No More Vietnams (28 page)

General Van Tien Dung, commander of North Vietnam's forces in South Vietnam, described the conference in his memoirs. Hanoi's top brass opened the meeting with an evaluation of the military situation. They observed that Saigon's troops were “growing weaker militarily, politically, and economically every day” and that Hanoi's forces were now “stronger than the enemy in the South.” They noted that they had “set up strategic positions linking North and South, had increased our forces and stockpiles of matériel, and had completed the system of strategic and tactical roads.” And given the decline in American assistance to Saigon, they concluded that the United States was “meeting difficulties at home and abroad” and that “its ability to give political and military aid to its protégés was declining every day.”

Dung wrote that there was a heated discussion of one key question: “Did the Americans have the ability to send troops back into the South when our large attacks led to the danger of the Saigon army's collapse?” He noted that all “paid special attention to the fact that since they had signed the Paris Agreement on Vietnam and had been forced to withdraw from South Vietnam, the Americans had grown more confused and were in greater difficulty than before.” Inflation, recession, energy shortages, and Watergate all handicapped the United States. Communist party First Secretary Le Duan concluded, “Now that the United States has pulled out of the South, it will be hard for them to jump back in.” Congress, in his view, was
abandoning Saigon and would never intervene to save Thieu's government.

Hanoi's war council decided to launch a major offensive in 1975. In November it sent a directive giving the word to its military commanders in the South. “Enemy air and artillery capability [is] now limited as a result of reductions in U.S. aid. In short, the enemy is declining militarily and has no chance of regaining the position they held in 1973. On the other hand, our position is improving. We are now stronger than we were during the Tet Offensive in 1968 and the summer of 1972. We now have ample amounts of money, weapons, and equipment which makes it possible for us to initiate a sustained attack on a wide front.”

North Vietnam, now armed to the teeth, was poised to strike. Its readiness was a result of a massive resupply effort by the Soviet Union and China. In 1973, while Congress was cutting aid to South Vietnam, North Vietnam received 2.8 million metric tons of imports from its Communist allies, an amount 50 percent larger than that of 1972 and 10 percent higher than the record set in 1971. And in 1974, Hanoi imported over 3.5 million metric tons. In November 1974, when President Ford met with the Soviets in Vladivostok and the Chinese in Peking, he asked for greater restraint on their part. But neither slowed the flow of arms.

Hanoi's rearmament had not been inevitable. Initially, its Communist allies had not been eager to give more aid, because we had made it clear to them that doing so would damage their new relationships with the United States. When Hanoi's leaders complained about the level of resupply, the Soviets and the Chinese dragged their feet, offering some new aid but with strings attached. Moscow and Peking demurred, saying that it was a hopeless and wasteful effort to keep sending arms that would later be destroyed through American bombing. But after Congress cut off the possibility of future bombing in June 1973, there was no longer any reason for restraint. Moscow and Peking had been willing to help us contain Hanoi—but only if we were determined to do so as well.

During 1974, with the benefit of its new supplies, North Vietnam prepared to renew its offensive. It built up its forces and logistics system in South Vietnam while conducting a series of strategic raids designed to make marginal improvements in its positions. By December, Hanoi had arrayed a heavily armed, 185,000-man expeditionary force against South Vietnam's thin lines of defense. Once again Saigon's shortfall of regular combat battalions was sharply evident. But unlike the situation in 1972, our ally did not have the mobility to redeploy its forces quickly, because of budget cuts in Congress, and did not have the air cover of American bombers, because of the bombing cutoff legislated by Congress.

As the dry season began in December 1974, South Vietnam faced the looming danger of being overrun after a North Vietnamese breakthrough. On December 13, after initiating several diversionary strikes, the North Vietnamese began the assault on Phouc Long Province about fifty miles north of Saigon. It moved in two divisions, a tank battalion, an artillery and an antiaircraft regiment, and several local sapper and infantry units. South Vietnam's forces were comprised of two battalions of the Regional Forces and two platoons of the Popular Forces. Although these units were putting up a heroic resistance, the weight of superior numbers took its toll. Saigon deployed some reinforcements, but outposts had to be abandoned one by one under barrages of artillery fire sometimes as heavy as 3,000 rounds per day. Soon, South Vietnamese forces were unable to return fire. By January 6, 1975, Phouc Long Province had fallen—the first Communist conquest of a provincial capital since 1972 and of a full province since 1954.

When the news reached Hanoi, North Vietnamese leaders were holding a series of strategy-planning meetings. Le Duan advocated a bolder military attack, with a two-year timetable for total victory. He argued that the failure of the United States to respond in any way demonstrated that we would not intervene even with our air power to prevent the defeat of Saigon. He called for a “widespread attack in 1975 to create conditions for a general uprising in 1976 to liberate all of South Vietnam.”
But he was advising this option simply as the minimum. “If opportunities present themselves early or late in 1975,” he added, “South Vietnam should be liberated this year.”

• • •

On the eve of their battle for survival, our South Vietnamese allies were in their weakest condition in over five years.

Congressional cuts in military assistance for fiscal year 1975 had an immediate effect on South Vietnam's armed forces because they needed to ration their fiscal 1974 appropriations even more strictly if they were to have any hope of getting through the following year.

Our $700 million aid package actually amounted to only $500 million because Congress now forced our ally to foot the bill for shipping and other expenses. South Vietnam's needs for ammunition
alone
were $500 million
at
1974
prices
. Its army received only about 50 percent of what it required, and its air force only about 30 percent. Its fuel supplies would be so tight that it could afford to operate only 49 percent of its vehicles. Over 200 aircraft had to be put into storage. And any significant troop movements required the approval of the corps commander.

Our pledge to replace, piece for piece, all equipment destroyed or worn out during the cease-fire went out the window. By June 1974, South Vietnam had lost 58 ships. It received no replacements. It had lost 281 aircraft, but received only 8 primitive, propeller-driven Cessna 0-1's in return. Furthermore, South Vietnam could afford only 33 percent of the spare parts it needed. Over 4,000 vehicles and aircraft stood idle awaiting repair.

This had a serious detrimental effect on air support. South Vietnam's air force, knowing that no replacements or spare parts were available, could not afford to take any risks when attacking enemy positions. Bombing and strafing became far less effective as a result.

Availability of ammunition required severe restrictions on its use. South Vietnamese commanders in the field were begging their superiors for more as the fighting intensified. A comparison
of the available supplies from July 1974 through February 1975 with the actual consumption rate under the intensive fighting during 1972 led to grim conclusions. In 1972, South Vietnam's army had fired an average of 2.8 rounds per day from its 81mm mortars, 25.0 rounds from its 105mm howitzers, and 16.2 rounds from its 155mm howitzers. But now there were, respectively, only 1.1, 6.2, and 4.9 rounds per day available for these weapons. Less than a third of the firepower used by South Vietnamese forces in 1972 would be available to them during 1975.

In February 1975, stocks of critical ammunition were far below the sixty-day safety level. South Vietnam had a thirty-one day supply of munitions for the 5.56mm rifle, twenty-five days of the fragmentation grenade, twenty-nine days of the 40mm grenade, twenty-seven days of the 60mm mortar, thirty days for the 81mm mortar, thirty-four days for the 105mm howitzer, and thirty-one days for the 155mm howitzer. This constituted a crisis of the first order. Even if the combat rates stayed at the levels of late 1974, the fact was that South Vietnam would simply run out of all ammunition in May 1975.

The availability and quality of medical care for South Vietnamese casualties plunged. Wounded soldiers could not count on evacuation helicopters. Stocks of basic medical supplies were depleted to such critical levels that strict conservation measures were ordered. It was even necessary to wash bandages, surgical dressings, intravenous sets, rubber gloves, and hypodermic needles and syringes so they could be reused.

When these shortages made it painfully clear that Saigon urgently needed more military assistance, President Ford asked Congress for a $300 million supplementary appropriation for South Vietnam. He also requested another $222 million for Cambodia—which had even worse supply shortages.

These requests were the bare minimun necessary for our allies to survive.

• • •

None of these events went unnoticed in the North Vietnamese war councils. Hanoi's leaders could not believe their good
fortune as the antiwar majority in Congress did their work for them.

“Nguyen Van Thieu,” General Dung later wrote, “had to call on his troops to fight a ‘poor man's war.' ” He observed that the “decrease in American aid had made it impossible for Saigon troops to carry out their combat and force-development plans” and noted that there was a 60 percent drop in South Vietnamese fire support and a 50 percent reduction in mobility. “This situation,” he continued, “forced them to change over from large-scale operations and deep-penetration helicopter and tank assaults to defense of their outposts, digging in and carrying out small search operations.”

As North Vietnam started its final offensive, he wrote, the most significant point was that “as we increasingly took the initiative and grew stronger, the enemy grew weaker and more passive every day.”

After its victory in Phouc Long, Hanoi ordered an attack on Ban Me Thout, the capital of Darlac Province in the central highlands. On March 10, three North Vietnamese divisions advanced on the city. South Vietnamese defenses were manned with only one regiment of regular troops and three battalions of territorials. General Dung later wrote that his forces had advantages of 5.5 to 1 in infantry, 2.1 to 1 in heavy artillery, and 1.2 to 1 in tanks and armor. Yet despite these odds, South Vietnam's troops did not cut and run—they stood and fought. It was a hotly contested battle. Antiaircraft fire and intense fighting at the city's air strip made sending in reinforcements impossible, and the relentless hammering of enemy artillery soon forced the South Vietnamese to fall back. In the end, Ban Me Thout fell in less than 24 hours. But it was because the South Vietnamese were lacking not valor but numbers. When Hanoi's forces had taken the city, its streets were strewn with the bodies of hundreds of South Vietnamese soldiers killed in action.

With the fall of Ban Me Thout, North Vietnamese forces held the western approaches to Saigon. President Thieu therefore called a meeting of his military strategists and commanders at
Cam Ranh on March 14. He did so with a heavy sense of pessimism. On March 12, the House Democratic Caucus had voted 189 to 49 against the Ford administration's request for $300 million in supplemental appropriations, and the next day the Senate Democratic Caucus had affirmed this verdict 38 to 5. Thieu knew, as did Hanoi, that there was no way to overcome those majorities. He now had to recognize the painful fact that his forces could no longer afford to defend the entire country.

Thieu told his commanders that he was switching to a strategy of “light at the top, heavy at the bottom.” He explained that the government was going to withdraw forces from the central and northern provinces to reinforce its defenses in the Saigon area and the Mekong delta, where most of the country's population lived. It was a desperate gambit—but as North Vietnam's offensive took shape, South Vietnam was in desperate straits.

At the Cam Ranh conference, Thieu took his first step toward implementing his new strategy: He ordered the abandonment of the central highlands. He knew this meant that the Communist forces in the region would sweep to the coast and thereby divide the country. But he also knew that his two divisions there could not hold out indefinitely against Hanoi's four unless major reinforcements were sent in. None were available. Cuts in military aid had left South Vietnam without any reserves. Therefore, he reluctantly told his generals to withdraw South Vietnam's forces from Pleiku and Kontum and redeploy them for a counterattack to retake Ban Me Thout.

Thieu's strategic withdrawal was more easily ordered than executed. North Vietnamese forces had interdicted all major roads running eastward from Pleiku and Kontum. South Vietnamese troops would take a severe pounding if they tried to punch through along Route 19 or 14. Thieu therefore decided to have them take Route 7B, an old logging road that had not been used in years. This turned out to be a disastrous mistake. No one took the time to find out if Route 7B was usable. Not until it was too late did the South Vietnamese discover
that the road had been overgrown with brush and was missing an important bridge.

On March 15, as South Vietnamese soldiers prepared to pull out, Pleiku City and Kontum fell into chaos. No one had the slightest intention of being left behind. A mass exodus of their entire populations—over 200,000 people—made it impossible to conduct an orderly military retreat. As civilians got mixed into the ranks of soldiers, progress slowed. Poor road conditions soon brought the march down to a snail's pace.