Goodnight Saigon

by Charles Henderson

  Since he did not have enough forces to adequately cover both areas, he chose to compromise and send an additional Twenty-third Division regiment halfway to Ban Me Thuot, an absurd token gesture from a confused and frustrated commander.

  That same day he had called on his superiors at the Joint General Staff in Saigon, asking their advice and help. He begged them for additional troops or at least more supplies and equipment. However, his pleas fell on unfriendly and skeptical ears.

  His friends and fellow senior officers, while smiling sympathetically to his face and sharing in his frustration, generally held contempt for Phu behind his back. To them, he was an old warhorse whose imagination and initiative had long ago withered. They believed that the only way to motivate Phu to lead his II Corps soldiers to hold the Central Highlands and keep open Highway 19 was to leave him spread thin and short. With ample supplies and forces, they thought him likely to hole up at Pleiku and Kontum and let the enemy have the highlands and the route to the sea.

  They remembered that when the French fell at Dien Bien Phu, General Pham Van Phu had fallen with them. The Viet Minh took him prisoner and tortured him. He had no stomach for ever coming close to repeating such a horror.

  Leaving him in a tight spot would motivate General Phu to hold the Central Highlands and keep his lifeline, the road to Qui Nhon, open.

  Yesterday morning’s news, the predawn attack on Ban Me Thuot, had sent a shockwave through the Joint General Staff. Outwardly, Pham Van Phu expressed determination to hold the Central Highlands to the last man and assured his superiors that II Corps would not lose the capital city of Darlac Province nor its southern neighbor, Quang Duc Province. When the general laid the telephone back in its cradle, he slumped in his chair. He realized that he had been terribly wrong in his judgement, and now he could lose everything.

  He also felt deeply embarrassed. For more than a week his forces had lost all contact with both the 10th and the 320th NVA divisions. No matter where his reconnaissance scouts searched, they could find no trace of them. Their sudden appearance outside Ban Me Thuot left him feeling foolish.

  In a last-ditch attempt to save face, as well as Ban Me Thuot, Darlac, and Quang Duc, which represented a third of the area that Military Region 2 covered, General Phu hurriedly organized a counteroffensive that would launch from the air and have ground forces follow on. Now, as news of failure came in the afternoon message traffic, the hopes he had tied to this initiative drifted like feathers in the wind.

  A pattern of sweat spread across the back of the old general’s shirt as he twisted his wire-frame glasses in his fingers and looked at the sergeant standing by the helicopter. From his office window, Phu watched as the light westerly breezes lifted the main rotor blade up and down, causing it to shudder against the lanyard that had it tied to the nose of the Huey, near a red placard with two white stars painted on it. Inside the aircraft’s cockpit, the pilots sat patiently, also waiting like their crew chief.

  Inside the general’s office, Tran Van Cam sat on a large green leather chair opposite the corner of Pham Van Phu’s desk. At the other corner, seated in a similar chair, II Army Corps chief of staff, Colonel Le Khac Ly, scanned a stack of messages and unconsciously shook his head and pursed his lips at what he read. Together, the three officers waited for the first situation reports from the second wave of the airborne assault initiated this morning against elements of the Tenth NVA Division sighted by reconnaissance aircraft at Phuoc An, approximately twenty-five kilometers southwest of Ban Me Thuot.

  At dawn, he had filled the sky with helicopters lifting the entire Forty-fifth Infantry Regiment, reinforced with elements of the Twenty-third ARVN Ranger Group, in an airmobile counteroffensive. This first wave had met with complete disaster.

  The troop-laden helicopters literally flew into cones of fire. In them the airborne forces suffered total annihilation. Soldiers perished by the hundreds.

  Several battalions of tanks and artillery of the Tenth NVA Division, working as a rear guard for the main body of the 968th NVA Corps, had lain in wait for the ARVN airborne assault on the fringe of their primary forces that now focused heavy fire on Ban Me Thuot and Phuong Duc Airfield. As the ARVN choppers settled toward their intended landing zones, the NVA guns blew them out of the sky.

  Of the few aircraft that made it to the ground, the Twenty-third Division soldiers that leaped from them found themselves in the center of a huge killing zone, with no way out. Five artillery battalions bolstered by a full infantry regiment firing all levels of automatic weapons, rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, and mortars chewed the hapless ARVN to bits.

  Suddenly, the telephone on the general’s desk rang, shocking the silence that prevailed in the II Army Corps commander’s office. Colonel Ly snapped his head up and dropped his lapful of papers. Pham Van Phu did not turn his face from the window, but listened.

  “Sir,” Brigadier General Cam said, placing the telephone handset back on its cradle, “the second attack has also encountered heavy losses from antiaircraft fire.”

  “I expected as much,” Phu said and turned from the window.

  “However, recognizing the fire,” Cam said, “a number of the helicopters in this wave managed to turn and have successfully landed troops at alternate sites away from the enemy. Those forces have now consolidated on the ground and initiated an advance, attempting to engage the enemy.”

  “We can only hope that they gain a foothold,” Phu said, but knew in his heart that the army his soldiers faced had his Twenty-third Division and entire II Army Corps, for that matter, outstripped. Unless the Joint General Staff took immediate action to reinforce his command, Ban Me Thuot, Darlac, and Quang Duc would fall to the enemy in a matter of days.

  “General, sir,” Colonel Ly said, “what about your helicopter? Will you join the rangers and Colonel Pham Van Tat this evening after all?”

  Pham Van Phu said nothing, but merely shook his head slowly from side to side and returned to the window. He watched the sun disappearing behind clouds that formed thunderstorms above the western horizon. A soldier ran across the lawn in front of his headquarters and shouted in the ear of the sergeant who wore the white helmet decorated with the orange, silver, and green strips of reflective tape.

  He watched the young aircrewman run to the nose of the helicopter, unhook the lanyard from the rotor blade, and then motion to the pilot to start the aircraft. In a few seconds, the rotor spun rapidly above the dark green aircraft, thumping the air as it generated lift.

  Even from the distance of his office window, the general could sense the relief felt by the helicopter crew, simply by the way the sergeant hurried through his launch chores. The young man nearly skipped as he lightly danced around the aircraft, preparing it for flight.

  With a small red light flashing beneath its belly, the Huey lifted from the II Army Corps headquarters landing site. The general looked at the sergeant seated inside the helicopter, looking back at him.

  As the sergeant squinted his eyes at the window, slowly growing smaller as the aircraft pulled away, he could see the general still standing there. It appeared as though the man had waved just as the chopper had lifted off. The sergeant raised his right hand, covered in a green cloth glove trimmed in gray leather, and waved back.

  Chapter 6

  FATAL PANIC

  NHA TRANG, RVN—FRIDAY, MARCH 14, 1975

  “WHAT HAVE YOU allowed to happen!” South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu said, straining his voice on the verge of shouting as Major General Pham Van Phu formally presented himself, snapping his heels together, his body locked straight, his thumbs pressed tightly at the seams of his trousers, and his eyes fixed ahead.

  “Sir,” Phu said, pausing to carefully choose his words while restraining his own frustrations. “One could better place that rhetoric at the feet of the Joint General Staff. Had they provided the II Army Corps the supplies and reinforcements that I requested weeks ago, Ban Me Thuot, Darlac, and Quang Duc would not now stand
in jeopardy.”

  “Jeopardy?” Thieu snapped. Then in his typical supercilious manner, like a lordly peacock with feathers fully spread, he strode across the room to a pair of opposing sofa chairs. There, he glanced at the demure little man standing rigid as a statue and tossed his head back and laughed sarcastically, forcing out several insulting huffs at his humiliated subordinate’s claim.

  “As always,” he droned with a lofty nasal whine, projecting his disdain, “you fail to recognize the obvious. My dear general, those places have long since fallen beyond all hope of salvation. Besides, where, pray tell, would the Joint General Staff have obtained these precious supplies and reinforcements that would have made all of this difference? Do you not realize that the provinces surrounding Da Nang and Hue also lie under siege? Should we have redirected those forces to you? Oh yes, we could have simply stripped them from the defenses at Saigon and provided you those troops as reinforcements.”

  Pham Van Phu held his wooden stance for a silent moment, taking several calming breaths, but then he turned his head and looked the South Vietnamese president directly in the eyes and spoke. “Sir, if the Communists divide the Central Highlands, then they also succeed in dividing the Republic,” he said and then paused thoughtfully. “That places them one step away from winning this war.”

  Phu again stood silent for several seconds, letting his words find weight with his president.

  “Stopping the Communists at Ban Me Thuot,” the general continued, “is very well worth the cost of redeploying whatever forces and supplies necessary. The alternative hands our enemy ultimate victory.”

  President Thieu fell into a sofa chair and pointed to the one opposite of him, motioning for General Phu to relax and to sit.

  “If you believe that, why did you not redeploy your own forces to Ban Me Thuot?” Thieu said, now using a more civil tone, but still tinting his voice with a mordant edge.

  “That would have left Pleiku and Kontum unguarded,” Phu responded, holding fast to his original beliefs. “We can isolate Ban Me Thuot, along with Quang Duc Province and the lower half of Darlac, and hold the enemy in check where he now stands. However, I cannot do that with only the two infantry regiments that remain of the Twenty-third Division and what we have left of the three ranger groups assigned to them, perhaps twenty-thousand troops.”

  “You also have the Twenty-second Infantry Division, the Second Armored Brigade, and four additional ranger groups supporting them,” Thieu said casually. “What are there, ten battalions in those four ranger groups? Ten out of the seventeen battalions of rangers that you have in total? With the forces in the Twenty-second Division and the Second Armored Brigade, that gives you what? Something like sixty-thousand additional troops? Plus, that goes without mentioning that you can also draw from a sizable reserve of Montagnard popular and regional force militia.”

  “Do you not realize that we face three full infantry divisions heavily reinforced with tanks and artillery moving on Ban Me Thuot?” the general retorted, without actually addressing President Thieu’s observation that his forces numbered closer to eighty-thousand than twenty-thousand. “I estimate their strength at more than one hundred thousand seasoned and well equipped veteran soldiers.”

  “I suspect an even greater number,” Thieu admitted in a low voice, “perhaps half of the more than three hundred thousand North Vietnamese troops currently deployed south of the DMZ. Probably even more. We have no way of knowing how many additional divisions that the enemy may have secretly transferred here since their attack at Don Luan in December. In any regard, General Truong and his Military Region 1 army and Marine Corps units no doubt face what remains of those enemy forces not presently striking the Central Highlands.”

  “Where we break our ranks,” Phu warned, finally taking the seat across from President Thieu, “they will pour through the gaps. Clearly they intend to divide and then conquer.”

  “I agree,” Thieu said. “The Communists obviously seek to disjoin our forces and overwhelm us from multiple fronts. That is why I have reached certain conclusions and now propose a resolution that will position our forces so that we can at least save Saigon and negotiate a cease fire.”

  “You mean to abandon our northern provinces?” Pham Van Phu finally asked after sitting in shocked silence for several seconds.

  “Yes,” Thieu said. “My plan establishes a new demilitarized zone north of Nha Trang Bay, where Highway 21 joins Highway 1 at Ninh Hoa, extending from there to the western border. If we fail to hold that position, then we will fall back to a similar line at Vung Tao, along Highway 15.”

  The South Vietnamese president then looked out the windows that opened to the blue sea that washed the snow-white crescent beach wrapped along the shore that embraced Nha Trang. Just beyond the breakers, tall volcanic rocks that formed tiny islands covered with thick vines, bushes, and small trees, giving them a visual texture of lumpy, green velvet, jutted fifty to a hundred feet above the clear water. Below the emerald peaks, swarming in the currents that flowed through lava and coral grottos, colorful fish and giant prawns teemed. It looked like a picture from a postcard, a warm and tranquil place, beautiful.

  Pham Van Phu cleared his throat, breaking President Thieu’s lapse.

  “It would be such a shame to lose all of this to people who could never truly appreciate it,” Thieu said in a soft voice, now speaking from his heart.

  The general looked at the sight from the open windows: the giant, white marble Buddha towering above the trees on the hillside across the bay, overlooking the bright blue sea and white coral beaches. Beneath the tall salt cedars that lined the boulevard and walkway bordering the strand, he saw old men seated at concrete tables, playing chess. Throughout the sandy stretch that curved along the length of the city, fading into a rocky peninsula at its northern limit, he observed a colorful array of countless parasols with people lazing in their shade, reclining on towels. He too enjoyed the beauty and the life that Nha Trang afforded and agreed with his president’s view about it, nodding to him with a sad smile.

  “We cannot allow that to happen, can we?” Thieu said, sighing.

  “It will not happen, sir,” Phu said in a stronger voice, trying to rescue both of their spirits from the doldrums.

  President Thieu then clasped his hands together and pressed them to his forehead, as if in prayer, bowing his head slightly. Then, putting his hands back in his lap, he looked squarely at General Phu.

  “When I held my field command, you served me well,” Thieu said, smiling. “In all the years that we have known each other, I have never questioned your loyalty to me. Today, I must call upon that long friendship because I need your unequivocal faith in support of my strategy to save our nation.”

  “Sir, without question,” Pham Van Phu said, seizing the opportunity to endear himself, and leaned forward in his chair to carefully hear his president.

  “Most of the other regional commanders and the entire Joint General Staff disagree with my assessment of this situation,” Thieu said. “They support the CIA’s and Ambassador Martin’s positions that our forces outmatch the Communists when we stand in defense and that from the fortifications at our key enclaves we can ultimately stop this offensive. I disagree.”

  “Respectfully, sir,” Phu said, “may I address this matter with candor?”

  “Certainly,” Thieu said, forcing a smile. “That is why I asked you to speak privately with me. I greatly respect your thoughts about this crisis.”

  “Sir,” Phu continued, “I believe that in most situations, apart from that which we presently face at Ban Me Thuot, our forces will prevail in defense.

  “We do not have the cache of munitions and stores, nor the fortresses, at Ban Me Thuot that all of our other principal enclaves possess. That lack of adequate fortification and supply represents the two greatest reasons why we now suffer the loss. However, our forces at Pleiku and Kontum, and to a greater extent at Da Nang, Chu Lai, Hue, Phu Bai, Dong Ha, and even here at Nha T
rang and Cam Ranh Station, have very adequate hardened positions controlling the high ground and ample hidden stockpiles. The Americans abandoned much of these stores as so-called junk for us to reclaim, taking advantage of a loop-hole in the Paris Accords.

  “You have my loyalty, sir, but I must hold faith with what the other generals have advised you.”

  “No!” Thieu shouted, lurching from the chair. He rushed to a table where he picked up a pale green, manila folder stuffed with papers and shook it at General Phu. “These reports indicate that we have depleted the greater majority of those very supplies and munitions.”

  “Sir, I have seen with my own eyes what we hold in many of these caches,” Phu said, rising from the chair in a respectful response to the president abruptly leaping to his feet. “We drafted those reports in hopes of gaining additional American support. Just as when we submitted our budgets, the truth that they tell represents a different set of circumstances and realities.”

  “Our forces, thus far, have stood no match against the North Vietnamese,” Thieu snapped. “You lost, what, two regiments already? Or is it now three? Annihilated! Sixty percent of the men killed before they could even land!”

  “This is not the same situation, sir,” Phu said in a soft, conciliatory voice, hoping to ease the tensions that had sent President Thieu into such an explosive tantrum. “That is one battle, not the war, nor does it represent the whole country. We must now resolve to isolate the enemy’s forces and contain them where they presently stand.”