Kontum: The Battle to Save South Vietnam

20. Finishing the Job

20 Finishing the Job You will kill ten of our men and we will kill one of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it. —Ho Chi Minh John Paul Vann was elated. He was vindicated. His plan had worked. The Arc Lights and tactical air killed tens of thousands of the enemy, destroyed their supplies, and broke up their attacks. The USAF, VNAF, and the Hooks brought in our necessary supplies . Colonel Rhotenberry and the other advisers did their jobs, and Brigadier General Ba and his 23rd Infantry Division had held. Kontum was saved. Although some pockets of enemy resistance remained, around noon on Wednesday, 31 May, Mr. Vann declared that the main battle for Kontum was over. At a press conference in the Team 21 mess hall in Pleiku, Vann said the big test had been on 14 May, when the first NV A tanks were destroyed in Kontum. He said the battle was “characterized by the failure of the North Vietnamese to achieve any objectives.” The NV A needed replacements and resupply for its battered forces, and those forces were now retreating from Kontum City, leaving nearly 4,000 of their dead behind on the battlefield. Most had been killed by air strikes and artillery. In clearing out the last of the NV A in the city, 23rd Division troops killed 237 enemy soldiers and found another 128 bodies in a mass grave on the northern outskirts of Kontum.1 In the evening , the 3rd Battalion of the 53rd was on a search mission three kilometers northeast of Kontum when it found approximately 100 NV A bodies in destroyed bunkers and foxholes.2 As of 31 May, the Communists physically controlled all but 246 • KONTUM four hamlets in Kontum Province, and government control over those four was either marginal or inadequate.3 The main supply route from Pleiku to Kontum, Highway 14, remained closed. Kontum airfield was also closed, so the only resupply was by Hook or parachute. As for the enemy, the province senior adviser recorded: “Reports from Hoi Chanh, POWs, and line crossers confirm that the enemy is critically short of ammunition and food; malaria and infected wounds are serious problems; death of many small unit leaders is resulting in aimless wanderings; after having been told that they were coming into Kontum as an occupying force, they expressed great surprise at the ferocious reception they received.”4 When the monsoon season started, ground combat slowed down. As the enemy activity to our front slackened, the 23rd Division concentrated on eliminating the last strongpoints of enemy resistance within the city. The last day of May was the seventh day of intense, close-in fighting in Kontum. Reopening the airfield—at least to night operations—was a top priority, but we first needed to clear out all the NV A holdouts. The enemy-held areas in the southeastern part of the city were reduced to about four square blocks. However, the fighting between the 44th Regiment and the enemy in the hospital area was hard, bunker-to-bunker, house-to-house, and often hand-to-hand combat with a tough enemy who was determined to hold the buildings and bunkers he occupied. Our progress was slow and costly. There was heavy cloud cover most of the day, but when there were breaks in the ceiling, we used tactical air strikes a few hundred meters in front of our attacking troops.5 By the end of May, after two months of fighting, the Communists controlled enough territory to rule over half a million South Vietnamese, but that was 3 percent of the entire population of 18.9 million.6 The enemy paid a terrible price in casualties for the territory and population seized. The NV A troops surrounding Kontum were in especially bad shape. Their repeated attacks against our defenses and our air attacks against them inflicted heavy casualties. Captured message logs revealed that the C6, C7, and C8 Companies of the 5th Battalion, 141st Regiment, 2nd NV A Division, were down to 20, 12, and 60 men, respectively. The 60 men in C8 Company included battalion headquarters and mess personnel. This battalion, with a normal strength of about 600, was now down to only 92 men. It was also short of ammo and radio batteries and had difficulty evacuating its wounded.7 FINISHING THE...