(EDITOR'S NOTE: The following dispatch from Charles Black, Enquirer military writer in Viet Nam covering the 1st Cavalry Division, was mailed Nov. 14.)
By CHARLES BLACK
Enquirer Military Writer
DUC CO, Viet Nam - Communist
prisoners taken at Plei Me indicate that the first battle there was
little more
than a field exercise for green North Vietnamese units.
It was very evident the objective of the attack on the camps was not to overrun them but to put them under such pressure that relief simply had to be committed.
The real objectives are the
ambush sites. This weary game has been
played out for years in the Vietnamese war and it deserves some
attention by
the men in charge.
The solution is actually a
simple one and it is certainly an obvious one.
The Special Forces camps in these areas are kept so fully
occupied, with
providing for their own security that they don’t function for any other
real
purpose.
Labor is expended on adding
to wire entanglements, digging shelters, clearing brush and grass and
building
up a useless fortress.
Patrols are sent out not so
much with the mission of offensive action and of pacifying the area as
to keep
an attacking force from gathering around the camp - and, even this
objective
usually isn’t attained.
When local recruits are
trained, they are usually fed right into the defensive requirements of
keeping
the camp secure. The North Viet Nam
units use the camps, then, simply as bait.
The little force pinned like
a butterfly for the methodical tacticians in the training camps north
of the
17th parallel and a plan achieved months in advance can be followed to
the
letter by the units coming to South Viet Nam - with apparent absolute
assurance
that the camp will be taken by surprise and that the units sent to
relieve it
will wearily accept the lot of proceeding into the prepared ambushes.
Since a well-prepared ambush
is practically impossible to spot and since the camps are the focal
point for
all other plans of offensive action by the PAVN (Peoples Army of North
Viet
Nam) forces - and often enough by the main force Viet Cong guerrillas
who are
much more fanatical and vicious foes - and since there isn’t too much
being
accomplished by these exposed outposts, the solution would seem to be
just to
tear them down and be done with it.
The entire concept of the
Special Forces has been toyed with by men outside of it, and who must
have had
better things to do, so that it is almost lost now.
These troops were originated
as an offensive weapon. They were
conceived as a force which would infiltrate an enemy area in secrecy
and
organize and train guerrillas to operate in that area.
Somebody commenced talking
about “bolsheviks and snake eaters” and now men wearing the clean
collars of
the Saigon Sappers smile rather smugly as they explain the emasculated
concept
of the Special Forces as one of “counter-guerrilla” activity.
The new “basic mission” is
defensive by definition and lends itself neatly to the
refrigerator-equipped
“camps” which are so handy for Viet Cong planners.
It is time to change this and to return to reality.
The A teams in this country
need to be kicked back out into the brush where they can give their
CIDG
fighters the kind of training they need and where they will have to
operate in
a sneaky and offensive manner - ambushing, patrolling, and hiding their
tracks
for security. They can bring their
bands back into areas made safe by the power of conventional forces
when rest,
recreation and a square meal is dictated.
This would produce more intelligence, it would make the
infiltrating
North Viet Nam troops frightened of the night and it would put some
sense back
into the Special Forces program here.
I am talking about the
Central Highlands area in these paragraphs.
I’m not prepared to make such armchair general remarks on
anything in
the Mekong Delta areas and I see advantages to the camps when they are
located
in populous zones even in this region.
The ones out in the
boondocks are simply stupid, however.
They sop up precious airlift capability; require enormous loads
of
supplies which could be put to better use; waste the talents, training
and
dedication of fine NCO’s and officers.
Any good they do is overshadowed by their availability as bait
in
Communist operations.
I am certain that the men in
charge of planning these affairs in Hanoi must be bored by them and
astonished
that the game is allowed to continue for so long.
Even at this writing, after
the 1st Air Cavalry’s 1st Brigade provided the first new development in
the
long and hackneyed history of these actions by pursuing and hacking up
the PAVN
attacking force when tradition dictated that the fight was over and
everybody
would proceed as before, it is predictable that someplace in the very
near
future a Special Forces Camp will be hit by the 324th PAVN Division.
This unit is now resting up
across the Cambodian border southwest of Duc Co after leaving North
Viet Nam on
Aug. 15 and walking through Laos. If
the game is played out, a South Viet Nam relief force will proceed to
the
camp’s rescue with all concerned fully aware that the relief force will
be
ambushed.
Plei Me should have been
enough of this kind of military tradition established by the 40 or 50
other
such events which had preceded it, but the reaction of military
bureaucracy is
no swifter than any other so it is possible that the whole farce will
be run
through just once more to make certain that something should be done
about it.
The trip to Duc Co showed me
that good men, in fact some of the finest men the U.S. Army can
provide, can be
used for a sterile purpose and sacrificed to needlessness simply
because a
program got under way once and the inertia keeps it rolling along.
It also showed me the
heights to which heroism and dedication among our professional soldiers
can
scale.
The Special Forces A Team at
Duc Co had its feet planted and were doing their best to carry out
their work
of training troops and fighting the enemy when I saw them.
I hope that they and the
others penned up in the barbed wire traps have good luck and that
somebody does
something about the situation.
What is more likely,
however, is this:
Somebody in an office will
take great umbrage at this article and maintain that the team at Duc Co
is
somehow at fault for my observations and judgments.
The team will have a load of
reports and paperwork and irate letters put on top of the other useless
endeavors of the camp.
This is as predictable as
the next PAVN or Viet Cong attack on the next camp someplace and the
ambush of
the relief column. It will make me
unpopular with the men I met in Duc Co because they have enough trouble
already
and it will make me unpopular in many staff offices as well.
I worry more about the
opinion of the men at Duc Co, however, than about the latter. The staff men are in a position to remedy
the problem. The A Team has to live
with it or die with it.