by Eric Hammel
*
February 8 was liberation day for Jim Bullington and his hosts, Father Pierre Poncet and Father Marie Cressonier. Early in the day, Bullington's friend, Albert Istvie, arrived from his home at the Hue Municipal Power Station with startling news: the NVA had gone. Still, Bullington and the priests remained indoors until, shortly after lunch, they heard American voices outside. Minutes later, from a second-story window, Bullington spotted several "real, honest-to-god U.S. Marines." The CORDS officer was about to shout a greeting to his countrymen, but one of the priests asked him to keep quiet until several of his Vietnamese neighbors had been escorted from sight. The priest was fearful that VC sympathizers might mark him for retaliation for harboring an American. Fifteen minutes later, Marines from 2nd Lieutenant Mike Lambert's 3rd Platoon, Hotel/2/5, reached the house. When Bullington introduced himself to a Marine sergeant, the sergeant matter-of-factly replied, "Oh yeah, they told us there might be some sort of VIPs hiding around here. I'd better tell the captain." Bullington was surprised to learn that he had been elevated to VIP status and that his deliverance had been anticipated.
When Captain Ron Christmas arrived a few minutes later, Bullington explained the priests' dilemma with the neighbors. After a moment's thought, Christmas had a corpsman wrap Bullington in a military blanket and escort him from the house. It was hoped that any onlookers would take Bullington for a wounded Marine.
When Jim Bullington arrived at MACV, he used the communications facilities there to announce his safe return to his superiors in Quang Tri City and to ask permission to remain in Hue until he had some word about the fate of his fiancée, Tuy-Cam. Permission was denied; Bullington was ordered to fly to Danang the next day.
At that moment, Tuy-Cam and her family were safe. They were at home, only a few hundred meters west of the priests' house, but on the wrong side of the Phu Cam Canal. The best assurance that Jim Bullington could get was that their neighborhood would be cleared as soon as important military objectives had been secured.
Father Poncet and Father Cressonier chose to remain at home, where they felt they could best help their neighbors restore their lives. Albert Istvie also opted to remain at his post at the power company; he wanted to get to work helping to restore electricity to the city. The next day, after Jim Bullington's intercession, Istvie's wife and two children, with Bullington, were flown to Danang aboard a Marine helicopter.
*
Sparring with NVA rearguard detachments and stragglers consumed most of the afternoon of February 8, and more NVA bodies, weapons, and gear fell into Marine hands.
At 1315, Golf/2/5 Marines entered the U.S. consul general's residence, on Ly Thuong Kiet Street, right across from Hue Cathedral, and only a half block west of the cane field that stretched out on both sides of Highway 1. Reaching the consular quarters brought Captain Chuck Meadows and the Golf/2/5 survivors full circle, for the first shots fired at them in the battle for Hue had come from an NVA machine gun set in near the cathedral.
As soon as the Marines entered the U.S. consul's residence, they turned up evidence that the compound had been used by the NVA as a field dispensary. Bloody bandages, other medical waste, and abandoned medical supplies abounded. In a search of the area, twenty hastily dug graves were discovered, and a total of twenty-five dead NVA soldiers were exhumed.
Late that afternoon, 2/5 established night defensive positions on both sides of Ly Thuong Kiet Street. The only action of the night was a brief mortar barrage at 1905, which wounded three Marines at the 2/5 CP.
Outside the battle zone on February 8, several LCUs arrived at the Hue LCU ramp. They were chock-full of ammunition and other useful gear and equipment. The last LCU to leave the ramp that afternoon was fired on heavily by small arms and mortars, but, undamaged, it ran the gauntlet to the South China Sea. The LCU lifts were extremely important because the continuously foul weather had halted helicopter resupply efforts.
*
On February 9, NVA gunners again started the day by terrorizing the MACV Compound. This time they fired six 60mm mortar rounds at it. The 1st Marines CP, which was inside the compound, arranged for counterbattery missions against the area southeast of the city, in which muzzle flashes had been observed. Against the one or two NVA light mortars, the Marines fired ten 81mm mortar rounds and, from Phu Bai, eight 155mm rounds. Once again, damage and casualties could not be assessed.
The task of securing the An Cuu Bridge site was given to Lieutenant Colonel Mark Gravel's 1/1, which was to attack from the north, down the northeast side of the cane field, from the vicinity of Tu Do Stadium. Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham's 2/5 was to secure the north side of the Phu Cam Canal all the way from the Perfume River to a battalion boundary line set just to the east of the An Cuu Bridge.
After clearing two city blocks, including Tu Do Stadium, without firing a shot, Alpha/1/1 suddenly ran into opposition. At 0820, as the company point pushed east from the stadium, four Marines on the point were wounded as they crossed a street. In the ensuing exchange, it took three 90mm rounds fired by the attached M-48 tank to get Alpha/1/1 across the street. At 0900, the NVA hit the tank with seven 57mm recoilless rifle rounds. The tank was set afire and abandoned on the spot by its crew, three of whom were burned and needed to be evacuated.
It is not surprising that 1/1 encountered such strong opposition in its new zone. Apparently, the Marine battalion was facing the main body of the 804th NVA Battalion, which the Marine clearing operation had not seriously engaged in the preceding week.
Shortly after the damaged M-48 tank was towed away, an ARVN major entered the Alpha/1/1 lines. He had been home for Tet leave when the battle started, and, in joining 1/1, he was leaving his house for the first time since January 31. The ARVN officer pinpointed his house on 2nd Lieutenant Ray Smith's map and told Smith that the building next door was the site of an NVA battalion CP—presumably the 804th NVA Battalion. Before being escorted to MACV, the ARVN major said that a Chinese advisor was stationed with the NVA command group. Lieutenant Smith passed these tidbits up the chain of command and requested permission to level the area around the enemy CP with some serious artillery fire. Permission was conditionally granted—if higher headquarters agreed.
At 1020, while pulling out of the line of the anticipated friendly fire, Alpha/1/1 was struck by an estimated 200 small-arms rounds and three B-40 rockets. The Marines returned fire with M-16s, M-60s, and six LAAWs. Three Marines were wounded and evacuated in the exchange, and two of eight NVA soldiers who sprinted into an open area were killed by a direct hit from one of the LAAWs.
At 1325, Bravo/1/1 was struck by yet another group of NVA. At the outset of the exchange, an accompanying Army M-55 quad-. 50 truck was struck by a B-40 rocket and rendered inoperable. At the cost of one Marine wounded, the enemy strongpoint was silenced by a cloud of bullets, M-79 grenades, and LAAWs. Five minutes after the M-55 was damaged, the main body of Alpha/1/1 was struck by ten 60mm mortar rounds fired from north of Tu Do Stadium.
By then, higher headquarters had come back with permission for Lieutenant Smith to fire all available artillery at the 804th NVA Battalion CP and the battalion's zone south and east of Tu Do Stadium.
In the largest artillery barrage to strike Hue to date, Lieutenant Smith's artillery forward observer directed a total of about 250 8-inch howitzer rounds, nearly five hundred 155mm gun rounds, and all the rounds the 1/1 81mm Mortar Platoon could spare.
For all the artillery fire, it was painfully obvious by the middle of the afternoon that 1/1 was not going to be able to close on the An Cuu Bridge from the north that day. At 1515, the battalion attack was canceled, and Lieutenant Colonel Gravel's two thin infantry companies were ordered to consolidate a night defensive position at the limit of their advance. Harassed at 1515 by NVA snipers, who fired sixty rounds and wounded three Marines, the Marines responded, as usual, with M-16 and M-60 fire. This time, however, the small-arms fire was bolstered with 81mm mortar fire. Results could not be dete
rmined.
Five more Bravo/1/1 Marines were wounded and evacuated during another exchange at 1600, and yet another exchange at 1745 resulted in two Marines killed. A 105mm howitzer mission was placed on the source of the enemy fire, but that had no lasting effect. The only enemy fatality actually confirmed during the course of the day's action was chalked up at 1800, when a scout-sniper sent down to the Bravo/1/1 position from the 1st Marines CP shot an NVA soldier dead in the open. However, subsequent searches through the area fronting the Bravo/1/1 position turned up thirty-three enemy corpses and three weapons.
*
At 0828, February 9, Captain Chuck Meadows's Golf/2/5 turned up a cache of 600 tons of rice and one ARVN M-41 tank. After liberating hundreds of civilian refugees from several church buildings, Golf/2/5 continued to apply pressure on the NVA manning positions in and around the cane field southwest of Highway 1. At 1005, in Golf/2/5's only action of the morning, both Army M-42 Dusters attached to the Marine company were disabled when their fuel tanks were holed by NVA fire. One Marine was killed and two Marines were wounded in the exchange. Fortunately, neither Duster caught fire, and both were towed to the rear for repairs.
At 1820, as engineers accompanying Golf/2/5 were placing charges to drop the first bridge to the west of the An Cuu Bridge, NVA soldiers to the south put out an intense volley of small-arms and automatic-weapons fire. The NVA fire was quelled and the bridge was blown, but one Golf/2/5 Marine was killed and two others were wounded.
Altogether, throughout the day, in addition to recovering the rice and the ARVN tank, Golf/2/5 accounted for seventeen NVA killed. The unit captured five AK-47 assault rifles, two SKS carbines, one 60mm mortar, eight B-40 rockets, and twenty-eight 60mm mortar rounds. Golf/2/5's losses were two killed and five wounded.
At 1051, as the 3rd Platoon of Captain Ron Christmas's Hotel/2/5 moved east alongside the Phu Cam Canal, it was struck from south of the canal by small-arms fire. One Marine was killed. At 1220, a routine search by several Hotel/2/5 Marines turned up three Vietnamese men clad in civilian clothes and carrying a carbine, a submachine gun, and a B-40 round. At 1305, the company apprehended eight more civilian-garbed Vietnamese men who were monitoring a Marine artillery fire-control net on a transistor radio. The eight men and their radio were turned over to the 1st Marines CP. At 1720, after being prevented by NVA fire from demolishing the second Phu Cam bridge east of the An Cuu Bridge, Hotel/2/5 called in an 8-inch howitzer mission to drop the span. When the initial heavy-artillery rounds fell astride the target, they produced two large secondary explosions on the south side of the canal. A moment later, eight enemy soldiers were shot to death in the open as they attempted to flee from a strongpoint beside the bridge. No Marines were even scratched during the incident.
In its only action of the day, Captain Mike Downs's Fox/2/5 was harassed by a sniper at 1035 as it was clearing the built-up area at the western end of the Phu Cam Canal. The sniper was beyond reach, on the south side of the canal, so the Marines responded with small-arms fire, ten 106mm recoilless rifle rounds, and twenty-two 81mm mortar rounds. One Marine was wounded, and the sniper was claimed as a kill.
On February 9, 2/5 seized all but the eastern tip of the triangular area bordered by the Perfume River, the Phu Cam Canal, and Highway 1. Much of the newly liberated area still had to be searched carefully, but it was evident that the 4th NVA Regiment had been ejected from Hue's modern central area. The inability of 1/1 to break into the defensive sector held by the remnants of the 804th NVA Battalion necessitated a one-day delay in the deployment of the 1st Marine Bridge Company at the as-yet-unsecured An Cuu Bridge site.
*
Throughout February 10, 2/5's efforts went into mopping up NVA stragglers and collecting their discarded weapons and equipment from the built-up areas north of the Phu Cam Canal. Casualties were extremely light in all three companies—just three 2/5 Marines wounded all day in exchange for nine confirmed kills.
In the 1/1 zone, the attack toward the An Cuu Bridge was canceled. Instead, Alpha/1/1 and Bravo/1/1 were put to work clearing the 804th NVA Battalion out of the neighborhoods to the east and southeast of Tu Do Stadium.
In the only significant action of the day undertaken by 1/1, Lieutenant Ray Smith's Alpha/1/1 fired an E-8 gas launcher and threw in a dawn attack against the reported site of the 804th NVA Battalion's CP. Marines searching through the rubble left by the previous afternoon's massive artillery strike found that the target building had indeed housed the CP, complete with tattered NVA battle flags. Several bodies were exhumed from the rubble, but large pools of congealing blood and numerous blood trails and drag marks indicated that many more dead and wounded enemy soldiers—hopefully including the Chinese advisor—had been dragged away during the night.
As in the 2/5 zone, the Marines made few contacts with the enemy through the remainder of the day; casualties were light. Though the 804th NVA Battalion had not quite given the area up, it did not put up much of a fight.
At 1235, February 10, the delayed bridge convoy, guarded by a platoon of the real Bravo/1/1 and about 150 replacements bound for 2/5, was ordered out of Phu Bai. When it arrived at the An Cuu Bridge site, the Marine engineers discovered that the condition of the span was far worse than they had been led to expect; their bridging materials were inadequate. The 1st Marine Bridge Company and all the trucks laden with supplies for 1/1 and 2/5 returned to Phu Bai, but nearly 200 fresh infantrymen crossed the shattered span on foot and walked to MACV, where they reported to the 1st Marines CP. The Bravo/1/1 platoon was turned over to 1/1, and the rest of the new arrivals were sent to the 2/5 CP for assignment to the letter companies. A number of the 2/5 replacements were among the first Marines to be returned to the battalion following earlier injury and evacuation in Hue.
*
For all practical purposes, the mission assigned to the 1st Marines by Task Force X-Ray on February 3 had been accomplished by the end of the day on February 10. The entire heart of modern Hue bounded by Highway 1, the Perfume River, and the Phu Cam Canal was free of organized NVA or VC opposition. Moreover, the 804th NVA Battalion's resistance in the built-up area east of Highway 1 and south of the Perfume appeared to be on the verge of collapse. In the days ahead, 1/1 would continue to clear the enemy from its zone around Tu Do Stadium, while, in the absence of firm orders from above, Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham would, on his own authority, ease elements of 2/5 into the built-up areas south of the Phu Cam Canal to see if they were strongly held.
The focus of the battle for Hue was about to shift to the symbolically meaningful effort to liberate the entire Citadel of Hue from the reinforced 6th NVA Regiment. To restart the 1st ARVN Division's and 1st Airborne Task Force's stalled drive inside the Citadel, the GVN decided to "send in the Marines."
***
PART VIII
The Citadel
***
Chapter 28
Though it had been defeated, the 4th NVA Regiment had not been driven entirely from Hue. Indeed, from about February 10, it was reinforced by elements of two NVA. regiments dispatched from around Khe Sanh following the collapse of the assault on the Marine combat base and possibly by other units from elsewhere in I Corps.
The 4th NVA Regiment had been ejected from southern Hue, but the 6th NVA Regiment—which was also to be reinforced by infantry units from other areas—was still strongly in possession of more than half the Citadel. In eleven days of heavy fighting, the 1st ARVN Airborne Task Force and up to four infantry battalions of the 1st ARVN Division had been fought to a complete standstill. By February 10, ARVN General Headquarters, in Saigon, was demanding the withdrawal of the three airborne battalions, which were part of the ARVN General Headquarters reserve. If the airborne battalions were indeed withdrawn and not replaced in kind or by a much stronger force, Brigadier General Ngo Quang Truong faced grim prospects in his struggle to clear the NVA and VC from the Citadel. Truong therefore requested that the airborne battalions be replaced with any av
ailable but comparably proficient units from anywhere outside the 1st ARVN Division's area of operations. In the end, the GVN's Joint General Staff (JGS) decided to throw in part of the JGS national strategic reserve—at least two of the six strong infantry battalions composing the Vietnamese Marine Corps (VNMC). Since no other South Vietnamese combat units were available, MACV finally persuaded the GVN to employ a U.S. Marine infantry battalion inside the Citadel.
*
The 1st Battalion, 5th Marines (1/5), had had a bad Tet. Charged with guarding Highway 1 south of Hai Van Pass, the battalion had found itself strung out in four widely dispersed bases on January 31, easy pickings for the aggressive Communist units operating in Quang Nam Province. Not only were elements of 1/5's dispersed infantry companies bombarded and harassed, the battalion's main encampment at Phu Loc was directly attacked by NVA or VC infantry. Further, 1/5 was hampered in defending itself by its missions to defend or rescue a number of Vietnamese units and Marine CAPs based in its area of operations. During one such mission, on February 1, the battalion commander was severely wounded and evacuated. His replacement, Major Bob Thompson, the III MAF embarkation officer, arrived in Phu Loc to assume command of 1/5 late the following day.
Between January 31 and February 6, 1/5 worked the area along Highway 1 in the vicinity of Phu Loc. The battalion sustained many casualties, but it and other ARVN and U.S. units in the area slowly gained the advantage. On February 7, the bulk of 1/5 moved north of the Hai Van Pass to clear NVA units that were still molesting the strategic Troi Bridge. When that one-day sweep had been completed, the entire battalion was again concentrated south of Hai Van Pass, once again in the vicinity of Phu Loc. Security for Troi Bridge was left to Echo/2/5, and the job of patrolling Highway 1 south of Phu Bai was turned over to a battalion of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division.
