Losing Vietnam (28 page)

The newspapers blamed Ambassador Martin for the “catastrophe” in Saigon. Photographs of evacuees ascending the ladder at the embassy
rooftop were printed everywhere as a sign of failure. There was no failure on Martin's part. Yes, he held out hope to the very end that the situation would improve. In the final days, however, the normally decisive ambassador could not face the fact that South Vietnam was falling. In 1974, he had not supported proper evacuation planning, concerned that it would send a negative message to the Vietnamese. Then he refused to allow a stepped-up airlift, again concerned that it would panic the Vietnamese. On 29 April he wasted valuable daylight hours before he acquiesced to a military evacuation option. Finally, he would not leave the embassy as long as the airlift could continue to evacuate the Vietnamese supporters of the United States. In the end, President Ford had to order him to leave.

In testimony before Congress, Martin did fight hard to obtain the military and economic aid necessary to keep South Vietnam operating. He would not stand by and see American promises to the Vietnamese vitiated. Ambassador Martin was an honorable man, intelligent and strong and quite gutsy. Once the fall of the government was obvious, he did his best to evacuate the maximum number of Vietnamese supporters possible. In Cambodia we evacuated hundreds of supporters; in Vietnam we evacuated over a hundred thousand. Martin deserved much better treatment than he received from the press. If there was any failure, it was Congress's for not properly supporting the war efforts in Southeast Asia, certainly not Martin's for attempting to evacuate the maximum number of U.S. supporters.

Subsequent to the cease-fire, the war in South Vietnam was a North Vietnamese–initiated conflict primarily directed against the South Vietnamese pacification program to gain population and territorial control so as to establish a claim of sovereignty. The ultimate goal, of course, was to overthrow the government of South Vietnam. It was a war of attrition that the communists incrementally ratcheted up in intensity by increasing their number of attacks by fire and by increasing the scope of ground attacks from regimental to divisional size and finally to coordinated corps actions. Studies of wars normally focus on the final cataclysmic battles; however, in this war it would be misleading for a
summation to neglect the thousands of minor engagements that were continuously fought in the rural countryside. This war of minor skirmishes took a heavy toll of human lives and caused much suffering for the peasants whose allegiances both sides fought over. Numbers rather than words best describe the conduct of the war: During the 116-week period from the cease-fire on 28 January 1973 until the last few data inputs were received on 19 April 1975, there were 85,210 incidents and more than 155,000 combatants were killed in hostile actions. Of these incidents, 69,011, or 81 percent, were enemy initiated—of which 52.2 percent were attacks by fire, 39.4 percent ground incidents, and 8.4 percent terrorism, sabotage, or political acts. On the flip side, 16,199, or 19 percent, were friendly-initiated ground attacks. The 116 weeks were divided into five periods, during which the enemy-initiated ground attacks remained relatively constant at about 235 per week. However, as its logistics improved, to keep pressure on the RVNAF the enemy kept increasing its attacks by fire both in number and in intensity. The 203 attacks by fire per week in the initial period more than doubled to 428 in the final period. In December 1973, after our initial analysis, to keep the enemy off balance the South Vietnamese increased their friendly-initiated ground contacts from an average of thirty-nine per week in 1973 to 273 per week in period 5, which, incidentally, exceeded North Vietnam's 255 ground contacts per week in the same period.

The types of incidents portrayed can be further categorized as ground contacts, other ground incidents (ambush, penetration, and harassment), attacks by fire, and other enemy-initiated incidents (mines, terrorism, sabotage, and political) (see
table 16
).

Table 16.
Total Incidents, 28 January 1973–19 April 1975

Source
: “Republic of Vietnam Ammunition Conservation Study,” June 1975, Headquarters USSAG, Nakhon Phanom, Thailand.

Ground incidents include contacts, ambushes, penetrations, and harassments. The definition of each is explained in
appendix A
. There were relatively few ambushes and penetrations but 10,038 harassments, which resulted in 3,122 enemy killed. Although few in number, the 250 ambushes resulted in by far the greatest number of casualties per incident (4.56). The most important ground incidents were the 30,807 ground contacts (attacks), which accounted for 96 percent of the enemy killed and 62 percent of friendly casualties. Sabotage and political acts by the communists resulted in no casualties. However, the enemy acts of terrorism and the ubiquitous mines and booby traps caused 4,775 casualties. The other primary source of friendly casualties was the attacks by fire, which caused 25 percent of all friendly casualties.

In December 1973, USSAG informed the joint staff that the communists had taken the offensive everywhere in South Vietnam and that the RVNAF was both more effective and more efficient when it initiated attacks, and as a result the word went out for it to become more aggressive. From December 1973, when we initiated coverage by type of unit, until April 1975 the ARVN initiated more ground contacts (12,974) than the enemy. The army attacked the enemy more than twice as often (5,799) than it was attacked (2,498). The territorials initiated about as many ground contacts (7,175) as the communists initiated against them (7,391) and more than those initiated by the army. As expected, the enemy attacked the territorials almost three times as often as it did the army. Obviously, the North Vietnamese were selective in choosing their targets. This reflected that territorials—who, incidentally, had very little in the way of firepower compared to the regulars and whose troop strengths were usually depleted—protected the South Vietnamese hamlets, generally the North's objectives to gain territory and population and disrupt the pacification program, and, of course, there were twice as many territorials as regulars. Of all communist-initiated ground attacks, 75 percent were against territorials. Even the communist multidivisional attacks against Phuoc Long and Ban Me Thuot were directed at units composed primarily of territorials.

There is no doubt that the territorials' outposts and units bore the brunt of frequent enemy attacks and consequently paid a high price, with more friendly territorials killed than regular troops. However, the 30,146 enemy killed by the territorials was a surprising number. Yet the
better-trained and -led regulars were even more successful, eliminating 42,123 enemy, with an effectiveness ratio of 6.27, almost double that of the territorials.

The army was the glue that held the RVNAF together; it backed up the territorials and repeatedly took the battle to the enemy. Even circumscribed by lack of equipment, ammunition, petroleum, and spare parts, the ARVN was an effective combat organization, although it paled in comparison with U.S. combat forces.

The large number of friendly casualties resulting from enemy attacks by fire was reduced somewhat over time as the matter received more command emphasis, but it was always too high. Again, more than twice as many attacks by fire were launched against the territorials than against the regulars, whose defenses against attacks by fire were not satisfactory. Of all enemy attacks by fire, 61 percent resulted in no casualties, which indicates multiple casualties were often taken.

The communist strategy of conducting thousands of minor attacks against the weakest elements of the military enabled the North Vietnamese to slowly gain territory and some population while forcing the highly dispersed South Vietnamese forces into a defensive posture, “protecting all territory and population.” It also allowed the North Vietnamese to expand their command and control, upgrade equipment, and increase their manpower in preparation for massive multidivisional combined arms attacks against outnumbered friendly troops defending selected enemy objectives. Yet, this was a war of minor skirmishes punctuated by a few major battles. The casualties added up—and quickly, because of the total number of incidents. Every day, there were an average of two major incidents and 140 combatants killed.

The United States reneged on almost all of the pre–peace treaty promises made to South Vietnam. It did not replace major combat system losses on a one-for-one basis; it did not maintain the pre-treaty level of the stocks of ammunition; it failed to intervene militarily when North Vietnam overwhelmingly renewed its aggression; and most importantly it did not continue to provide adequate financial support. In August 1974, a USSAG study had concluded, “U.S. funding of less than 1
billion dollars ensures early demise of RVNAF.” The congressional funding available to South Vietnam for FY 75 was only $583 million, definitely not sufficient to successfully conduct the war. In April 1975 the South Vietnamese would have been completely out of ammunition within days; they were doomed to defeat. The question then should be “Why did South Vietnam fall when it did?”

A contributing factor to South Vietnam's ultimate defeat was President Thieu's dictate that the military must protect all territory and population, which overrode his joint staff's recommendation to withdraw from many of its relatively isolated positions. This required the military to become thinly spread throughout the country, protecting more than ten thousand hamlets and villages. As a consequence, it had no reserves with which to combat a potential major communist offensive. The great reduction in the FY 75 U.S. funding greatly exacerbated the situation. Rather than changing its current strategy to one of a prioritized defense of critical areas so that the South Vietnamese manpower and greatly reduced resources could be more selectively utilized, the government continued on as before until early March, when the enemy's attacks spooked President Thieu.

However, in early March 1975 South Vietnam was holding its own. The December–January COSVN offensive in MR-3 and MR-4 had netted the enemy Phuoc Long Province and some key outposts and population in the delta. From a military point of view, the localized Phuoc Long defeat was not great, although the first loss of a provincial capital was a psychological blow to the South Vietnamese. There were no major enemy inroads in MR-1 and -2; the RVNAF was on the offensive and was still effective, although not as much as it had been in the summer of 1974. It still had superior mobility, but the enemy antiaircraft capabilities and the infiltration of a great number of tanks and artillery had seriously eroded its firepower advantages. The necessity to dramatically cut back on flying hours and conserve ammunition and the inability to replace combat equipment losses was having a deleterious effect. Additionally, while the RVNAF was scraping the bottom of the manpower barrel to bring units up to strength and to form a strategic reserve, the North Vietnamese were infiltrating a large number of combatants and organizing their regimental units into divisions and corps capable of conducting large-scale combined
arms offensive operations. The force pendulum was swinging inexorably in favor of the North Vietnamese. Yet, for all of this, the South Vietnamese soldiers were still seriously attriting the enemy and still had a strong military capability. Man for man, they were probably superior to the enemy. (Many American Vietnam War veterans, who were better equipped and better led, do not have a high regard for the ARVN, usually comparing its capabilities to those of U.S. troops. However when one compares the South Vietnamese military to the Cambodian or Thai military, both of whom I was very familiar with, and the NVA/VC, the ARVN looked good.)

So what happened? The II Corps commander's inability in March 1975 to properly interpret the intelligence information about the communists' intent to attack Ban Me Thuot prevented the precautionary reinforcement of the principally territorial units in the area, enabling the enemy to overwhelm the greatly outnumbered defenders and resulting in the second loss of a provincial capital in two months. This obviously caused President Thieu to abandon his firm policy of giving up no territory or population, and he made his catastrophic unilateral decision to hastily withdraw from MR-1 and -2. His order to withdraw was ill-conceived, poorly executed, and unnecessary at the time.

The North Vietnamese pressures in March were high initially but subsequently not overwhelming. The communist buildup of combat forces in MR-1 and MR-2 was not large. The most difficult of all tactical maneuvers is a withdrawal. It takes careful planning and strong execution—particularly under pressure. After his fateful decision, the JGS staff told President Thieu that probably only 25 percent of the combat forces could be saved. They were entirely correct. The retreat lacked both careful planning and strong execution; the air force, for example, was not fully integrated into the planning. The unfortunate situation could only be saved by a massive introduction of U.S. air power, and this was not forthcoming. The end had come quickly and dramatically, the result of President Thieu's decisions and of poor ground execution by senior military leaders.