Steel and Blood: South Vietnamese Armor and the War for Southeast Asia

By Ha Mai Viet

When South Vietnam was abandoned by its American allies and consequently defeated by the North Vietnamese in 1975, all its military records were lost to the enemy. This has led to a paucity of factually based analyses of the war by South Vietnamese authors. In a project lasting some ten years, and financed by his own hard-earned resources, Colonel Viet has researched, documented, and analyzed the Vietnam War from the perspective of South Vietnamese armor forces, elements in which he himself played an important role as leader, teacher, and innovator. His travels to interview hundreds of people with first-hand knowledge of these matters took him back and forth across the United States (and to Canada, France and Australia) and enabled him to piece together the story as recalled by virtually every senior South Vietnamese who was involved, along with many of lesser rank but important experience, and many Americans as well. The result is a unique and invaluable work, one recounting from the early days of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam its organization and development, its combat operations, and its interaction with American advisors and then later with deployed American units. Viet tells this story as an historian would, not glossing over the shortcomings and failures of his fellow Vietnamese soldiers (or of the Americans), but also providing definitive accounts of their successes, their innovations, their courage and determination, and the hardships experienced and survived in the course of a long, difficult, and ultimately unsuccessful struggle. In Colonel Viet's words: "In order to give the truth back to history, we did not hide anything, whether it be victory or defeat." Finally, in a very touching portion of the work, Colonel Viet memorializes his fallen comrades of the armored force and commemorates the service of all the American advisors to the armored force he was able to identify.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Naval Institute Press
• Release date: Oct 1, 2008
• ISBN: 9781612514338

Book preview

Also by Ha Mai Viet

Thep Va Mau: Thiet Giap Trong Chien Tranh Viet Nam, 2005

Coauthored works:

Blind Design: Why America Lost the Vietnam War, 1996

South Vietnam 1954–1975: Nhung Su That Chua He Nhac Toi, 1990

An Association of the U.S. Army Book

South Vietnamese Armor and the

War for Southeast Asia

By Ha Mai Viet, Former Colonel, ARVN

NAVAL INSTITUTE PRESS

Annapolis, Maryland

The latest edition of this work has been brought to publication with the generous assistance of Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest.

Naval Institute Press

291 Wood Road

Annapolis, MD 21402

© 2008 by the United States Naval Institute

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-61251-433-8 (eBook)

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Hà, Mai Viêt.

Steel and blood : South Vietnamese armor and the war for Southeast Asia / Ha Mai Viet.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Vietnam War, 1961-1975—Tank warfare. 2. Vietnam War, 1961-1975—Campaigns. 3. Vietnam War, 1961-1975—Regimental histories—Vietnam (Republic) 4. Vietnam (Republic). Quân luc. Thiét giáp—History. I. Title.

DS558.9.A75H4 2008

959.704’3325—dc22

2008015590

Print editions meet the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

1615141312111098987654321

First printing

Dedicated to the memory of my beloved father, Ha Mai Anh, and in honor of the heroes of the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces who valiantly fought until the last days in the Vietnam War.

CONTENTS

Foreword

Preface

Part I: Combat History

Chapter 1.Ferocious Battles, 1963–68

Chapter 2.Vietnamization, 1969–74

Penetrating the Plain of Reeds on the Border

Chapter 3.General Offensive on Three Fronts

Chapter 4.The Capture of South Vietnam

The Central Highlands Campaign, 1975

Part II: Military History

Chapter 5.Historical Background

Chapter 6.Vietnam National Army

Chapter 7.Vietnamese Armored Cavalry

Chapter 8.Armor before 1975

Chapter 9.Association Remembers the Armor of the Republic of Vietnam

Acknowledgments

Appendix 1: Sacrificing for the Fatherland

Appendix 2: Maps

Abbreviations

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

FOREWORD

Most wars are followed with an unending number of books about the exploits and heroism of the participants. One need only consider World War II, about which books continue to be written at an amazing rate. Such is not the case with our longest war to date—Vietnam. There have been a number of books written about the role of the American armed forces in that conflict, but because of the war’s unpopularity, many of these books do not truly represent the war in its reality, as experienced by the millions of American servicemen and -women who served there.

The millions of Vietnamese who served with honor in the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces (RVNAF) during the conflict have had much less written about their service. As a result, too many believe they did not fight with determination to preserve the freedom of their country. This unfortunate perception exists even among many American veterans of the Vietnam War who did not serve with, or alongside, RVNAF units.

Colonel Ha Mai Viet has written an excellent history of one important element of the RVNAF, the Armor Force. It was not an easy book to document and write because few RVNAF historical records of the long conflict survived the North Vietnamese conquest of South Vietnam. Colonel Viet thus spent eight years of hard work and traveled thousands of miles conducting research and interviews in an attempt to resurrect the history of RVNAF armor units. His work is unique in that it does not present just the good side of the RVNAF armor units and their leaders, but also their weaknesses. He tells the story with unflinching honesty. When the units or their leaders performed well, he tells us that, and why; when they failed, he also describes that. You seldom find this in a history of a conflict.

I have a perspective on the RVNAF that many do not because I served two tours as a senior adviser to their units. During the period 1964–65 I was the senior adviser to the 5th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division, RVNAF. During this period, the 5th Regiment was involved in constant heavy fighting with large well-trained and well-equipped Viet Cong units in the northern provinces, the area where U.S. Marines eventually operated, beginning in 1965. The 5th Regiment was in that period of the war well led, but poorly equipped with shot-out weapons and nearly no artillery fire support. In spite of this, they fought well, while suffering many dead and wounded.

In 1971–72 I was the senior adviser to the 51st Infantry Regiment and the 1st Armor Brigade, again in the northern provinces. Because of the Vietnamization program, which began in 1969, both units were equipped with weapons and other equipment on par with U.S. forces, with the exception of artillery and aviation. This upgrade made a tremendous difference in combat effectiveness—so great that it is hard to imagine unless one had served with the RVNAF during both periods.

I will not dwell on the Easter Offensive of 1972 because it is well covered in this book. I will only add that a majority of the RVNAF units with which I served fought well. Always outnumbered, they stopped and eventually defeated a well-equipped and well-trained North Vietnamese Army. American airpower, coordinated by army and marine advisers, played a key role in their success, compensating for deficiencies in artillery and aviation assets, which still characterized South Vietnamese forces.

Sadly, because of the antiwar sentiment in our country, Congress cut off aid to South Vietnam while the North Vietnamese were being rebuilt and massively supplied by the former Soviet Union. The rebuilt North Vietnamese army invaded and defeated South Vietnam in 1975. Many of my South Vietnamese comrades in arms died in that conflict or were incarcerated for long, cruel years in so-called re-education camps. It is not a period in the history of our country of which I am proud.

The story in Steel and Blood is one that needs to be told. I hope that it may inspire other former RVNAF soldiers to add their voices and testimony in countering the unfortunate derogatory myths of the RVNAF that still exist.

I am proud of the time I spent serving alongside the soldiers of the RVNAF.

LOUIS C. WAGNER JR.

General, U.S. Army (Ret.)

PREFACE

Steel and Blood aims at honoring the noble sacrifices of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Vietnam and the heroic acts of the brave troops of the Armor Branch. This work especially seeks to contribute historical facts to the military archives so that later generations can better understand the Vietnam War.

The contents of the book include two main parts: The first part relates twenty-three fierce and bloody battles fought with the participation of armored units. After that is a short history of the creation of the national armed forces and the Vietnamese Armor Branch. The sources of all facts, comments, and observations are found in the notes section and are presented in a truthful manner without any exaggeration or embellishment.

While preparing this work, with the exception of events I have personally witnessed, I have researched the related documents, tried to understand the background of events, interviewed eyewitnesses, and compared different sources of information before presenting the account of bloody events on the battlefields of South Vietnam in accordance with the truth as I found it. In order to give the truth back to history, I did not hide anything, whether it be victory or defeat.

It was not easy to find valuable documents and information. Therefore, although I spent eight long years researching the book, Steel and Blood does contain cases where the true story has not been fully told. In cases like these I only present events according to the documents that I have been able to locate, leaving the rest of the story to be told by future historians and eyewitnesses who will hopefully surface at a later date.

Aiming at honoring the memory of the members of armor units who have made the supreme sacrifice of their lives in the service of the country so that their children and grandchildren can be proud of their forefathers, I have researched and found the names of 197 members of armor units who were killed in action and the names of nine armor members who died in communist prisons, these names to be included in the history of the Armor Branch of the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces.

PART I

COMBAT HISTORY

CHAPTER 1

Ferocious Battles, 1963–68

General Situation

As of early 1959, the number of armed North Vietnamese communist troops operating in South Vietnam was estimated at approximately 40,000 guerrillas, 10,000 local force troops, and 35,000 regulars. With these forces, the Viet Cong (VC) passed Resolution 15 to launch the Simultaneous Uprising Campaign and announced that they would liberate the people of South Vietnam from the yoke of the rule of the American imperialists and the dictatorial oligarchy of Ngo Dinh Diem. ¹

As for the United States, on 5 May 1959 the United States announced that, in response to requirements in South Vietnam, by the end of the year the number of personnel assigned to the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) will be raised from 327 to 685.²

In October 1960 the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) had to fight for one entire week before it managed to repel three battalions of North Vietnamese regulars trying to cross the border from Laos to infiltrate into the 2nd Tactical Zone in the Kontum Province area.

On 20 December 1960 North Vietnam formed the National Liberation Front for South Vietnam (NLFSVN). About three months later on 10 March 1961, the National Liberation Front announced that a guerrilla campaign against the South Vietnamese government would be launched on 9 April 1961, the date of the South Vietnamese presidential election.

On 7 February 1961, two U.S. Army air support companies with a strength of three hundred soldiers landed in Saigon, raising total U.S. troop strength in South Vietnam to four thousand men.

During 1961 the number of disruptions and attacks by communist guerrillas and North Vietnamese regulars clearly increased. The primary developments, as recorded by the Rand Corporation, were as follows:

•In the 1st Tactical Zone:

— On 29 March 1961 ARVN destroyed a VC commo-liaison station at Ca Lu in Quang Tri Province and captured a document that stated that during the previous six months 1,800 North Vietnamese troops had infiltrated into South Vietnam through this particular station.

•In the 2nd Tactical Zone:

— On 1 September more than one thousand VC troops attacked two outposts in Toumorong in Kontum Province. Poko Outpost was recaptured after a few hours. The VC left more than one hundred bodies on the field.

— Three weeks later on 21 September, the VC attacked the Quang Nhieu Development Center near Ban Me Thuot.

•In the 3rd Tactical Zone:

— On 3 April, the VC attacked Ben Cat in Binh Duong Province. One hundred guerrilla soldiers were killed in this attack.

— On 14 May the VC attacked Di Linh District, but ARVN troops repelled this assault. The enemy left eight bodies behind on the battlefield.

— On 2 June, ARVN troops killed sixty-seven VC in an armed clash about fifty-five miles south of Saigon.

— On 19 September, 1,500 VC attacked and occupied Phuoc Vinh City, the capital of Phuoc Thanh Province, located sixty miles north of Saigon. The province chief and deputy province chief were both killed.³

•In the 4th Tactical Zone:

— On 28 March 1961 more than two VC battalions attacked an ARVN battalion in Cao Lanh, Kien Phong Province. Two hundred VC soldiers were killed or wounded. ARVN lost eleven men killed and twenty-three wounded.

— On 1 April 1961 four hundred guerrillas attacked Truc Giang Village in Kien Hoa Province, but Republican Guard forces repelled the attack.

— The Kien Hoa Province capital was attacked and the electrical power plant was destroyed. More than five hundred meters of road along the Kien Hoa-My Tho highway were dug up. At this location, sixty-three VC armed with individual weapons were captured.

About two months later, on 19 July, a force of approximately 700 ARVN troops conducted an ambush in the Plain of Reeds that killed 169 communist soldiers out of a total of 500 communist troops trying to infiltrate into South Vietnam. According to information from the ARVN Joint General Staff (JGS), during August 1961 ARVN forces killed a total of 302 guerrillas and captured 357 prisoners. Friendly forces lost 73 killed, 50 missing, and 191 wounded.

In the face of this situation, on 2 October 1961 President Ngo Dinh Diem said in a speech to the National Assembly, The North Vietnamese communists have started a war in South Vietnam. They have not only attacked us with guerrilla forces; they have also sent fully equipped North Vietnamese regular forces to infiltrate into South Vietnam.

In a letter sent to President Ngo Dinh Diem noting the sixth anniversary of the formation of the Republic of Vietnam, on the occasion of South Vietnam’s National Day, 26 October 1961, U.S. President Kennedy solemnly promised, The United States has decided to help South Vietnam maintain its independence, protect the Vietnamese people against communism, and build a better economic situation for themselves.

In February 1962 two U.S. army helicopter units began to be employed to transport ARVN troops into VC base areas in Ca Mau, Tay Ninh, Phuoc Thanh, Kien Hoa, Kien Phong, and Dong Thap provinces, into War Zone D, and so forth. In addition, in April 1962 the United States gave South Vietnam thirty M-113 armored personnel carriers (APC) to form two mechanized companies.⁴ Each company was equipped with fifteen APCs.⁵ Both armored companies received their equipment and were trained at the Thu Duc Armor School before being placed under the operational control of the 7th and 21st Divisions to test the combat capabilities of the M-113 APC on the battlefields of 4th Tactical Zone.

According to a document from Bison Books Corporation, as of 29 December 1962 the United States had 11,000 advisers and support personnel, including 29 Special Forces teams, in South Vietnam. As of that time, U.S. Army air units had flown more than 50,000 sorties, of which approximately 50 percent were combat support sorties.

On the communist side, China has disclosed that in 1962 it provided the VC army more than 90,000 individual and crew-served weapons and trained approximately 25,000 guerrilla troops in South Vietnam. In South Vietnam alone, the number of sympathizers working for the VC rose to 150,000. During this same period, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam consisted of approximately 200,000 regular troops, while 65,000 People’s Self-Defense troops had been trained to protect their villages and hamlets.

In early 1963 the Battle of Ap Bac was fought in the 4th Tactical Zone. The results of this battle encouraged the VC to charge forward to attack and occupy Binh Gia in the 3rd Tactical Zone to serve as the springboard for the series of important military events that took place after 1964.

On 22 November 1963 President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Vice President Lyndon Johnson replaced him and sought a solution for the war in Vietnam. After French president de Gaulle suggested neutralizing Southeast Asia,⁶ in a 1 February 1964 press conference President Johnson said that he was prepared to consider any plan that would guarantee the neutrality of both North and South Vietnam. However, just over one week later, on 11 February 1964, two of the Vietnamese Communist Party’s largest newspapers published the following statement: North Vietnam will never accept a neutral settlement. The newspapers said, If the United States follows the recommendation of a number of U.S. military officials and attacks North Vietnam, Communist China is prepared to assist the North Vietnamese Communists. About two weeks later on 25 February, the Soviet Union informed the United States that Russia could not sit back and do nothing if the United States expanded the war into North Vietnam.⁷

In South Vietnam after President Ngo Dinh Diem was assassinated on 2 November 1963, throughout 1964 the situation seriously deteriorated and suffered crises of every type, especially political and military. Hanoi exploited this deterioration to the maximum extent possible and threw everything it had into the effort to attack South Vietnam in order to gain the upper hand.

In addition, the generals holding leadership roles in the political arena only concerned themselves with fighting one another for power and relied on the United States for everything else. They did not exploit our just cause and did not think about the future consequences of their actions for our nation. It was these clumsy, inexperienced, and incapable leaders who brought South Vietnam to the brink of disaster.

During 1964 the Soviet Union supplied Hanoi with large quantities of modern weapons, including AK-47 rifles, 7.62-mm machine guns, B-40 rocket-propelled grenade launchers (RPG), and 57-mm and 75-mm recoilless rifles. Thanks to this aid, from that point on the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong armies steadily grew more powerful. The proof of this is that on 10 August 1965 Gen. Maxwell Taylor, the former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff who served as U.S. ambassador in Saigon in 1964–65, reported the following to Washington: In terms of weapons and training, the VC are better equipped and better trained than ever before.⁸

In the late fall of 1964 the Politburo in Hanoi decided to send regular army units into South Vietnam to launch large-scale conventional military operations because they concluded that small units fighting with guerrilla tactics could not topple South Vietnam.

In order to carry out this plan, in early December 1964 Hanoi sent a regiment of regulars from the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) 325th Division and a group of training instructors, all ethnic North Vietnamese, to infiltrate into South Vietnam in the Kontum Province area.⁹ By the end of December 1964 intelligence reports revealed that at least three North Vietnamese regiments,¹⁰ including the 32nd Regiment and the 325th Division’s 95th and 101st Regiments, had moved down from North Vietnam into South Vietnam.¹¹ These developments reveal that North Vietnam in fact began implementing a plan to attack and occupy South Vietnam from this point onward. This was an important development in the Vietnam War. During this same period, parallel with the North Vietnamese communist plan to infiltrate troops into central Vietnam, in South Vietnam General Nguyen Chi Thanh, the chief of the Communist Party’s Central Committee in South Vietnam, was carrying out a plan to form Viet Cong units up to the division level.

It was also in 1964 that the communists began to shift from guerrilla warfare to conventional warfare and that they began to test the combat abilities of the newly formed large VC units in South Vietnam. The prime example of this was the Battle of Binh Gia.

On 2 August 1964 North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin attacked the U.S. destroyer Maddox. Two days later the North Vietnamese attacked the destroyer Turner Joy.¹² As a result of these actions, a few days later, on 7 August, the U.S. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. This resolution granted President Johnson permission to use any measures necessary to repel armed attacks on U.S. forces and to block any aggression that might occur.¹³ After this resolution was passed, North Vietnam reacted quickly with a series of attacks against U.S. installations in South Vietnam.

On 30 October 1964 communist forces shelled the Bien Hoa Airbase, destroying six B-57 bombers.

On 24 December 1964 the communists set off explosives in the Brinks Hotel, where U.S. bachelor officers were quartered, in the center of Saigon. North Vietnamese regular troops continued to pour into South Vietnam.

From the moment that the United States officially entered the conflict in South Vietnam, the North Vietnamese communists never missed an opportunity to try to influence political events in the United States. For that reason, from 1964 on, on a regular four-year cycle, the North Vietnamese communists launched aggression against South Vietnam with large-scale campaigns aimed at creating echoes on the international political scene and at causing U.S. leaders additional problems and concerns. The following list shows the years when significant events or campaigns occurred:

1964:The Battle of Binh Gia, in which the VC shifted to conventional warfare.

1968:The Tet Offensive.

1972:Offensives in three theaters: Quang Tri, Binh Long, and Kontum.

1976:General Offensive–General Insurrection, which began on the Central Highlands Front. However, because the military situation changed beyond Hanoi’s and Saigon’s expectations, North Vietnam’s 1976 plan was turned into the 1975 Ho Chi Minh Campaign. This campaign ended the Vietnam War on 30 April 1975.¹⁴

In between the above events were continuous North Vietnamese operations aimed at

•Destroying warehouses and facilities, diverting the enemy’s attention, and eroding opposing forces

•Reducing the will to fight of the soldiers and civilians of South Vietnam and of the United States

•Creating an emotional reaction among the American people, and especially influencing the antiwar movement

•Discouraging the U.S. executive and legislative branches of government

•Creating an impact on the international political stage with the goal of mobilizing support for ending the war, using the ploy that the United States had to withdraw from South Vietnam so that North and South Vietnam could be unified

Following are the main operations and campaigns between 1963 and 1975 in which ARVN armored units participated:

1.Major operations from 1963 to 1968

The initial battles of the Vietnam War:

— Ap Bac, January 1963

— Binh Gia, December 1964

The Central Highlands Campaign of 1965: The First Attempt to Cut South Vietnam in Two

— Duc Co, August 1965

— Pleime, October 1965

— Ia Drang

The Tet Offensive, February 1968

2.Vietnamization of the War, 1970–72

Cambodian Incursion, 1970

— Toan Thang 41–46

— Toan Thang 1/71

— The Bloody Withdrawal from Dambe

— The 3rd Cavalry Brigade’s Relief of Duc Hue

The Southern Laos Incursion, 1971:

— Lam Son 719, January 1971

3.The Nguyen Hue Campaign to the Conclusion of the Paris Peace Talks

Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) Front, March 1972

— Spring 1972, the Flaming Front Lines

— 1st Cavalry Brigade on the Front Lines

— The Recapture of the Quang Tri Citadel

The Vietnamese-Cambodian Border Front, April 1972

— Heroic Binh Long

The Central Highlands Front, April 1972: The Second Attempt to Cut South Vietnam in Two

— Tan Canh Falls

— Heroic Kontum

4.The General Offensive–General Insurrection

The Central Highlands Front 1975: The Third Effort to Cut South Vietnam in Two

— Campaign 275

— The Fall of Ban Me Thuot

— The Retreat Down Provincial Route 7B

— 1st Tactical Zone Disintegrated

The Ho Chi Minh Campaign: Ending the Vietnam War

— The Last Ten Days of the Republic of Vietnam

The Initial Battles

THE BATTLE OF AP BAC

In early January 1963 the ARVN and the VC fought a ferocious battle in Ap Bac, a small, remote, lightly populated hamlet in an area crisscrossed by many canals and streams in Dinh Tuong Province, about forty miles southwest of Saigon. The terrain at Ap Bac gave the enemy many defensive advantages. In addition, Ap Bac was located near an area the communists called the Ba Beo Secret Zone.

At the time of the battle, the 5th Troop/1st M-113 APC Regiment,¹⁵ commanded by this author (Captain Ha Mai Viet), was conducting operations in Dong Xoai in the 3rd Tactical Zone. During the night of 2 January 1963, we received orders to move immediately to Ap Bac to reinforce our forces conducting the operation there because they were under heavy enemy pressure. On 3 January 1963 the 5th Troop/1st Armored Cavalry was placed under the operational control of the commander of the 7th Infantry Division.¹⁶

In terms of military theoretical principles, the initial plan of operations for the battle of Ap Bac was a workable plan. In practice, however, the unit commanders encountered a number of problems during the operation, including inaccurate information about the enemy and a lack of priority for air support. The biggest mistake was the lack of unity of command,¹⁷ and one could say that the procedures for directing the troops were rather complicated. In addition, I consider the battle of Ap Bac to have been simply an ordinary military event, even though it was the first time an entire infantry battalion had been landed by helicopter en masse on a single objective.¹⁸ In addition, I do not see anything significant about the battle that should have caused the U.S. media to publicize and dissect it as an event that could be used to evaluate the progress of the war in Vietnam.

According to an intelligence report, in late 1962 the VC set up a radio transmitter in Tan Thoi Hamlet, about one and a half kilometers northwest of Ap Bac. The intelligence report also stated that the enemy had a reinforced company, about 100 men, assigned to protect this radio transmitter. Later we learned that the enemy force was actually three times larger than the original estimate. My Tho Province’s main force 514th Battalion, COSVN’s (Central Office for South Vietnam) main force 261st Battalion, and local guerrilla and militia troops were all stationed in Ap Bac. The total VC troop strength in Ap Bac is estimated to have been between 350 and 400 men.¹⁹

On 29 December the ARVN JGS ordered 7th Infantry Division to launch an operation to destroy this enemy force and eliminate the radio transmitter.²⁰ The VC force was located in the middle of an area of flooded rice paddies with many deep, winding, mud-filled canals and irrigation ditches. These presented significant obstacles that our M-113 APCs and our infantry would have to cross. There were a few scattered civilian homes in the target area. Both banks of the Eel Canal were covered by tall trees and heavy vegetation, providing cover for enemy bunkers and foxholes used in ambushes or as defensive positions.

After receiving the order from the JGS, Colonel Bui Dinh Dam, commander of the 7th Infantry Division, initiated Operation Duc Thang 1, to begin on 2 January 1963, with the aim of surrounding and eliminating this radio facility and destroying enemy units in the area of Tan Thoi and Ap Bac.²¹ According to the plan prepared by 7th Division headquarters, one battalion of the division’s 11th Infantry Regiment would land by helicopter at a landing zone north of the target area so the battalion could then advance into Tan Thoi Hamlet. Meanwhile another force consisting of two Civil Guard battalions assigned to Dinh Tuong Province²² would advance from the southern end of the target area into Ap Bac; 4th Troop/2nd APC Regiment (M-113), formerly the 7th Mechanized Company (M-113),²³ operating under the control of 7th Infantry Division for a trial period and commanded by Captain Ly Tong Ba, was assigned to the Dinh Tuong Province sector headquarters. The armored troop drove by road from My Tho up to the Cai Lay district capital, then set out northeast across the open rice fields, heading for Ap Bac. In addition to these units, 7th Division held back three infantry and ranger companies to serve as reserve forces. A total of 1,500 troops from the Upper Delta Tactical Area participated in this battle. The ratio of forces was four to one.

When discussing the combat capabilities and accomplishments of 7th Mechanized Company we cannot fail to mention an operation that had occurred more than two months before Ap Bac. Thanks to the mobility and surprise effect of the amphibious M-113 APCs in an operation on the border of My Tho and Sadec provinces on 25 September 1962, 9 of 7th Mechanized Company’s M-113s killed 150 VC and captured 38 prisoners from Kien Phong Province’s main force 502nd Battalion. During this battle our troops captured twenty-seven weapons, including one .30-caliber machine gun and two light machine guns. The mechanized company suffered only two casualties. Warrant Officer Ninh was killed and one enlisted man was wounded. This was the first time the enemy’s 502nd Battalion had encountered the 7th Mechanized Company in the Plain of Reeds. The battalion suffered heavy losses and was forced to flee during the first minutes of the battle.²⁴

In addition, from the time of 7th Mechanized Company’s formation in April 1962 until the engagement at Ap Bac, this company had always maintained the initiative and had scored so many brilliant victories that communist troops usually tried to avoid the company.²⁵ Even after the battle of Ap Bac in January 1963, when it had been integrated into the 2nd Armored Regiment, 7th Mechanized Company (now called 4th Troop/2nd APC Regiment) continued to hold the initiative on the battlefields of the Plain of Reeds. Based on the successes of 7th Mechanized Company in 1962, the Armor Command quickly formed the first four M-113 armored cavalry troops for assignment to each of its armored regiments. However, the U.S. press did not know of or report on these successes.

While 7th Division was launching its attack on Ap Bac on the morning of 2 January 1963 in Tay Ninh Province in Tactical Zone 3, more than sixty U.S. and VNAF aircraft, including sixteen U.S. Air Force (USAF) B-26 bombers, twenty-six USAF T-28 fighters, and twenty-six VNAF AD-6 fighters, were in the air over Tay Ninh supporting more than twelve hundred paratroopers and an infantry battalion landed by helicopter that were conducting a coordinated attack against nine VC installations in War Zone C.²⁶

Because most of our helicopters were assigned to the operation in Tay Ninh, 7th Division received only ten CH-21 transport helicopters and five UH-1 helicopter gunships for its operation.²⁷ With this small number of helicopters, the infantry battalion had to be landed in many separate waves rather than the entire battalion being landed all at once to take full advantage of the elements of momentum and surprise.

The Progress of the Operation

North of the target, at 0700 on the morning of 2 January 1963, the infantry battalion’s lead company landed by helicopter north of Tan Thoi Hamlet, exactly as planned. As soon as its troops jumped out of the helicopters, the company had a number of scattered clashes with enemy troops, forcing it to halt and dig in to secure the landing zone. Then, because a thick morning fog that enveloped the entire area created concern about possible collisions and that the pilots might become lost, the planned landing of additional troops was postponed for almost two hours. The rest of the battalion resumed the landing operation shortly before 1000 hours, but when the battalion advanced toward the target, its advance elements were stopped by VC troops dug in at blocking positions north and northwest of Tan Thoi Hamlet. The battalion became pinned down at this location.

South of Ap Bac two Dinh Tuong Province Civil Guard battalions slogged through flooded rice paddies,²⁸ advancing from south to north in two parallel columns.²⁹ Their objective was to block enemy forces trying to flee in this direction. At about 0745 the Civil Guard battalion advancing on the eastern axis suddenly walked into a VC ambush in the Cong Luong Canal area on the southwest side of Ap Bac. Enemy troops hiding in foxholes covered with branches and earth along the banks of the canal, on the southern and western sides of Ap Bac, opened fire in a volley that killed a Civil Guard company commander and seven other soldiers and wounded the Civil Guard battalion commander and thirteen of his soldiers. When he learned of the ambush, Major Lam Quang Tho, the Dinh Tuong Province chief (and concurrently commander of the 2nd Armored Regiment), ordered the two Civil Guard battalions to halt and set up blocking positions. Major Tho also asked the 7th Division commander to send in his reserves as reinforcements.

Before the reinforcements were landed by air, division artillery pounded the two targets, Tan Thoi and Ap Bac. Smoke and flames rose into the sky from the middle of the hamlet, the center of the target, but the communist guerrillas had dispersed their troops into camouflaged positions hidden under clusters of trees along the edges of the hamlet facing out into the rice paddies, where they had good fields of observation. Shortly after 1000 hours, ten CH-21 helicopters transporting an infantry company landed at a landing zone less than three hundred meters west of Ap Bac, in sight of the enemy troops and within the range of their guns. As the helicopters came in to land, one CH-21 was hit but managed to get down safely. The infantry aboard the helicopters escaped without injury. Meanwhile, because of poor coordination in the ARVN and the U.S. chain of command, the commanders did not have a firm grasp of the situation and became overly excited about the situation. A UH-1 helicopter gunship immediately swooped in to the rescue but was shot down. Another CH-21 flew in to try to rescue the two downed helicopters, but it too was shot down.³⁰ By noon, a total of five helicopters had crashed, including one forced down by mechanical problems.³¹

As was the case during the initial troop landing in the Ap Bac area, throughout the operation the units did not receive priority response to requests for air support because the Tay Ninh operation had priority. As a result, we lost the battlefield initiative at Ap Bac, and fourteen of the fifteen helicopters participating in the operation were hit by bullets fired from hidden enemy positions along the banks of the canal.³²

When he learned of the first helicopter shot down, Lt. Col. John Paul Vann, chief adviser to the 7th Division, called by radio from his L-19 observation aircraft to Capt. James Scanlon, the adviser to the 7th Mechanized Company (M-113), to ask Captain Scanlon to move 7th Mechanized Company to Ap Bac immediately. At that moment, however, 7th Company was still almost two kilometers west of Ap Bac and had not yet crossed the Lan Canal. This was the first time 7th Mechanized Company (M-113) had run into trouble crossing a canal. In his article, The Battle of Ap Bac: Myth and Reality, Brigadier General Ly Tong Ba described what happened:³³

The 7th Mechanized Company (M-113) crossed a natural canal that the local farmers called Lan Canal. This terrible stream had no banks. It was like a bone in the throat that my M-113 iron buffaloes just could not swallow. Faced with my responsibility and worried about the safety of the downed aircrew, I did not know what to do. I suggested to the Advisory Team and to the Operation Headquarters that they should order the nearest friendly unit to march on foot to the helicopter crash site. Even though this might take some time, it would certainly be faster than 7th Company (M-113) could get there. I had no idea how long it would take us to cross the Lan Canal to reach the objective. My vehicle crew took turns wading along the banks trying to find a way across the canal, but we could not get a vehicle across because the canal was simply a bottomless pool of mud. Because they did not understand this particular factor, the American advisers misunderstood my actions. They thought I was irresponsible, that I did not want to fight, and that I was afraid to engage the enemy troops.

Finally, at about 1300, 7th Mechanized Company managed to cross the Lan Canal. On the way to the objective, 7th Mechanized Company encountered an infantry first lieutenant who commanded the troops that had landed at Ap Bac. This officer and his men were deployed around the first downed helicopter. This officer complained to Captain Ba: Even though I heard only a few isolated gunshots while I was in the helicopter, I suddenly noticed that some of the helicopters were trying to land while others went into a hover. They crashed when they tried to help each other. I believe that pilot error was the reason for this mess.³⁴

While the twelve M-113 armored personnel carriers of the 7th Mechanized Company continued to inch forward toward the objective located at the edge of the hamlet before deploying into line formation, VC troops, hiding in bunkers and foxholes under the clumps of trees along the canal bank in front of the unit, waited for the M-113s to get close enough. When the APCs were about fifteen to twenty meters away, the VC suddenly opened fire, killing Sub-Lieutenant Nguyen Van Nho of 1st Platoon/7th Company and Warrant Officer Nguyen Van Hao, who was riding on the company’s command vehicle.³⁵ Six .50-caliber gunners from the other platoons were hit, one by one, because the .50-caliber machine guns on the M-113s did not have gun shields to protect the gunners when they fired their weapons.³⁶ Because of this, during the Battle of Ap Bac 7th Mechanized Company lost eight men killed and seven wounded, representing about 15 percent of the company’s troops who took part in this battle.

Major General Huynh Van Cao, the IV Corps commander, flew up to the 7th Division operations headquarters to discuss the situation. General Cao then flew to JGS headquarters to request the immediate dispatch of reinforcements—one airborne company—to jump into the area held by 7th Mechanized Company at 1300 and help finish off the battle before nightfall. Instead, the JGS provided the 8th Airborne Battalion, with two companies, and dropped them into Ap Bac at about 1800, shortly before dusk.³⁷ Some of the paratroopers landed in the designated drop zone but were forced to remain in place through the night. Others got entangled in the trees in the hamlet, and some were blown over enemy positions by the wind, resulting in needless deaths.³⁸

General Ba, who watched the airborne being dropped in the wrong location, described the situation: One hour earlier, at about 5:00 in the afternoon, 7th Mechanized Company had shattered the VC forces and captured the objective. I stood on the bodies the VC had left behind as I watched our paratroopers slowly landing in the rice paddies behind 7th Mechanized Company. It was a beautiful scene, like something out of a movie, but the Battle of Ap Bac was already over.³⁹

Making use of the cover of night and the fact that the airborne battalion had landed west of the battle area, the VC escaped eastward from Ap Bac across an abandoned field, a gap in our battlefield deployment that the operational headquarters had left unguarded. The next morning, however, the operational headquarters sent the newly arrived 5th Troop/1st Armor Regiment to advance toward the target with the mission of attacking and destroying the enemy,⁴⁰ rather than order the troop to pursue the enemy and exploit the victory. This proves that the enemy’s withdrawal in the middle of the night came as a surprise to the operational headquarters.

After the helicopters crashed, there was inadequate air support, and there was no friendly unit other than 7th Mechanized Company close enough to the helicopter crash site to rescue the crews. Out of fear he would be blamed for these problems, Lt. Col. J. P. Vann shifted the blame to 7th Mechanized Company by accusing the company of moving too slowly.⁴¹ As for Captain Scanlon, the adviser assigned to the mechanized company, he did not understand the situation and therefore did not report to Lieutenant Colonel Vann the terrain problems faced by the company. Even worse, when 7th Company began to engage the enemy, Warrant Officer Hao was killed, and three other crewmen of the command vehicle were wounded and lay bleeding on the roof and on the floor of the vehicle. Captain Scanlon threw open the rear doors of the M-113 command vehicle and ran away to escape to the rear.⁴² Scanlon did not return to the 7th Mechanized Company until the next morning, 3 January 1963. By that time Captain Ba had resolved all the problems and the battlefield had been cleared of enemy forces. When 7th Mechanized Company captured the objective, it found eight enemy bodies, including the body of a VC commander, scattered across the tops of the bunkers.⁴³

As of the afternoon of 3 January 1963, friendly and enemy losses during the two-day operation at Ap Bac were as follows:

•ARVN: 66 killed and 109 wounded.⁴⁴

•United States: 3 killed and 6 wounded.

•VC: 36 prisoners and 18 bodies left behind on the battlefield. The VC evacuated approximately 50 wounded personnel and a number of bodies.⁴⁵

Consequences of the Battle

In practical terms, the Battle of Ap Bac was over at the end of the first day. The following morning, 3 January 1963, U.S. reporters arrived in the battle area to collect information for their reports. They knew nothing about the operation other than what they had learned from the after action reports prepared by the U.S. advisers. Unfortunately, however, these reports were written while the advisers were still angry at the ARVN commanders for missing an opportunity to score a victory. In his post-operation report, 7th Division adviser Lt. Col. John Paul Vann reached the following conclusions:⁴⁶

•ARVN lacked combat experience and its coordination had been poor, thereby enabling the VC 514th Battalion to escape.

•The 7th Mechanized Company had moved too slowly. In three and one-half hours the APCs only advanced fifteen hundred meters, even though the enemy was equipped only with small arms.

Vann’s conclusions, along with similar reports prepared by other advisers, were viewed by journalists as official documents they could use to criticize U.S. policies in Southeast Asia as well as what they called the dictatorial and erroneous policies of President Ngo Dinh Diem.⁴⁷

On the other hand, Major General Huynh Van Cao, commander of the 4th Tactical Zone, maintained that the operation had failed because the 7th Division’s operations plan was not suited to the terrain and did not focus its primary effort against the objective.⁴⁸

The U.S. press exploited the Ap Bac incident constantly, bringing it up again and again for months afterward. However, the press almost never mentioned the problems and obstacles we encountered in this operation: bad weather, the flooded and swampy terrain, the maze of canals and streams, and so forth. Instead, the American journalists in Saigon turned Ap Bac into a major incident, using it to criticize the Ngo Dinh Diem regime and the U.S. policy of involvement in the Vietnam War. To put it another way, Ap Bac became the media’s main weapon when they declared war on us.

In summary, U.S. media organizations intentionally exploited the Battle of Ap Bac to criticize U.S. policy in Vietnam because they believed this policy could lead the United States to the brink of bankruptcy and would cost the United States many lives. In addition, they viciously opposed the Ngo Dinh Diem regime, claiming that President Diem’s regime was a dictatorship and an oligarchy, especially after Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu asserted that all the U.S. press are communists.⁴⁹

Most of the U.S. press asserted that the losses we suffered at Ap Bac represented a significant defeat and criticized the armed forces of the Republic of Vietnam. They said ARVN was incompetent and not strong enough to stand up against the North Vietnamese Army. As a matter of principle, however, it is impossible for anyone to use the results of a small, regimental-sized battle in a remote area with difficult terrain to draw negative conclusions about an entire army or the government of a nation.

According to most battlefield observers, what happened at Ap Bac was unfortunate and regrettable. If fog had not blanketed the area of operations and the landing zone, and if the landing of our troops had not been delayed, the operation would have turned out very differently. Besides, whether we won or lost at Ap Bac was unimportant, because this was just one more operation.

Brigadier General Ly Tong Ba, who was the commander of the M-113 mechanized company during the battle, says that John P. Vann was too enthusiastic and too concerned about the fate of the U.S. personnel and the number of helicopters lost, so he lost his cool and slandered both the Army of South Vietnam and me personally, because I was involved in this battle. On several subsequent occasions when he saw me, in Binh Duong Province in 1968 and in II Corps in 1972, Vann apologized to me and asked me to forgive him. That is the truth.⁵⁰

Major General Huynh Van Cao, who was the commander of IV Corps at the time of the battle, wrote this about the Battle of Ap Bac in his memoir, One Life: Unfortunately, during the very first days of the year 7th Division was defeated at Ap Bac. This defeat was caused by high-ranking communist agents inside the division. Although Ap Bac was only a minor defeat, the U.S. press and public opinion blew it out of proportion. We lost only one M-113 damaged, one helicopter shot down, and a few dozen soldiers dead and wounded, but boastful communist propaganda turned this into a major incident, making it seem like a greater victory than Dien Bien Phu.⁵¹

The incident at Ap Bac thus came to have a tremendously unfavorable impact on the reputation of Vietnam’s First Republic (the Ngo Dinh Diem government). It also provided an excuse for the U.S. press to argue against the involvement of U.S. forces in the war in Vietnam and provided the North Vietnamese communists an opportunity for more of their boastful propaganda.⁵²

THE BATTLE OF BINH GIA

General Situation

In addition to North Vietnamese infiltration of troops into central Vietnam in 1964, in the southern part of South Vietnam General Nguyen Chi Thanh, the Communist Central Committee leader in South Vietnam, worked to form new VC units up to the division level. The first large VC unit formed in South Vietnam was the VC 9th Division, also called Work Site 9. This division was formed by bringing together the VC 271st and 272nd Regiments, equipping the new unit, and providing training on the new weapons. It was planned that 9th Division’s first operation would be conducted in Phuoc Tuy, where the mission would be to capture and occupy Binh Gia.

To carry out the plan to attack Binh Gia, on 4 December 1964 about one thousand soldiers of the VC 9th Division, divided up into many small groups, moved from Tay Ninh, War Zone C, and War Zone D down into Phuoc Tuy in many separate waves over the course of several weeks.⁵³ There they received weapons and ammunition shipped by sea from North Vietnam and then assembled in the rubber plantations around Binh Gia and the surrounding area in order to practice using their new weapons. General Tran Van Tra, the commander of communist forces in the southern part of South Vietnam, personally supervised the training and the movement of the troops into the assembly area.

On 9 December 1964, M-113 APC Troop 3/1, operating under the operational control of the Phuoc Tuy Province sector and commanded by Captain Nguyen Huu Trung Ngoc, was ordered by the province chief, Lieutenant Colonel Le Duc Dat, to conduct a reconnaissance and search operation through an area of rubber trees about ten kilometers east of Binh Gia.

The APC troop had no accompanying infantry troops and did not have a clear idea of either the friendly or the enemy situation. At 0900 the troop left Phuoc Tuy and drove up the road through Dat Do and Nui Dat districts. After passing Binh Gia Village the troop reached its objective at about 1300. During the search the troop found many signs that enemy troops had just left the objective area. The troop immediately reported this to sector headquarters, which ordered the troop to return by the same route.

Troop 3/1 reached Binh Gia with no difficulty, then continued down the gravel road toward the province capital. At about 1500 the troop drove through the Binh Ba rubber plantation and was about to reach the Xuan Son strategic hamlet when the troop commander, Captain Ngoc, became concerned that the troop might be ambushed when it drove past the hamlet. He ordered the troop to leave the road, turn into the rubber plantation on the left, and advance through the trees in a step-ladder formation. After moving for about one kilometer, when the lead platoon was opposite the sap collection warehouse and the rearguard platoon was even with the strategic hamlet, the VC opened fire, immobilizing the M-113 that was leading the way for 3rd Platoon, Troop 3/1.

The intermingled battle between the two sides was ferocious from its very first minutes. The VC had not had time to dig bunkers or foxholes, so they simply took cover behind tree trunks to fire their weapons. Our APCs were limited by the rows of trees, so movement and maneuver were difficult. This meant that the vehicles were unable to support one another, so everyone fired wherever he could. This meeting engagement lasted for five hours, but the troop received no air or artillery support. During the entire course of the battle, only a single L-19 flew over, observed the fighting for about half an hour, and then flew away. The result of the battle was that both sides suffered heavy losses.⁵⁴

More than two weeks later, on the morning of 28 December 1964, a battalion of the VC 9th Division captured and occupied Binh Gia Hamlet, Phuoc Tuy Province, in a surprise attack. Binh Gia was constructed according to the strategic hamlet model and was located along a road, stretching for more than three kilometers. The hamlet was about sixty-five kilometers east-southeast of Saigon. It had originally housed more than two thousand Catholic refugees who fled North Vietnam in 1954. By 1964 the population of the hamlet had risen to six thousand people. Two Regional Force platoons and People’s Self-Defense Forces provided security for the hamlet.⁵⁵

Immediately after the VC entered Binh Gia, III Corps headquarters implemented a plan to relieve the enemy pressure. The relief force consisted of the 30th and 33rd Ranger Battalions and the 4th Marine Battalion. These units were part of the III Corps and JGS reserve force. They were some of ARVN’s best fighting units and were under the command of Major General Cao Van Vien, the III Corps commander. During the final days of the battle, the 5th Tank Task Force was also sent to the operating area to pursue the enemy, but then the headquarters of the operation entrusted the task force with responsibility for road security along the road from Phuoc Le to Binh Gia.

Progress of the Battle

After taking over Binh Gia, the VC established their headquarters in the Binh Gia Cathedral and openly invited battle.

On the afternoon of 28 December 1964, III Corps headquarters landed two companies of the 30th Ranger Battalion by helicopter in an area west of Binh Gia Hamlet, but the VC ambushed the rangers right at the landing zone. After resisting fiercely, a little over one hundred rangers managed to withdraw into Binh Gia Hamlet.

The next morning III Corps sent in the 33rd Ranger Battalion, landing the battalion by helicopter south of Binh Gia Hamlet. The battalion was to link up with the 30th Ranger Battalion (minus), which was fighting for its life inside the hamlet. During the landing the VC shot down three helicopters. Because of heavy enemy resistance around the landing zone, 33rd Ranger Battalion was unable to move quickly and did not reach the Binh Gia Cathedral until late afternoon.

After two days of counterattacks, III Corps headquarters recognized that the situation was still not good, so on 30 December III Corps ordered 4th Marine Battalion to move from Di An to Ba Ria. This battalion then searched for and destroyed the enemy along Inter-Provincial Route 2, on the stretch of road from the province capital, Phuoc Le, to Binh Gia Hamlet. The marines then linked up with the rangers and coordinated their efforts to relieve the enemy pressure. In the end, the VC withdrew from Binh Gia Hamlet, but clashes continued to take place in the area around Binh Gia.

A review of the first three days of fighting revealed that the rangers had lost sixty soldiers killed, while the VC had left thirty-two bodies behind on the battlefield.

At about 1400 the following afternoon, 31 December 1964, 2nd Company/4th Marine Battalion was searching for the crew of a helicopter gunship that had been shot down in the Quang Giao rubber plantation at dusk the previous day when the company was ambushed by the VC about four kilometers southeast of Binh Gia.⁵⁶ At the time of the ambush, the company had already located and evacuated the bodies of four American crewmen from the downed helicopter. The rest of the 4th Marine Battalion moved up to relieve the ambushed company, but they too suffered heavy casualties and were forced to retreat back to Binh Gia. According to Combat History of the ARVN Marine Corps, 4th Marine Battalion suffered the following losses in this clash: 112 men killed (11 officers, 18 noncommissioned officers, and 83 privates), 120 wounded (5 officers, 15 NCOs, and 100 privates), and 82 missing (2 officers, 10 NCOs, and 70 privates). The battalion suffered a total of 314 casualties.⁵⁷ Almost half of the Marine battalion had been lost after recovering the four bodies of the crew of the U.S. helicopter gunship shot down behind enemy lines the night before.

On the morning of 1 January 1965, the 1st and 3rd Airborne Battalions landed by helicopter and parachute to search the rubber plantation about five kilometers east of the Binh Gia Cathedral, but by then the enemy had dispersed and withdrawn.⁵⁸

On 2 January 1965 the 5th Tank Task Force (minus), equipped with M-24 tanks and commanded by Colonel Lam Quang Tho, was present in Ba Ria.⁵⁹ This task force was made up of Tank Troop 1/5 commanded by Captain Huynh Tan Hung,⁶⁰ Tank Troop 3/5 commanded by Captain Nguyen Van Cua, one battery of 105-mm howitzers, and one Phuoc Le Province Sector Regional Force battalion (minus) to accompany the armor. While it waited for orders, 5th Tank Task Force was assigned responsibility for maintaining security along the Ba Ria-Binh Gia road to allow 4th Marine Battalion to evacuate their wounded and transport the bodies of their dead back to Phuoc Le City.

It was the end of winter, so the sun set early in the afternoon. In addition, in the rubber trees everything was hidden in darkness under the shade of the tall, thick trees. At about 1800, exploiting the approaching darkness, the VC sprang a sudden attack. They launched B-40 rockets and fired recoilless rifles at the tanks of Tank Troop 1/5. Because they were in positions where their fields of vision and fields of fire were restricted, Tank Troop 1/5 was unable to react promptly.

As soon as he received word that Tank Troop 1/5 was under attack, Colonel Lam Quang Tho, the commander of 5th Tank Task Force, personally directed Tank Troop 3/5 to move out to rescue Troop 1/5. However, along the road the task force was forced to halt because two Troop 1/5 M-24 tanks were burning in the middle of the road. The cannon rounds stored inside the tanks exploded constantly, fire and smoke filled the air, and thick rows of rubber trees lined both sides of the road, so it was not possible to maneuver around the burning tanks, especially in the dark. Tank Troop 3/5 could only sit back and provide fire support to Tank Troop 1/5, using their 75-mm guns. The battle between the VC and Tank Troop 1/5 lasted all night. The artillery at Nui Thanh provided fire support based on requests received from Captain Hung, the commander of Troop 1/5. Finally, at first light on 4 January 1965, Tank Troop 3/5 managed to link up with Tank Troop 1/5.⁶¹ Only at that time did our troops gain a solid grip on the situation.

This was the first time that a VC unit had conducted a division-sized operation in South Vietnam. Previously, the VC had usually utilized small units to make sudden attacks and then withdrawn quickly. It is thought that because of this unexpected change in tactics the III Corps commander failed to understand the combat possibilities and the VC concept of operations. It is also possible that General Vien did not suspect that the enemy main force troops were actually a fully armed and well-trained division equipped with new Soviet-made weapons,⁶² and, therefore, that is why he reacted by sending in units in such a piecemeal fashion.⁶³

Summary

According to U.S. documents on the Vietnam War, the results of the Battle of Binh Gia, from 28 December 1964 to 2 January 1965, were as follows: The VC lost about 120 soldiers killed. ARVN losses were 200 soldiers killed and more than 300 wounded or missing. The U.S. lost 5 men killed and 3 missing.⁶⁴ These figures do not include the final day, 4 January 1965, when VC troops at Binh Gia made a surprise attack on Tank Troop 1/5, raising the number of losses.⁶⁵