Kontum: The Battle to Save South Vietnam

9. The Collapse at Tan Canh

9 The Collapse at Tan Canh It is inconceivable that the South can’t hold out against the North Vietnamese. They are just too good and wellequipped an army for that—unless the North Vietnamese are all Prussians and the South Vietnamese are all Italians. . . . There is always that possibility, of course. —A Rand Corporation senior analyst The ARVN 22nd Infantry Division was a large division with four rather than the usual three regiments and four rather than the usual three battalions in each regiment. In February 1972, the division commander was Major General Le Ngoc Trien, an officer who was tired, burned out, and actively lobbying for a new assignment. His deputy, Colonel Le Duc Dat, who was stationed in Kontum, wanted to be the division commander and had enough political influence to get the job despite John Paul Vann’s lobbying for another candidate. Vann had known Dat when he was a province chief in III Corps and considered him incompetent and corrupt. Colonel Dat’s adviser was Colonel Phillip Kaplan, who became the commanding officer of MACV Advisory Team 22 and senior adviser to the ARVN 22nd Division in August 1971. Kaplan had graduated from Officer Candidate School in 1949 and had served as a platoon leader in Korea, so he was an experienced combat leader.1 After Dat took command, Kaplan established a reasonably good relationship with him but thought several of the regimental commanders should be fired.2 While Brigadier General Wear continued to advocate a series of blocking positions on the enemy’s avenue of approach to Kontum, President Thieu was admonishing his generals not to give up any 96 • KONTUM more territory. So Vann’s strategy was to establish a stronger forward defense to hold the territory northwest of Kontum. He convinced Lieutenant General Dzu that this tactic was necessary, and on 27 January Dzu ordered Colonel Dat to set up a 22nd Division forward CP at Tan Canh. This placed the division headquarters closer to the units it would be controlling during the NV A offensive . Dat’s 42nd Regiment was already at Tan Canh, and his 47th Regiment would be moved from Pleiku to Dak To II,3 about five kilometers west of Tan Canh. Lieutenant Colonel Robert W. Brownlee Jr., senior adviser to the 47th Regiment, was quoted in Time magazine about the NV A’s probable intentions in the Highlands: “The enemy’s got a new goddamn division and three good regiments across the border in this area, and Tet is coming and Nixon’s going to Peking. If I were a Communist political commander I’d say screw the casualties and hit ’em.”4 The 9th Airborne Battalion was also at Dak To II and had one company deployed on a ridge farther north. The Ben Het Border Ranger Camp was five kilometers west of Dak To II. The 40th and 41st Regiments, half of the 22nd Division, would remain on the coast to defend Binh Dinh Province.5 Binh Dinh was an important province of a million people as well as being the intersection of coastal Highway 1 and Highway 19 that connected Pleiku and the Highlands with the coast.6 Elements of the 19th ARVN Cavalry Regiment were sent to Tan Canh to reinforce the 22nd Division’s own organic 14th Cavalry Regiment. Although these ARVN tank units were called regiments, they were more equal to a US tank battalion in numbers of men and tanks. Colonel Dat sent this additional armor to Ben Het Border Ranger Camp because he thought any NV A tank attacks would come from that direction. However, the II Corps senior armor officer , Lieutenant Colonel Tuong, argued against this disposition because he thought the tanks should be uncommitted and free to use in counterattacks rather than in fixed positions inside Ben Het.7 Colonel Dat was one of those South Vietnamese who believed the northerners made better soldiers. He thought the NV A was superior in just about every way and was probably invincible. This view was ironic because Dat was from the North himself. When Kaplan admonished him about things he failed to do, Dat would sometimes say, “We’ve been fighting this war a long time.” Kaplan’s response would be, “That’s the trouble!” Dat once sent Mr. Vann a THE COLLAPSE AT TAN CANH • 97 gift, a statue of a...