For the Sake of All Living Things

by John M. Del Vecchio

  Hanoi maintained its belief in the simple assumption that domestic political pressures would sooner or later force American leaders to accept the Communist terms for disengagement. “Those terms...amounted to unconditional surrender—unilateral withdrawal of all American troops and the replacement of the anticommunist...[Saigon] regime with a Lublin-model Communist front government,” wrote Stewart Alsop in Newsweek in September 1969. That observation remained valid in 1971, especially with the new domestic political storm brewing in the United States.

  On 13 June 1971, The New York Times began publishing excerpts of the 47-volume, 7,000-page Pentagon analysis of how, over thirty years, the United States had become committed to the defense of Indochina. Long after the controversy generated by the publication of the “sensitive” Pentagon Papers had become a footnote to the war, some scholars condemned the excerpts as “highly selective.” For example, the papers contain details of the Truman administration’s military aid to France in its war against the Communist Viet Minh, but omit details of the U.S. effort to convince the French to grant full independence to their colonies. This becomes important only in light of the emphasis placed on the meaning of that U.S. aid by the antiwar movement in the early 1970s and the impact of that movement on U.S. policy. Facts such as the above did not appear in The New York Times’s “complete and unabridged” 677-page volume. (Complete and unabridged with respect to what it had published in its own pages, not with respect to the Pentagon document—by page count The New York Times’s account is 9½percent of the Pentagon study.) The tone of The New York Times edition was set early when it critiqued U.S. military planners. “The conflict in Indochina,” Neil Sheehan wrote in the introduction, “is approached as a practical matter that will yield to the unfettered application of well-trained minds, and of the bountiful resources in men, weapons and money that a great power can command.”

  Hanoi’s America watchers were also paying attention to the continuing My Lai uproar. Five percent of all American network television coverage of the entire war—473 of 9,447 stories aired from 1963 to 1977—dealt with this one atrocity. What happened there is abhorrent. Still, it is incredible that the American media became fixated on an event that accounted for only 3/1000 of one percent (.0003) of the deaths in Indochina during that period.

  The North Viet Namese Communist leadership—secure in the belief it had a firm hold over the Cambodian revolution, seeing expanding negative U.S. domestic reaction to news from Southeast Asia, knowing that Nixon’s approval rating was based on the American people’s desire for a guarantee that all U.S. servicemen held captive by North Viet Nam would be fairly treated and released when all U.S. troops were withdrawn, and placing great emphasis on the increasing limitations set upon the Nixon administration by the U.S. Congress—ceased their attacks on Phnom Penh and redeployed much of that force to the east, not for any of the reasons suggested above but because Hanoi had decided to go for broke in South Viet Nam. This decision, made at the time the KK was engaging the NVA about the Northern Corridor, was a precursor to the largest military offensive to that time in Southeast Asia, North Viet Nam’s Nguyen Hue, or Easter, Offensive.

  Why did North Viet Nam decide to go for broke? Communist propaganda states that the NVA were attempting to shore up the remnant of the Southern rebel government, the PRG (which the NVA still held in house arrest near Kratie), and its forces, the VC (though Southern rebel units were now manned almost exclusively by Northerners, and, generally, Southern officers were being passed over for promotion and the positions given to Northerners). One must suspect that with U.S. troops mostly withdrawn (all American ground forces were disengaged from combat roles by March 1972) the new NVA strategic target became the destruction of the Republic of Viet Nam Armed Forces (RVNAF). Cambodia could wait.

  North Viet Nam’s generals saw Southeast Asia as a single mobile battlefield for trucks and armor, whereas the US-ARVN, FANK and Royal Lao militaries tended to see Southeast Asia as three (or, with North Viet Nam, four) separate theaters. Outside Cambodia, the NVA, in mid-November 1971, began a massive buildup at Ho Chi Minh Trail trailheads leading from North Viet Nam into Laos. Concurrently, major road construction was reported throughout the Laotian panhandle, and new and expanded surface-to-air missile sites were photographed all along the trail network. In response, the United States increased the number of B-52 sorties over Laos and thus decreased the number over Cambodia.

  Though Chenla II was FANK’s breaking point, the republic’s death was far off. A major event, the next tsunami—caused by the NVA drain-off—was yet to occur.

  STAGING

  In December 1971, the NVA 5th and 7th divisions, and part of the 91st, were pulled from “international duty.” This is why, when the 25,000-troop ARVN emergency relief force entered Cambodia at the beginning of December, they found very few NVA soldiers to engage. This sort of pullback was not new. In April, May and June 1970, the NVA had pulled back from the Khmer heartland, first to protect the fall-back from the border sanctuaries of other NVA units fleeing the US-ARVN incursion and then to rebuild those sanctuaries in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal. Again in February 1971, in reaction to the Laotian Incursion (Operation Lam Son 719) by ARVN units staging at Khe Sanh, South Viet Nam, and leapfrogging to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail at Tchepone, Laos, the NVA drew combat and support units from Cambodia.

  In late 1971 the NVA continued to maintain its COKA headquarters near Siem Reap. Elements of the 91st Division remained in the North and Northwest. Other units remained spread about the interior (near COSVN headquarters at Kratie and elsewhere), yet, employing more than 15,000 vehicles, the NVA shifted forces from Cambodia, Laos and North Viet Nam. This shift, given great importance by Krahom leaders, created a fundamental change in the balance of forces in Cambodia. Entire armies had been removed, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers were now massed in the border sanctuaries.

  In the first two months of 1972 U.S. bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos and of transfer points above and below the demilitarized zone in Viet Nam intensified in an attempt to forestall the anticipated offensive in South Viet Nam. Along the Cambodian border in South Viet Nam, the ARVN generally withdrew and entrenched, letting B-52s and tactical air strikes slow the NVA buildup and advance. Indeed, throughout 1972 the bombing of Cambodia remained at low levels. The sorties flown in all 1972 equaled 40 percent of those flown in 1971, and the majority of the 1972 flight’s were along the border trail network in the NVA-held northeastern highlands. Significant bombing did not return to the Cambodian interior until after the January 1973 signing of the Paris peace agreement.

  The Cambodian Communists saw 1972 as a year to consolidate gains, look for opportunities and stimulate internal contradictions—political struggle versus armed struggle—inside the ranks of all their enemies. Outside of the border provinces only a few major engagements occurred during the year. From 12 to 28 February, a 6,000-man FANK force attempted to unseat the 4,000 NVA holding Angkor Wat near Siem Reap. During this operation Lon Nol reinforced his troops with an additional 4,000 soldiers. Still FANK was unable, or unwilling, to dislodge the North Viet Namese from this long-established headquarters complex. For the remainder of the year FANK battalions settled into a lethargic defensive pattern of protecting enclaved cities. Their mobility, as measured by battalion-days in the field, equaled about 70 percent of that of 1971. Even this, however, is probably a padded figure. On 21 February 1972, Richard Nixon became an unwitting accomplice to Krahom goals by removing one of the main and longest-running motivations for U.S. commitment to Southeast Asia. On that date the American President was greeted in Peking by Prime Minster Zhou Enlai. Suddenly, U.S. containment policies were deemed senseless.

  THE EASTER, OR NGUYEN HUE, OFFENSIVE

  The NVA offensive into South Viet Nam was World War II Panzerlike action—fast, hard and with a modern twist, helicopters. Some have reduced the violence to Allied air power versus NVA tanks and surface-to-air (Sam-7) missiles. Yet a more conventiona
l victory—crushing firepower decimating an enemy fixed in position by infantry units—has never been gained. The offensive and the victory of the counteroffensive constitute, in the United States, the least-known period of the entire war. In launching the Nguyen Hue Offensive, North Viet Nam’s leaders made a fatal assumption. But the consequences of their error were mitigated by Allied political bungling and by Communist “scientific” propaganda. And though these events may seem isolated and distant from Cambodia, the results formed part of the continuum of events leading to the rise of Pol Pot’s forces.

  On 29 and 30 March 1972 the North Viet Namese Army came out of its enclaved, tactically defensive posture and launched the long-expected-offensive against the South. Twelve divisions, 150,000 men supported by more than 500 Soviet tanks plus heavy artillery and self-propelled antiaircraft guns, surged across the demilitarized zone (DMZ), in from Cambodia and Laos, in from the sea.

  The first attacks swept across the DMZ from Khe Sanh to Dong Ha, killing hundreds of troops and civilians. On day two, NVA gunners hit twelve DMZ outposts with a cumulative 5,000 rounds of artillery fire. Firebases and small posts were abandoned; and the first skirmish of the second front was fought near Tay Ninh. On 1 April the NVA 304th Division supported by attached artillery and surface-to-air missile units, about 30,000 men, swept across the DMZ, routing the thinly spread ARVN 3d Division. South of the DMZ, Highway QL 9 filled with fleeing refugees. By 4 April most of Quang Tri Province had fallen. About 40,000 refugees fled the onslaught.

  Under heavy cloud cover, second-front blitzkrieg assaults rumbled out of Cambodia’s Mondolkiri and Kratie provinces and crashed against the ARVN defenders of An Loc in Binh Long Province. Reports of the period are fascinating. During World War II and the Korean War the media were sympathetic to our beleaguered allies, but not so in the case of South Viet Nam. Beginning on 3 April, American news coverage nearly universally criticized the ARVN for pulling back without fully engaging enemy forces. They failed, however, to mention that the enemy was numerically superior and was advancing behind superior firepower.

  The RVNAF (Republic of Viet Nam Armed Forced: regular forces = ARVN, provincial forces = PF and regional forces = RF) were, with the exception of the Airborne and Marine divisions, stationed in their home provinces, where they were spread thin. When the NVA were dispersed and operating in their terrorism-and-harassment mode, the RVNAF offered maximum protection to the population. But when the Communists massed for tactical offensives, the RVNAF, spread out as they were, were unable to hold and could only blunt the initial assaults. The ARVN then had to adjust to the enemy’s numerical superiority by shifting forces to the attacked area. Often, the response time was days; however, once aerial and ground forces reacted and fixed the attackers, the advantage fell to the defenders.

  On 6 April the skies cleared and U.S. pilots flew 225 sorties against attackers below the DMZ, and NVA mobility slowed. South of the Central highlands the NVA captured Loc Ninh and trapped the ARVN 5th Infantry Division to the south.

  The Communists opened their third major front on 8 April, assaulting east out of Ratanakiri Province, through Duc Co and Plei Ngai and across to the north-south Highway 14. There they cut Kontum from Plei Ku and potential reinforcements. To the south An Loc fell under siege, and American installations at Cam Ranh Bay and Nui Ba Den were hit by rockets. To the north, the next day, U.S. and ARVN air power fixed (prevented from maneuvering) an element of the NVA 304th Division. With their lines of communication and supply broken, the Northerners were trapped beneath a rain of bombs. One thousand men were killed and thirty tanks destroyed.

  American ground forces were no longer a part of the Viet Nam War but air power was an ever-greater part. On 10 April two additional aircraft carriers were ordered to the theater, bringing the U.S. total to six. B-52s began hitting NVA lines west of Kontum and within 1½ kilometers of An Loc.

  By mid-April, to keep the ARVN dispersed and reinforcements away from the main attack points, NVA rocketeers dropped dozens of 122mm shells on Saigon, Da Nang and other civilian concentrations, while small units assaulted over a hundred sites in the South, nearly all for the first time since Tet 1968.

  At first, NVA generals were ecstatic. Although the bombings were taking a significant toll, their progress was awesome. The ARVN 3d, 5th and 22d divisions were at the point of collapse. Major firebases in the north and central regions had been overrun. Underestimating the resilience of the ARVN and the capabilities of regional and provincial forces, and expecting the South to fall, the NVA leaders pulled strategic reserve units from Cambodia and ignored serious reports of Khmer Krahom positioning and attacks.

  Meanwhile President Nixon moved away from America’s long-term policy of strategic defense—that America would not attack the source of the war, North Viet Nam—and ordered U.S. strategic bombers to hit Hanoi and Haiphong. Within a day, the first major antiwar protests of 1972 erupted on America’s college campuses. Within a week, as South Viet Nam fought for its very existence, eight Ivy League college presidents issued a statement condemning U.S. bombing of the North. As NVA attacks intensified at An Loc, at Ah Khe and throughout the Central Highlands, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Democratic Caucus voted (4-20) to set a termination date for American support. As the NVA opened up a minor front in the Mekong Delta, as NVA divisions nearly annihilated the ARVN 22d Division, as the number of refugees in South Viet Nam skyrocketed to over 1.5 million and as a dozen Cambodian towns in the Parrot’s Beak were overrun by North Viet Namese, 90,000 Americans demonstrated against the war in New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

  Within a month, in addition to their gains in South Viet Nam, the NVA held all of Cambodia east of the Mekong with the exception of Neak Luong, Svay Rieng City, a few minor enclaves and the vast tracts the KK had usurped in the absence of any strong presence.

  By 1 May, American B-52 and fighter-bomber sorties over North Viet Nam had risen to 350 per day. Now, as nearly 200,000 Communist soldiers attacked on three major fronts in South Viet Nam and as the South Viet Namese people, instead of joining the “popular uprising” resisted or fled ruthless and indiscriminate NVA artillery fire, sixty U.S. college presidents petitioned for the immediate and complete withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Indochina.

  On 8 May President Nixon ordered the mining of Haiphong and other North Viet Namese harbors, ordered a naval blockade of North Viet Nam and ordered the rail lines from China bombed. He announced that these orders would be rescinded when all U.S. POWs were released and an internationally supervised cease-fire was signed. In exchange for those conditions, not only would he rescind these orders but he would withdraw all Americans within 120 days. Hundreds of thousands of antiwar demonstrators took to the streets of America.

  FACTS AND SPECULATIONS

  Although the offensive would continue for another hundred days, the NVA had lost the element of surprise. The ARVN had responded on all fronts, shifting forces to match the massed attack points of the Communists, and the offensive had been blunted. That’s not to say the NVA did not continue to advance in some areas. As in their small-unit operations, once the Allies fixed them in position they attempted to withdraw, escape, regroup and reattack elsewhere. Nixon’s semistrategic offensive against North Viet Nam stimulated no major reaction from either Moscow or Peking. One suspects the Soviets and Chinese were conceding the war and acquiescing to a new order, as in Korea, of a split Viet Nam. North Viet Nam had wreaked havoc on the South, yet by mid-May analysts for all superpowers knew the North would not topple South Viet Nam. Soviet and Chinese aid to the NVA decreased, not as a response to American military moves cutting supply lines, but because of political fluctuations in the face of America’s show of will to stick by its fighting ally. But Nixon’s 8 May announcement, for the first time, did not demand the withdrawal of Northern troops from the South (a pivotal point later in the year). In Hanoi, political and military leaders interpreted the President’s speech as acceptance of a cease-fire-in-place co
ncurrent with U.S. withdrawal. Ex-VC Minister of Justice Truong Nhu Tang noted in his book A Vietcong Memoir:

  Practically the entire North Vietnamese army was now inside South Vietnam—to stay....Nixon and Kissinger had decided...they could have no choice but to accept...the fait accompli of a full Northern military presence....Their decision was of course induced by powerful factors. The American press was already screaming its rage about renewed bombing of the North. Nor was there anything subtle about the reaction in Congress, which...was well on its way toward legislating the United States out of the war.

  At this point one sees, on the one hand, a major offensive by the NVA being crushed by the ARVN and by Allied air power; an American military shift from a strategic defensive to a semistrategic offensive posture, no significant political response by North Viet Nam’s major allies, and a cutback in Communist materiel supply. On the other hand, in America, the reactions of antiwar demonstrators, the media and Congress (on 9 May the Senate resolved to cut off all war funds) had convinced the administration that it must, in Nixon’s words, “...bring the war to a decisive military conclusion.” The Nixon regime thus accepted the one element President Thieu feared most, allowing the NVA to remain on Southern territory. In Communist terms, the North Viet Namese had achieved their major goal, that of stimulating their enemies’ internal contradictions—separating South Viet Nam from the United States and President Nixon from the American people. As an example of that latter separation, an analysis of television news coverage (three major networks only) for the period 15 April to 15 May 1972 reveals that of 258 stories, 132 supported “antiwar” viewpoints, 15 presented “pro-war” perspectives and the remaining 111 were neutral. Of all the NVA shellings of civilian areas, of the leveling of entire cities, America saw only two clips. There was not a single mention of NVA weapons captured. On the surface this seems insignificant, but the capture of enemy weapons has always been a symbol of victory in battle, so the zero mention juxtaposed with mentions of ARVN losses is significant. And only one story was a battle analysis. Again, Truong Nhu Tang makes a relevant point: