Soldiers Learn Valuable Lessons at Battle Site
(EDITOR’S NOTE: Charles Black, Enquirer military writer, has returned home after four months in Viet Nam. He was with men of the 1st Cavalry Division during many of their recent engagements with Communist guerrillas, and his articles on the war will continue in The Enquirer daily.)
By CHARLES BLACK
Enquirer Military Writer
An early morning patrol by
Lt. Bill Schiebler’s platoon of Company A, Second Bn., 12th Infantry,
had
confirmed that the North Vietnamese battalion fought by this unit and
First
Squadron, Ninth Cavalry, along the Tae River had retreated during the
night.
Prowling infantrymen had
turned up 57 bodies of PAVN soldiers, which brought the total to 136
North
Vietnamese bodies left behind. Total
prisoners, including 22 wounded, was finally counted at 57. As nearly as could be ascertained by
helicopter and careful estimates, another 150 to 200 PAVN casualties
had been
inflicted during the previous day’s fighting.
The 15 men from Lt.
Schiebler’s platoon had slipped along a ridgeline which had formed the
PAVN’s
final line of resistance the previous day and come onto elaborately
prepared
positions which the battalion had been unable to use because the
helicopter-borne
attack had landed in an unguarded area and surprised the force guarding
the
field hospital which the 1st Cavalry had captured.
The positions were very
educational so far as the tactics and thinking of these Communist
forces were
concerned and held some valuable lessons for any infantryman.
Troops Dug In
They were dug into the
forward slope of a V-shaped hill, not a tall one but just a sloping
rise in
ground, flanking along an open field which was an inviting landing zone
for
choppers and also guarding the trail used by the PAVN wounded and
carrying
parties who had come here from the Plei Me battle about eight miles or
so away.
The trail was easy to
see. It was not only an old, well-used
path, beaten by Montagnard tribesmen and presumably other Viet Cong and
PAVN
units, but actually marked with blazes on tree trunks.
The bark of trees had been cut away at
shoulder height every 20 feet or so, marking the route.
A PAVN battalion is composed
of four specialty companies and a headquarters company.
One company is a weapons company and has
four mortars, five recoiless artillery pieces, (57mm and sometimes
75mm) plus
machine guns, etc.
Line companies have three
platoons of 30 men each, plus the headquarters element.
The weapons are all capable of full
automatic fire and 37mm rocket launchers are carried as well as Russian
assault
rifles, Chinese Communist (shortened to “Chicom” by GIs), submachine
guns and
Russian rifles with a lever on the right side allowing them to fire
either
semi-automatic or full automatic.
There seems to be a
conglomeration of attached troops to this battalion, some of whom carry
Mauser
style, straight pull bolt action rifles.
They apparently come from the support battalion which is
included in
each regiment.
The regiment itself is
composed of its headquarters, three maneuver battalions number four,
five and
six (presumably the other battalions are in the “old” 325th division
regiments
which have been operating in South Viet Nam for many months) and the
support
battalion.
Soldiers Very Young
The soldiers were very young
North Vietnamese who had been drafted and then recalled to the 304th
PAVN
Division which was redesignated the “325th” on arrival in South Viet
Nam. They had suffered about 25 per cent
attrition from disease, etc., and were very short on rations although
ammunition was in plentiful supply.
They had apparently prepositioned weapons and ammunition
supplies all
through the area.
(The men of Lt. Col. Earl
Ingram’s battalion had found one of these dumps and it had been a
spectacular
capture for the Second of the 12th two days earlier.
Mortars, machine-guns, anti-aircraft weapons, ammunition, etc.,
had come in by the helicopter load from the hidden arms dump.)
The young PAVNs had been
given a pass on July 17 and then moved to a point in North Viet Nam
near the
South Vietnamese and Laotian borders, interrogation of prisoners showed. They left on Aug. 17 and spent 57 days walking
on the trail.
They came through Laos,
entered South Viet Nam near Kontum, proceeded south to Cambodia near
the Ia
Drang River where, from supplies apparently on hand in the Chu Pong
Mountain
region, their uniforms, ammunition and weapons were replenished.
Some prisoners told of
carrying loads, 200 men apparently having been saddled with one round
of 120mm
mortar ammunition each.
That big mortar has yet to
appear in the fighting and they are believed stored in the safety of
Cambodia,
along with 75mm pack howitzers and four 105mm howitzers the PAVNs are
known to
possess.
Three Regiments
The regiments which had come
down the Ho Chi Min trail in this movement were the 101st, 66th and
32nd. The 101st had besieged Plei Me. The 32nd had joined the early fighting
there, then had left the camp to take up ambush positions around
landing zones
and on roads leading to the camp. The
66th was in reserve.
It was fairly well accepted
by intelligence men by now that the entire siege had been designed to
draw the
1st Cavalry into a quick relief of the camp and to attempt to ambush
its
helicopters. The road ambush was set up
to hit the usual surface column the Vietnamese troops would send out to
the
camp. It did, but Vietnamese tanks and
APCs, with artillery from the First Battalion (airborne) 19th Artillery
commanded by Lt. Col. Joe Bush, along with the fine tactical air
supplied
throughout the campaign, had made the ambush very costly for the PAVNs.
In the positions dug in
here, I counted 125 fighting holes on the forward slope and possibly
there were
an equal number of ordinary shelter holes near campsites stretched in a
draw
along a creek facing Plei Me and guarding a trail as well as the LZ.
The PAVN planners had assumed that any pursuit would work out from Plei Me, following them. Air mobility makes such pursuit techniques not only unnecessary but even repugnant to an experienced air assault commander and his staff, however. They had first scouted a circle far out from Plei Me and worked in until they spotted the activity here and then landed behind it.
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