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V I E T N A M P R I M E R
by
Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall (Ret.)
LESSONS LEARNED
HEADQUARTERS, DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY
V I E T N A M P R I M E R
FOREWORD
The two authors of this study went to Vietnam in early
December, 1966 on a 90 day mission, one as a private citizen with vast
experience in analyzing combat operations, the other, a Regular Army
officer representing the Army's Chief of Military History. Their
collaborative task was to train combat historians in the technique of the
postcombat interview. In the course of conducting six schools for officers
selected for this duty in Vietnam, they put into practice the principles
they advocated, and from their group interrogation of the men who had done
the fighting, they were able to reconstruct most of the combat actions of
the preceding six months, including all but one of the major operations.
The present work emerged from this material.
Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall, Retired, longtime friend of the
Army, and Lieutenant Colonel David Hackworth, veteran of a year's combat in
Vietnam as a brigade executive and infantry battalion commander, have
pooled their experience and observations to produce an operational analysis
that may help American soldiers live longer and perform better in combat.
Their study is presented not as the official solution to all the ills that
beset combat troops in Vietnam but as the authors' own considered
corrective and guide for the effective conduct of small unit operations.
Although it does not necessarily reflect Department of the Army doctrine,
it can be read with profit by all soldiers.
(signed)
HAROLD K. JOHNSON
General, United States Army
Chief of Staff
V I E T N A M P R I M E R
LESSONS LEARNED
V I E T N A M P R I M E R
A critique of U.S. Army tactics and command
practices in the small combat unit digested from
historical research of main fighting operations
from May, 1966 to February, 1967.
The material presented in this document was prepared by Brigadier General
S. L. A. Marshall, U.S. Army, Retired, and Lieutenant Colonel David H.
Hackworth, Infantry; and the opinions contained herein do not necessarily
reflect the official positions of the Department of the Army.
VIETNAM PRIMER
TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE POST-ACTION CRITIQUE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
THE CORE OF THE PROBLEM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
LESSON ONE - THE DISTRICT ASSAULT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
LESSON TWO - WARNING AND MOVEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
LESSON THREE - DOUBLING SECURITY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
LESSON FOUR - CONTENDING WITH JUNGLE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
LESSON FIVE - RATES OF FIRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
LESSON SIX - COMMUNICATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
LESSON SEVEN - SECURITY ON THE TRAIL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
LESSON EIGHT - THE COMPANY IN MOVEMENT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
LESSON NINE - RUSES, DECOYS, AND AMBUSHES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
LESSON TEN - FIELD INTELLIGENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
LESSON ELEVEN - THE DEFENSIVE PERIMETER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
LESSON TWELVE - POLICING THE BATTLEFIELD. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
LESSON THIRTEEN - TRAINING. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
LESSON FOURTEEN - THE STRANGE ENEMY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
V I E T N A M P R I M E R
THE POST-ACTION CRITIQUE
All of the lessons and discussion presented in this brief document are
the distillate of after action group interviews with upwards of a hundred
rifle companies and many patrols and platoons that have engaged
independently in Vietnam.
Every action was reconstructed in the fullest possible detail,
including the logistical and intelligence data, employment of weapons,
timing and placement of battle losses in the unit, location of wounds, etc.
What is said herein of the enemy derives in whole from what officers and
men who have fought him in battle learned and reported out of their
experience. Nothing has been taken from any intelligence document
circulated to the United States Army. The document therefore is in itself
evidence of the great store of information about the Viet Cong that can be
tapped by talking with men of our combat line, all of which knowledge lies
waste unless someone makes the effort.
The briefing actions at the company level generally took less than one
hour. The longest lasted two days and more. The average ran about three
and one-half hours. To reconstruct a fight over that span of time required
from seven to eight hours of steady interrogation.
Soon after engagement, any combat unit commander can do this same
thing: group interview his men until he knows all that happened to them
during the fire fight. In their interest, in his own interest, and for the
good of the Army he cannot afford to do less. There is no particular art
to the work; so long as exact chronology is maintained in developing the
story of the action, and so long as his men feel confident that he seeks
nothing from them but the truth, the whole truth, then the needed results
will come. Every division and every independent brigade in Vietnam has at
least one combat historian. He is charged with conducting this kind of
research; he can also assist and advise any unit commander who would like
to know how to do it on his own.
Special rewards come to the unit commander who will make the try.
Nothing else will give him a closer bond with his men. Not until he does
it will he truly know what they did under fire. Just as the combat
critique is a powerful stimulant of unit morale, having all the warming
effect of a good cocktail on an empty stomach, and even as it strengthens
each soldier's appreciation of his fellows, it enables troops to understand
for the first time the multitudinous problems and pressures on the
commander. They will go all the better for him the next time out and he
will have a much clearer view of his human resources. Combat does have a
way of separating the men from the boys; but on the other hand the boys
want to be classed with the men, and influence of a number of shining
examples in their midst does accelerate the maturing process. The
seasoning of a combat outfit comes fundamentally from men working together
under stress growing in knowledge of one another.
Mistakes will be brought out during the critique. Their revelation
cannot hurt the unit or the man. Getting it out in the clear is one way -
probably the only way - to relieve feelings and clear the atmosphere,
provided the dignity of all present is maintained during the critique.
Should the need for a personal admonishment or advice become indicated,
that can be reserved until later.
Far more important, deeds of heroism and high merit, unknown to the
leader until that hour, become known to all hands. From this knowledge
will come an improved awards system based on a standard of justice that
will be commonly acknowledged. Men not previously recognized as possessing
the qualities for squad and platoon leading will be viewed in a new light
and moved toward promotion that all will know is deserved.
No richer opportunity than this may be put before the commander of a
combat company or battery or the sergeant who leads a patrol into a fight.
He who hesitates to take advantage of it handicaps himself more than all
others. If he does not know where he has been, he can never be certain
where he is going.
That is to say, in the end, that something is lacking in his military
character, a "zeal to close the circuit," which is the mark of the good
combat leader.
V I E T N A M P R I M E R
THE CORE OF THE PROBLEM
Though it may sound like a contradiction to speak first of the tactics
of engaging fortifications in a war where the enemy of the United States is
a hit-and-run guerrilla, seeking more at
the present time to avoid open battle than to give it except when he
imagines that the terms are more than moderately favorable to his side, a
moment's reflection will sustain the logic of the approach.
His fortified areas almost invariably present the greatest difficulty
to U.S. tactical forces, and it is when we voluntarily engage them that our
loss rates are most immoderate. At no other technique is he more skilled
than in the deceptive camouflaging of his fortified base camps and semi-
fortified villages. There, even nature is made to work in his favor;
trees, shrubs, and earth itself are reshaped to conceal bunker locations
and trench lines. Many of these locations are fund temporarily abandoned,
thus presenting only the problem of how to wreck them beyond possibility of
further use. On the other hand, when he chooses to fight out of any one of
them, the choice is seldom, if ever, made because he is trapped beyond
chance of withdrawal, but because he expects to inflict more than enough
hurt on Americans in the attack to warrant making a stand.
There is even more to it than that. The fortified base camps and
villages are the pivots of the Communist aggression. Denied their use, the
movement would wither. The primary problem of defeating the North
Vietnamese Army (NVA) south of the 17th Parallel and the ultimate problem
of destroying the Viet Cong (VC) between that line and the southern
extremity of the Delta are joined in the tactical task of eliminating their
fortified areas with maximum economy of force.
Years of labor and mountains of irreplaceable material have gone into
building this network of strong camps over the country. It is the
framework that sustains irregular operations, and a semi-guerrilla army can
no more get along without it than a conventional army can hold the field
when cut off from its main bases. Yet there is no such camp or armed
village in Vietnam today that is beyond the reach of U.S. forces. However
remote and concealed, none can be moved or indefinitely kept hidden. To
find and smash each, one by one, is an essential task, a prime object in
conclusively successful campaigning. The Viet Cong movement cannot survive
as a horde of fugitives, unidentified as they mingle with the village crowd
and bury their arms in the surrounding paddies. When the fortified bases
go, the infrastructure withers, and thus weakened, finally dies.
The fortified base camp is roughly circular in form with an outer rim
of bunkers and foxholes enclosing a total system of living quarters,
usually frame structures above ground, command bunkers, kitchens, and
sleeping platforms. But as with the U.S. defensive perimeter, the shape
will vary according to the terrain, the rise and fall of ground, and the
use of natural features to restrict attack on the camp to one or two
avenues. Some of the bases, and in particular those used only for training
or way stations, have minimum defensive works. In all cases, however, the
enemy is prepared to defend from a ground attack.
The semi-fortified village is usually an attenuated or stretched out
set of hamlets, having length rather than breadth, a restricted approach,
bunkers (usually at the corners of the huts), lateral trenches, and
sometimes a perpendicular trench fitted with fighting bunkers running the
length of the defended area along one flank. There will be at least one
exit or escape route rearward, though the position is often otherwise
something of a cul de sac, made so by natural features. Tunnels connect
the bunkers and earthworks, enabling the defenders to pop up, disappear,
then fire again from another angle, a jack-in-the-box kind of maneuvering
that doubles the effect of their numbers. An unfordable river may run
along one flank while wide open paddy land bounds the other. The apparent
lack of escape routes makes the position look like an ideal target for our
side, with our large advantage in air power and artillery. But until
bombardment has blown down most of the foliage any maneuver into the
complex by infantry skirmishers is a deepening puzzle.
When the attempt is made to seal in the enemy troops, one small
opening left in the chain of force, such as a ditch, the palm grown slope
of a canal bank, or a drainage pipe too small for an American to venture,
will be more than enough to suit their purpose. They will somehow find it;
there is nothing that they do better by day or night. It is as if they
have a sixth sense for finding the way out and for taking it soundlessly.
They are never encircled so long as one hole remains. Beaten, they will
lose themselves in shrubbery and tree tops while the daylight lasts, get
together when night closes, and make for the one exit.
Three ground units of the 1st Air Cavalry Division fought through an
action of this kind in early December, 1966, and took heavy losses. By
dark the fight was won and resistance ended. The natural boundaries of the
combat area permitted no chance for escape over 95 percent of the distance.
Through a misunderstanding, the two rifle units covering the one land
bridge left a 30 meter gap of flat land between their flanks. Though it
was a moonlit night, the enemy remnants, estimated at two platoons or more,
got away without a fight.
V I E T N A M P R I M E R
LESSON ONE - THE DISTRICT ASSAULT
The record of U.S. Army operations in South Vietnam demonstrates one
hard fact: a company sized attack upon an enemy fortified base camp or
semi-fortified village, held in equal strength by NVA or VC main force with
a determination to defend, and not subjected to intense artillery and/or
air strikes beforehand, means payment of a high price by the attacker. The
result of such an attempt is either ultimate withdrawal by the attacking
force, too often after excessive loss, or a belated reinforcement and a
more prolonged involvement than was anticipated or is judicious.
Yet the tactic seems to have a fatal allure for the average young U.S.
rifle company commander. It has been many times tried and, just as often,
failed. The enemy deliberately tries to make the position look weak, and
hence attractive. One ruse is to leave frontal bunkers unmanned, though
the approach of the attacker is known. Initial resistance will be offered
by a squad minus, while within the complex a company plus is preparing to
maneuver. The effort is subtly directed toward getting the attack snarled
in a maze of fortifications not visible to the eye, whence extrication
grows ever more difficult and advance becomes extremely costly.
The direct consequence for the rifle company that impulsively engages
a position well beyond its strength, at least 50 percent of the time, will
be as follows:
(1) Its battle order, or fighting formations, are weakened
through immediate losses in its frontal element.
(2) It must concentrate on the problem of extracting its
casualties under fire.
(3) Its direct pressure against the enemy is diminished and
disorganized. In short, overimpulsiveness runs counter to
effective aggressiveness.
Upon contacting any such fortified position, where direct enemy fire
by automatic weapons supplies proof of the intention to defend, the rifle
platoon or company should thereafter immediately dispose to keep its
strength and numbers (weapon power and men) latent and under cover to the
full limit permitted by the environment. It may even simulate a
withdrawal, continue desultory fire from its forward weapons, or seek the
enemy rear when favored by terrain, weather, and light. The full length
assault is to be avoided while the heavy fires of supporting arms are
brought in. The careful, fire covered probe is the called-for expedient.
The headlong rush, like the attempt at envelopment before any attempt has
been made to feel out resistance, should be avoided absolutely.
Where environment and weather permit such intervention, artillery
fires should concentrate on the rear, while tactical air targets on the
enemy camp. Otherwise the effect of bombardment is likely to be the
premature aborting of the position. Following bombardment, the direct
frontal assault by the single rifle company should not be pressed unless
reinforcement is already on its way, within 20 to 30 minutes of closing, in
strength sufficient to engage at least one flank of the enemy position.
The attack should then proceed by the echeloning of fire teams, taking
advantage of natural cover and concealed avenues of approach. Gradual
advance is the one safeguard against full exposure and undue loss, as in
the taking of a city. Holding at least one platoon in reserve is so much
insurance against enemy attack on the flank or read.
When casualties occur in the initial stage of encounter with the enemy
in fixed positions, the extraction of WIA's by forward skirmishers should
not be more than the distance required to give them the nearest protection
from enemy fire. This stricture should include a relatively secure
approach for the aid man. Extraction of the dead is to be delayed until
the development of the action makes it unnecessary to be done under fire.
Unless these rules are followed during engagement, unit action stalls
around the attempt to extricate casualties, thereby yielding fire-and-
movement initiative to the enemy. This effect was observed in
approximately one-third of the company actions researched.
The data basis clearly indicates that the one most effective way to
deal with the enemy fighting out of the fortified camp or village is to zap
him with the heaviest artillery and tactical air ordnance, not to maneuver
against him with infantry only. The "finding" infantry must also carry on
as the "fixing" force, leaving the "finishing" to the heavy weapons that
can both kill men and batter down protective works. If overextension is to
be avoided, the sealing-in of the position may hardly be assigned to the
unit that has initiated the action. The sealing-in is higher command's
problem. Additional maneuver elements are dropped to the rear of the
position, and if need be the flanks, to block likely escape routes, strike
the withdrawing columns, and continue the mop up once the enemy, realizing
that our infantry in the assault will not fall victim to his subtle trap,
wearies of the punishment. How far these reaction deployments are spread
should depend on the topography, availability of natural cover, and all
else connected with the enemy's ability to vanish into the landscape and
our chance of cornering him before he does so.
V I E T N A M P R I M E R
LESSON TWO - WARNING AND MOVEMENT
For the rifle platoon or company to attempt envelopment of any village
where there is some reason to suspect that it is fortified and will be
defended is tactically as foolhardy as to assault directly any enemy
position in a non-built-up area not subject to ground level or overhead
surveillance. Reports from air observers that when seen from directly
above at not more than 100 feet the village looks unguarded and unfortified
are not to be considered conclusive, since it has been repeatedly shown
that the enemy's skill with natural camouflage may wholly conceal at such
distance a truly formidable position.
A "position" is defined for this purpose as that ground from which, on
initial contact, volley or approximately synchronized fire from a number of
automatic weapons is directed against the friendly unit in movement.
Particularly, when the enemy opens with a mix of rifle and machinegun fire,
there is positive indication that he has not been surprised and rates
himself strong enough to invite the attack. Even when he opens with random
and unaimed rifle fire from somewhere in the background, this is no sure
sign that he is getting away and that therefore prompt pursuit is in order.
Here is a much-used VC-NVA ruse to draw the attack pell mell into a well-
concealed, defended position.
An attempt to envelop a village with light forces, when its possession
of defended works or lack thereof is unknown, can only lead to dispersion
of force and a regrouping at unnecessary cost when the village is defended.
A careful probe on a narrow front with a fire base in readiness is the
proper method. If fired upon, the unit then has two options: (a) house-by-
house and bunker-by-bunkers movement into the complex as in attack on any
built-up area; or (b) the calling in of heavy support weapons, according to
the volume and intensity of the enemy fire. Any attempt to close escape
routes by surrounding a succession of hamlets prior to developing the
situation by limited probing is either prohibitively hazardous or time
wasting. Any direct fire out of a village serves warning. And, as
previously said, so does erratic and distant fire from beyond the hamlet
when it is time to the American forward movement and is roughly counter to
the direction of the attack. This familiar enemy come-on is an incitement
to rush into a well-laid ambush.
A sudden volley fire out of the hamlet, wood patch, or any location
must prompt caution and reconsideration rather than prompt immediate
forward extension in the assault. The enemy does not volley to cut and
run; almost never does he do so even when his sole object is to delay and
disrupt pursuit, after breaking off engagement. Furthermore, the enemy
does not employ ground as we do, with emphasis on fields of fire and a
superior height. He may do so some of the time; his surprises are staged
most often by his choosing a position that we would rate impractical or
untenable. He will fortify a ridge saddle to fire therefrom in four
directions, ignoring the higher ground. Thus he can block advance via the
draws or engage the attackers at close quarters when they move via the
trail which often follows the spine of the ridge. Or he may rig a deadfall
in front of a seeming dead end where slopes to front and rear seem to cut
off all possibilities of escape. In village defense, he will leave empty
his best situated forward bunkers covering the one track that leads into
the first hamlet to create the illusion of abandonment. As a result the
assault is enticed into an interior jungle of foliage covered works and
underground passages that in combination will facilitate the enemy's rapid
movement from point to point. To thwart his design, the following measures
are indicated:
(1) In the approach march, except when it is over terrain where
observation to front and flanks removes any possibility of his
immediate presence in strength, all ground should be approached
as if he were present in force. Seldom in Vietnam are there
marches over such an obviously secure area.
(2) Defended built up areas, whether of purely military character or
a native hamlet, when clearly supplied with surface works and
amplified by underground passages, are not to be reckoned as
proper targets for the rifle company or smaller unit operating
unassisted. One or two "snipers," or riflemen operating from
cover, spending a few rounds in token resistance and then
fleeing, do not constitute "defense of a village" or of a wood
line. Four or five enemy continuing to fire together at close
range from any such location after being taken under fire should
be accepted as warning that larger forces are immediately
present. If the enemy force is no larger than a platoon minus,
its advantage in position still warrants the prompt calling in of
maximum supporting fires.
V I E T N A M P R I M E R
LESSON THREE - DOUBLING SECURITY
The record of more than 100 U.S. rifle companies and as many platoons
that have been heavily engaged since May 1, 1966 shows unmistakably that
the most frequent cause of surprise, disorganization of the unit under
fire, and heavy initial losses has been excessive haste in the advance
overland and outright carelessness about security.
A great part of our shock killing losses occur in the first stage of
engagement. The enemy, fortunately, is not skilled at following up a first
advantage in surprise fire. His musketry, when large numbers of his people
engage at close range, is highly inaccurate compared to our own. Our
losses in the rifle line once the fight is joined are rarely extravagant.
The great wasting of lives comes of too much rushing in the movement to
contact or of tactical carelessness in the first stages of engagement. A
column that indulges in all-out chase of the enemy can be caught by him if
it has not taken pains to make sure that it is not being followed. Or the
column on departing its night location may expose its intent to continue in
widely separated fractions disregarding whether its every move is under
enemy observation. Or it may march blindly onto ground such as a jungle
clearing when common sense dictates extreme caution.
In every incident that has involved the destruction of a platoon-size
unit, the misfortune was due less to enemy guile than to our own lack of
judgment. The enemy is fairly well skilled at laying ambushes and using
lures and ruses to draw forces in the right direction. But he is not
superhumanly clever. Applied common sense will beat his every design. It
is not common sense to run chances by making haste when one is rushing
straight to an entrapment. Consider two recent examples of sudden shock
loss due to impetuous advance:
(1) The platoon on patrol moved out over the same route - a straight
running trail - taken by a patrol the previous day. There was no
periodic halt to scout enemy presence in any or all four
directions. No stay-behind party was peeled off to see whether
the patrol was being followed. The platoon in single file
continued on the same azimuth for two hours. That line,
projected, let to two large clearings in the jungle separated by
less than 200 meters. The column advanced across the center of
the first clearing, 125 meters wide, and on the far side of the
wood line walked directly into a well-prepared ambush.
(2) The company had passed the night in defensive perimeter adjacent
to much higher ground where observation was unrestricted by
vegetation. The Cambodian border lay directly to the west.
Although the men on LP (listening post) duty could hear enemy
moving through the grass nearby during the night, when the
company moved out shortly after first light it did not
reconnoiter the high ground to the south along its line of march.
The lead platoon advanced directly past it, and was soon 1,000
meters forward of the main body, which was also in motion. The
rear platoon was kept tied to the ground of the night position,
600 meters behind the main body. While one group of enemy
engaged and immobilized the main body, after luring it into an
ambush, another closed on the rear platoon from two sides and in
two minutes of action annihilated it with automatic weapons.
The "lessons learned" from these two experiences are so glaringly
apparent that it is not necessary to spell them out. There remains but to
examine the main reasons why the practice of "pushing on" persists at the
expense of conservation of force. They are, in order of importance and
cost:
(1) The greenness of commanders of the smaller tactical units and the
emotional confusion deriving from the momentum with which they
are projected afield via the helicopter lift followed by the dash
to form a defensive circle around the LZ (landing zone). This
sprint-start blocks understanding that the pace thereafter as the
unit deploys must be altered radically. The jolt comes of the
abrupt shift from high gear to low. It is not enough to "slow
down to a fast trot." Prudence requires nothing more or less
than a tight reining-in for a fully observant and fully secured
advance.
(2) Pressure from higher commands to "get on with it." There is
rarely any such urgency except when some other unit has become
heavily engaged and is gravely endangered. Even then, making
sure of the degree of urgency to avoid making a bad situation
worse is the primary obligation of higher command. Too often the
unit sent post-haste on a rescue act has emerged having taken far
greater punishment en route than the unit to be rescued. Last,
it should be noted that such pressures from above are exerted
much less frequently in Vietnam than in Korea or in World War II.
(3) The assignment of a predetermined "objective" that while hardly
warranting the name implies that Unit Alpha must either link with
Unit Bravo at Point Niner by 1100 or prove itself remiss. Often
no situational urgency exists, and the obstacles on the march may
be greatly unlike for the two units and not have been tactically
plotted or analyzed. There is nothing wrong with the designation
of the rendezvous point. The error is made in the assignment of
a definite hour. Each unit must be allowed to cope properly with
its own march problems. The first arriving simply take up a
defensive posture until the second closes.
(4) Selecting in advance the location of the night perimeter when too
little thought has been given to the stress and unavoidable delay
which may be imposed upon the unit by natural obstacles or minor
and harassing enemy elements. Forced marches in these conditions
are usually attributable to the designation of what the map or
prior reconnaissance has indicated would be a viable LZ. Even if
it so turns out, it may not be worth the striving, if the
marching force arrives in a state of exhaustion. A unit closing
on its night position, and having to go at its defensive
preparation piecemeal just as darkness descends, is in an acutely
vulnerable position. There are some marked examples from Paul
Revere IV, fought in December, 1966, that deserve careful regard.
The troops were put under a heavy and possibly unnecessary
handicap by an extended march and late arrival at the ground to
be defended. Their lack of time in which to organize properly
gave the enemy an opening advantage. Nonetheless, there was no
panic. The NVA surprise achieved only limited success. The
salient feature of these actions was the counter-surprising
ability of the average U.S. rifleman to react quickly, move
voluntarily and without awaiting an order to the threatened
quarter, and get weapons going while the position was becoming
rounded-out piecemeal under the pressure of direct fire.
V I E T N A M P R I M E R
LESSON FOUR - CONTENDING WITH JUNGLE
The word "jungle" is too loosely used by U.S. Army combat troops in
Vietnam to permit of broad generalizations about what tactical formation
best serves security during movement and conservation of force should
significant contact ensue. The term is misapplied every day. Men fresh
from a fight say something like this, "We engaged them in impossibly dense
jungle." Then a detailed description, or a firsthand visit to the premises,
reveals it was nothing of the kind; it was merely the thickest bush or
heaviest tropical forest that they had yet seen.
So for the purpose at hand some definition is thought necessary, rough
though it may be. If troops deployed in line can proceed at a slow walk,
with one man being able to see three or four others without bunching, and
each having a view around him somewhere between 20 and 30 meters in depth,
this is not jungle, though it may be triple-canopied forest. The
encumbrance to movement out of tangled vegetation and the extreme limiting
of personal horizon due to the obstruction of matted vines, clumped bamboo,
or banyan forest with dense undergrowth such as the "wait-a-minute" thorn
entanglement are evidence of the real thing irrespective of how much
sunlight permeates the forest top. The impediment to movement and the
foreshortening of view are the essential military criteria. When we speak
of jungle we therefore mean the condition of the forest in which forward
movement is limited to 300-500 meters per hour, and to make this limited
progress troops must in part hack their way through.
When any troop body - our own or the enemy's - is thus confronted, it
cannot in any real sense maneuver; and the use of that verb is a self-
contradiction. The troop body can only imperfectly respond to immediate
pressures which bring one man closer to another in the interests of mutual
survival and the organic will to resist. The unit so proceeding and not
yet engaged is best advised to advance single file for lack of any more
reasonable alternative. Its point - the cutting edge - should be not more
than 200 meters to the fore, to conserve energy and insure the most prompt
possible collection in emergency. Serving as both the alarm element and
the trail-breaker, the point needs to be rotated at not more than one-hour
intervals, for work sharing. To broaden the front and advance in platoon
columns doubles the risk and the work without accelerating the rate of
advance. Should both fronts become engaged simultaneously, being equally
compromised, the existence of two fronts compounds the problem of over-all
control and unified response. The column in file, hit at its front, may
more readily withdraw over the route already broken or reform forward and
align on the foremost active element, which rarely may extend over more
than a two-squad front.
The data basis on such encounters makes clear that U.S. infantry in
Vietnam can withstand the shock of combat under these supremely testing
conditions. A number of the sharpest company-size actions in the 1966
campaigning were fought and won in dense jungle, and several of these
encounters have become celebrated. On the other hand, the same data basis
indicates that this is not a productive field for our arms, and for the
following reasons:
(1) The fight on average becomes joined at ranges between 12 and 20
meters, which is too close to afford any real advantage to our
man-carried weapons.
(2) Should the top canopy of the jungle be upwards of 40-50 feet high
our smokes other than WP (white phosphorus) cannot put up a high
enough plume for the effective marking of a position.
(3) Supporting fires, to avoid striking into friendly forces, must
allow too wide an error margin to influence the outcome
decisively.
(4) Mortars are of no use unless they can be based where overhead
clearance is available. A highly workable technique being
employed by units in Vietnam is to fly the mortars into the
defensive perimeter, LZ permitting, each night and lifting them
out prior to movement.
(5) The advance of reinforcement is often erratic, always ponderous,
and usually exhausting.
(6) Medevac, where not impossible, is almost invariably fraught with
high unacceptable risk.
In the true jungle the enemy has more working for him than in any
other place where we fight him. But the added difficulties imposed by
nature cannot exclude the necessity for engaging him there from time to
time. It is enough here to spell out the special hazards of operating in
an environment that, more than any other, penalizes unsupported engagement
by the U.S. rifle unit and calls for maximum utilization of heavy support
fires at the earliest possible moment. All-important to the unit commander
is timely anticipation of the problem and the exercise of great caution
when operating in dense jungle.
On the more positive side, according to the record, the jungle as to
its natural dangers is not the fearsome environment that the imagination
tends to make it. In all of the fighting operations analyzed, not a single
U.S. soldier was reported as having been fatally bitten by a snake or
mauled by a wild animal. In Operation Paul Revere IV, one man was killed
by a falling tree during a clearing operation, the only such casualty
recorded. Leeches are an affliction to be suffered occasionally; troops
endure them and even jest about them, knowing that the discomfort will be
eased shortly. The same is true of "jungle rot," a passing ailment of the
skin that usually affects the hands and forearm; it comes of abrasions
caused by pushing through thorny jungle growth. A few days under the sun
will dry it up. Most of the fighters who get it do not even bother to take
leave; they bandage the sores while they are afield, then take the time-
and-sun cure on their return to base camp. Losses due to malaria can be
kept minimal by strict adherence to the prescribed discipline. One major
additional safeguard, within control by the unit leader, is that he
refrains from marching and working his men to the point of full exhaustion,
a common sense command practice in all circumstances.
V I E T N A M P R I M E R
LESSON FIVE - RATES OF FIRE
According to the data basis, the U.S. infantry line in Vietnam
requires no stimulation whatever to its employment of organic weapons when
engaged. The fire rate among patrols in heavy, if brief, contact is not
infrequently 100 percent. Within the rifle company, during engagement
prolonged for several hours, the rate will run 80 percent or more and the
only nonfirers will be the rearward administrative element or the more
critical cases among the early wounded. It is not unusual for one man to
engage with three or more weapons during the course of a two-hour fight.
Except during the first five minutes of unexpected engagement, which
almost impels an automatic rate, fire control is generally good. The men
themselves, even in unseasoned units, quickly raise the cry: "Hold your
ammo! Fire semiautomatic!" No U.S. infantry unit, operating in
independence, has been forced to withdraw or extract, or made to suffer a
critical tactical embarrassment, as a result of ammunition shortage.
Gunners on the M-60 go lighter than in other wars; the average carry is
1,000 rounds, with 1,200 being about the outside limit. But in no single
instance have the machineguns ceased fire during a fight because the
position had run out of machinegun ammunition.
When suddenly confronted by small numbers of the enemy, the Americans
firing their M-16's will in the overwhelming majority of cases miss a
target fully in view and not yet turning. Whether the firing is done by a
moving point or by a rifleman sitting steady in an ambush, the results are
about the same - five total misses out of six tries - and the data basis
includes several hundred such incidents. The inaccuracy prevails though
the usual such meeting is at 15 meters or less, and some of the firing is
at less than 10 feet. An outright kill is most unusual. Most of the waste
comes from unaimed fire done hurriedly. The fault much of the time is that
out of excitement the shooter points high, rather than that the M-16 bullet
lacks knockdown power, a criticism of it often heard from combat-
experienced NCO's. The VC winged but only wounded by an M-16 bullet, then
diving into the bush, makes a getaway three times out of four, leaving only
his pack and a blood trail.
As to effectiveness over distance, until recently he data basis
deriving from 6 major and approximately 50 minor operations contained not
one episode of VC or NVA being killed by aimed fire from one or more M-16's
at ranges in excess of 60 meters. Then, out of Operation Cedar Falls in
January, 1967, there developed 6 examples of such killings at ranges
upwards of 200 meters. The difference can be explained by the nature of
the terrain. Most of the kills during this operation were made in the open
rice paddy.
The M-16 has proved itself an ideal weapon for jungle warfare. Its
high rate of fire, lightweight, and easy-to-pack ammunition have made it
popular with its carrier. But it cannot take the abuse or receive the
neglect its older brother, the M-1, could sustain. It must be cleaned and
checked out whenever the opportunity affords. Commanders need assign top
billing to the maintenance of the weapon to prevent inordinate battlefield
stoppages. The new field cleaning kit assists the purpose.
The fragmentation hand grenade, a workhorse in the infantryman's
arsenal of weapons in Korea, is of limited value in jungle fighting. The
record shows that all infantry fights in the jungle are characterized by
close in-fighting at ranges from 12 to 20 meters and that the fragmentation
grenade cannot be accurately delivered because of the dense, thickly
intertwined and knotted jungle undergrowth that blocks its unrestricted
flight. In numerous cases it was reported that the grenade striking a vine
and being deflected would then rebound on its thrower, causing friendly
casualties.
The soldier enters battle with the average of four hand grenades
strapped to his already overloaded equipment. He has been taught in
training that the grenade is the weapon for close in-fighting. He learns
empirically about the difficulty attendant on using a grenade in the bush.
Many times the record shows that he had to learn his lesson the hard way.
The data basis shows that fewer than 10 percent - 6 percent being the usage
factor of World War II - of the grenades carried into battle are ever used.
The configuration of the grenade itself makes it cumbersome and therefore
dangerous, as it is carried on the outside of the soldier's equipment and
is susceptible to any vine and snag that tugs at the safety pin.
Out of this research then it may be reckoned that the soldier's load
could be lightened by two hand grenades and that all commanders should
closely analyze their unit's techniques for the employment of this weapon.
Procedures must be developed and then practiced by troops on specially
prepared jungle hand grenade courses. The trainer should bear in mind
during this instruction that post-operation analysis of World War II and
Korea showed that the soldier who had training in sports always excelled
with the grenade. The information collected in Vietnam fully supports this
conclusion. The old byword that was once synonymous with the art of
grenade throwing, "Fire in the Hole," should be brought back in use to warn
all that a grenade has been dispatched and cover must be sought.
V I E T N A M P R I M E R
LESSON SIX - COMMUNICATIONS
Not one example has been unearthed of a critical tactical
disarrangement or defeat suffered by a U.S. infantry unit of any size or by
an artillery battery because of radio failure or a break in communications.
Many RT's (radio operators) get shot up and their conspicuous equipment
invariably attracts the enemy fire. Units are avoiding this hazard by
concealing the PRC-25 in standard rucksacks. But no less invariably, the
shift to another frequency or the improvising of a relay saves the day. In
the defense of LZ Bird on December 26, 1966, all radios went out for one
reason or another during the high tide of action. Nonetheless, there
resulted no serious impairment to the action of the small infantry and
artillery fractions generating counterattack within the perimeter, though
heavy interdiction of enemy escape routes might have been brought in a few
minutes earlier had not radios failed. That failure only slightly blurred
the aftermath to one of the more spectacular U.S. victories of the year.
Despite the technological gain in our field communications since the
Korean War, and it has been truly noteworthy, a serious gap exists in the
flow of critical information during the time of combat. The pinch is most
acute at platoon and company level. Some of it is due to the far greater
mobility of operations in Vietnam, compared to anything we have experienced
in the past, and it may also be in part attributed to the peculiar nature
of the war. There are no "little fights" in Vietnam; platoon-size and
company-size engagements compel the direct attention of top command. It is
not unusual for the company commander, at the time of engaging the enemy,
to have his battalion, brigade, and division commanders all directly
overhead, trying to view the action. Each has some reason for being there.
But their presence does put an unprecedented strain on the leader at the
fighting level, and also on his radios, as everyone "comes up" on the
engaged unit's "freq" to give advice. There are frequently too many
individuals trying to use the same frequency to permit of any one message
running to length. So brevity is a rule worked overtime, too often to the
exclusion of fullness of necessary information. A rule that must be
followed is that except for rare and unusual circumstances all commanders
should follow established radio procedures and not "come up" on the radio
of the next subordinate unit.
One further glaring gap is to be noted. When the unit, having had a
hard go in combat, is relieved or reinforced by another which must continue
the fight, very rarely does the commander going out tell the full story,
giving the detail of situation, to the incoming commander. Just as rarely
does the latter insist on having it. This is an understandable human
reaction, since both men are under the pressure of the problem immediately
facing their units in a moment of high tension, the one withdrawing and
worrying about extricating casualties, the other bent on deploying under
fire without loss of time. But the danger of not having a full and free
exchange as the relief begins is that the second unit, left uninformed,
will at unnecessary cost attack on the same line and repeat the mistakes
made by the first unit. The record shows unmistakably that lessons bought
by blood too frequently have to be repurchased.
Another weakness common among junior leaders is the inaccurate
reporting of the estimate of the situation. Estimates are many times
either so greatly exaggerated or so watered-down that they are not
meaningful to the next higher commander who must make critical decisions as
to troop employment and allocation of combat power. The confusion and
noise of the battlefield are two reasons why faulty estimates are made;
overemotionalism and the sense of the drama are others. These factors,
coupled with the judgment of an impulsive commander who feels that he must
say something on the radio--even if it is wrong--are the crux of the
problem. Commanders must report the facts as they see them on the
battlefield. If they don't know the situation, they must say just that!
V I E T N A M P R I M E R
LESSON SEVEN - SECURITY ON THE TRAIL
Strictures against the use of trails by U.S. forces during the
approach may be uttered ad nauseam, with emphasis upon the increased danger
of surprise and ambush. The utterance does not, and will not, alter the
reality that more than half of the time the U.S. rifle platoon or company
is moving it will go by trail the full distance or during some stage of the
journey. In such an area as the Iron Triangle, trails are unavoidable if
one is to move overland at all; the alternative is to move around by sampan
and stream. The bush and forest-covered flats flanking Highway No. 13 have
a network of crisscrossing trails, with as many as five intersections in
one acre of ground. It is humanly impossible to move across such a tract
without getting onto a trail.
"What's wrong with it? That's where we find the VC," is an argument
with a certain elementary logic in its favor. That is, provided that
maximum security measures in moving by trail are punctiliously observed.
What measures are most effective under varying conditions is a moot
subject, awaiting statement and standardization before hardening into a
doctrine. As matters stand, the young infantry commander gropes his way
and makes his decisions empirically, according to the various pressures
bearing upon him.
For the rifle company not in file column but formed more broadly for
movement toward the likelihood of contact, the commander again has no firm
doctrinal guide. The formations adopted vary widely, and the reasoning
that supports some of the patterns is quite obscure. Within one battalion
there will be as many designs as there are companies for traversing exactly
the same piece of terrain. If it is reasonable to believe that there must
be one optimum formation that best safeguards the security of the body in
movement, then letting it be done six different ways is hardly reasonable.
"Main trails" or "speed trails" in the Vietnam bush average not more
than 3 1/2 feet in width except at intersections. When a unit goes by
trail through the heavy bush, it has no alternative to single file.
Practical working distance between the point and the front of the main body
should vary according to the roughness of the terrain and how far one can
see ahead. In Vietnam, as almost anywhere else, the flatter the ground the
straighter the trail; and if the ground is cut up, then trails are
tortuous. The scouts should be at 20 and 10 meters beyond the van of the
point squad, observation permitting. The point squad ought to be relieved
every hour to assure continued vigilance. At each relief it buttonhooks
into the bush until the main body comes up, though this in not the practice
if the column is approaching an intersecting trail or stream bed or coming
to any built-up area. Once in sight of a stream crossing or trail mouth,
the scout element (including the point squad) proceeds to check it out,
after reporting the sighting to the main body. Its surest maneuver is a
hook forward through the bush over both flanks that should close beyond the
intersection in sufficient depth to abort any ambush.
If the main body closes to within sight of the point while it is so
moving no real additional jeopardy will result, provided the column marks
time and maintains interval. During such a halt, any attempt by the main
body to form a partial perimeter will merely cause bunching. Depending on
conditions of terrain, visibility, and like factors, the rear of the point
may be anywhere from 200 to 50 meters ahead of the lead platoon's front
man. At lesser distance than 50 meters its security value dwindles. The
VC will let scouts pass an ambush to get at the point, or will pass up the
point to hit the main body, thereby doubling confusion to the column. The
double hook forward by the point cuts the danger for all concerned.
Nature itself limits the threat of lateral ambush against a column
going by jungle trail as opposed to one going through tall elephant grass
or over a path where banks or bushes on either side offer concealment for
the enemy. The bush is too thick; to put fire on the trail, the field of
fire from Claymore or machinegun would be too short; too few targets would
be within reach of any one weapon. A 5- to 10-meter break between squads--
which does not retard movement--enhances march security.
Where making its circular deployment to check out any suspected ambush
site, the scout element should be supported by the machinegun, which is
best placed with No. 2 man of the point. An alternative to this move is to
have the gunner reconnoiter the bush forward with fire; if the bush is
extra thick, the M-79 may do better. The RT is with the point's last man,
who serves as breakaway, running the word back should there be instrument
failure.
When a stay-behind party is dropped from the column to check on
whether it is being trailed, it should peel off from the front of the main
body and enter the bush without halting the latter's advance. Its maneuver
is S-shaped so that it takes up automatically a full ambush posture instead
of being a simple fire block.
The column moves on and through the stay-behind group (2 fire teams,
with a machinegun in the down-trail team). The forward team springs the
trap as the enemy party comes even. The rear team fires only if the enemy
doubles back or is too numerous for the forward weapons.
Other than in attack on road columns, the enemy does not appear to use
front-and-rear ambushes, i.e., the delivery of surprise fire from cover by
a block up front, quickly followed by an attack on rear or midway of the
column. Except along the wood line of a clearing the "impenetrable" jungle
does not lend itself to such tactic in assault against a column moving by
trail. More favorable to the design of the VC and NVA is their use of a
killing fire from out of concealment against the head of the column from a
wide spot in the trail. This may be automatic fire or a command-detonated
mine. Their Chinese made version of the Claymore mine is a potent weapon
when so employed. It may be hidden within a hollow tree or fixed with
camouflage in a clump of foliage. The mine is set to command a long
stretch of trail and is one of the hazards of moving along it.
There is no warning and no follow-through; it is a one-weapon affair.
During Operation Attleboro, a single command-detonated Claymore set in a
tree killed or wounded 26 men strung out over 40 meters of trail. It was
fired from 5 meters forward of the front man. The column was rushing from
battle urgency and the scout element did not take enough time to look over
the ground thoroughly. The first scout alone had been permitted to pass
uptrail beyond the weapon. Obviously the formation--point and the front of
the main body--had become closed too tightly. On the wide trail the
advance was moving in a fashion that served only to put more people at the
mercy of the weapon. Had they been following exactly in single file, each
body would have given more protection to the men that followed.
Periodic "cloverleafing" or some variation of that movement by the
column in movement is supposed to be SOP for field operations in Vietnam.
The object is to beat out a limited area around the base of the command
during a security halt or rest halt or before the troops set up the night
defense. Four patrols may be sent out anywhere from 100 to 500 meters for
this all-around sweep.
Among the cloverleaf variations possible, one has clearly obvious
advantages. The preferred option, "A," affords a double check timewise
both forward and rearward of the column's route of advance and makes
maximum use of the deployment. At all stages of the sweep it also exposes
a smaller element to the danger of surprise and ambush. The "buttonhook,"
used extensively by the Australians for ambushing an enemy force that is
following one of their columns, is in essence the covering of one quadrant
of the four-circle cloverleaf. It is executed usually over a much smaller
radius.
When a company- or platoon-size patrol conducts sweeps of the vicinity
before setting up for night defense, the priorities are:
(1) The arc covering its line of advance into the ground.
(2) The intervening ground between the perimeter and the LZ, and
(3) The sector judged least defensible. Particularly if darkness is
imminent, organization of the position (meaning the assignment of
sectors and placing of men and weapons, but not necessarily
digging in) precedes the dispatch of watering parties and the
placement of LP's.
Division and brigade commanders afield stoutly contend that the
cloverleaf kind of precaution is always taken by patrols, or by a company
moving cross country in search of the enemy. The same story is told at
battalion. Analysis of more than 100 company operations at the fighting
level reveals that the story very rarely stands up. The average junior
leader simply gives lip service to the principle. Just as trails are used
despite all taboos, most of the time little scouting takes place outward
from the U.S. column traversing them, despite all admonition. Contributing
to the almost habitual carelessness of junior leaders is a besetting
vagueness on the part of many superiors in stating the mission and making
it specific as to its several essentials. The unit should not be told to
"check out" a certain area, or to "run a patrol through the jungle patch
ahead and return," as if it were the simple problem of putting a policeman
on a beat. Each patrol should have a stated purpose. It risks hazard to
gain something; it must therefore be told what it is after. Prisoners?
Ambushing of the enemy? Destruction of a bridge? Caches? Location of a
suspected base camp? Observe signs of enemy movement but not engage? Seek
a trail entrance? The list of possibilities is long. But if the average
leader is given only a general instruction he will comply in the easiest
way, and nine times out of ten that means taking the trail, probably the
same trail going and coming. If he is told at the start, "Be at LZ Lazy
Zebra by 1800 for extraction," and he discovers that too little time has
been allowed to do anything well, the door is open for him to go forth and
do all things badly. Command must safeguard its upcoming patrol against
the danger of becoming trapped from having beaten over the same old route.
V I E T N A M P R I M E R
LESSON EIGHT - THE COMPANY IN MOVEMENT
One large unresolved question is what formation is best for the rifle
company in movement under the conditions of the Vietnam war where the enemy
is highly elusive, seeks contact only when he expects to stage a surprise,
is adept at breaking contact and slipping away, and operates in a
countryside that well serves these tactics.
The VC and NVA are not everywhere, though they are apt to be met
anywhere, and hence all movement should be regulated accordingly. No
deployment is militarily sound which assumes that the enemy is not close
by. If that axiom were not true, there would be no rush to form the
defensive perimeter when the unit is dropped on the landing zone. Yet it
is too often disregarded in jungle movement by leaders who refuse to
believe that the enemy can strike without warning from out of nowhere
There is a great variety to the countryside. The less-dense jungle
has more the nature of a tropical forest in the matted thorn bush, clumped
bamboo, bamboo thicket, creepers, and lianas do not greatly impede
movement. There are vast stretches of still more open country, almost
treeless, flats covered only with elephant grass standing higher than any
living thing, barren volcanic hills, paddy lands uninterrupted save by
their own banks, and dikes that stretch on for miles.
Some areas are densely populated. Others are wholly abandoned, even
by the enemy. In January, 1967 a Special Forces patrol, which had been on
its own for 32 days, marched 230 kilometers in 22 days without seeing one
human being, domesticated animal, or habitation.
Vietnam is not "mostly untamed jungle." Large and decisively
important parts of it are cultivated flat land denuded of forest and bush
except along the stream banks. Almost as much of it is fertile, relatively
flat, not heavily forested or overgrown, but still undeveloped and almost
deserted. In the central plateau there are broad lava flows where no grass
grows. Some of the volcanic hills are boulder and slab-strewn and almost
barren of vegetation.
Any of these landscapes is likely to become battleground, and several
of them in combination may be crossed by a rifle company in a single day's
march.
The question of what formation best serves military movement over such
a greatly diversified land may be answered only by thinking of what is
being sought: (1) security, (2) control, and (3) concentration of fire
power without undue loss of time and personnel. These are not in any way
separate aims; each reacts upon the others. Security and control are
desired so that fire concentration can be achieved when nothing else counts
more.
So the precept must follow: the more complicated a formation and the
more numerous its parts, the greater the danger that control will be lost
in a moment of emergency, especially when the unit is moving over
countryside the nature of which prohibits visual contact between the
various elements.
Yet "the wedge," which has numerous variations, is the formation that
the average U.S. rifle company commander prefers to use during advance into
enemy country. It is extremely difficult to control during marches over
cut-up ground and possesses no inherent advantage in bringing fire power to
bear quickly against the threatened quarter. In fact, it has several
built-in handicaps.
The forward platoon in center and the two platoons right and left each
use a point, with scouts out. So there are never less than seven elements
to control. That is several too many, should the body have to re-form
suddenly to meet an assault from an unexpected direction. Thus formed, the
company extends over a wider area than if the columns were more compact,
though the advantage is decidedly marginal. Nothing else is to be said in
favor of the wedge, for its design neither strengthens security on the move
nor favors rapid and practical deployment for combat. If the formation
should be hit from either flank, greater confusion will ensue than with a
simpler pattern. Should the enemy be set up and ready to fight on a
concealed broad front directly to the fore, all three columns are likely to
become engaged before the commander has a chance to weigh whether full-
scale involvement is desirable.
On the other hand, suppose that the company is making its approach
march in 2-column formation. The width between columns should be
approximately equal to their length when the terrain permits. If either
column is hit from the flank and faces toward the fire, the other is
automatically in place to serve as a reserve and protect against a turning
maneuver. Further, if the advance guard (scouts and point) draws fire in
volume signifying enemy determination to stand, the force is in position
either to be committed whole at once or to fight on a narrower front with
half of its strength while keeping a 50 percent reserve.
When the enemy fire and the condition of the advance element permit,
the scouts and point should displace to rearward as the company shifts to
line of skirmishers, lest the whole organization be drawn willy-nilly into
a full-scale commitment. In the Vietnam fighting, according to the data
basis, the latter initial disarrangement occurs approximately half the time
in attacks on a fortified position. The scouts or the men in the point
become engaged and take losses; the lead platoon becomes scattered and
disorganized in the effort to extricate them; the fire line thereafter
gradually becomes reknit on ground too far forward, greatly to its
disadvantage and harshly limiting the supporting air and artillery fires.
Much is heard in Vietnam about VC and NVA employment of the inverted L
ambush. This tactic gets its effects from an intensifying concentration of
fire. The enemy normally fights out of timber or other natural cover, and
the flanking side usually runs parallel to a trail. The twin-column
company formation is far more properly disposed to cope with the L than is
the wedge or any eccentric formation, particularly if it is moving with a
few flankers out, a practice it should adopt wherever natural conditions
permit. In fact, almost anywhere that the enemy can use the L ambush
practically, our people can use flankers to serve as a buffer.
The righthand column, in the correct position, needs only face right
to engage. The lefthand column moves into line against the enemy force
blocking the line of movement. The company CP is located according to the
intensity of fire and availability of cover.
So confronted, the enemy loses any initial advantage in fire or
maneuver, and his problem of collecting forces to alter the terms of the
contest is probably more complex, since he had planned to execute a set
piece. The data basis is too limited to warrant generalizing about VC-NVA
tactical arrangements for exploiting the L ambush. But in the few examples
when the fight went to a finish, the enemy reserves were placed to support
the vertical bar of the L. This is the logical way to employ them if an
ultimate envelopment is the object.
Whether to accept line-against-line engagement on these terms, however
equal, is the prime question for the U.S. force commander from the start of
action. He may not have any option initially because his position may have
been weakened by early losses before he was able to get the feel of his
problem. At any stage it is preferable that, maintaining loose contact in
the interim, he backs away with the main body as promptly as he can. At
the same time he should call for maximum striking power against the enemy
positions. The L ambush, by reason of its configuration, is an ideal
target for field artillery and tactical air operating in combination. The
vertical bar is the prime target for the artillery--gun-target line
permitting--because it can be worked over with maximum economy and minimum
shifting of the guns. The horizontal bar is the proper mark for TAC Air
because the boundaries of the run may be more readily marked manually when
a withdrawal is perpendicular to the line of advance than when the strike
parallels the line of advance and withdrawal.
There is one postscript dealing with the enemy use of the L ambush.
The examples of record indicate that the enemy reserve will maneuver in an
attempt to block our line of withdrawal. The effort normally takes the
form of setting the ambush along the first stream or trail crossing on the
immediate rear. Withdrawal over the same route used in the advance is
therefore to be avoided. The movement should be an oblique from the open
flank where the enemy has not engaged.
V I E T N A M P R I M E R
LESSON NINE - RUSES, DECOYS, AND AMBUSHES
To begin, at least one generalization is permissible. The enemy
-- VC or NVA -- has a full bag of tricks, a fair number of which we now
understand. Practically without exception they are not intricate. Most
of them depend for effectiveness on creating one of two illusions: either
(1), our side has caught the enemy off guard; or (2), he is ready, waiting,
and weak, and we have only to make the most of the opportunity.
One other generalization might well follow. The U.S. unit commander,
if he is to keep his guard up against ruses and ambushes, must be receptive
to the counsel of his subordinates and draw on the total of information
concerning the immediate presence of the enemy that has been collected by
his people. Nothing more greatly distinguishes U.S. generalship in
Vietnam than the ready communion between our higher commanders and their
subordinates at all levels in the interest of making operations more
efficient. If a general sets the example, why should any junior leader
hold back? For his own purposes, the best and the most reliable
intelligence that a small unit commander can go on is that which his own
men gather through movement and observation in the field.
On the bright side, the record shows unmistakably, with numerous cases
in point out of the 1966-7 period of fighting operations, that the average
U.S. soldier today in Vietnam has a sharper scouting sense and is more
alert to signs of the enemy than the man of Korea or World War II. The
environment has whetted that keenness and quickened his appreciation of any
indication that people other than his own are somewhere close by, either in
a wilderness or in an apparently deserted string of hamlets. He feels it
almost instinctively when the unit is on a cold trail. The heat of ashes
that look long dead to the eye, a few grains of moist rice still clinging
to the bowl, the freshness of footprints where wind and weather have not
had time to blur the pattern in the dust, fresh blood on a castoff bandage,
the sound of brush crackling in a way not suggesting other than movement by
man -- he gets these things. Walking through elephant grass, he will note
where over a fresh-made track the growth has been beaten down and bruised,
and with moisture still fresh on the broken grass he will guess that a body
of the enemy has moved through within the hour. These things are in the
record. Also in it are words like these: "We entered the village. It was
empty. But the smell of their bodies was strong, as if they had just got
out. They have a different smell than we do."
How the quickening process works, how the senses sharpen when soldiers
are alert to all phenomena about them, and how a commander may profit by
collecting all that his men know and feel about the developing situation,
is well illustrated by quoting directly from a post-combat interview of a
patrol out of 25th Division in early 1967:
Lieutenant: "I noticed that between 1700 and 1800 all traffic stopped
within the village. That was early and therefore unusual. The workers
disappeared. Women came along, rounded up the water buffalo, and quit the
area. People in the houses near the perimeter ate a quick evening meal and
go out. Everything went silent. I knew then something would happen."
Sergeant: "I saw people leaving the house to my right front about 25
meters. Then directly to my front, 150 meters off, the family left at the
same time. We took fire from the house when the enemy came on."
It is the task of the unit commander not only to stimulate a scouting
faculty in all hands but to welcome and weigh all field intelligence that
comes of so doing. Even the hunch of one man far down the line is never to
be brushed off; he may have a superior instinct for sensing a situation.
In one of the more tragic incidents during 1966 operations near the
Cambodian border, a company commander was warned by a Specialist 4
artillery observer before it happened. the company had spent the night in
defensive perimeter. An NVA soldier had walked into one of its trail
ambushes during the night, and the men working the LP's reported their
certainty that they had heard human movement all during the night in the
grass beyond them. When the company broke camp soon after first light, the
Specialist 4, viewing the ground over which it would advance that morning,
said: "Captain, don't go that way, you are walking into an ambush." This
advice was disregarded. The ambush was there. The losses were grievous.
Developments proved doubly that the Specialist 4 was a responsible soldier
whose judgments deserved respect. In the ensuing fight, the captain was
wounded and could no longer function. The Specialist 4 took charge of the
operation and with help brought the survivors through.
Whenever the enemy makes his presence obvious and conspicuous, whether
during movement or in a stationary and seemingly unguarded posture, it is
time to be wary and to ask the question: "Is this the beginning of some
design of his own, intended to suck us in by making us believe that we are
about to snare him?" This question should be asked before any operation,
whether it involves a division moving against the enemy or a small patrol
or rifle company beating out the bush in search of his presence. The
people we are fighting are not innocents and are rarely careless. They
bait their traps the greater part of the time by making themselves so seem.
In Operation Nathan Hale, June 1966, the opening onfall of the NVA
forces engaging was against three CIDG (Civilian Irregular Defense Group
-- a paramilitary organization) companies at and around the Special Forces
camp at Dong Tre. In this, they were partially successful. The one
company outposting the nearby hills was overrun and took heavy losses. The
NVA was waiting outside the camp to strike the expected relief column; but
the CIDG Force, located inside the Dong Tre camp, was saved from disaster
when its ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) commander wisely resisted
the temptation to send it to relieve the beleaguered company. During the
day that followed air observers over the general area reported seeing enemy
groups in large numbers threading the valleys leading away from Dong Tre,
all moving in one direction. That was the picture the enemy intended
should be seen; he had already chosen his battle ground. As the U.S.
reaction expanded and the general fight developed, our forces deployed into
well-prepared and extremely hot LZ's where our softening-up fires had had
mainly the effect of drawing attention to where the landings would take
place. That in the end Operation Nathan Hale could be rightly claimed as
an American victory does not alter the fact that much of it need not have
been won in the hardest possible way. North Vietnam made much of it, and
in documents published to troops boasted that more than one thousand
Americans had been killed, an approximately 10 to 1 exaggeration. With a
more perfect collation of available intelligence from the start and in the
first days as the units deployed, it might have been a more resounding U.S.
victory.
Here, one clear distinction is in order. The NVA and VC are neither
everywhere nor phantomlike. Though they try to appear so, they are of
human flesh and must respond to their own nature, irrespective of the
disciplines given them within military organization. On the trail, or
during any movement in which they have no reason to suspect the near
presence of a U.S. or allied force, they are incessant chatterers and
otherwise noisy. Repeatedly they get sandbagged for carelessness. As to
their being everywhere, it would be easier to dispose of them if that were
true. Some of our line commanders at the lower levels get the idea after
fighting for a while in Vietnam that, whenever our columns move, the enemy
knows and invariably shadows them. Nothing in the data basis confirms it,
and indeed, with our vastly superior mobility due to helicopter deployment
over great distance, it would be humanly impossible for him to shadow every
assault by the rifle company or every prowl by the patrol. What the record
does say unmistakably is that a fair portion of the time he manages to get
on our heels. The moral plainly is that, in all movement afield, the
column should proceed as if detection may have occurred early, and should
take the necessary precautions to avert surprise.
It is a different problem when there is clear reason to believe that
the enemy knows of the presence of U.S. forces. Take one example of
numerous such incidents. This one is from Operation Crazy Horse. A
company column had been proceeding via a broad valley along the river
banks. At some low-lying hills it was held up for five minutes by direct
fire from two or three rifles at range of 100 meters or thereabouts. The
exchange was broken off without casualties on either side when the enemy
faded back. There was reason to suspect that the fire had come from an
enemy outpost, so placed not only to sound the alarm but to keep the attack
moving along the line of the enemy withdrawal. The suspicion was well
founded because not far beyond the initial encounter lay a well-prepared,
fortified position, with machineguns sited on ridges and the garrison
standing to, ready to defend them.
A few VC or NVA soldiers, acting as couriers, carriers, or such,
having a chance meeting with a U.S. column in movement, might get off a
quick shot or two before scuttling into the bush. But any such casual
group has a getaway on its mind primarily. This kind of haphazard fire is
quite different from steady delivery of small arms fire from one position,
though the latter is in small volume and persists for only a few minutes.
The latter, seemingly aimed to check or delay movement, may more likely
have the prime object of inviting it on. It should alert the unit
commander to the probable imminence of a prolonged fire fight, and he
should review his preparations accordingly.
So we speak here of the obvious or overt move, or attention-getting
activity in any form. Even a minor weapons exchange always alerts a unit.
But beyond that, the commander should take heed of any unusual
manifestation of sight or sound when his troops are seeking contact with
the enemy. One illustration comes out of Operation Paul Revere IV, and
while there is none other exactly like it, simple logic gives it overall
significance.
The rifle company had been moving over fairly open country not far
from the Cambodian border since first light. In late afternoon, it several
times encountered NVA soldiers moving singly and the scouts or point traded
fires with them, with varying results. Then as the company approached a
village, it heard the tumult of voices, shouts and cries, from children,
men, and women, as of many people making haste to get away before the
Americans arrived. But is it a natural thing for people fleeing for cover,
in the face of an armed advance, to call attention to their departure?
Without firing, the company deployed and surrounded the village, to find it
empty. It then moved on, following in the same direction that the
"refugees" had taken. Dark was at hand. Not far beyond the village the
company came to fairly clear ground slightly elevated that looked suitable
for night defense. Watering parties moved out to a nearby creek to
replenish supply. Before they could return, and while the perimeter was
still not more than half formed, the position was attacked by an NVA force
in company-plus strength. It had been deployed on ground over which the
watering parties moved. The most heartening part of the story is that the
U.S. company, on its first time in battle, sprang to its task, got its
defensive circle tied together quickly, and in a four-hour fight under
wholly adverse conditions greatly distinguished itself. In view of the
scenario, any conclusion that the enemy just happened to be set at the
right point is a little too much to allow for coincidence.
Mystification, like over optimistic anticipation, rates high in the
techniques of deception. We use ruses in our own cover planning; that the
enemy does the same, and that his designs are more primitive, relying less
on elaborate charades and more on the foibles of man's nature, should
occasion little surprise. Traps beset us only because of a reluctance on
the part of junior leaders to give the other side credit for that small
measure of cleverness. To outthink the enemy, it is necessary only to
reflect somewhat more deeply.
During the Tou Morong battle (Operation Hawthorne II) in June 1966, a
reconnaissance platoon had a rather unproductive morning. It came at last
to an enemy camp that was deserted. Several meters beyond it the main
trail branched off where two trails came together, both of them winding
uphill. At the intersection was a sign reading in Vietnamese: "Friend Go
This Way." There were two pointing fingers, one aimed at each uphill
trail. It was a time for caution and for reporting the find to higher
command. But the commander split his force and the divided platoon moved
upward via both trails. En route, both columns exchanged fires with a few
NVA soldiers who held their ground on both trails. There were light losses
on both sides. The two columns began to converge again as they approached
a draw commanded by a ridge fold from both sides. There they ran into
killing fire and were pinned in a fight that lasted through that afternoon,
all night, and until next morning. Before it ended, the great part of two
U.S. rifle companies and all the supporting fires that could be brought to
bear had been called in to help extricate the eight surviving able-bodied
men and the wounded of what had been a 42-man platoon.
In warfare fought largely platoon against platoon and company against
company, the true situation is not made plain in most cases until the two
sides begin a close exchange of flat trajectory fires. Until then we may
speculate, but we do not know the reality; the hard facts of reality can be
developed only stage by stage as the fire fight progresses. During the
approach, however, the leader takes nothing for granted and continues to
look for a plant. The enemy has many ruses, and if something new and novel
did not appear from day to day he would soon lose all ability to surprise.
That is why all such items in company or higher command experience should
be reported and circulated for the benefit of all concerned. It is only
through cross-checking and the accumulation of more data that the larger
significance of any one action, device, or stratagem may be given full
weight.
Two days after Christmas, 1966, two NVA prisoners fell into our hands
in III Corps Zone. They both told this story. A group of American POW's
were being held in an enemy base camp near the Cambodian border. The NVA
prisoners gave the same numbers and pointed to the same spot on the map.
The chance to liberate a group of fellow soldiers was certain to appeal to
Americans at this or any other season of the year. Nothing in the incident
itself was calculated to arouse suspicion. So with utmost secrecy, an
expedition was mounted.
But it happened that on the same day on the far side of the country
two NVA soldiers surrendered to forces of the 1st Air Cavalry Division
operating in Binh Dinh Province. They were followed in by an ARVN soldier
who told of having just escaped from an enemy prison camp. These three men
related a common experience. They had seen three U.S. soldiers of the 1st
Air Cavalry Division in captivity at a spot not far from the Soui Ca
valley. One was a "Negro with tattoos on his left arm," a detail of
description which should have raised an eyebrow, the U.S. Negro soldier not
being given to that practice. On checking the records, the division found
it had no MIA's tallying with the descriptions. But thinking the prisoners
were from some other U.S. outfit, it prepared to launch, again with utmost
secrecy, a rescue expedition.
The other rescue party had gone forth several days earlier and found
nothing. But the try had been made in battalion strength. The air cavalry
division also mounted a battalion operation and put a heavy preparatory
fire on the landing zone. This bag also proved to be empty. There was no
sign any prisoners had been at the spot indicated. The coincidence,
followed up by the double failure, is the best reason for believing that,
had one company or less been sent, it would have deployed into an ambush.
There is no final proof.
Under hot pursuit, the enemy is adept at quickly changing into peasant
garb and hiding his identity by mingling with the civilian crowd. That is
why he carries several sets of clothing in his haversack and why we find
them in his caches. The data basis shows that he will go on the attack
using women and children to screen his advance. When no option but
surrender or death is left him, he will employ the same kind of protection.
During Operation Cedar Falls, in January 1967, women and children would
come first out of a hut or bunker making the noises and gesture of the
helpless in distress. They would be followed by the VC, some with arms
lowered, others with hands empty and raised. Troops are able to cope with
this problem without any cost to life; but it requires extraordinary
alertness coupled with restraint.
Ambushing occurs only when men become careless. With any truce or
cease-fire, there comes the temptation to relax and neglect accustomed
safeguards, and the enemy takes all possible advantage of it. The
Christmas afternoon ambushing of a patrol in 1st Infantry Division sector
is one instance. The patrol advanced on a broad front sweep across a rice
paddy directly toward a tree line. The ambush was set and ready to fire
from just inside the tree line. If the patrol had to cross the paddy, it
took the one worst way to do it, particularly since the dikes and banks
afforded at least partial cover for several columns.
To advance along a trail up a draw under an open sky without first
scouting the shoulders or knobs above it, or putting strafing fires on
them, is the hard road to entrapment. Those knobs are a favored siting for
machinegun emplacements by the NVA and the VC, the draw is the beaten zone,
and the bunker roofs are seldom more than a foot above ground (fig. 18).
That the platoon leading the company column makes the passage safely
without drawing one shot by no means indicates it is unguarded. To the
contrary, the enemy by choice tends to let it pass, so as to involve the
entire company. If fire were to be placed on the point or leading files of
the first platoon, the column would recoil and then deploy for a sweep. To
spring such an ambush, the enemy will risk allowing the lead platoon to get
on his rear since in jungle country, where there is no trail into the
emplaced guns, being on the rear begets no real advantage. The platoon
must either double back over the trail at the risk of being ambushed on the
other side of the draw or it must spend an hour hacking its way through
jungle to get to the target.
The ambushing of a road column, done by maneuver bodies rather than by
fire out of fixed positions, necessarily takes a quite different form. It
is usually a double strike out of cover, not made simultaneously, but so
synchronized and weighted that the stopping-stalling effect is produced
first by the weaker element against the head of the column, the main body
then moving to roll up the force from its tail. The two moves are timed
closely enough together that the column is engaged from both ends before it
can deploy and face toward either danger (fig. 19).
The VC-NVA will spring this kind of trap only out of slightly higher
ground where there is some kind of cover for automatic guns within 50
meters of the road or less. The bunching of any column simply makes the
opportunity more favorable and the risk safer. The VC-NVA prefer a bend-
in-the-road situation for setting such a trap. The reason is obvious: out
of sight, the tail of the column does not sense what is happening to the
head in the critical moments, a handicap that increases the chance that the
column will split apart and try to fight two separate actions. Given
adequate air cover (either Air Force or Army reconnaissance aircraft or
gunships), any column would be immune to such attack. In lieu of these, an
artillery dusting of the flankward ground wherever its characteristics are
favorable to an entrapment, and just prior to the coming up of the column,
would be a great disarranger. Is artillery used that way in Vietnam? Too
rarely, which is not the fault of the gunners. The trouble is that some
commanders think of a road march as just that and nothing more; by so doing
they scorn elementary precautions.
There is still another dimension to this subject, far more sinister in
its import. That the enemy will employ the live bodies of his own men as
decoys to lure our troops forward and set them up before a hastily
contrived ambush or well-concealed but fortified position, the data basis
leaves no room for doubting. It shows, furthermore, that live decoys are
used at such short range and so fully exposed to our fire as to create a
better than even prospect that their lives will be forfeit.
If any such ruse were to be employed regularly by the enemy, the trick
would shortly wear itself out, which is true of any stratagem. It has,
however, been employed often enough that his occasional recourse to it
should be accepted as fact, though American conditioning is such as to make
us skeptical that this degree of fanaticism is possible even in the Viet
Cong. There are eight incidents in the record of this nature.
In two incidents, the physical circumstances were such as to exclude
the possibility that they just happened that way through accident rather
than by deliberate design. Taken together, their lesson is so glaring as
to warrant saying to any unit commander or patrol leader: "If you come upon
a jungle clearing and you see two or three or even one enemy soldier with
back turned, or you are moving fairly in the open, and you see a few NVA or
VC moving at distance with backs turned, never facing about, watch out!
The chances are very good that you are being led into a trap."
The turned back is the surest sign. It is positively enticing. It
reads like the invitation on the small airport truck: "Follow Me!" The
effect is to nourish the hope that the maneuvering formation has caught the
enemy unaware and is on the track of something big. That may be half true,
but the something big is as the enemy planned it.
Incident No. 1. A 1st Infantry Division platoon with 32 men was
patrolling not far from War Zone C. Several hundred meters short of its
turnaround point, it entered upon a jungle clearing, keyhole-shaped, about
150 meters from tree line to tree line. In column, the patrol strung out
along the trail until all but the last four men were in the open. By then
the head of the column was two-thirds of the way across the clearing. At
that juncture, the point saw three VC soldiers, backs turned. They stood
15 meters to the fore, 10 meters short of the tree line. Without turning,
they darted away obliquely toward the trees. The lead files twisted about
to pursue. The M-79 gunner got off a round and thought he hit one or two
of the men just as they disappeared into the tree line. The turning of the
column in pursuit of the men spread it neatly in front of the killing
ambush, arrayed just inside the tree line. Is it conceivable that with the
ambushers watching the approach of the column over several minutes and
getting ready to blast it down, the three pigeons standing with backs
turned not more than 30 meters from them were unwarned?
Incident No. 2 An American company was on a search-and-destroy
mission close to the Cambodian border. Its scouts saw two NVA soldiers
standing 200 meters away on a small hill, their backs turned
(at A). These decoys walked off to the westward without ever turning.
The company followed. Getting too close to the Cambodian border, the
commander called for artillery fires on the bush into which the two decoys
had disappeared (at B) rather than take the chance of pursuing them into
neutral territory. The company then turned back to the pivotal point from
which it had started westward, feeling the chance was lost. It paused
there a moment before marching south. Just then an NCO happened to look
back at the hill where the two NVA's were first sighted. There stood two
more figures in khaki, wearing military helmets (at A). They too had their
backs turned, though the U.S. company had been moving about conspicuously
in the open for almost an hour. The two pigeons stood right where the
others had been, within killing range, not more than 200 meters away. The
company did not fire them -- and that was a mistake. The two NVA's never
did face about. Deploying, the company advanced toward them, moving
broadside against the face of the hill (at C). It got within a stone's
throw of the base before there was any fire. Then it broke like a storm
-- automatic, grenade rocket. On the crest of the low hill was a major NVA
force in concealment, with earth protection. The U.S. line was pinned at
once. In the three-hour engagement that followed, it took a bloody
beating. In the end, what was left of the enemy garrison withdrew to
Cambodia. Accident? Coincidence? Common sense rejects the idea. The
enemy baited a trap, perhaps not too skillfully. But it worked.
The enemy does employ agents and double agents. He does contrive to
plant stories through them which are accepted at face value. He does
resort to such stale devices as planting a fake operations order on the
corpse of an officer. Such hoaxes are occasionally swallowed whole instead
of being taken with a grain of salt, better yet, a shakerful.
These, then are the ruses, decoys, and ambushes that hurt worst, not
the narrow fire blocks rigged at the turning of a jungle trail, which
seldom take more than a small toll. In these small affairs, engagement
usually takes place at not more than 10 to 20 meters' range. At any longer
distance than that, particularly in night operations, fire is not apt to be
successful. The enemy has no special magic in that setting, with that
tactic. We can beat him at his own game; the record so proves. The big
ambushes, in which he contrives to mousetrap anything from a platoon-size
patrol to the greater part of a battalion, are his forte, his big gambit,
his one hold on the future. Foil these, deny him surprise on the defense,
frustrate the designs by which he inflicts shock losses in the first stage
of encounter, and there will be nothing going for him that will offset his
dwindling power to organize and press hard in the attack.
The job can be done. We can manage it by a more careful scrutiny of
the seeming opportunity -- the thing that looks too good to be true. We
can avoid the staged entrapments of the enemy by reacting always, to any
and every indication of his presence, as if he is right there in the
foreground in main strength.
Simply for the sake of emphasis, it is here repeated that in this war
a lone rifle shot means little or nothing. An automatic weapon opening
fire usually means business. When two or more automatic weapons open at
one time at close range, something big is almost certain to begin.
V I E T N A M P R I M E R
LESSON TEN - FIELD INTELLIGENCE
In the battle of Bu Gia Map fought in May 1966, a reinforced battalion
from the 101st Airborne Division engaged for two days against a large enemy
force one day's march from the Cambodian border. By making the wisest
possible use of supporting artillery and air power, the commander destroyed
the greater part of an NVA battalion. It was a resounding victory.
Yet it pivoted altogether on a persistent questing for intelligence by
men in the unit at the time of the operation. To begin, the battalion had
no target of real promise, and after the first few days of searching the
mission seemed futile. On a hunch, the commander made a personal
reconnaissance by Huey to an abandoned airstrip 30 minutes flight distance
from his base.
There he drew fire. He quickly redeployed his battalion into this
area by airmobile assault. Then all companies, save the security force at
the new base, began "checkerboarding," or combing out the general area in
all directions. The commander stressed one thing above all else; "We must
get prisoners." The first night ambushes succeeded in taking one NVA
private alive, but he was emotionally overwrought and his information
proved of no great value. An ambush patrol on the second night struck pay
dirt and captured another NVA soldier. This POW was sick from malaria.
The battalion commander's philosophy was "treat POW's as nicely as
possible," for this "gentle" treatment of prisoners had paid off before.
After the prisoner had received medication, warm blankets, and food, he
sang like a canary, located his unit on the map, and volunteered to lead a
force there. Through no fault of his, when the friendly forces surrounded
his unit's camp, they found it abandoned. The bird had escaped the cage
minutes before. On the fourth day, with the commander still pressing his
men to "take them alive," a patrol wounded and captured an NVA sergeant.
He described the enemy force that lay in ambush directly to the westward
and gave the location of the fortified hill as being one kilometer away --
a position until then unsuspected. The capture had occurred on a new trail
leading to the defended hill. The success of the expedition turned on this
one small event.
In the Tou Morong campaign of June 1966, four battalions made a great
sweep for three days over a far spread of difficult country and converged,
toward closing out the operation, still empty-handed. Nowhere had they
encountered enemy in force. On the afternoon of the third day, with full
withdrawal imminent, the commander of the 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry, on
reaching the Tou Morong outpost (the purpose of the sweep was to relieve
the garrison there) talked to a sublieutenant of Popular Forces who had
been long in the area. The American asked him: "Where do you think the
enemy is?" The map was brought out. The Vietnamese put his finger on a
village and said: "Whenever we patrol, we find NVA around there." The
American believed him, or at least felt the information warranted a second
try. So the plan was altered. The battalion of the 101st Airborne
Division stayed in the area and began grinding away. The battle of Tou
Morong -- a highlight of U.S. campaigning in 1966 - developed from this one
incident.
Operation Thayer-Irving, mounted in the 1966 autumn, was in its early
stages underproductive. During the first weeks, troops beat out much
country, spent much energy, and took light losses for little gain. A
feeling of futility developed. In the second phase the search turned
toward the coast line of Binh Dinh east of Highway NO. 1. In early morning
a troop commander of cavalry making a reconnaissance by gunship saw three
khaki-clad figures standing in the street of a fishing village. Too late,
they ducked for cover. Capitalizing on this seemingly insignificant scrap
of intelligence, Operation Irving became a shining battle success. And not
only in terms of enemy losses: more prisoners were taken than in any show
of that year. The abrupt change in fortune came of one piece of fresh
intelligence collected by one man.
From the data basis could be lifted numerous other encouraging
examples of the same kind, though on a smaller scale. However, there are
also negative aspects to several of the operations which we have already
considered in a favorable and positive light.
In one campaign, on the evening before the conversation that turned a
futile exercise into a productive battle, fighting developed "off the map,"
along the low ground of the flat and treeless valley south of the mountain
area being worked over by the maneuvering battalions. One U.S. artillery
battery had been deployed there by helicopter to provide covering fire for
a rifle battalion. A rifle company was sent along to guard its base. At
the same time an ARVN battalion was marching up the main road, over flat
ground, toward its objective. Less than 700 meters from the U.S. position,
the ARVN battalion became heavily engaged when it turned aside to bivouac
on the finger of a low-lying ridge. Several U.S. advisers were along. Men
of the two U.S. units deploying into the LZ could not hear the sounds of
the fight over the noise of Hueys and Chinooks landing and leaving. Within
a few minutes, the U.S. rifle company also became engaged with an NVA force
on the wooded nose of the nearest finger of the same low-lying ridge, not
more than 300 meters from the American battery. The artillery weapons were
never turned around and they took no part in the fight. The U.S. advisers
with the ARVN battalion and the command at the artillery base were on the
radio telephone, talking to one another. But only fragmentary information
was exchanged between them. Neither force got an understanding of the
other's immediate problem and situation, though one was not more than a 10-
minute walk from the other and the broad valley was clear of enemy forces.
Had either been more perceptive, more disposed to talk things out fully, an
NVA platoon might have been taken whole or destroyed and the significance
of the attack on the ARVN battalion by at least two NVA companies would
have come clear.
In Operation Thayer, which became largely a dry well, a 12-man patrol
from the cavalry division moved along with an interpreter from the National
Police. While it paused by a stream to wash feet and break out rations, an
aged Vietnamese woman came along the trail next to it. She was asked:
"Have you seen any VC?" She replied: "There are three right now in my
village down this trail." The cavalrymen followed along, engaged and
killed an enemy outguard of several men, took losses themselves in the
exchange of fire, then learned there were outguards posted generally around
the village. They concluded that the place was held by an enemy force in
at least company strength. The time was late afternoon. Because other
problems pressed the brigade, the opening was not taken. The patrol was
withdrawn before there was any real testing of enemy strength, and by next
day the bird had flown. The point is only that what had at first seemed an
unlikely source of information about enemy presence proved to be wholly
valid.
The besetting problem in Vietnam is to find the enemy. It is like
hunting for the needle in the haystack only if the unit commander views it
as a task primarily for higher levels and does not have all of his senses
and all of his people directed toward systematizing the search so that it
will pay off. His scout elements are only a first hold on the undertaking;
they probe over a limited area of a large countryside prolific with cover
and natural camouflage. Out of their truly productive contacts resulting
directly from maneuver emerges only a small fraction of the hard
information leading to our most successful finds and strikes. The greater
part of it derives from careful interrogation of people met along the way,
interrogation that neither overlooks nor discounts any possible source.
One new unit, operating in Paul Revere IV, took over a village in late
afternoon. Finding the people gone and the livestock fresh, it concluded
that an NVA force was probably close at hand. So the men killed the pigs
and left the chickens, figuring that if the enemy returned by night, the
fowl might sound the alarm. The gambit failed; the enemy, attacking the
American perimeter next to the village in early evening, avoided the
chickens by moving in from the other side. The men had a good idea
nevertheless; even animals can be used as early warning in Vietnam.
These things are said in Vietnam about intelligence flow by commanders
and men who fight there:
(1) It comes in greater volume than in any other war.
(2) Not more than 10 to 15 percent of it leads to anything worthwhile
-- though each lead must be followed through to hit pay dirt.
(3) Where there is a payoff, in nine cases out of ten, the
information which led to the introduction of tactical forces into
a certain area proves to be wrong in whole or in part, and
something quite else, but still worth the effort, develops from
the deployment.
(4) Development and exploitation therefore depend chiefly on what the
tactical unit learns and does.
(5) Most of the intelligence which leads to worthwhile results in
battle is collected by tactical units after they have deployed.
These are broad propositions. They call to mind the epigram of the
late Justice Holmes: "I always say that no generalization is worth a damn,
including this one." But if it is granted that statements (4) and (5) are
only partially true, they put the unit commander at dead center of our
combat intelligence collecting apparatus. It is a task that he cannot
shrug off; there is only the question of whether he will be thorough or
slipshod in his work. Working closely and continuously with his
interpreters while in the field is one prerequisite of success.
Nothing will be said here about the collecting and use of enemy
documents. The unit commander gets full instruction on this subject from
higher authority within Vietnam, and to add anything would be superfluous.
Our primary concern is with his attitude toward all people who may be
sources of information that will help him to make contact. They are of
many kinds. These things are to be said of them:
(1) Captured NVA soldiers, more so than hardcore Viet Cong, and not
unlike the Japanese in World War II, are constrained to cooperate
and tell most of what they know. When they have the inclination,
they give without being manhandled. There is no example in the
record of an NVA captive who, in responding readily to
interrogation, gave false information that set up a U.S. unit in
front of a trap. The initially sullen enemy soldier is not apt
to change and respond with worthwhile information.
(2) The people of the countryside, be they Vietnamese, Montagnards,
Chinese, or any other, friendly or hostile, often know more about
enemy presence or movement that they will voluntarily tell. They
must be sought out and questioned, or obviously there will be no
answers. The questioning is best done in a friendly and
initially indirect manner. Paying some attention to the children
sometimes wins cooperation. Without an interpreter, the exchange
is made extraordinarily difficult, though there are several
examples in the record of large results achieved through sign
language. The characteristics vary from tribe to tribe, but most
Montagnard villagers have no understanding of numbers, time
according to the clock, distances when computed in terms of miles
or kilometers, and other basic units of measurement as we know
them.
(3) All CIDG companies and their Special Force advisers doing regular
duty and patrolling daily within any region naturally know more
about enemy presence within it and the problem of fixing it than
any field force likely to be committed there suddenly on such a
mission. Acquiring such knowledge is their specialty, their
reason for being. Any tactical commander who bypasses the
opportunity to learn all he can from them when he is in their
vicinity is not doing his best for his people or himself.
(4) The same thing is to be said of ARVN, Nationalist Police, ROK,
and other allied forces, officers and men, who have served in any
area being entered for the first time by a U.S. tactical unit.
Not to profit from their experience by seeking them out and
asking what they know is a mistake. It has happened many times
that they had a good fix on an enemy force but withheld from
moving to contact because their strength was insufficient.
Experience has also shown that, if requested, these veteran
allies will readily provide personnel to act as scouts and guides
for U.S. units deploying in their area of operation.
The record indicates that the Special Force teams in Vietnam have
developed sophisticated search and surveillance systems now uniquely their
own. These could be made of more general application by the field army to
the benefit of all. Any tactical unit commander is well advised to make
contact with Special Force field personnel when opportunity affords to
learn more about such things. Some of these operations are of a classified
nature though the methodology and the working rules are not a highly
sensitive subject. The soldier troubling to make such a visit might learn
some useful new tricks besides sharing good company, usually supplied with
cold beer, for a spell.
In the tall bush, jungle, or tropical forest, the NVA and VC make
effective, though irregular, tactical use of tree roosts, as did the
Japanese in World War II. The upper branches serve for observation; in the
lower limbs are concealed platforms for sniping. The enemy sets these
forward of main positions, placing them to the flank or rear of our lines
when we close. In Operation Attleboro our people learned of this technique
a little late and several men were killed by fire from overhead until a
gunner sensed what was happening, dusted the trees with automatic fire, and
brought several of the snipers down. Tied to the trunk by long ropes, the
bodies dangled in mid-air. In a campaign fought near the Cambodian border,
a brigade commander complained about this enemy practice, as if it were
unfair. His general asked him: "Well, did you think to do it, also?" It's
a good question. According to the record, Americans as individuals
sometimes make tactical use of trees, as when an inspired battalion
commander directed his fighting line from the upper crotch of a banyan
during Operation Geronimo II because he was trying to take prisoners and
the voice on the bullhorn would carry farther that way. But trees are not
used for sniping and superior observation on any organized basis, though
the opportunity is there. Why? Too many commanders simply fail to think
of it.
V I E T N A M P R I M E R
LESSON ELEVEN - THE DEFENSIVE PERIMETER
Procedures used in forming the defensive perimeter vary greatly along
with their effectiveness from unit to unit. There is uniformity within a
brigade or a battalion when command at these levels continues to insist
upon it and inspects to see that the work is properly done in the field.
Left to his own devices, the young company commander, most of the time, is
careless about perimeter organization. That the unit repeatedly deploys
without contact tends to lull the unit into a state of indifference. This
the attitude prevails, "If we got by last night without digging, why dig
tonight?'
To some extent, all infantry units try to follow the tested and proved
principles and techniques of defense taught at the service schools. But
too many do not try very hard; if they did, there would be fewer losses due
to failure to dig in deep, or to dig at all, when there was time for
digging and the men were not physically exhausted.
The record shows conclusively that the unit disciplined to follow the
rules has never suffered a serious tactical disarrangement and invariable
sustains relatively light losses when considered against the volume of
enemy fire and the intensity of the attack. Its production of fire is
steadier and better controlled than that of the unit that has failed to
make the best use of ground. The movement of weapons and ammunition from
the less-threatened sectors of the perimeter to the foxholes under direct
pressure, when ammo runs low and weapons are being knocked out, is
systematic, not haphazard.
We have cases in the book in which the rifle company was so lax about
elementary precautions in organizing for defense that there appears no
other explanation of how it escaped destruction in the fight that ensued
except that the average enemy soldier has no real skill with the rifle and
other had weapons.
There are far more examples on the bright side. Representative of
them are company actions out of the 4th Infantry Division's experience in
Operation Paul Revere IV in late 1966. Yet these units were having their
baptism of fire. The NVA attacks ranged from company-size to assault by
the reinforced battalion. Some of the attacks were supported by heavily
concentrated mortar fire, so accurately placed as to suggest that the
weapons had been preregistered on the position. One mortar barrage on a
single position in a fight of less than one hour was reported as hurling
between 500 and 700 rounds; through group interview of the unit, the figure
was subsequently scaled down to 300-350 rounds. Yes, the unit under this
fire took heavy losses. But in view of the powerful barrage that struck,
it came through splendidly. "We had dug in right up to our chins," one
sergeant said. Close questioning of the men established that this was no
exaggeration.
The mortar barrage had been set to disorganize the defense preparatory
to a battalion-size assault that under cover of dark had already closed to
within approximately 200 meters of the position. Its repulse was total.
Not only did it fail to break the perimeter; it did not get close enough to
trade volume rifle fire with the defenders. There can be no doubt that
deep digging, and one other tactical precaution to be discussed later,
saved this rifle unit and the supporting artillery battery. A general rule
now being followed in Vietnam is to stop moving early enough to allow for
sufficient daylight in which to establish a solidly organized, well-dug
defensive perimeter.
The ROK forces have had similar success on the defense since their
first major encounter with NVA troops in the rice paddies of south Tuy Hoa
(Hill 50) in January 1966. Two battalions of NVA tried to overrun two ROK
marine companies. The fight went three hours; when it ended, more than 400
enemy dead lay outside the ROK perimeter, while inside it the losses were
light. ROK units have never taken a reverse while on defense in Vietnam.
They employ no defensive tactics that are peculiarly their own; there is no
secret to their success. What they do has been taught them by U.S. Army
advisers and can be found in our manuals. The Korean soldier works at his
position like a mole. The holes are dug deep and reinforced with
protective overhead over. Tactical wire is placed to the front and
interlaced with trip flares, mines, and other anti-intrusion devices.
Outposts are set along likely avenues of approach, far enough from the
perimeter to provide a sufficient warning interval. Patrols are dispatched
to scout possible sites for enemy supporting weapons. (The enemy normally
prepares such positions well before the infantry attack comes on.) The
position prepared, it is then manned by an alert and well-supervised
soldier. Usually, one-third of the defenders are at the ready, listening
for noise of the enemy. Noise, light, and fire disciplines are sternly
enforced. "Stand-to" is conducted at dusk, dawn, and, when keyed to
intelligence, in the middle of the night.
With the average U.S. rifle company in night defense, nominally every
third man is on the alert, and the watch is two hours. Because of the high
mobility of operations, tactical wire is not used, though the unit stays in
the same position two days or more. It would seem prudent to harden the
base whenever any prolonged stay is in prospect, but the practice is not
generally applied. Such a rule should be in order, most particularly when
the perimeter encloses artillery, which is high on the list of enemy
targets. In the fight on LZ Bird, 26 December 1966, already praised here
as a highly valiant and successful defense. American losses would have
been less and the enemy attack could not have impacted with such pronounced
initial violence, had this precaution been taken.
The average U.S. rifle company on defense uses the buddy system, or
two men to a foxhole. The record fully sustains this practice as having,
in this mode of warfare, an added value beyond those of affording
companionship, steadying the individual nerve, and contributing to unit
alertness. We are dealing with a fanatic enemy, capable of acts of seeming
madness and utter desperation. Often, the lone fighter is not prepared to
cope with the frenzy of an attacker thus possessed. Two men can; one man's
courage rubs off on the other. From Paul Revere IV and earlier operations,
the record has numerous entries of foxhole buddies, working together,
manhandling, and at last vanquishing a demonic adversary, where one man
would have failed. Example: The NVA soldier charges directly in and jumps
into the foxhole. One man, tackling him around the knees, wrestles him
down, works on him with a machete, and cuts through the shoulder to the
bone so that the arm dangles by flesh. The American by then is atop the
still-struggling enemy. His buddy, trying to help, but having no clear
shot at the target, puts three bullets from his M-16 into the enemy's legs.
The figure goes limp. The two Americans toss the body out of the
perimeter, thinking the man dead. It lands on the back of a company aid
man who grabs the nigh-severed arm and is astonished to see it spin a
complete circle. The corpse comes alive and struggles with the aid man.
He is killed at last, beaten to death with an entrenching tool.
Some companies use the three-man foxhole; there are sound arguments
for it and the results seem more satisfactory, insuring maximum rest
combined with the required degree of alertness. Terrain -- the possession
of high ground for the defensive position -- has little value in Vietnam
compared with former wars. What is important is that the position be
compact; weakness, vulnerability come rather from overextension, trying to
cover too much ground, thereby shortening the field of fire, and lessening
mutual support, foxhole to foxhole.
Trip flares and other alarm or anti-intrusion devices, including the
Claymore, are not employed regularly and consistently by all units on the
defense, though they are invariably carried along. There is no general
explanation other than lack of command insistence. The Claymore is
employed more than any other fixture outward from the perimeter. Lately
the NVA enemy has acquired the nasty habit of sneaking forward a few hands
in the early stages of a fight who wriggle in on their bellies to where
they can cut the Claymore wires. The Viet Cong enemy frequently improves
on that trick. In January 1967, for example, a platoon from 25th Infantry
Division conducted a small night operation on the outskirts of Vinh Cu and
was attacked while in defensive position. Reports the witness: "I went out
to get my Claymore only to find that the mine had been turned around.
Faced as it was, it could have wiped out the people in four of our
positions had we fired it during the fight." (The battery-powered,
tripwire-type anti-intrusion device has little appeal and goes almost
unused. In all operations, we found only one lieutenant who thought it
worthwhile and strung the wire regularly.)
Outposts, giving way to listening posts after dark, are set generally
and routinely by platoons and rifle companies on defense along each likely
avenue of approach, with about this one exception: a unit rigging ambushes
on trails adjacent to the perimeter rarely sets up outposts as well. Two
or three men usually compose an OP or LP. They do not dig in as a rule.
One man is supposed to stay alert; the others sleep. Though frowned upon,
smoking on OP and LP, and within the perimeter, is common. (An exception
is in Special Force detachments on patrol where smoking is prohibited. The
rule is respected because, among other effects, "smoking makes the sense of
smell less acute.") Sometimes the LP is connected with the perimeter, and
sometimes not; this variation is arbitrary and in no way related to the
distance between the post and the main body. Where there are four platoons
on perimeter, there will usually be four OP'S or LP's. Generally each
platoon sets out one LP to cover the main approach into its sector. When
the RT is used on LP duty, a prearranged signal (so many clicks on the
push-to-talk button) warns of the approach of enemy force and gives its
size.
LP's located at real distance from the defensive perimeter are not
only of vital service to security but invariably safer for their occupants.
At least half the time in Vietnam, according to the record, the defense is
established on ground that permits siting LP'S for maximum effectiveness.
Yet rare indeed is an LP posted more than 50 meters from the foxhole line;
far more frequently, where the terrain and vegetation outward from the
perimeter are clear enough for the men on LP to run back to the main body
the posting is too close to be of much use or there is none whatever.
In the 4th Infantry Division's fight near the Cambodian border in late
November 1966, three men were on LP duty 350 meters west of the perimeter.
They heard an NVA rifleman as he crawled over a pile of logs not more than
10 meters away. Certain they had not been seen, they slipped backward a
few feet to get a clearer view of him and have more freedom of action. All
three then blasted him with the greater part of three magazines of M-16
fire. Their volleying tripped off the enemy mortar attack before the NVA
line had advanced to more than even with the LP. The mortars started,
fired a few rounds, then broke off when the enemy realized that something
had gone wrong. (It is assumed that small arms fire was the prearranged
signal for the enemy mortarmen to begin their supporting fires.) The NVA
line was still far short of closing distance. Thus the attack became
unhinged. The three Americans, going on a dead run for the perimeter, made
it in time to alert the defenders to what was coming.
In another perimeter defense in Paul Revere IV one LP, equipped with a
radio though it was only 30 meters from the foxhole line, was dead in the
way of the enemy line of advance. One soldier got off the warning; it
helped not at all because by then the attack had broken against the main
body, and within seconds the soldier was down and dying and crying for an
aid man. Initial confusion in a sector of the perimeter arose out of
distress over the man and the desire to rescue him. Temporarily, it
inhibited fire in decisive volume from the one platoon that was under the
heaviest and most direct pressure, though it shortly got going,
semireconciled to the loss of the lone man on the LP.
According to the record, this is a not uncommon incident. Something
of the sort happens often enough to warrant raising the question: do LP's
placed at only 20 to 35 meters from the perimeter have sufficient warning
value in this form of warfare to justify their use? The extra danger to
men so placed is hardly debatable. The brief time interval is not enough
to allow the alerting of the armed circle. Time after time, because the
LP's have been overrun, greater jeopardy is visited on the main body. The
command places a certain amount of reliance on them though they have little
chance to do the work for which they are intended.
There is no evidence on record in Vietnam that any U.S. rifle company,
having set up for night defense by perimeter, has been wholly overrun,
though the story was too frequently otherwise in Korea. Many such
positions in Vietnam have been cracked, and others have taken hard
punishment, but the ground has always been held until the enemy withdrew or
the command decision was made that it was no longer worth the fight. The
unit sometimes gets out; none has ever been driven out. The same cannot be
said of platoon perimeters, the reason being they do not have enough fire
power to withstand a hard-pressed attack. They are as insecure as was the
company perimeter atop a Korean ridge. The comparison rather clearly
bespeaks the scale of the war and the relative ineffectiveness of the
enemy, NVA or VC, in the attack. Use of the company perimeter as the basic
defensive element, careful tying-in of weapons, and alertness will beat him
every time.
V I E T N A M P R I M E R
LESSON TWELVE - POLICING THE BATTLEFIELD
Policing of the battle field, or tidying-up as the British say, is an
ancient custom in armies, and more of a necessity in Vietnam than in wars
of our past. The reasons are already well known to troops before they
arrive in Vietnam. Not only is the debris of war so repulsive and
unwholesome that having as little of it about as possible is just another
part of good housekeeping, but denying to the enemy anything and everything
that may be of use to him is the interest of self-preservation.
So there is nothing novel or unreasonable about the requirement put
upon troops that they strip the scenes of action and the routes over which
they move of everything that the enemy might turn to a fighting purpose or
use to help his forces in any other way. Every dud grenade or unexploded
artillery shell left behind is a gift to the Viet Cong. Any discarded C-
ration tin can be transformed into a booby trap. The enemy is good at such
tricks, and nine times out of ten he will return to the field to look for
free items he can add to his bag soon after we depart it.
A fundamental consideration in any discussion about policing the field
is the soldier's load, for it goes to the heart of the problem. Why does
the field get lettered? Even though the soldier's load has been discussed
and analyzed by experts perhaps more than any other subject in warfare, the
record in Vietnam still shows that the average infantry soldier crashes
through the jungle weighted down like a pack mule. When he finds the
enemy, he must always unload the rucksack or the heavy pack in order to
move more quickly about the battlefield. It is not uncommon to find
soldiers saddled with five days' C-rations, which weigh about 15 pounds.
Their commanders proudly report, "Five days' rations give my men freedom
from resupply; they can move with the speed and stealth of a guerrilla."
In actual fact, mobility is decreased because of these heavy loads and the
soldier is physically worn down by midday. Fatigue affects alertness,
making him vulnerable to the enemy's designs.
The good commander takes a hard look at every item that his soldiers
carry. What they do not absolutely require he eliminates. At all times it
should be a main aim to lighten the load of his men. For the soldier in
Vietnam like the soldier of World War II and Korea will throw away or lose
anything he does not need, or thinks he may not need tomorrow -- and before
another day has passed the enemy will have picked it up.
These lines from a book published by the Department of Defense should
be read again by unit commanders in the light of our Vietnam experience:
"Extravagance and wastefulness are somewhat rooted in the American
character because of our mode of life. When our men enter military
service, there is a strong holdover of their prodigal civilian habits.
Even under fighting conditions, they tend to be wasteful of water, food,
munitions, and other vital supply. When such things are too accessible
they tend to throw them away rather than conserve them in the general
interest."
Because of this fault in our makeup, combat leaders in Vietnam have to
keep prodding their men to police the premises before quitting the
perimeter and moving on. The distinguishing feature of this discipline is
the heavy accent that has to be given it because we are fighting a
guerrilla enemy and no piece of open country is likely to be held by our
people for very long.
What is new and different about the war in Vietnam is the emphasis put
upon the tallying of enemy dead at the same time that the field is being
policed. Where circumstances permit and members of the unit are not
subjected to additional jeopardy, they are required to tally the manpower
losses of the enemy as conscientiously as they are required to set about
possessing the weapons that he leaves on a field from which his forces have
withdrawn.
These two requirements need to be discussed and understood in one
context. The heavier burden put upon troops adds up to a somewhat onerous
task and not one they would undertake of their own volition. Like so much
of war's drudgery, however, it is still acceptable, so long as doing the
job does not subject the men to extremes of risk.
None but a foolhardy soldier would voluntarily charge forward against
fire from an enemy rifle line so that he might wrest an AK47 or SKS from
Viet Cong hands to claim it as a souvenir, though he would be denying the
enemy that one weapon. Body count is governed by the same principle that
underlies this negative example. It should not be ordered when there is
clearly present the prospect of increased risk for the unit or the
likelihood of more casualties; nor should it be ordered when there is a
more pressing military object immediately to be served.
Time and tactical opportunity wait on no man. Take one example. A
U.S. unit in perimeter defense clearly witnesses the temporary withdrawal
from the immediate vicinity of the enemy force that has been pressing the
attack. Given the choice in the breathing space of one or the other, only
an unthinking commander would put the counting of bodies outside his lines
ahead of possessing the weapons scattered there. The enemy may swarm back
and, by pressing home the attack again, manage to extract the bodies. But
if the weapons are left there and he recovers them, they could help him
overrun the position. The bodies do him no good; they merely burden his
withdrawal. And all we lose by letting him get away with them is a
comforting statistic.
We are pointing out only that body counting at the wrong time, or at
the sacrifice of real tactical opportunity, can be both dangerous and time-
wasting. It is not a task or object of such transcendent importance as to
warrant taking additional casualties, though any small-unit commander may
make it such by getting confused about his priorities. Emphasizing body
count until it obscures the more legitimate interest of security and
mobility is ever a mistake on his part. In its possible consequences it
differs in degree from the requirement to police the combat field. When
the young commander, having won his fight, pushes out his tidying-up
patrols before he has done a proper job of reconnoitering for enemy
presence just beyond the foreground, he is wrong, dead wrong.
Examples that make the point dot the record. Item. A fight is not
even halfway along. Pressure on the unit leader is mounting by the minute.
But already higher command is putting additional pressure on him to police
the field and get the bodies counted in the proper time. It is his duty to
bear with it: he is still the judge of the right time and circumstance.
Item. A U.S. rifle company in a good defensive position atop a ridge is
taking steady toll of an NVA force attacking up hill. The skipper sends a
four-man patrol to police weapons and count bodies. Three men return
bearing the fourth, who was wounded before the job was well started.
Another patrol is sent. The same thing happens. The skipper says, "Oh, to
hell with it!" Item. In Operation Nathan Hale three men working through a
banana grove were hit by sniper fire. They were counting bodies.
Item. In Operation Paul Revere IV a much-admired line sergeant was killed,
two other enlisted men were wounded, and a lieutenant barely escaped
ambush, when the four together were "tidying up" the field. They ran into
a stay-behind party planted in a thicket on the morning after the fight.
Small-unit leaders have to understand that the requirement, though
urgent, is not that urgent. Body-counting is of lesser moment than the
chance to kill and capture still more of the enemy in the hour when
effective pursuit is possible. As Marshal Foch said, "If you reach the
stop one minute after the bus is gone you miss it." One of the comments
often made by Americans fighting in Vietnam is that the enemy has greater
skill at breaking contact than any soldier ever engaged by our forces. A
unit commander only adds to the enemy's reputation when he rates keeping
contact and maintaining pursuit as secondary to counting bodies simply
because such tallying is a duty on his checklist.
No solution to fit every possible variation of this problem can be
recommended. A few suggestions are put forward to assist the small-unit
commander in arriving at his own solution. He is the man on the spot and
the best judge of the situation, and it is his decision that will cure or
kill. To him belong the options involving the immediate safety and best
interest of this command, in the light of what he knows about the
situation. If he believes that a present, but unmeasured, danger forbids
body counting or that a more urgent military object should come first, he
need only have the courage of his own convictions in coming to that
decision. No one may rightly press him to trade lives for bodies.
Out of data based on more than 100 actions by rifle companies and
platoons, it can be fairly estimated that the physical and tactical
difficulties besetting a unit in the hour when the fight ended precluded
the possibility of a body count at least 60 percent of the time. Still
more significantly, and with very rare exceptions, where a body count had
been reported and was therefore entered into the record, analysis of what
really happened in the fight leads to the conclusion that the enemy
actually lost more dead than the number reported. Overall, what was
claimed and reported, on the basis of the data afforded by the fight
itself, appeared to be an understatement of the casualties inflicted on the
enemy.
V I E T N A M P R I M E R
LESSON THIRTEEN - TRAINING
Our mistakes in Vietnam are neither new nor startling. They are not
something we can blame on the mysteries of the warfare. They are the same
problems that have been haunting small-unit commanders since before Gideon.
The mistakes we are talking about will not likely cause a unit to take a
beating. But they will inflict on it needless casualties. In peace or war
these errors spell the difference between professionalism and mediocrity.
Many young leaders, enchanted by the Hollywood image of war, approach
combat with the good-guy-versus-the-bad-guy attitude. But there is no
similarity between what John Wayne gets away with on the screen and the
hot, hard facts of the fire fight. A small-unit leader in combat cannot
afford to have a film hero's devil-may-care attitude toward training,
discipline, and basic soldiering.
In the recipe for battle victory, well-led and disciplined soldiers
are the main ingredient, soldiers who have been conditioned by thorough
training to react by habit when confronted with the searing realities of
engagement. The habits learned in training -- good or bad -- are the same
habits that move the soldier in combat. A leader, then, must insure that
each of his soldiers is well trained and has developed good habits --
habits so deeply ingrained through correct reaching and intensive practice
that even under the pressure of fear and sudden danger each soldier,
automatically, will do the right thing.
There is no magic formula or sweatless solution by which one can
achieve this goal. Leaders may approach training for combat only with
intense dedication, accepting as gospel the timeless truth that better-
trained men live longer on the battlefield.
No military unit is ever completely trained. There will always be a
weak area that requires additional time and effort. The wise commander
uses all available time to train his unit; he never says, "Good enough."
In Vietnam he can continue to train constantly -- in the assembly area, in
the reserve position, and during the execution of the mission. Leaders
must accept the old but absolute maxim: "The more sweat on the training
field, the less blood on the battlefield."
An alert leader constantly stresses essential battlefield arts and
skills: fire and maneuver; marksmanship; camouflage and concealment;
communication; maintenance; noise, light, and fire discipline; scouting and
patrolling; woodcraft; mines and boobytraps; and field sanitation. And he
makes on-the-spot corrections with the same precision as he does in
dismounted drill.
If a soldier is firing from the wrong side of a tree, the leader tells
him what he is doing wrong, and why. If the soldier is wandering around
without his weapon during an exercise, the leader tells him that he is
being fired on by an enemy sniper and that he should take cover and return
the fire. When the soldier looks at him dumbfounded and says, "I can't
because my rifle is over there," then the leader tells him he is "dead" and
makes him lie where he was "killed" for a couple of hours.
The good leader forms a checklist habit. Combat is too serious a
business to permit easy excuse of even one mistake. If a unit is going on
a patrol, setting up an ambush, establishing a defensive position, or
conducting an airmobile assault, he should pull out his checklist and
insure that every point is checked off. Many checklists are available
throughout the Army and in Vietnam, but in the main they are far too
complicated and tend to fog up the issue with unnecessary details.
A simple checklist which underscores the salient points of the
operation at hand will stimulate recall. Battle experience has
conclusively proven that fatigue, fright, and preoccupation with the
routine tend to cloud and distort the memory.
The good leader practices giving a five-paragraph operations order.
He is never so much of an "old pro" that he can do without the tried and
proven form. He makes sure his people use it too, and he listens to
subordinates issuing their orders. If he knows his business, he will know
whether they are following correct troop leading procedures and whether
they have heeded their lessons. To plan his operation and issue his orders
in the same detail and with the same precision as if he were taking his
first ATT (Army Training Test) and an umpire were breathing down his neck -
- that should be the object. The voice of experience might well say to
him: "Never quit checking. Check everything all the time -- weapons for
cleanliness, aidmen for supplies, sentries for alertness, and the camp for
field sanitation."
Many young leaders in Vietnam think that if they will it, the thing
will be done. Seldom did we find one who adequately checked to see if his
orders were being carried out. The order-giving process has three main
elements: (1) formulation; (2) issuance; and (3) supervision. All are
interrelated and act upon one another. The successful leader will look to
all three elements and make sure they are in balance before he concludes
that his unit has been readied to the best of his ability for the impending
action.
V I E T N A M P R I M E R
LESSON FOURTEEN - THE STRANGE ENEMY
A more bizarre, eccentric foe than the one in Vietnam is not to be
met, and it is best that troops be told of his peculiar ways lest they be
unnerved by learning of them for the first time during combat. He may blow
whistles or sound bugles to initiate the assault; or he may trip the fight
with a flare or the beating of a bongo drum. But he does not come on in a
"banzai charge." That description of him, for example in stories about
Operation Attleboro, is a bit of press fiction. The "banzai charges" in
reality amounted to about 50 men walking forward in line against a two-
platoon front. They did not yell; they screamed only when they were hit.
Then meters from where they started they were mowed down or turned back.
In the second "banzai charge" only 30 men so acted; the third time there
were 12.
It is in many small ways that the enemy in Vietnam deviates from what
we consider normal, sometimes to the stupefaction of our people. Nerves
get jangled when in a fire fight joined at close range men hear maniacal
laughter from the pack out there in the darkness just a few feet beyond the
foxhole. Catcalls, the group yelling of phrases and curses in English, the
calling out of the full name of several men in the unit -- such
psychological tricks are likely to be trotted out at any time.
In one of the company fights in Paul Revere IV, a voice from a bamboo
clump not more than 10 meters from the foxhole line shouted, "Hey, how's
your company commander?"
One American, not at all jumpy, yelled back, "Mine's great; how's
yours?"
The voice replied, "No good; you just killed him."
During the hottest part of the defense on LZ Bird, with the NVA in
large numbers inside the perimeter, the Americans still in the fight were
astonished to see enemy skirmishers break into their tents, emerge arms
laden with fruit cakes, boxes of cookies, and sacks of candy, then squat on
the fire-swept field and eat the goodies.
In that same fight one U.S. rifleman, not in anyway hurt, feigned
death when an enemy party came upon him. The NVA took none of his
possessions and did not try to roll him. The soldier lying next to him,
already wounded, was shot dead and his pockets were picked clean.
In Operation Paul Revere, an NVA soldier walked into a U.S. outpost of
two men after dark, sat beside one of them who was half asleep, and started
talking to him in perfect English. The interloper even leaned on the
American, who in his stupor thought this was his buddy who was sprawled out
sleeping several feet away. The monologue went on several minutes. By the
time our man finally became aware of what was happening, the North
Vietnamese was strolling away. He made it clean without a shot being
fired.
In Operation Cedar Falls, enemy soldiers hid in water holes along the
creek banks like so many muskrats. The entrances were below the surface.
Our skirmishers could hear their voices a few feet away but could not find
them. In the same fight, within the Iron Triangle, a party on ambush at
night sensed a particularly pungent smell in the air which only one man
could identify. "I know it," he said. "That's pot [marihuana]." It was a
first warning of enemy presence.
In one of the mad scenes in Operation Irving, more than a platoon of
enemy vanished into subsurface water holes along a river bank. Bamboo,
bored through to form a pipe, serves as louvers for these chambers. U.S.
cavalrymen spotted the telltale signs, stripped naked, got down into the
stream, and fished the NVA out of the holes.
On a long patrol in January 1967, a Mike Force led by Special Force
personnel, was shadowed for 10 days by one Viet Cong. He kept a copious
diary, relating that he could not understand what the column was trying to
do or where it was heading because of its zigzag movement. But along with
his diary entries he had carefully written down the plan and maneuver to be
used by several enemy battalions gathering to envelop the Mike Force. On
the eleventh day, making one false move, he was shot dead. The diary was
found on him, and the column walked away from the trap.
Another snapshot from Operation Cedar Falls. Nine Americans were in
an ambush position. One group of 14 Viet Cong kept circling the ground for
two hours. Then one of their number walked to within five feet of the
muzzle of the machinegun, knelt down, and lit a candle to look at a wounded
man struck down by the same gun a few minutes before.
An ambush patrol from 1st Infantry Division, based at Di An, was in a
night operation near War Zone D. The men had already made a killing, and
because their leader had an intuition that the Viet Cong were out in force
that night they rapidly shifted position to stronger ground. The leader
asked for illumination and Smokey the Bear (a flare ship) came over. When
the lights popped on, instead of having a view of the river banks 250
meters to their fore, the men were "dazzled by an array of shining objects
that seemed to be moving" between them and the stream. This dazzling band
was about 100 meters wide and six feet tall. Feeling themselves
threatened, for want of anything better to do the troops opened fire with
M-16's and machineguns. The shining objects began falling. Then fire came
against the Americans. At last they understood. These were Viet Cong --
several platoons of them. The VC had been advancing, each one carrying in
front of him a sheet of roofing tin that screened his body wholly. Why?
No one ever found out. It was just another mystery, wholly baffling to the
Americans. One of them said, "It was screwier than Macbeth."
There are these tales and many more about our odd foe. The full
measure of his strange nature is yet to be taken. We will continue to
endure it in its military manifestations so long as the fighting goes on.
To accustom the American soldier to expect the unexpected may be too much
to expect, but he can be braced to the probability that when he engages the
VC or NVA the most unlikely things will happen. Getting to know them
better is a large part of the game. INDEX
17th Parallel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Ambush. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11, 13, 14, 18, 22-24, 26, 27
Ambushes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13, 23
Ambushing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24
Artillery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8-10
Attack. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7, 9-11
Automatic fire use. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
Automatic weapons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 11, 14
Battle losses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Bunker. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Bunkers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7-9, 11, 12
Casualties. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 10, 19
Casualty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
Claymore. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23, 43
Combat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
critique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Communist aggression, pivots of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Delta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Escape. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 10, 11
Excessive loss. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Exhaustion of the troops. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14, 17, 41
Fortified areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Fortified base camp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Fortified base camps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Fortified bases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Fortified villages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Frontal assault . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Grenade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19, 34, 45
Grenades. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
Guerrilla . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Hamlet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11, 12
Hamlets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 11
Heroism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Intelligence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5, 28, 29, 36-38, 42
Jungle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12, 16, 17, 19, 25
Jungle canopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
Jungle clearing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13
Jungle fighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17, 19
Jungle movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
Jungle rot. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
Jungle warfare. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
Landing zone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14, 25, 32
Leeches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
Loss. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10, 13
Loss rates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Losses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8, 9, 13, 17
LZ (also see landing zone). . . . . . . . . .14, 17, 20, 24, 29, 37, 42, 50
M-16
60 meter rule. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
ability to take abuse or neglect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
blood loss with wounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
compared with M-1 Garand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
firing in a foxhole. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42
ideal weapon for jungle warfare. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
Killing at 200 meters or more. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
knockdown power of 5.56mm bullet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
long range accuracy not required . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
missing a target . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
shooting high in panic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
tripping off an enemy mortar attack. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44
use. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44, 51
M-60 ammo quantities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
Machinegun. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
ammunition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
Malaria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17, 36
Medevac in the jungle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
Mine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23, 43
Mines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42, 48
Mortars
attack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44
barrage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41
fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41
use in jungle canopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
North Vietnamese Army 7, 9, 11, 14, 18, 23, 25-34, 36-39, 41-44, 46, 50, 51
NVA . . . . . . . . . 7, 9, 11, 14, 18, 23, 25-34, 36-39, 41-44, 46, 50, 51
Operation Attleboro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23, 40, 50
Operation Cedar Falls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18, 32, 51
Operation Crazy Horse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30
Operation Geronimo II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40
Operation Hawthorne II. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31
Operation Irving. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37, 51
Operation Nathan Hale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29, 47
Operation Paul Revere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50
Operation Paul Revere IV. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17, 30, 41, 42, 47
Operation Thayer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37
Operation Thayer-Irving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37
Panic firing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
Perimeter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7, 13, 14, 17
position (defined). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
PRC-25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
Rates of fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
Rifle
company. . . . .5, 9, 12, 13, 18, 22, 25, 26, 29-31, 37, 41-44, 46, 47
fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11, 30, 42
line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13, 46
long shots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35
platoon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 11
shooting high too often. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
skill. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41
unit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 17, 42
Rifle accucracy in a fire fight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
Rifleman. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15, 18, 44, 50
Riflemen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12
ROK (Republic of Korea) forces/units. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39, 42
Semiautomatic fire use. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
Sniper. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12, 40, 47, 48
VC-NVA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33
Viet Cong (VC).5, 7, 9, 11, 18, 22, 23, 25-28, 30, 32-34, 37, 39, 43-46, 51
Vietnam . . ii, 5, 7, 9, 12, 14, 16-20, 22, 24-26, 28-30, 33, 38, 39, 42-50
Vietnamese. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31, 36, 37, 39, 50
Withdrawal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7, 9
Wounded . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18, 23, 29, 31, 36, 47, 50, 51
Wounds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5