by Eric Hammel
*
A new subheadquarters of the Saigon-based MACV was to oversee all the combat forces in I Corps. First announced on January 27, 1968, the name of the new jointly staffed headquarters was MACV Forward, a clear indication of its importance in the future scheme of things. After taking up residence at Phu Bai, in the same building that housed the 3rd Marine Division rear command post, MACV Forward was to directly oversee III MAF and the new U.S. Army corps (which would soon emerge as the Provisional Corps, Vietnam, and then as XXIV Corps). MACV Forward's focus would be operations in Quang Tri and Thua Thien provinces.
The massive growth of the American military presence in northern I Corps was not without its difficulties. From early January 1968, the road net encompassing Highway 1 through Phu Bai, Hue, PK 17, and Camp Evans was choked with the men and equipment of the 1st Marine, 101st Airborne, and 1st Cavalry divisions. The larger encampments, Phu Bai and Camp Evans, were particularly busy, crowded with transient infantry and support units waiting overnight or for up to a week for their marching orders.
January was a time of extreme confusion for the burgeoning American commands in I Corps. The existing base facilities, already stretched to sustain three and then four U.S. combat divisions, simply were not up to handling the massive influx of troops and supplies. Two brigades of the Air Cav were temporarily without most of their helicopters because fuel-storage and fuel-handling facilities at their new bases were inadequate. The first fresh brigade of the 101st Airborne Division assigned to northern I Corps was brand-new in-country, and it had to gain experience from largely unproductive patrolling aimed at acclimating the troops to local conditions and combat fieldcraft in general.
The 3rd Marine Division, whose forward command post moved north from Phu Bai to Dong Ha in late January, was to tighten its tactical area of responsibility northward to cover only northern Quang Tri Province. As such, it was the least affected of the four U.S. divisions. On the other hand, the 1st Marine Division had to shift its entire strength northward into Thua Thien and southern Quang Tri provinces, an area very different from its former domain, which had been centered on the huge northern base at Danang. The division had to uproot its base facilities; move them across the forbidding Hai Van Pass; reassemble them; and follow, a battalion at a time, as its old hunting ground was turned over piecemeal to the still-forming Americal Division. Unlike the Air Cav or even the 101st Airborne Division, which could call on air transport, the 1st Marine Division was obliged to move almost everything on trucks. Thus, it faced the trickiest, nastiest move of all.
Though the command post of the 1st Marine Division's 1st Marine Regiment (1st Marines) and the forward divisional subheadquarters (Task Force X-Ray) had already moved north to Phu Bai, it was expected that the division would be only partially effective in its new tactical area of responsibility by the middle of February. It was not expected to be completely effective before mid-March.
*
Any sustained movement of roadbound convoys in Vietnam was likely to provoke enemy attack. Road patrols and guard detachments at vital bridges were beefed up, but there was only so much that could be done. Patrolling Highway 1 and guarding its numerous chokepoints tied down troops and reduced the combat effectiveness of the infantry battalions involved. The isolated guard outposts also provided VC and NVA units in the region with many small targets that could be easily pinned down and overrun.
The section of Highway 1 between Phu Bai and Camp Evans, including the section through Hue, was to be the most heavily traveled of all. This was because the main bodies of three of the four U.S. divisions slated for duty in northern I Corps would be based at or north of Phu Bai. Some of the men involved in planning and implementing the huge military migration saw Hue as a potentially hazardous obstruction. For several miles in the city, Highway 1 ran between rows of dominating multistory buildings, and there were also many bridges, including a very long one across the Perfume River. But there was no practical way to bypass the city, so an attitude of fatalism prevailed. Besides, the local VC cadres had never before violated Hue's tacitly recognized sanctity. If the VC were going to harass the convoys, they were likely to do so in the countryside.
*
On the night of January 20, 1968, the attack on Khe Sanh began. The attention of those in the American and ARVN senior headquarters in I Corps was naturally attracted in that direction, away from the cities and towns in eastern I Corps and even along the previously heavily embattled strip between National Route 9 and the DMZ.
Commentators who have attempted after the fact to divine Communist intentions regarding Khe Sanh have emphatically pointed out that there is nothing in the captured Communist records, nor in any public statements since, to indicate that Khe Sanh was a feint devised to draw combat troops to the far northwestern corner of South Vietnam. This might be true; indeed, no public statements have ever revealed Khe Sanh as a feint. But the fact is that the attention of America's military leaders, including Lyndon Johnson's almost total concentration, was instantly riveted on Khe Sanh. Plans were immediately drawn to relieve the besieged base by using most of the two newly arrived brigades of the 1st Cavalry Division. Even as the new Air Cav divisional command post was being prepared to open at Phu Bai on January 27, Lieutenant General Robert Cushman, the commanding general of III MAF, directed Major General John Tolson of the 1st Cavalry Division to prepare a contingency plan for the relief or reinforcement of the Khe Sanh Combat Base. Thus, intentionally or not, the Communists at Khe Sanh came close to drawing the U.S. Army's most mobile combat division away from the center of the Tet action just before the action was set to commence.
Other factors conspired to focus attention on Khe Sanh. For many months, U.S. intelligence agencies had been picking up rumors of a large-scale Communist offensive. The rumblings seemed to indicate that the blow would fall just before the annual week-long Tet holiday.
General William Westmoreland, MACV commanding general, had become convinced that the NVA and VC were about to launch a major offensive in Quang Tri Province, along the DMZ. Westmoreland's conviction—a reasonable but incorrect assessment of the Communist summer offensive along the DMZ—was the driving force behind the buildup of U.S. divisions in northern I Corps and the plan to establish MACV Forward there.
Notwithstanding General Westmoreland's opinion, intelligence analysts at III MAF headquarters in Danang felt that the main pre-Tet target would be Danang. Thus the Marines hatched an elaborate scheme aimed at getting the enemy to launch the attack prematurely. When no attack fell on Danang and Khe Sanh came under siege, III MAF analysts assumed that Khe Sanh had been the object of the rumblings all along.
At the same time that Khe Sanh was becoming the focal point, other indications suggested that a major blow would fall along Highway 1 somewhere north of Danang and south of Hai Van Pass. An attack around Phu Loc would have made sense in light of the 1st Marine Division's heavy use of the highway. Though analysts gave no date for this potential pre-Tet effort, prudent countermeasures were set in place—even though doing so slowed the 1st Marine Division's move into northern I Corps. At 0130, January 26, the command post of Task Force X-Ray, at Phu Bai, was struck by a barrage of fifty 82mm mortar rounds. There was no follow-up, so the blow was interpreted as a routine though unusually protracted harassment by a local VC unit. When no significant blow had fallen by 1800, January 29— the hour the annual Tet truce went into effect—the alert along Highway 1 was marginally relaxed.
*
No one dreamed that the Communists would launch a major assault anywhere in South Vietnam during the Tet truce. It was well known that something might happen just before or just after the three-day truce, but the Communists had never seriously violated Tet.
Weeks of intelligence gathering indicated that the 4th and 6th NVA regiments were, respectively, ten kilometers south and twenty kilometers north of Hue—a day's march. The two NVA units had both been in evidence for some weeks and had not directly engaged
any ARVN or U.S. units except Sergeant Jack Lofland's tiny CAP patrol. Elements of the 5th NVA Regiment, which was hiding in the hills west of Hue, were not detected at all.
No one seemed to know why two crack regiments had suddenly appeared in the vicinity of Hue, nor how or when they had arrived. But they were not bothering anyone or even making threatening moves. The NVA regiments were tracked, but they were not molested. The 1st ARVN Division was spread too thin to challenge the NVA, and all the American combat units anywhere near Hue were too busy with moving-in problems to take decisive action.
That no special precautions—much less active attacks—were undertaken despite strong evidence pinpointing two elite NVA regiments violated one of warfare's most enduring tenets: One must never base actions on what the enemy's intentions might be; all action must be based upon the enemy's capabilities. No one guessed what the 4th and 6th NVA regiments might be doing near Hue, but no one posited, either, what they could accomplish if they went into action. A mild report about the NVA regiments was issued to local military agencies, but neither ARVN nor any U.S. headquarters overseeing the sector promulgated an alert.
***
Chapter 3
A week before Tet MACV commander General William Westmoreland urgently recommended that the three-day Tet truce be cancelled. General Earle Wheeler, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, had concurred, and South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu agreed to cancel the truce on the morning of January 29, half a day before it was to go into effect. However, a major communications foul-up in Saigon on January 29 prevented announcement of the cancellation. President Thieu and most of the GVN's senior officials scattered for the holidays, before the problem could be corrected. Thus, on January 29 no Tet combat alert was issued by MACV, the ARVN, or any GVN agency.
Acting without authority, completely on his own, Brigadier General Ngo Quang Truong was the only senior field commander, ARVN or American, to prepare any sort of defense before the onset of the Tet offensive in the Hue area. Truong, who had assumed command of the 1st AFVN Division during the Buddhist insurrection in 1966, was a canny, battle-wise thirty-eight-year-old. A 1954 graduate of Dalat Military Academy, he had served for twelve action-packed years as a front-line commander with the ARVN Airborne Division. Completely self-reliant, self-confident, and inner-directed, a self-starter with a wonderfully disciplined mind and an iron will to win, he was one of the best senior combat commanders the ARVN had ever fielded.
At dawn on New Year's morning, January 30, General Truong, his senior staff officers, and the 1st ARVN Division's three regimental commanders helped the mayor of Hue at the annual flag-raising ceremony at Hue Citadel's southeastern wall, overlooking the Imperial Palace and the Perfume River. At the close of the ceremony, Truong and his senior officers returned to the division command post (CP), a large former French Foreign Legion compound occupying the northern corner of the Citadel. Truong planned to stand down his division CP and send all but a skeleton watch of his staff officers and headquarters troops on leave for the first three days of Tet. The division's infantry units were engaged in the regional pacification program; thus they could not be stood down even for Tet. The regimental commanders were to return to their own CPs.
Just prior to joining his family at home, which was south of the Perfume River, General Truong took a few moments to glance through fresh reports that had reached his desk since he had departed for the flag ceremony. Several of the reports outlined extremely serious violations of the day-old Tet truce by very large Communist units operating in central South Vietnam, in Kontum, Pleiku, Binh Dinh, Khanh Hoa, and Darlac provinces.
As Truong read the reports, something clicked. Several divergent thoughts came together: In a U.S.-supported heliborne assault in the mountains west of Hue in mid January, 1st ARVN Division troops had uncovered an unoccupied but superbly equipped 500-bed military hospital; in the two weeks since, two elite NVA regiments had been pinpointed in the immediate neighborhood north and west of Hue; and, within the past twelve hours, many NVA and VC combat units had been attacking ARVN and other GVN posts in five central provinces despite the Tet truce.
Despite Truong's intuition that a Communist offensive was about to be launched in and around Hue and other northern I Corps cities, it was difficult for the general to reach the necessary decision to rescind holiday leaves. Tet was too important an event to cancel on the basis of mere speculation. The division staff worked brutally long hours throughout the rest of the year, and its morale depended greatly upon the Tet reprieve. If Truong rescinded leaves and was right in his assessment, no harm would be done and much good could be accomplished. If he was wrong, however, staff cohesion might be shattered. Truong had a feeling, an instinct, but he had no hard intelligence that the attacks in the south would spill over into his division's zone of responsibility. No higher headquarters had alerted him. Everything he saw was in his mind's eye. There was no hard analysis, no confirmation from on high. Then the young commander's instincts—finely honed in his career of constant action—assumed control of his racing thoughts.
Truong decided to go for broke. He ordered regimental commanders and all staff officers still on duty in the 1st ARVN Division CP to meet with him. As soon as the senior officers had assembled, Truong ordered his entire division to full alert. The division staff officers and headquarters troops were to remain at their posts. The regimental commanders were to return to their CPs, as planned, to place all their battalions on full alert. All divisional staff officers and headquarters troops who had already departed for Tet leave and could be reached were to return to the CP without delay.
The order came as a major blow to the division staff. However, all the senior officers had been handpicked by Truong; he trusted them and, perhaps more important, they trusted him. There was a moment of stunned silence followed by unanimous obedience.
General Truong contacted the commander of his elite all-volunteer personal guard, the Hoc Bao (Black Panther) Company, and ordered him to remain at full alert within the Citadel. Finally, Truong ordered the commander of the elite thirty-six-man 1st Division Reconnaissance Company to patrol the western approaches to the city aggressively. If there was to be an attack that night, the division commander was certain it would come from the hills to the west.
For all his prescience, even General Truong fell into the age-old trap of trying to divine the enemy's intentions rather than reacting to his capabilities. Truong later reported, "I suspected the enemy had the will to attack. I did not think they had the capability." Still, in time of war, it is often better to do the right thing for the wrong reasons than the wrong thing for the right reasons.
Only after Truong issued his orders did he receive belated official word that the truce had been canceled by his government. The result of Truong's timely insight, flawed though it was, saved his life, the lives of his wife and their children, and the lives of many of his staff officers and their families. Indeed, in reestablishing the war footing of his division early enough to do some good, Ngo Quang Truong probably saved the city of Hue and most of her 140,000 citizens from an outcome far worse than the horrid fate they did suffer.
*
Marine Major Frank Breth, the 3rd Marine Division liaison officer to the 1st ARVN Division, spent the morning of January 30 at the 3rd Marine Division rear CP, at Phu Bai, getting caught up on local events following a week's leave. As Breth was on his way back to Hue's MACV Compound, Lieutenant Colonel Ed LaMontagne, 3rd Marine Division embarkation officer, approached him. LaMontagne was an old friend, former commanding officer, and the man responsible for getting all his division's heavy equipment from Phu Bai up to Dong Ha. LaMontagne told Breth he planned to be in Hue the next day to oversee the movement of some heavy rolling stock by way of the Navy LCU (landing craft) ramp on the Perfume River. Since the LCU ramp was only a few blocks from the MACV Compound, LaMontagne asked if he could stop by for lunch. Realizing that LaMontagne was as interested in a good lunch
as in visiting with an old friend, Breth said he would save him a place. Then Breth jumped into his jeep to buck the eleven kilometers of solid military and civilian traffic snaking up Highway 1 from the Phu Bai gate to Hue.
When Major Breth checked into his office at MACV later in the day, the compound was crowded with advisors on holiday because their ARVN units had stood down for the truce. There was nothing much going on; no one at MACV had heard of General Truong's full-scale alert. Frank Breth figured he would get caught up on a week's worth of paperwork in plenty of time to have a leisurely lunch the next day with Lieutenant Colonel LaMontagne.
*
Marine 2nd Lieutenant Terry Charbonneau's platoon of Charlie Company, 1st Motor Transport Battalion, was in Phu Bai on the morning of January 30. The enormous task of moving the entire 1st Marine Division into northern I Corps was falling mainly upon the shoulders of the 1st Motor Transport Battalion, and the work was unremitting—by far the most exasperating Lieutenant Charbonneau had seen since his arrival in Vietnam in November 1967. To make matters worse, the last days of January were being frittered away moving divisional units already in Quang Tri City and Camp Evans south—back to Phu Bai.
