Vietnam's Forgotten Army: Heroism and Betrayal in the ARVN

9. The Making of a Traitor

9 The Making of a Traitor IMM EDIAT ELY AFTER THE conclusion of Operation Lam Son 719, President Nixon proclaimed, “Tonight I can report that Vietnamization has succeeded.” He then announced an acceleration of the U.S. troop withdrawal process, with an additional 100,000 troops slated to return to the United States by November 1971, and promised his war-weary constituents that “American involvement in Vietnam was coming to an end.”1 The complex military legacy of the ARVN performance in Laos, demonstrating at once both great potential and critical dependencies , nearly faded from view amid the bright light of political expediency , for, regardless of the pace of South Vietnamese reform, regardless of the overall ability of the ARVN to survive, America was quitting South Vietnam. An eerie military calm set in across South Vietnam for the remainder of 1971. Bearing out U.S. intelligence estimates, the NVA remained in a defensive mode, and, although the ARVN launched several offensive operations within its borders, contact with NVA units remained slight. With the NVA avoiding battle and the VC nearly eradicated, the situation was so peaceful that former Marine colonel Robert Heinl observed , “If successful pacification is the yardstick, the war in Vietnam is already settled. We have won.”2 Throughout the countryside, the indicators of success were everywhere; pacification indeed flourished, the “Land to the Tiller” program distributed land to those who had none, and rice production soared with the continued use of a highyield hybrid dubbed “miracle rice.”3 In part, the tranquility in South Vietnam was a result of the ARVN/U.S. successes of Operation Lam Son 719, which had sorely depleted NVA stocks and manpower. However , the communists had an ulterior motive for their quiescence: realizing the political reality that undergirded American policy, the primary NVA aim was to avoid any action that carried the risk of slowing the U.S. withdrawal.4 229 Perhaps the NVA need not have worried, for the drawdown of American forces in Vietnam continued to gather a rather unseemly momentum and was the force behind a strategic restructuring of the entire conflict. From a high of more than 500,000 troops in South Vietnam in 1968, by May 1971 U.S. strength in theater had been slashed by half, and in terms of combat units more than 70 percent of American maneuver battalions had been withdrawn. Even as it became clear in late 1971 that the NVA had recuperated from the Cambodian and Laotian incursions and was building up for a renewed offensive, the United States countered with an announcement of the pending redeployment of an additional seventy thousand troops, which by April 1972 left only sixty-nine thousand American servicemen in Vietnam and no units of divisional size.5 The disengagement process also involved a reduction in combat support elements, including command and control communications systems, which significantly reduced the ARVN’s ability to react to any major NVA attack.6 Although the withdrawals succeeded in both cutting the number of U.S. casualties and limiting the political fallout of the war on the American homefront, they presented clear tactical problems to the wounded and overstretched ARVN, especially in I Corps. General Truong put the difficulty of dealing with the emerging change and growing threat well: By March 1972, almost all U.S. combat units had redeployed from MR-1 [I Corps]. The single remaining unit, the 196th Infantry Brigade, was standing down and conducted only limited operations around Da Nang and Phu Bai airbases, pending return to the United States. Ground combat responsibilities were entirely assumed by ARVN units with the support of U.S. tactical air, naval gunfire and the assistance of American advisers. In the area north of the Hai Van Pass, where 80,000 American troops had at one time been deployed, there were only now two ARVN infantry divisions supported by a number of newly-activated armor and artillery units. Total troop strength committed to the defense of this area did not exceed 25,000.7 In accordance with the policy of withdrawing combat forces, both the Americans and Australians began a swift and relentless drawdown of combat advisers serving with ARVN units. With the exception of airborne advisers and some teams in I Corps, MACV closed 230 The Making of a Traitor out all battalion advisory teams by June 1970 and began to phase out regimental advisory teams in September...