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CHAPTER 1
THE TRAP IS BAITED
It was quiet, but it wouldn't be for long. Lt. Col. Mike Conrad, commanding officer of the 2/8, and the senior officer commanding at FSB Illingworth, knew the NVA were out there. His ground surveillance radar had found them stacked up and swarming in the tree line, and they would come boiling out of the jungle and attempt to overrun his undermanned and vulnerable position as soon as they felt ready. That would be just about any moment. He knew he'd get a warning, though — maybe a few minutes — before the assault began. The NVA were experienced, tough, capable, and far from stupid. They'd begin by pounding the bejesus out of Conrad's base with mortars, rockets, recoilless rifles, and whatever artillery they might have been able to drag through the woods and place behind their front lines. They would soften up the Americans before blowing their bugles and charging Conrad's works.
It was 0217, April 1, 1970. Every man on the fire base, about 220 of them, had been woken up in anticipation of an attack. Conrad had demanded that every officer and every sergeant make sure that every man was awake and alert. The "Pipsy-5" antipersonnel radar that Conrad and his men had deployed to scour their perimeter had initially picked up strong movement right before midnight, especially in the jungle area facing the southwest corner of their pitifully small berm. Conrad did not hesitate. He ordered the Cobra gunships he had standing by to zoom in and rake the tree lines. They unloaded salvo after salvo of rockets and ripped the foliage with their miniguns. Artillery from nearby firebases like FSB Hannas, FSB St. Barbara, and Camp Hazard opened up on the preprogrammed coordinates they had carefully calculated, aiming points designed to support FSB Illingworth. Conrad also unleashed his own .50 cal machine guns and whatever M-60s were available, and all guns poured fire directly into the trees ahead.
No response came back toward Conrad's lines, however, and after a few minutes, the firing of the defenders slowed to a stop. Rotor blades flicked away in the night sky, their sounds becoming faint as they sped away to refuel and resupply. The throaty cannons and mortars fell silent, too. Machine-gun barrels glowed, and the smell of warm gun oil wafted on the night air. The grunts put their personal weapons back on "safe." It became eerily quiet. After a few minutes the night sounds returned. Crickets recommenced their chirping; a monkey screeched in the trees. Within the lines, the men nervously began the never-ending process of wiping down and reloading their weapons. They relaxed — as much as they could given the tension swirling around them. A number of them decided to catch a few z's. Those who could sleep did so in place, boots on, heads resting on helmets or other equally uncomfortable, makeshift pillows.
Colonel Conrad cautiously stepped out from his TOC (tactical operations center) and peered into the blackness. With his RTO (radio telephone operator) at his side he decided to walk the perimeter — again. It would be one more sweep of the interior lines, just to be sure that he and his men had done everything humanly possible to be ready.
A thousand things were racing through Conrad's brain. Uppermost in his thoughts was the fact that as bad as their situation had become, it was exactly what his bosses had wanted it to be. His men were being used as lures, very expensive and vulnerable lures, to draw out the NVA and get them to expose themselves. It had worked, that was for sure, and since it had, Conrad's job had morphed into keeping the lures from being swallowed whole. It wasn't going to be easy.
After his last stroll Conrad returned to the TOC. He decided to lie down and try to catch a few precious moments of sleep. He would not get very much rest. About an hour later, after tossing around miserably on his cot, he was wide awake. At 0217, somewhere out in the inky blackness, he heard them: faint whistles followed by the barking of artillery. Conrad leapt from his rack and tried to race outside. Bad move — he was forced to dive back into the TOC as sheets of steel rained down on his post. The explosions ripped the night sky apart and enveloped the entire compound in deadly shards of red-hot metal.
CHAPTER 2
THE FIREBASE STRATEGY IN VIETNAM
By early 1970, "Vietnamization" of the war was in full swing. The "we can beat them" approach of General William Westmoreland, who had commanded all the troops in Vietnam from 1964 to 1968, had proved to be unattainable. Also over was the tenure of his former boss, President Lyndon Johnson. The elevation of Richard Nixon to the presidency, partly based on a promise to end the war, blew sweeping winds of strategic change into the Saigon headquarters of MACV (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam) soon after the 1968 elections. General Creighton W. Abrams was placed in command, and his orders were clear: Hand off the war to the South Vietnamese and get us out with as much dignity and as few additional casualties as possible.
By the first months of 1970, many American units had been issued orders to stand down and get ready to redeploy back to the States. Our staunch allies, like Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea, were peeling away as well. Even at that, over 350,000 army, navy, and air force personnel were still stationed in Vietnam along with about 50,000 U.S. Marines. The main job assigned to all that manpower was to "clear the playing field" of as many obstacles as possible and then turn over responsibility for the war to the South Vietnamese government and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). It would not be an easy task, and many in the American forces were dubious about the potential for a positive outcome.
The skepticism did not come about due to the perceptions concerning the combat capabilities of the average soldier within the ARVN. Just like their opponents, the Vietcong and the NVA, the South Vietnamese were fighting for what they believed in. Generally, the frontline ARVN troops and their junior officers had a decent reputation, and many had fought bravely. The challenge within the ARVN was with the field-grade officers (majors) and above (colonels and generals). The officer corps at the higher levels was riddled with the corrupt and the incompetent. Part of the reason was cultural; this was a society that had been, for centuries, based on the Chinese model, where connections and bribery had played a major role in determining who acceded to the higher levels of power. Another big part of the problem stemmed from the fact that many of the most courageous and competent officers, invariably the younger, lower-ranking ones, were not surviving long enough to get promoted and rise to the top.
This situation might have been able to be corrected if the quasi-civilian governments of the era had had any backbone or moral fiber themselves. As it was, one corrupt regime followed another, and no effective and determined leadership emerged to stabilize the situation. The so-called domino theory, which the war hawks touted and the "peaceniks" derided, ultimately proved to be correct, but in fairness to those who were skeptical, some of the dominoes were just plain rotten.
Via Vietnamization, were we knowingly setting up a "paper tiger"? In hindsight, it would seem that most of the senior leaders of the time would probably have guessed just that, but it wasn't a foregone conclusion. There was a chance for success, albeit a very tentative one. This glimmer of a prospect, combined with the persistent pressure to cut our losses and withdraw, made Vietnamization the plan of the day.
Setting up a clean slate upon which the ARVN could write their destiny was not going to be easy. It centered on using the superior firepower of American arms, principally those on the ground and in the air. The army, marines, and air force, in particular, would police things up one more time, hoping the NVA would not be capable of racking up another set of insurmountable obstacles for the ARVN. This strategy meant locating and clearing as many NVA strongholds, supply depots, and infiltration trails as possible before handing off the baton. It would, in May 1970, be the primary reason for the Cambodian Incursion; but in March, that event was still some weeks away and in a highly classified planning phase.
In War Zone C, where the story of FSB Illingworth takes place, the task of cleanup fell primarily to the 1st Cavalry Division. The "First Team" was a 15,000-man division, primarily infantry, but with a substantial airlift capability. The division's hefty reliance on its helicopters gave it, in fact, an "airmobile" designation. The unit was also augmented by the temporary assignment to it of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment (ACR) and a number of batteries from the 2nd Field Force, Vietnam (Artillery). The combined force was a very powerful one with the ability to move fast and strike hard. The division was commanded, at the time of this story, by Maj. Gen. Elvy Roberts.
Roberts was old-school. He had graduated from West Point with the Class of '43 and was immediately thrown into the crucible of World War II. As a paratrooper, he made jumps into Normandy and other parts of France with the famed 501st and 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiments. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and by the time the war concluded he had a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart to testify to his personal bravery.
Roberts rose steadily through the officer ranks, leading a battalion, then a brigade, and was, for two years in the 1950s, principal U.S. military adviser to the shah of Iran. As the Vietnam War commenced, then widened, he served a tour as an adviser to the ARVN. Most of the army's best officers pulled an adviser's tour at one time or another in the early years of the conflict. On his second tour, he was tapped as an assistant division commander and ultimately the division commander of the 1st Cavalry.
In his turn as head of the division, he was assisted by two ADCs (assistant division commanders), one of whom was Brig. Gen. George Casey Sr. Casey was a rising star in the army — brilliant (he matriculated first at Harvard, then transferred to West Point, Class of '45), popular, fearless, and an exceptional strategist. Although "fire bases" or "fire support bases" were not new in concept, it was primarily Casey's method for deploying them at this point in the war that made them critical to the Vietnamization objectives of the division. The strategy was much more about mobility in Casey's vision than it had been when the U.S. Army's Korean allies had first developed the fire base concept.
Casey was no stranger to Vietnam either. He had served in country previously, not once but twice. For ambitious senior officers, two tours were becoming more or less de rigueur. Casey was being offered a third tour, but three tours would be strictly voluntary — and unusual. This tour, if he accepted it, would give him command of the division, after a few months as an ADC. He said yes. He would, of course, get a second star, making him one of the army's youngest-ever major generals, but he did not accept the assignment for that reason. His notes, letters, and records, as well as the recollections of his many devoted aides and subordinates, indicate that he had a deep, abiding concern for his men. He knew, unquestionably, that the dynamics of the war were changing, and he wanted to see his men get through this difficult transition period with as little hardship and bloodshed as possible. He felt it was his duty to stay with these men, to protect them to the extent that he could, and to get them out of this quagmire as soon as possible.
With the brainy, gifted, and hard-charging Casey as his number two, Roberts didn't have a lot to worry about when it came to making sure that his orders were carried out and that the troops were doing what they were supposed to be doing, albeit under difficult circumstances. Roberts was well aware of the informal chatter about Casey's rising star in the army and his possibly becoming chief of staff at some point in his career. Roberts gave Casey a lot of room to either prove his theories — or hang himself.
So it was that Casey, in early 1970, convened his battalion commanders and basically told them that they were going to do things differently. They would no longer be seeking out the enemy and attempting to engage them in full-on, stand-up fights: They were going to get the enemy to come to them, by luring them out, tempting them with easy targets, then laying on the full, crushing force of the big guns and tactical air.
War Zone C, the 1st Cavalry's primary area of operations (AO), extended from Saigon, north and west, all the way up and through a large bulge in the Vietnamese contour that ended in a jagged and twisted border with Cambodia (seemap). The area had once been modestly populated, and the French had built a hard-surfaced road through the region. This highway was designed to carry traffic and commerce from Saigon to the major cities along the Cambodian border and then on to Phnom Penh, the country's hub and capital. One of these border cities, Snoul, would become a prime focal point of the upcoming Cambodian invasion.
The commercial center of War Zone C was Tay Ninh City, but by 1970 it was nearly deserted; the whole region had been a free-fire zone for nearly two decades. The French, the Viet Minh fighting the French, the Vietcong, the PAVN (the People's Army of Vietnam), and, eventually, the Americans had all used the wide-ranging area as a constant battleground. Many cleared areas that had supported productive farms were being reclaimed by the jungle.
War Zone C, which had colorful nicknames for certain facets of its contours — monikers like "the Parrot's Beak," the "Fishhook," and "the Dog's Head"— had become a prime conduit for the northern forces to sneak both men and supplies into the south. The infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail, which snaked down from the north through the neutral nations of Laos and Cambodia to the west, had sprouted tributary pathways throughout the zone. The terrain was riddled with cleverly disguised trails, and the triple-canopy jungle hid numerous caches of supplies and materiel.
The presence of the 1st Cav and, concurrently, the 25th Infantry, had made life much more difficult for the PAVN. Their choices were to relocate the supply routes to Cambodia or to try to continue to push supplies and reinforcements through the zone. Cambodia was the worst of their options: The delays inherent in the longer routes were onerous, and the government of Cambodia was becoming increasingly obstreperous concerning the "invasion" of its territory by the North Vietnamese.
There was another pressing imperative for the NVA to use the routes available to them in War Zone C: Their allies, the Vietcong, had suffered a staggering number of casualties during the 1968 Tet Offensive. The coordinated attacks, flung at nearly one hundred different targets during the Tet holiday, were universally beaten back (including an attack on the American Embassy in Saigon), but there were many desperate battles, and the campaign nearly finished the Vietcong as an effective fighting force. This collapse put the whole NVA strategy in jeopardy, especially in the southern part of the country, and it made the NVA even more anxious to rush men and supplies to the areas in and around Saigon. The trails through War Zone C were still the most expedient pathways.
The NVA, like sharks, were also smelling blood in the water. They believed that the Americans were losing their resolve to fight hard (that proved to be untrue) and that taking just a few more risks, pushing just a little harder, would finish off any determined resistance on the part of the United States and its allies. As a consequence, they elected to continue to use the supply routes, supply depots, and fortified bunker complexes they had peppered throughout War Zone C. In so doing they were, in effect, daring the Americans to deny them the use of these resources.
General Casey certainly understood what the NVA were up to, and he wanted to thwart the enemy's plans for using his AO as a conduit to press the war more effectively. This would mean, of course, that he and his men would have to root out the enemy, one base at a time. Plus, the rules had changed. Casey, Roberts, and the other senior commanders no longer had carte blanche to throw American resources at the enemy in an effort to get them to commit to a fight. The brute-force tactics of hard-charging warfare were no longer authorized. Casey would have to make the NVA come to him, then try to destroy them in a more efficient manner.
Casey came up with a plan. It was bold, innovative, and dangerous, but Roberts signed off on it, and in late 1969 and early 1970 it was put in play. The strategy was based on speed, mobility, stealth, and keeping the enemy guessing — and nervous. Small, company-sized units, both infantry and armor, would be sent out on long patrols to try to sniff out hidden enemy caches and supply routes. Once they were located, air and artillery would be called in to eliminate them. To assist in this process, the artillery units in the division would no longer remain in fixed base positions. They would be broken down into battery-sized commands and moved around like the infantry and the cavalry.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Fire Base Illingworth"
by .
Copyright © 2013 Philip Keith.
Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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