Grab Their Belts to Fight Them by Warren Wilkins

Author:Warren Wilkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Published: 2011-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

Obviously not every Viet Cong unit had the luxury of vanishing into such an intricate, and in some places commodious, tunnel network like Lieutenant Linh. Still, Linh’s actions and those of his men testified to a larger point. Stalked by an American sweep operation, the VC dispersed, engaged American forces when it was expedient, and retreated when it was not or when they had no inclination to fight. Much like Linh, the Viet Cong as a military adversary could dictate the battle tempo of the big-unit war against the Americans. Unless trapped—and as Lieutenant General Bernard W. Rogers decried after a 1967 offensive, “It was a sheer physical impossibility to keep him [Viet Cong] from slipping away whenever he wished to, if he were in terrain with which he was familiar”—the Viet Cong could on balance accept or decline battle at their own discretion.18 In contrast, American units, dragooned as they were to “find Charlie,” more or less accepted battle whenever Charlie saw fit to give it.

To the extent that the Viet Cong could dictate battle tempo, Communist proficiency in the information war played a vital role. Dreadfully permeable, South Vietnam’s civilian and military command establishment, with whom the U.S. military had to coordinate and cooperate, suffered from extensive Communist penetration. These security breaches, in turn, leaked sensitive information to the Viet Cong, some of it forewarning them about forthcoming allied military operations. Intercepted American radio transmissions and information picked up from Vietnamese civilians employed at American bases supplied additional intelligence and sharpened the focus of the intelligence outline.

Noisy American field craft and a debatable operating doctrine also provided the Viet Cong with advance notice, and hence the choice beforehand of whether to fight or take flight. Weighted down with burdensome equipment and frequently exhausted, the average American infantryman “humping the boonies” could not ape the hushed movements of many of his Viet Cong counterparts. Sizable American infantry units, in the opinion of one decorated American veteran, sounded like “a herd of elephants coming” when on the move.19 Conspicuously loud American war machines only added to the racket generated by infantry units with dubious noise discipline. Doctrinally the practice of “prepping” landing zones with air and artillery strikes before an American airmobile assault broadcast American intentions as well. A CINC-PAC (commander in chief, Pacific Command) study openly questioned the advisability of a doctrine that sacrificed the element of surprise when fighting the VC/NVA: “This doctrine may be unsuitable against an enemy that withdraws in the presence of force, ambushes and interdicts in situations of its own choosing, and then melts into the jungle where it is indistinguishable from the native population. To provide this kind of enemy with tip offs is to ensure that we will plunge full force into a vacuum. Subsequent contacts with the enemy will be at best fortuitous, at worst the result of enemy counterattack and ambush.”20

Tactical familiarity with the Americans, moreover, assisted the Viet Cong in controlling battle tempo. “Their [Americans] idea was to surround

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.