by Tom Clancy
In Vietnam, there were times when we ran into guerrilla-type actions. But there were also times when we’d find ourselves in pitched battles with regular North Vietnamese forces. In fact, in the northern parts of South Vietnam, that was more often the case than not. In the south, the reverse was more usually the case. There we were more likely to encounter guerrilla action; but even there we ran up against different kinds of war. At times, we would be dealing with farmer by day, guerrilla by night, a very different kind of situation than dealing with mainline VC units, who were full-time guerrillas. But these were very different, again, from NVA soldiers, as was the nature of the combat with them.
And then to add to the complications, each environment had its own special requirements. If you were in the Mekong Delta in the Rung Sat Special Zone, you had a much different style of fighting than you might encounter patrolling in the jungle or in the large unit engagements we had in the north, along the coast, or on the open plains. And combat was different again up in the mountains.
The geography, the nature of the enemy, the style of fighting, and even the nature of some of the units all added their own particular character to what we might encounter. All tended to create different types of wars, if you will, or a different type of the same war.
Because I experienced so many different aspects of the war, I came back with a real understanding that this war was multifaceted; everything was all over the place. There was no clear and simple way to look at it. But most Americans who served in Vietnam had perhaps a year tour and saw only one geographical area. For them it was like the blind man and the elephant. The war they saw was real, but partial.
I remember talking to Marine friends who might have been up north in I Corps, where most Marines fought. They all thought their vision of the war was the true war. Yet I had to think, “Jeez, you saw only a small part of it.” I’d have the same experience talking with an army officer who’d served in the Mekong Delta or the Parrot’s Beak. Each man’s definition of the war would turn out to be completely different.
So my experience was almost unique. I didn’t see every possible way the war was fought, but I saw most of it.
What all this teaches is not how to deal with every possible situation. Fighting in delta swamps teaches you how to fight in delta swamps. Fighting in triple-canopy rain forest teaches you how to fight in triple-canopy rain forests. Fighting in mountains teaches you how to fight in mountains. Fighting in flat, coastal country where there are lots of rice paddies and villages teaches you how to do that. And you learn a lot simply shooting and getting shot at a lot, and working closely with others on a combat team. But there isn’t a great deal of carryover from any of that one to the other. The biggest lesson, in fact, is learning how to be open to surprising new experiences and then turning that openness into resourceful and creative ways of dealing with the challenges you face.
I was to rediscover these truths later in life when I began to be engaged in peacekeeping, humanitarian operations. After I’d gone through my first, I thought I’d learned everything there was to know about them. “These lessons apply everywhere,” I told myself.
But on the second one, it hit me that few of these lessons actually apply anywhere else. The previous experience helped, sure; it put me in the right frame of mind; but it didn’t tell me how to solve particular problems.
You have to be open to each new and very different reality. It’s wrong to use models and to think stereotypically about problems and issues.
Tony Zinni had come a long, long way from Philadelphia. He was to travel much farther.
THE FOREST OF DEATH
After Zinni completed his orientations in Saigon, Colonel Nels Andersen, the commanding officer of the advisory unit, decided that he should not wait for a hole to open up in one of the units, but immediately go out into the field to learn the ropes with experienced advisers. It was to be Zinni’s first taste of combat.
He was ordered to report to the Vietnamese Marines 4th Battalion, then conducting riverine operations in the Rung Sat Special Zone.
Rung Sat was a four-hundred-square-mile, strategically vital area southeast of Saigon — massive mangrove swamps and labyrinthine tangles of waterways. The shipping channels out of the South China Sea up to Saigon came through the Rung Sat Zone; and the Vietcong tried to interdict the shipping. They would pick people off the decks with snipers, shoot rockets or recoilless rifles at the ships, or mine the waterways — often attaching mines to ropes stretched from bank to bank. They kept it slack to let acceptable traffic pass and pulled the mines up when they spotted a target they wanted to strike.
Operating in the Rung Sat was tremendously difficult, with its tangled swamps and water levels at high tide so elevated that everything, including the villages, was under water. No place down there was dry all the time.
Advisers had “blanket” travel orders authorizing them to use any means of military transportation to get anywhere in South Vietnam if they weren’t moving with a unit. Usually this involved going to a nearby air base, such as Tan Son Nhut near Saigon, where you scrounged a ride to the region closest to your unit’s position. This could take days and involve a series of plane, helicopter, boat, and/or motor vehicle rides.
Even this basic knowledge didn’t much help Zinni. He had no idea how to get to the Rung Sat; he’d simply been told to go there, but was so green he had no idea about the best way to go.
He eventually found himself on a Vietnamese civilian bus overloaded with men, women, kids, grandmas, chickens, and bundles of possessions. The men, women, and kids all found this lone American in a Vietnamese Marine uniform, with all his combat gear, a puzzling curiosity. Americans in Vietnam didn’t travel on civilian buses.
He ended up at the gate of a small U.S./Vietnamese naval base at a place called Nha Be, not far from his destination. When he asked how to get to the 4th Battalion in the Rung Sat, he was led to the operations center, where he met the U.S. Navy operations officer.
“How did you get here?” the Navy officer asked, staring hard at Zinni, as though he had dropped out of the sky.
“I took the bus from Saigon.”
“You took the bus from Saigon?” he snapped. “You want to get yourself killed? You’ve got to be totally nuts! That’s offering yourself to the VC on a platter!” He then proceeded to chew the young lieutenant out for putting himself into such a risk.
Zinni tried to explain that he hadn’t realized taking the bus was dangerous, and besides it had been a pleasant ride and he’d met some nice people.
The Navy officer shook his head in amazed disbelief; and then cracked a tolerant smile. “Fools and children…”
“A resupply helo makes daily runs out to the 4th Battalion,” he said. “I’ll get you on tomorrow’s run. You’re welcome to spend the night here with the other officers in their hooch.”
The rest of the day Zinni met with other officers and NCOs learning about operations in the Rung Sat. They provided him with a wealth of knowledge about the local region, riverine operations, and the enemy.
Nha Be was home to U.S. and Vietnamese river patrol boat, helicopter, minesweeper, and River Assault Group (RAG) units (South Vietnamese units with U.S. advisers; the U.S. equivalent in the Mekong Delta was known as the Mobile Riverine Force). The RAGs used specially configured landing craft that were modified to move troops, control operations, and provide fire support on the complex of waterways in the southern regions of Vietnam. “Mother Ships”—really, barges — provided floating bases for these units. The Vietnamese Marines operated as the assault troops with the RAGs and had their own small boat units for these kinds of missions — high-speed fiberglass boats, called Dong Nai boats, with powerful outboard engines.
These operations were sometimes supplemented by air strikes using Vietnamese AD Skyraider aircraft. The ancient, prop-driven American planes were godsends to the guys on the ground. They carried huge loads of ordnance, remained on station for long periods, and flew slowly over targets
to pinpoint their locations. Jets were sexier, but they couldn’t provide anything like the long-term satisfaction.
Spotter planes were also often used to cover waterborne movements and observe the areas in front and to the flanks of the Marine movements. The natural tendency was to run these parallel to the route, but the VC watched out for this. It tipped them off to which waterway the Marines were on and to their direction of movement. The best technique was to vary the route of the planes and to run them back and forth across the waterway.
The resupply helo the next morning touched down at a small village called Tan Hiep in the middle of the mangrove swamps and river mazes that made up the Rung Sat. The village’s thatched houses were perched on high stilts, with rickety ladders leading up to the doorways. Debris on the ground indicated it was low tide. Zinni couldn’t imagine what high tide would bring.
The two battalion advisers, Captains Joe Hoar and Bob Hamilton, greeted him as he scrambled off the helo. Soon they were explaining that Colonel Andersen had radioed instructions to “snap Zinni in” for a few weeks; but their skeptical looks told him they were wondering what a junior lieutenant was doing here.
They took Zinni to meet the battalion commander, Major Tri, and some of his officers, including the battalion operations officer, Lieutenant Hoa Dang Nguyen. Hoa was a slender young officer, about Zinni’s height (5 feet 9 inches), and a Military Academy grad. He spoke English well — as did many of the Marine officers — was very friendly, open, and outgoing… and very Westernized. He and Zinni hit it off instantly, and later became close friends.
Tri was just as Westernized as Hoa, but also very polished and smooth (having graduated from American military schools), and obviously intelligent. He was considered by his community to be one of their most brilliant and innovative commanders, with a more intellectual approach to less operations than some of the more instinctive, seat-of-the-pants types who’d gotten most of their experience in the field. By 1967, he had considerable combat experience and was highly decorated, including a couple of American Silver Stars. Tri was expected someday to be the commandant of the Marines.
Bob Hamilton then showed Zinni to the stilted house where he would sleep. It belonged to a hamlet chief, and the battalion doctor was also quartered there. Though Zinni could not believe this was not an imposition, the head of the house seemed genuinely happy to host him.
After he settled in, Hamilton gave him a rundown of their operations in the Rung Sat:
The mission of the Marines, he explained, was to root out the VC and keep the water routes open. The terrain was miserable, with slimy mud-flats at low tide and extremely high tides that flooded virtually the entire region. Because the tangled mangroves were almost impossible to move through, travel was difficult and slow, with snakes, huge saltwater crocodiles,[10] and swarms of mosquitoes adding to the dangers and misery.
The tactics used by the Vietnamese Marines involved patrolling the rivers and streams, launching surprise operations from the RAG boats against suspected VC bases, interdicting and inspecting waterborne traffic, and laying in ambushes on the waterways at night. Zinni was to start going on these missions the next day.
“What do the Vietnamese expect me to do?” Zinni asked.
“Look,” Hamilton replied, “you’re not going to give them any tactical advice. They won’t need it. But this is where you are of value to them, this is what their expectations are.” He went on to explain technical matters Zinni needed to know in order to help the Vietnamese Marines in the Rung Sat — things like operating with the river assault groups, calling in artillery, calling in air support, calling in medevacs, and how all that worked.
After Hamilton left, Zinni had a hard time containing his excitement at finally seeing action.
The next morning brought reports that a rifle company had made contact with the VC. During the brief firefight that followed, the Marines took casualties, and the company was requesting a medical evacuation—“medevac,” a U.S. medevac helo. The rule was that U.S. helos had to be under a U.S. adviser’s control going into the landing zone (LZ). Though none of the advisers had gone out with the company, the pilots agreed to pick up an adviser and take care of the LZ coordinates from the air. Since none of the Vietnamese Marines on the ground spoke English, the entire affair would be managed by the adviser flying in with the medevac helos.
Hamilton and Hoar decided this was a good time for Zinni to get his feet wet.
Zinni was nervous and excited as the helos touched down and he climbed aboard. As they took off, he briefed the pilots, trying his best to act professional.
Minutes later, they were over the LZ — a muddy clearing.
The radio was crackling with excited Vietnamese chatter. Zinni did his best to respond, yelling in his best Vietnamese, trying to translate quickly, and then giving instructions in English to the pilots.
The Vietnamese popped a smoke grenade, Zinni confirmed the color,[11] and they headed down toward a small opening in the tangled mangrove masses below. A little closer, he saw three or four Vietcong bodies in black pajamas strewn about the LZ and the poncho-covered bodies that were dead Marines. The wounded Marines were waiting for the helo at the edge of the zone.
As they touched down, the rotor wash from the helo’s blades sent debris flying. The Marines rushed to get the friendly casualties into the chopper and out of there before drawing enemy fire. The wounded were quickly loaded aboard, then the poncho-covered bodies were pushed in behind them. One landed in Zinni’s lap (he was sitting on the deck in the back, by the door). As he grabbed him so he wouldn’t tumble back out, the poncho flew open to reveal the pale gray-green corpse. They rapidly lifted off and headed for the evacuation hospital, with Zinni still holding the body, his eyes locked on the dead and wounded Marines. Halfway back he realized that his hand was still clutching the radio handset. He replaced it in its holder.
Cradling a dead body on the deck of the helo and staring at the bandaged and bleeding troops brought the war home for the first time. The high adventure he had imagined had a nasty side.
During the following days, Zinni went on several night missions with the Dong Nai boats and the River Assault Group craft, setting up ambushes. Some of these were successful; and in one instance they nailed a pair of VC sniper teams carrying Russian sniper rifles, scopes, and special ammunition in brand-new leather cases.
Zinni was in the Rung Sat from April 3 to April 21. He then received orders to report to the 5th Battalion in Binh Dinh Province (II CTZ) and Operation Pershing — the most fiercely contested of Vietnamese Marine combat operations. He was there three times: April 24 to May 13; June 20 to August 10; and November 8 to December 13.
By the midpoint of his second assignment to Binh Dinh Province — sometime toward the end of June — Tony Zinni had become technically proficient in the arts of combat.
These skills came from several sources: from the day in, day out experience of the firefights themselves — calling in medevacs, calling in artillery and air, coordinating with U.S. units, and doing it over and over again under great stress; learning from the more seasoned and experienced advisers (like Joe Hoar and Bob Hamilton); learning from the Vietnamese Marines, especially in those tactical operations they performed well; and finally, from his own passion for mastering the arts of war. He really wanted to figure out what went on in combat. When he got into firefights — especially firefights with North Vietnamese or hard-core Vietcong units — he was fighting an enemy who possessed tremendous fighting skills. They were a tough enemy (not ragtag, like the Iraqi Army). Trying to take this war apart, figuring out what worked and what gave his guys the advantage, meant imagining how somebody on the other side — a North Vietnamese captain or other commander — was deciding how he could get the advantage. It was a contest of wills, intellects, and experience. “What is he thinking? What is he trying to do? What do I need to do to outguess him, to outplay him on this field?”
By the end of his tours in Vietnam, Zinni had
become a master of the combat arts.
OPERATION PERSHING
Though several factors made operations in Binh Dinh Province more difficult than in other areas, the worst of these were the deadly booby traps found virtually everywhere in the province. The VC were masters of every kind of booby trap, from the sophisticated to the makeshift; and for reasons that remain mysterious to Zinni, the Vietnamese Marines were especially vulnerable to them. Despite their well-demonstrated field skills and understanding of their enemy, the majority of Vietnamese Marine casualties suffered on Operation Pershing came from booby traps. In one instance, twenty-two Marines, including an adviser, were killed or wounded at a stream crossing where the VC had put in a “daisy chain” string of explosives under remote control.
The VC especially liked to rig booby traps along trails, paths, streams, and other likely movement lines. Sometimes small signs would warn other VC or civilians friendly to their cause. Zinni and his companions learned to watch for these — rocks or twigs arranged on a path or bent trees near a stream crossing, or the like. And they tried to avoid trails and obvious lines of communication. Since booby traps and the kill zones of ambushes tended to be oriented along these lines of movement, the best tactic was not to travel parallel to them but to zigzag across, always approaching from right angles. Zigzagging permitted the Marines to come in behind these positions.
Trails and streams were always crossed as danger areas, following a predetermined and rehearsed drill: The point signaled the trail ahead; a machine gun or automatic rifle was positioned to cover the crossing; the far side was checked; and when there was a “clear to go” signal, the Marines crossed in teams. The drill could be more elaborate for larger danger areas, such as clearings or paddies.
