(EDITOR'S NOTE: Charles Black, Enquirer military writer, is back at the 1st Cavalry Division’s base camp after being in action with elements of the division. His articles on the cavalrymen resume today. The following article was written Nov. 14.)
By CHARLES BLACK
Enquirer Military Writer
PLEIKU, Viet Nam - The trip
here from Man Yang pass, which Lt. Col. Harlowe Clark’s 1st Brigade
secured
with a picturesque and unopposed helicopter assault on a mountaintop
covered
with the graves of French soldiers killed in ambushes a decade ago, is
one of
the things I will not forget very quickly.
The scenic beauty of the
rugged hills through which Highway 19 winds down to the open plateau in
which
Pleiku is centered is similar to that of the Great Smoky Mountains, but
every
curve and every commanding hill slope holds a threat. Men on Route 19
are less
apt to survey the scenery for its beauty as with an eye calculating the
potential danger in the tall elephant grass and the Viet Cong ambush
possibility in a curve of the highway.
Nothing marred the technical
perfection of the 1st Cavalry Division’s operation and the road beyond,
which
was secured by Vietnamese forces, also produced no incidents while 500
trucks rolled
supplies to Pleiku for three straight days.
I came down to the road
after the assault on the mountaintop at the exact spot where the first
ambush
was dealt French Group Mobile 100 11 years ago and saw a reassuring
sight -
American helmets and the berets of Vietnamese Rangers, trucks and jeeps
and the
flash of jets lancing down toward a distant ridge in a thundering air
strike. The helicopters of the 1st
Cavalry Division buzzed around in swarms and I saw the big CH47
Chinooks
setting onto the ridge lines, and the howitzers of the 1st Battalion
(Airborne)
19th Cavalry frowned down from those unlikely artillery positions in a
matter
of minutes. The commanding position of those 105 mm. howitzers, set
atop a high
ridge in a single surge of aerial activity, emphasized the new
dimensions of
the force brought against the VC here.
Lt. Col. Dutch Uhland was
the first man I saw after setting foot on the asphalt of Route 19. He was at the front of the lead trucks of
the convoy talking to the man who would take over security for the convoy the rest of the way, Capt. Paul
Leckinger, adviser to the 21st Vietnamese Ranger Battalion, based at
Pleiku.
Capt. Leckinger, a darkly tanned infantryman whose red beret and tiger
suit made
him quite a flamboyant figure, offered me a ride down the road a ways.
He was quite proud of his
little Rangers.
“Those kids are tough
troopers. They have to have leadership,
but they will do anything the man in charge is willing to take them
into. I think a lot of those little
Rangers. I’ve gotten to know them and
really
appreciate them,” Capt. Leckinger said.
He reminded me of all of the
other advisers to Vietnamese units in this country.
These men have written a chapter in American military history
which should have its special place in the entire book.
Not many men have had the dedication to a
mission required of them as have the American field advisers in South
Viet Nam.
I promised to look up Capt.
Leckinger in Pleiku when he stopped at the Ranger battalion command
post and
caught a ride with Capt. Le Truong, the sector chief.
He spoke no English but he had a fine command of gestures and he
gave me a guided tour of the ambush site where the Viet Minh had dealt
the
French column its hardest blow. It was
just another stretch of road, a small plateau with two bends in the
road and a
high slope above it - except the rusty hulks of armored personnel
carriers and
trucks could be seen in the tall elephant grass and a little white
monument
marker.
(The white monument was
covered with the ever-present elephant grass when I saw the ambush site
and the
Vietnamese captain and I had to walk off the shoulder of the road to
find
it. Later, Bravo Co., 1st Battalion,
Eighth Infantry (Airborne) came here and cut away the grass, clearing a
spot
around the only memento to the French soldiers except their graves on
the
windswept mountain in the pass.)
The Vietnamese officer let
me off at the foot of a red clay drive (a deeper red than Georgia clay
but near
enough to cause some nostalgia) which led to a barbed-wire-enclosed
Special
Forces Camp. I walked up and a little
Civilian Irregular Defense Group soldier wearing a tiger suit and
weighed down
with a Browning Automatic Rifle decided to salute, just in case, and
waved me
on through to a group of men by two jeeps watching Air Force Skyraiders
trace a
line of explosions along a slope to the north.
The group was from Advisory
Team 21, which had helped plan the road clearing operation from the Man
Yang
Pass, which the sky soldier division had opened, to the ultimate
destination of
the truck caravans at Pleiku. I
recognized S-Sgt. Thomas J. Hudgins who had been with the Student
Brigade at
Fort Benning until August. He
introduced me to Capt. S. Vaughn Binzer and First Sgt. John L. Douglas,
who
both immediately set to work with a sales pitch about a project which
seems to
spring up almost universally when American soldiers get acquainted with
the
Vietnamese community near their station.
“We became interested in the
refugee problem at Pleiku. What we’ve
done is to write people and ask them to send us clothes for the little
kids out
there, summer clothes of course. If
they will send them to me with a tag on the package telling the age,
whether it
is for a boy or a girl, and what is inside, we will see to it those
poor kids
get them,” Capt. Binzer said.
He wrote the address for me:
Capt. S. Vaughn Binzer,
Adviser Team 21, APO 96295, San Francisco, Calif.
Col. Phuong, the commander
of the 24th Special Forces Zone in the Pleiku-Kontum areas, who was at
the camp
with the advisory team, came over and simply sat on a poncho where we
were
talking and joined the conversation. He
turned out to be one of the most impressive individuals I have met
here,
ranking with Col. Yen, the Marine commander, in Vietnamese leaders who
have
made their mark out in the field. Col.
Phuong, I am told, is now in ill health and stays closer to his home
base, but
his history is almost a model of the story of the troubles in the
country.
In 1942, as a youth, he
organized a guerrilla band to fight against the Japanese occupation
forces. By 1945 he had command of what
amounted to a regiment and he joined with the Viet Minh to fight
against France
as an ardent nationalist. In 1952-53 he
was imprisoned by the Viet Minh leadership because of his personal
popularity
and because of his implacable animosity toward the flavor of communism
which he
saw in the Viet Minh movement. Since
1954 he has been an active enemy of the Viet Cong.
As I was finding out his
background, I realized that he was asking me questions about my own
with the
skill of a good police reporter.
“You must go see
the Mekong Delta now if you
would know more about my country. You
are acquainted very well with our highlands.
I have just come here from the delta and it is very different. I think a man like you wants to know about
my country and you should go there,” he said finally.
I told him that I believed
there were enough problems right around the next ridgetop to keep me
occupied
for some time and he agreed.
“Understanding just a little
of what my country has to contend with is very hard, I suppose,” he
said.
He offered me a ride on the
final lap of the journey to Pleiku and I got into a jeep which needed a
clutch
job very badly. He cheerfully ignored
the troubles his drivers was having in making it chug up hills and
pointed out
the various tribes of Montagnards as we drove along.
The highway west of An Khe
as you near Pleiku is lined with Montagnard villages.
The huts are built up off the ground with wood and farm
implements, etc., stacked under the floor (as well as pigs, chickens,
etc., who
find shelter there) and the highland tribesmen walk along the highways
in Stone
Age costume, breech clout, a sash-like blanket over their shoulder, a
packbasket usually on their backs. Some
of the women wear a wrap skirt and nothing else, some add a bright
cotton
blouse. All wear the symbolic tribal
bracelets on their right wrists. There
are three main tribes here, Rhade, Jarai and Bahnar, and Col. Phuong
attempted
to point out the differences in costume and markings on the blankets to
me but
I never got the knack. A Bahnar looks
like a Jarai and both look like Rhade, but I suppose if I made a
project out of
it I could work it all out. All of
these people are darker than the Vietnamese, usually more muscular, and
infinitely more primitive. They smiled
and waved when I signalled them.
The tribesmen have been a
lot of trouble for the Vietnamese, who refuse to give them political
representation, etc., and have shown great preference for American
leadership
when it is available. The Rhade have
been in revolt several times and have caused some fine in-country
crises. The Jarai, whose tribal grounds
are mainly
north of Pleiku, have given some good accounts of themselves as Viet
Cong
fighters under American leadership (the Rhade have been valuable) while
the
Bahnar, living in the section near An Khe, simply don’t have anything
much to
do with anybody except other Montagnards and even that relationship is
usually
an inter-tribal brawl. They are probably
the most belligerent and independent of all these tribesmen who could
eventually hold the key to pacification of the mountain areas. (They can also be the start of even more
complicated woes in the years ahead if their differences with the
Saigon
government aren’t ironed out.)
Whatever the ethnological
and political circumstances, however, Montagnards provide an
interesting
sightseeing tour as they move along the road in single file in their
native
costumes and I was a little disappointed when we got to Camp Holloway
at
Pleiku, a place I have been intending to visit for a long time because
of a
contingent of the 1st Cavalry which got over here in a manner which
made some
more Army aviation history.
The 17th Aviation Company, which had formed up at Fort Benning in order to bring a company of CV2 Caribous over to support the division (among other chores in the Central Highlands), had been sent here while the division base at An Khe is being put into order. The company had come to Viet Nam in the first mass flight of Army aircraft to cross the Pacific and it was already setting some in-country flying marks. The amount of work which it found, in fact, saw the unit racking up 1,700 flying hours in its first 30 days work. Until the 17th came here, the venerable old 61st Aviation Company at Vung Tao had had that record with a three-month average of 1,500 hours per month. It isn’t likely that any group of pilots and crewmen can keep up the initial pace of the 1st Cavalry unit, but it was a fantastic way for a new unit to go to work in Viet Nam.