Nationalist in the Viet Nam Wars: Memoirs of a Victim Turned Soldier

17 On the Down Slope

261 On the Down Slope Badnewsfrombattlesaroundthecountryappearedinnewspapersalmostevery day. The North Việt Nam Army moved its soldiers into South Việt Nam in battalion and regimental size. Intelligence reports confirmed that several NVA regular divisions were already present in the South. In December 1964, the first NVA division appeared in the territory of my Twenty-secondDivisionaftermovingontruckorbyfootontheLongMountain Trails (the Hồ Chí Minh Trails) and crossing the Việt Nam common border with Laos and Cambodia. From the border area, the footpath routes branching from the Trails into the Twenty-second Division and Twenty-third Division Areas in northern highland provinces became the main NVA logistic lines to the RVN Corps Tactical Zone II. The NVA sea lines provided only a small quantity of supplies for its troops in the Vietnam Central coastal area. The Enemy Takes the Upper Hand In the last days of 1964, the communist forces attacked Bình Giả village, near the Sài Gòn Vũng Tầu Highway, where 1,000 North Vietnamese Catholics had been resettled in 1954. ARVN Ranger, Marine, and Airborne battalions were sent to Bình Giả and suffered heavy casualties (about 300 KIA). The fact that the VC was able to fight with its multi-battalion task force was a great shock to our confidence. The defeat of our elite combat units took place when the political situation was badly deteriorating, with unstable governments crumbling one after another every few months. The national military situation changed quickly with the introduction of North Vietnamese Army divisions, rather well trained and equipped with weapons more suitable to the combat environment than ours, the AK’s. We celebrated seventeen • 262 · The Cogwheel Tết 1965, or Year of the Snake, in anxiety as political and military situations were goingdownhillquickly.TheTwenty-secondDivisionunitswaitedfortheoncoming multiple divisions of the enemy offensive. A week after Tết, I got a telephone call from the Kontum district headquarters at 6:30 am, reporting that gunfire was heard from the area along Highway 14 where I was in charge. I quickly turned the radio on and tried to contact the relay station on a steep rocky hill covering my area of responsibility. There was no response . What I’d anticipated had at last come true. The Eighteenth Intelligence Platoon had been ambushed. When I reestablished communication with the relay station five minutes later,the405thThámKíchThượng(MountainCombatIntelligence)Company from the division reserve and an artillery section of two 105 mm howitzers were under my command and soon on the way for an intervention mission. Within twenty minutes we arrived at the junction of Highway 14 and the dirt road leadingtothebattleareaonemileaway .Wewereluckytodetectanambushofabout two NVA platoons on the dirt road and drove them into flight before the howitzers took the firing positions. After contacting the intelligence platoon under attack, I ordered artillery supportingfire,targetedbytheplatoonleader.Luckyagain,thoughmapsofthe area by 1965 were not accurate, we hit the enemy positions at the first salvo, and theenemymainforcewithdrewfurtherintothedensejungles.AnNVAplatoon stayedbehindtomaintaincontactwithmycrippledintelligenceplatoon,which was holding the ground with only fifteen able soldiers and their leader. I quickly reported the situation to the division before ordering the 405th Mountain Combat Intelligence Company to intervene. The company and I advanced to the battle area, leaving the artillery section under the protection of anotherinfantrycompanynewlyarrivingtoreinforcetheoperation .Inlessthanten minutes,mymenandIhadreachedtheattackedplatoonfrombehind.Myadvancing company then charged the enemy with full firepower from the right side. Upon seeing me, the platoon leader, Second Lieutenant Hùng, got up and shouted,“Comeon,I’llhaveaK-54foryou.”TheK-54,aChina-madepistol,was the favorite war trophy at the time. Then he ran to a dead enemy about thirty yards away whose hand was still holding a K-54. Like a flash, I saw a bareheaded enemy pop up from a foxhole close by and fell Lieutenant Hùng with a burst of his AK. “The lieutenant’s dead,” a corporal nearest to Hùng yelled. “Let me finish this son of a bitch.” BeforeIcouldreact,thecorporalplungedforward,whiletheenemysoldier was still trying to replace his empty thirty-round magazine with a full one. The angry corporal discharged his entire .45 Tommy gun magazine onto the enemy soldier. From about twenty yards away, I could see pieces of the communist soldier’s skull fly into the air. The soldier was one of the last three or four enemy On the Down Slope · 263 troops still in foxholes near our position. All were gunned down after their company disengaged and retreated following a short...