By CHARLES BLACK
Enquirer Military Writer
DUC CO, Viet Nam - The
Special Forces camp here is typical of these installations in this
country, and
a close look at its functions - and faults - is as good a way as any to
understand the events at the camp at Plei Me and the campaign by the
First
Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division fought under the command of Lt.
Col.
Harlowe Clark from Oct. 26 until Nov. 7.
The campaign, and that is
the only military term which can describe it, dealt out a losing hand
to the
101st Regiment of the 325th Division of the People’s Army of North Viet
Nam
(PAVN) and gave a bloody introduction to combat for yet another PAVN
division
infiltrating South Viet Nam from Cambodia, the 324th.
(The First Brigade’s
operations have been taken up after Nov. 7 by Col. Thomas Brown’s Third
Brigade
in a systematic fashion which is aimed at knocking out the 32nd
Regiment of the
325th PAVN division.)
Duc Co is a small chunk of
Vietnamese real estate enclosed with double entanglements of barbed
wire,
claymore mines, ditches, and defended by bunkers and a tank which won’t
maneuver because it was knocked out of action once but which is handy
as a
dug-in pill box. There is a Special
Forces A team here whose members include:
M-Sgt. Joseph P. Seyer (19
years of service); S-Sgt. Edward A. Stevens (16 years); S-Sgt. Jackie
D. Lawson
(6 years); S-Sgt. Anthony Salandro (6 years); S-Sgt. Raymond C. Dell (6
years);
S-Sgt. Kelly P. Decker (3 years); S-Sgt. Murray H. Parker (4 years);
SFC
Charles R. Smith (10 years); Sgt. David A. Woods (9 years); Sgt. Harold
T.
Palmer (10 years); S-Sgt. Thomas G. McNiff (19 years) and Sp5 Thomas A.
Jones
III (2 years).
I put in the length of
service of these NCOs to emphasize that in the main these Americans are
professional soldiers who have volunteered for the hazards and
hardships of
Special Forces work and who have training and vast experience to fit
them in
it. The team is commanded by Capt.
Richard B. Johnson with Lt. Joseph B. Kube as his executive officer.
The camp’s fighting force
consists of about 250 Montagnard Civil Irregular Defense Guard (CIDG)
troops
which the Special Forces men usually call “Strikers” because they are
organized
as a “Strike Force” and 240 Nuong tribesmen.
The Strikers are commanded
by a lieutenant (Tee Wee he is called in Vietnamese) and have been
recruited
and trained by the American team or its predecessors here.
Actually, the Americans are
in command, planning the tactical operations and going along in the
field. The Strikers get their pay from
U.S. funds
and are known as being among the most reliable fighters in Viet Nam.
The Nuongs are fantastic men
who are legendary here. Descendants of
Chinese refugees who settled in Viet Nam in past centuries, they come
from
families who first engaged in river pirating and banditry in a most
dedicated
fashion and who then realized that simply hiring out as professional
soldiers
was a more reliable source of income.
They are hired through “contractors” and are the highest paid
non-American troops in the country.
They are used as scouts, reconnaissance specialists, bodyguards
and
whenever especially skillful and tough professional killers seem to be
indicated.
Duc Co is an area where such
was indicated.
The camp was hit by several
battalions of North Vietnamese soldiers in May. The
fighting holes and bunkers dug by those soldiers litter the
area outside of the wire and the cleared terrain around the little
fortress. The pressure was relentless but
never so
relentless that the camp was overrun and this apparently was designedly
so. (Later events at Plei Me bore out
this assumption.)
I talked to Capt. Johnson
and M-Sgt. Seyer in the long, tin-roofed hut which is divided into
rooms with a
hall down the center to a kitchen - mess hall, lounge - club room and
serves as
the resident and headquarters of the team.
There isn’t any exact source
for this information but it came to me during the day in conversations
and
offhand remarks.
The Montagnard CIDG troopers
are dissatisfied. Some of them have
been at this camp for five years. The
camp is effectively blocked off from the countryside by Viet Cong
(local hard
core guerrillas and part-time fighters) and by memory of the 70 days
when
regular North Vietnamese soldiers occupied the area.
There is no government
influence outside of the range of the camp’s defenses or the rifles of
the
patrols sent out from it.
The Nuongs are restive men
who aren’t happy in a defensive stance and who are apt to engage in
ruthless
brawls if not kept busy patrolling, ambushing and fighting. (The most recent casualties came from an
argument over a game of cards and from the objections of one Nuong
about
another Nuong wearing his cap crooked.
The card game argument was settled with a bullet exchange which
caused
some casualties but no fatalities. The
cap was straightened with a carbine bullet which killed the man inside
of it.)
The camp duties of the team
include keeping the Montagnards from simply resigning; the Nuongs as
happy as
possible by diverting their energy toward fighting the surrounding
enemies
rather than each other; keeping a 24-hour guard on the radio; mounting
as much
of an offensive patrol and ambush system as is possible; recruiting and
training new troops to shore up the long suffering Montagnards and
building up
the camp’s defensive system by adding wire and clearing brush, etc.
The strain of all this
shows, too. The men in the team are
tense and hair-triggered even at their most relaxed moments. They have the tension of a tightly coiled
spring about them even when they sit and drink coffee and talk about
the
weather.
I came here in an Otter
piloted by Capt. Gene Hall of Columbus who simply decided to fly up and
see if
there “was any need for an airplane” on his “day off” from the usual
sunup to
sundown routine of the aviation company he commands at Pleiku.
He had picked up some mail
for the team at Pleiku and brought it in and then agreed to taking
seven Nuongs
back to Pleiku on the return trip. They
were being given a rest and recreation leave (R and R in GI
conversations).
I walked around outside the
camp while the Nuongs were having their leave papers checked by M-Sgt.
Seyer
and was dismayed by seeing the siegecraft of the PAVN units.
They had opened their attack
from prepared, dug-in positions which had taken more than a single
night of
digging to construct. A working party
clearing grass out of the wire and a newly cleared swatch in the brush,
with
the fresh scars of a bulldozer grave where the PAVN fatalities had been
buried
when the camp was relieved in the last days of June, 70 days after the
first
attack, showed that the lesson had been learned here.
When men can dig positions
at close range to a defense perimeter before opening fire, something is
lacking
in camp security.
The pattern of the attack,
as outlined by the A team and other reports (the team at Duc Co now was
not the
one there during the attack and siege) was this:
A new PAVN force had marched
down from North Viet Nam to a staging area in Cambodia on the
Vietnamese
border. From there they went to
long-planned positions around Duc Co.
Platoon and company sized
elements went to fields suitable for helicopter landings and dug
bunkers,
shelters and constructed field camps - each field which presented a
feasible
landing zone for a relief.
A field hospital was
established close to Plei Me and it is likely that a similar field
hospital was
set up near Duc Co. If the Plei Me
pattern held there, it would be within three or four miles and have a
medical regiment
ready to receive casualties.
An elite battalion of
fighting men would provide security for this hospital and probably had
elaborate dug-in defenses set up on the trails from planned battle
sites to the
hospital area.
At Plei Me, these trails
were actually blazed on trees to help the litter parties and walking
wounded
find the hospital.
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