, by events in this tiny, far-away country.

In August 1965 this was all in the future. America was far different then. Vietnam competed with other events for s.p.a.ce on the front pages. The cities were in their late-summer doldrums, vacations were coming to an end, and schools were preparing to open. Headlines most often dealt with domestic matters. In mid-month the Watts section of Los Angeles erupted in flames as rioting "negroes" protested their lack of civil rights. Astronauts Gordon Cooper and Charles Conrad prepared for and went into orbit in the Gemini 5 s.p.a.cecraft, paving the way for Neil Armstrong to set foot on the moon four years later. The Sandpiper, with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, was showing at theaters across the country; the Beatles were singing for Help; Petula Clark was wailing about Downtown; and Sam the Sham was doing the Wooly Bully. In baseball, the Twins and Dodgers were leading their leagues and would meet in the World Series two months later. An average daily record of 6.2 million shares was traded on the New York Stock Exchange, where the Dow Jones Industrial Average had just broken 900.

Yes, Vietnam was there, all right, but it was in the shadows. For America it was a n.o.ble little war in which the depraved enemy would soon give up in the face of just, perhaps, a bit more American might, and justice would prevail in yet another place in the world. None of our crystal-ball gazers knew that Vietnam and America were at a turning point. It was in this month, in this year, that Vietnam began its advance to the foreground of our national consciousness, where it was to take up residence and remain for a decade. Operation Starlite was the first event in that journey.

Otto J. Lehrack.

CHAPTER 1.

INCHING TOWARD THE ABYSS.

The United States came to this pa.s.s in baby steps, characterized more by Cold War fears, hubris, and inattention than by level-headed policy examination. The Soviet Union, China and, lately, Cuba, occupied the attention of planners at the White House, the Pentagon and in Foggy Bottom. For the twenty years since the end of World War II the thinkers in Was.h.i.+ngton had bigger fish to fry; Vietnam was little more than a footnote among the larger events of the Cold War. Very few American policy makers had even a vague understanding of Vietnam, its history, and recent events there. And those who did know anything about Indochina found their voices drowned by the choruses of Cold Warriors who kept the dangers of the Soviet Union and China at the head of the agenda.

The Vietnamese had been itching for self-rule for decades, and their patriotic movements gained speed and strength during World War II. After the defeat of the French Army by Hitler's Wermacht in the early days of World War II, the pro-n.a.z.i Vichy government agreed to joint rule by the j.a.panese of the French colony of Indochina. Vietnamese guerrillas fought the j.a.panese during the Pacific War with the a.s.sistance of the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the proto-Central Intelligence Agency. A handful of Americans advised and fought side-by-side with Vietnamese against the common foe. The arms and training America provided were a boost to the fledgling Vietnamese guerrilla forces that would later take on the French and the Americans.

After the defeat of j.a.pan in 1945, Communist Party leader Ho Chi Minh hoped to leverage his country's role against the j.a.panese into independence from post-war recolonization by France. He appealed to President Harry Truman to make Vietnam an American protectorate along the Philippines model.1 Ho was a charismatic intellectual who was widely read and traveled. He had lived in New York, where in 1918 he wrote a pamphlet about appalling conditions among the Italians in Harlem; and in Paris, where, in 1920, he became a founding member of the French Communist Party. But it was not just Ho's political beliefs that led to the rejection of his proposal to the United States. The major piece of the equation was French President Charles DeGaulle's desire to regain France's former colonies. France, after all, was a major American ally, and De Gaulle's vision of a French renaissance in Asia, to say nothing of his promised a.s.sistance in Cold War Europe, won the day with the American president. The seeds of American involvement in Vietnam were planted in the little-noticed recognition of French ambitions in Indochina. A handful of years later, these seeds germinated as Cold War anxieties prompted the Eisenhower Administration to provide the French with arms and financial a.s.sistance in their war against the Vietnamese communists. By 1950 the American taxpayer was footing the bill for 80 percent of the war's costs. Few Americans knew or cared that millions of U.S. dollars were going to help the French. A debt not written in the blood of our young men is a debt easily ignored or forgiven.

The French, however, had internal problems as a result of the war. The people were suffering from casualty fatigue. World War II was not that far behind them, and the growing numbers of killed and wounded in both Algeria and Indochina fanned the flames of public discontent. The French government attempted to attenuate mounting criticism by using pro-French natives and the French Foreign Legion to bear the brunt of the struggle in Southeast Asia. This policy bought but little time. The average French citizen had had enough of bloodshed and wanted the war to end. This was a sentiment reflected fifteen years later in the United States, when American citizens brought intolerable pressure to bear on the Johnson, Nixon, and Ford administrations.

France's short-lived and sad epilogue in Indochina collapsed in 1954 at the siege of Dien Bien Phu. The French actually sought this battle. The whole reason for establis.h.i.+ng the garrison at Dien Bien Phu was to draw the Vietnamese into a set-piece contest, which the French thought they would surely win. Dien Bien Phu was strong and it was occupied by the best French troops in Indochina. They underestimated the determination of the Vietnamese. Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap's Viet Minh2 reduced the fortified French position piece by piece with human-wave tactics, ma.s.sed artillery fire, even siege works. The artillery fire came from guns hauled by hand, under conditions of extreme hards.h.i.+p, into the mountains surrounding the stronghold. Under unrelenting barrages of artillery fire, the Vietnamese attacked again and again until all thirteen thousand defenders were killed or captured. This was a major military and psychological defeat for the French at the hands of an army that began as a single twenty-four man platoon a mere decade earlier. The French public had had enough.

In the treaty that ended the war and dictated France's withdrawal, Vietnam was "temporarily" part.i.tioned. The agreement also called for a general election within all of Vietnam in 1956 to determine under what sort of government the country would be unified. The Emperor Bao Dai appointed Ngo Dinh Diem to head a Western-style government in the south while Ho Chi Minh's forces took over the northern portion of the country.

Diem and Ho, like most Vietnamese, longed for the ultimate unification of their country, but each was determined to see that the unification took place under his own brand of government. Each side immediately began efforts to undermine the government of the other. The Americans, who had fought the communists in Korea and were well into the Cold War, wasted no time in shoring up the government of the southern, non-communist, half of the country under President Diem. Diem was an educated westernized Catholic and a member of the old social elite that ruled a country whose citizens were largely ancestor wors.h.i.+ppers or Buddhists in religion and peasants by occupation. Supporting Diem seemed at the time an easy and bloodless way for America to contain communism in Southeast Asia.

Diem and his family were corrupt and more interested in maintaining personal power than in turning the country into a democracy. In November 1963 unrest among the population shook the foundations of government and the Viet Cong guerrillas, southerners who wanted to liberate the South Vietnam from Diem, threatened to take over the country. A coup led by South Vietnamese Marines removed Diem from office with American acquiescence. Hours later he and his hated brother were murdered by those who had plotted against them.

A period of coup and counter-coup followed. Policy makers in the United States, still enamored with the idea of a cheap defense against Asian communism talked themselves into supporting one general after another as each boarded the Ferris wheel of power, rode to his own brief apogee, and came to ground in yet another chapter of the continuing power struggle. There were nine different governments in South Vietnam between November 1963 and February 1965.

The chaos brought on by the tumultuous days of revolving governments opened doors for increased activity by communist insurgents in the south at the same it hobbled the effectiveness of the Saigon government. The United States, sensitive to the fragility of its South Vietnamese ally and frustrated in its inability to control events in the south, began action against the north instead.

In February 1964, the United States and South Vietnamese initiated OPLAN 34A, a series of clandestine measures against North Vietnam, including sabotage and commando raids against military installations along the coast. Although South Vietnamese conducted the actual raids, they were planned and supported by the United States. The U.S. Navy also began Operation DeSoto, sea patrols in the Tonkin Gulf. The dominant thinking was that if the Americans and South Vietnamese punished the north a little, the communists would stop their activities in the south. This naive notion persisted for years despite the lack of any evidence that the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong would give in to this type of pressure. The Americans were looking for an excuse to do more when the so-called Tonkin Gulf incident of August 1964 provided it.3 a.s.sistance for the South Vietnam military persisted, first in the form of equipment, and then with advisors and yet more equipment. American casualties in Vietnam began with the deaths of Maj Dale Buis and MSgt Chester Ovnand on July 8, 1959. The two U.S. Air Force special intelligence personnel were watching a movie when a Viet Cong hurled an explosive charge into the room in which they were relaxing. For the next six years the butcher's bill slowly grew and then, almost imperceptibly, accelerated. In ones and twos at first, and then in larger numbers, the flow of body bags from Southeast Asia increased.

The U.S. Army general in charge, Paul D. Harkins, began his tenure as the Commander, U.S. Military a.s.sistance Command Vietnam (COMUSMACV), in 1962. Harkins looked and talked like a successful general, and he was always over-br.i.m.m.i.n.g with optimism about the course of the war in Vietnam. Those who got out of Saigon and went into the field did not share his confidence. Among those who did go to the field were members of a new generation of American journalists who felt determined to report what they saw. These journalists-Homer Bigart, Neal Sheehan, and David Halberstam among them-became increasingly vocal about what they perceived as the real course of the war and the weaknesses of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). At about this time, too, many of the junior American officers in the field, where they served as advisors to the ARVN, warned of impending crises due to the inadequacies of their hosts, particularly the Vietnamese officer corps.4 Gradually, it became evident to the Johnson Administration that something in Vietnam was wrong, so General Harkins was quietly retired and replaced by General William C. Westmoreland, U.S. Army.

Lewis Sorley, in his penetrating biography of General Harold K. Johnson, chief of staff of the United States Army from 1964 to 1968, offers some interesting observations about the appointment of Westmoreland. Sorley makes the point that Generals Johnson, Creighton Abrams (who was eventually to be Westmoreland's successor), and Bruce Palmer (who relieved General Johnson as the Army deputy chief of staff for operations) all understood the key task in an insurgency environment was to mobilize the population. Westmoreland himself, according to Sorley, did not.5 His training, and therefore his thinking, was oriented around set-piece warfare with the Soviet Army on the plains of Germany. The names of all four generals were submitted to President Lyndon Johnson as possible successors to the discredited Harkins. Westmoreland was a protege of Gen Maxwell Taylor, at this time U.S. Amba.s.sador to Vietnam, and Sorely believes it was Taylor's influence that led to Westmoreland's appointment as COMUSMACV.

Having made their choice, the Commander-in-Chief, the Secretary of Defense, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff gave Westmoreland a free hand as to the conduct of the war for the next four years.6 It was a period in which the war would evolve from a fight against pajama-clad guerrillas into one against a uniformed and well-equipped foe, one of the best infantry forces in the world, the regular North Vietnamese Army (NVA). The NVA was an army, it should be noted, that retained an important guerrilla element: It did not fight set-piece battles; it operated in an insurgency mode.

Westmoreland's tenure was also the period in which the war would lose its popularity, or at least its acceptability, with the American public and lead to the destruction of a presidency.

It may or may not be that the newly appointed American commander in Vietnam was well grounded in the requirements of warfare in an insurgency environment. But his opponents, the Vietnamese communists, understood them very well. Their countrymen had spent centuries in opposition to invaders and occupiers.

THE ENEMY.

Douglas Pike, a distinguished scholar of Indochina, calls the Vietnamese the "Prussians of Asia."7 "The alarums and excursions of war echo like an endless drumroll down the corridor of Vietnamese history. In vast and rhythmic cycles the Vietnamese experience for two thousand years has been invasion, siege, occupation, rebellion-interspersed with lesser moments of dissidence, covert militant opposition, and other forms of social sabotage. Mentally, the Vietnamese have always lived in an armed camp."8 For most of its history, Vietnam has struggled to resist foreign occupation. A unique and thriving civilization that was known as Nam Viet had been in existence for several hundred years, and was a kingdom under a regent named Choa To when, in 111 B.C., the Chinese Han Dynasty sent an expeditionary corps southward and conquered it. For a thousand years the Vietnamese struggled to free themselves from the yoke of Chinese domination. During this millennium, patriots by the score made their way into the pantheon of Vietnam's heroes and achieved national status. Every Vietnamese school child knows their names. In the First Century it was the Trung sisters, who led a rebellion against the might of the Chinese Empire. Their insurrection was overwhelmed and crushed in A.D. 43, but it lasted for three years against Asia's most formidable military force. In the Sixth Century, Ly Bi took back part of the country from the Chinese, made himself king, and reigned for six years. In the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth centuries, Vietnamese rebellions continually rocked the southern borders of the Tang Dynasty. Finally, in the Tenth Century, Ngo Quyen freed the Vietnamese from a millennium of foreign domination when he sank the Chinese fleet at the battle of Bach Dang. Three hundred years later the Vietnamese twice defeated the Mongols, conquerors of the Eurasian continent from the Pacific sh.o.r.es to central Russia. Tran Hung Dao, victor in the twelve-year war against these daring hors.e.m.e.n, is credited with being the progenitor of the type of warfare that his successors would wage against the French and the Americans. He conserved his strength while taking advantages of the enemy's weaknesses. He always sought the support of the population. He did not try to hold territory but willingly evacuated towns, and he even evacuated the capital when necessary. He avoided combat when the enemy was too strong, resorted to guerrilla hara.s.sment, and took the offensive whenever the circ.u.mstances were favorable.

The enemy relies on numbers. To oppose the long with the short-therein lies our skill. If the enemy makes a violent rush forward, like fire and tempest, it is easy to defeat him. But if he shows patience, like the silkworm nibbling at the mulberry leaf, if he proceeds without haste, refrains from pillaging, and does not seek a quick victory, then we must choose the best generals and defensive tactics, as in a chess game. The army must be united and of one mind, like father and son. It is essential to treat the people with humanity, so as to strike deep roots and ensure a lasting base.

In the Fifteenth Century, it was Le Loi who ejected China once more following yet another invasion and twenty years of exploitive rule. Nearly every Vietnamese city today has a Le Loi street or a statue of the great hero, or both.9 In the Nineteenth Century the Vietnamese met another invader against whom they struggled for nearly a century to expel. This time it was the French. The new intruder captured Danang in 1858 and laid siege to Saigon in 1859. Quickly driven back from Saigon, they returned two years later to stay. By 1883 France completely controlled all of Vietnam, and in 1887 they formed the French Union in Indo-China, which by 1893 included five regions in Southeast Asia. In addition to the three Vietnamese states of Tonkin, Annam, and Cochin China, the new union incorporated the neighboring countries of Cambodia and Laos.10 The French administration of the country was extremely repressive. Archimedes Patti, an American OSS officer who served in Vietnam during World War II, summed it up: "I confirmed in my reports that French colonialism in Indochina had been one of the worst possible examples of peonage, disregard for human rights and French cupidity and that for more than three-quarters of a century, the Vietnamese had been cruelly exploited, brutally maltreated, and generally used as French chattel.... The socioeconomic conditions generated by the French colonial system fostered discontent and rebellion...."11 Discontent and rebellion there were in abundance and they were fueled by French practices. "French Indochina" was prescribed as the proper designation for the country and the very use of the name Vietnam was considered revolutionary and therefore forbidden. High taxes impoverished many small farmers and resulted in the concentration of land in fewer and fewer hands. Before long, two percent of the population owned 50 percent of the land and tenant farmers paid up to 70 percent of their harvest to the landlord. The French maintained monopolies on the production of alcohol, opium, and salt. They imported rubber trees for a new industry that was controlled by a handful of non-natives.

The French abolished the old mandarin system of government and subst.i.tuted their own administration and administrators. Vietnamese could only gain access to the very lowest civil service positions, and only then if they were French-speaking Roman Catholics. The natives who made it into the civil administration were poorly paid and limited in prospects. Even the lowliest Frenchman in service earned at least six times what the highest paid Vietnamese made. Moreover, Vietnam became a dumping ground for Frenchmen who aspired to civil careers but for whom there was no work at home. The French used more administrators to govern 30 million Vietnamese than the British used to rule 325 million Indians.12 This enormous administrative superstructure had to be paid for somehow, and most of it came from punitive taxation of the Vietnamese.

Nationalists who rebelled against the French, and there were many, were harshly punished with harsh prison terms or death. Portable guillotines were sent around the countryside to deal with offenders. The Hao Lo prison, which gained notoriety during America's war with Vietnam as the "Hanoi Hilton," was constructed by the French to cage unruly Vietnamese.13 In 1890, a future revolutionary was born into the Nguyen family of Nghe An Province. He was named Nguyen Sinh Cung and would be later known to the world by one of his nom-de-guerre, Ho Chi Minh. Ho's father came from a peasant family but against all odds had become an educated man. His education carried him to a position as a minor official in the puppet Imperial court that was controlled by the French, and there he was exposed to first-hand evidence of foreign domination. This experience fostered a violent anti-French bias that was pa.s.sed along to his children. His daughter, who was caught smuggling weapons to Vietnamese rebels, was sentenced to prison for life. His eldest son became a patriot-writer who penned pet.i.tion after pet.i.tion to the French to protest the living conditions of his people and to demand independence.

Party history tells us that the youngest son, who was to become Ho Chi Minh, began his revolutionary career at age five, carrying messages between groups of anti-French rebels. A bright lad, Ho listened to tales of Vietnamese heroes and plots to achieve Vietnam's freedom. He became educated and for a time taught school. When he was twenty-two he s.h.i.+pped on a French liner and landed in New York and later Paris, where he found himself in the middle of a large Vietnamese expatriate community, a revolutionary breeding ground. A thin, almost frail, man Ho was charismatic and intellectual. He became immersed in the virtues of socialism and then in the teachings of Lenin. Sympathetic biographers also credit him with personifying the six Confucian virtues of wisdom, benevolence, sincerity, righteousness, moderation, and harmony. He attracted an intensely loyal following in no time and remained abroad for thirty years. In his absence, insurrection at home continued apace.14 In 1930 a major event catalyzed the Vietnamese. On the night of February 8-9 a group of rebels attacked a French fort. The French responded with widespread air and ground attacks that probably killed more innocent civilians, including a good number of women and children, than revolutionaries. The resulting outrage fueled general fighting, which spread throughout the country and consumed lives and property for most of the year.15 To dampen the violence, the French began a grim purge of anti-French revolutionaries. Ho Chi Minh was tried in absentia and sentenced to death. Others were caught and executed, and still more were sentenced to long prison terms from which few emerged. Vo Nguyen Giap, who was to become Vietnam greatest military commander in the wars against the French and the Americans, barely escaped his pursuers and went into exile in China. His wife and infant daughter were captured and both died in prison, his wife after being subjected to barbarous tortures.16 Ho left Europe and arrived in China near the Vietnamese border in 1941. There he met Giap for the first time, and the two men formed a bond that would last until Ho's death in 1969.17 Their arrival coincided with a new occupier of Vietnam, the j.a.panese. Ho and Giap collaborated with the American OSS against the j.a.panese and dreamed of post-war Vietnamese independence.18 Just two weeks after j.a.pan's defeat in 1945, Ho stepped up to a podium in Hanoi and gave a speech that was loosely based on an inflammatory doc.u.ment from another time-the American Declaration of Independence. He affirmed Vietnam to be a free and independent nation that would now govern itself without outside intervention.19 The French were having none of it and moved immediately to crush Ho's movement.

Ho and Giap had begun building military units from the self-defense forces that had been formed among non-ethnic Vietnamese mountain tribes during the early forties at the time of the j.a.panese occupation. The first platoon, the genesis of what was to become a powerful army, was organized in 1944. It was called the Tuyen Truyen Giai Phong Quan, or Armed Propaganda and Liberation Unit. The emphasis on propaganda was no mistake; it reflected the Vietnamese experience against foreigners. Ho's idea was to remind his soldiers that all power came from the people.20 Giap, like his long-ago predecessor Dao, understood the need to be one with the nation's inhabitants. Although a publicly stated goal of the United States in Vietnam was to win the hearts and minds of the people, the French and later most Americans believed technology and superior firepower to be sufficient to achieve their aims. An oft-repeated phrase during America's war in Vietnam was, "Grab 'em by the b.a.l.l.s, and their hearts and minds will follow."21 Giap sent his forces headlong against the French shortly after Ho's independence speech. The results were disastrous. In the beginning the insurgents took countless casualties as they attempted to employ conventional tactics against superior technology. It quickly became evident to Giap and his officers that, in order to overcome French superiority in numbers of men, firepower, aircraft, and mobility, the Vietnamese would have to fall back on the tactics of their forebears. Using such tactics Giap was not to win many battles against the French. He did not have to, he needed only enough to make them quit. He took a page from the book of Tran Hung Dao, leader of the Vietnamese against the Mongols, who had said, "The enemy must fight his battles far from his home base for a long time.... We must further weaken him by drawing him into protracted campaigns. Once his initial dash is broken, it will be easier to destroy him."22 Many years later it was American technology and firepower that bogged down against this philosophy. Anyone who fought in or studied America's war in Vietnam would recognize Giap's battle tactics against the French.

Giap learned never to seek a fight unless it was sure to be profitable, that he would win. The Americans, who were absolutely convinced of the superiority of their firepower, complained about this. They griped as if Giap's tactics made the enemy inferior, lesser men, ones who did not fight fair.

Moreover, Western firepower was a double-edged sword. It was difficult to control and often affected the innocent. Many Vietnamese who had no use for the communists were driven into their arms because of casualties within their families, dislocations, ruined businesses, and other forms of destruction caused by ma.s.s fire. Giap's propagandists were quick to exploit these mishaps to their own advantage.

Giap balanced his force ratio by such tactics as throwing a few rounds of gunfire at smaller outposts, just enough to wear down the inhabitants psychologically and to make the enemy use large amounts of supplies and men to guard them.

A lone guerrilla or a small team would mine roads and bridges at leisure, in the cool of the night. Then whole teams of French or American engineers and their security forces were forced to work in steam-bath heat to slowly, carefully, and stressfully sweep a road each time it had to be used.

Giap tried to make the French and the Americans afraid of everything. No unit was without at least one tale of the child who rolled a grenade into their midst, of the old woman who acted as a forward observer for enemy mortars, of the ARVN sergeant or officer who turned out to be a member of the Viet Cong. The list seemed endless. And then there were the ubiquitous b.o.o.by traps, which, in some areas, caused up to 80 percent of French or American casualties. The French called this process grignotage, the slow nibbling away of their morale by all possible means.

Giap also insisted that each unit in the field be responsible for itself. If it got into trouble, it had to get itself out; even if it was faced with complete destruction, it could expect no help. The opposite side of this coin worked very much to the communists' advantage. They would ambush or attack a unit and be ready, as well, to ambush the relief force that the French or Americans invariably sent. Sometimes they would suck in several units in sequence, inflict terrible damage on them, and then withdraw when they, themselves, were threatened. The French, and particularly the Americans, risked large numbers of men and significant resources in attempts to save a small unit or even just one man.

Visions of the Alamo or Custer's Last Stand will not permit the American military psyche to do anything else.