Footprints of War by Biggs David A

Author:Biggs, David A.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: 2018-01-19T16:00:00+00:00

A NEW WAR BEGINS

The deaths of Diệm and Nhu and the arrest of Cẩn marked an important turning point not only for RVN-US relations but also for the NLF and North Vietnam’s position in the war. At the ninth meeting of the central committee in Hà Nội in December 1963, the party formally committed the material and personnel of the People’s Army of Vietnam to support NLF operations south of the DMZ. By early 1964 PAVN soldiers openly participated in combat operations against RVN troops, threatening the ARVN posts at Nam Đông and A Lưới.

Although most American histories of the Vietnam War begin with an alleged North Vietnamese torpedo boat attack on US navy ships in the Tonkin Gulf in August, in Huế a real battle involving PAVN troops and the killing of US soldiers began one month earlier at Nam Đông. Soldiers in two PAVN divisions fought with PLAF units to wage a concerted series of attacks on the mountain bases and along Highway 1. Consul Helble in Huế was one of the few Americans who reported this act of war to Washington, and for unknown reasons senior American diplomats and military commanders buried the story. Helble was celebrating his farewell party at the consulate on July 2 after completing a long tour as Huế’s American consul. During the party in his villa, a courier notified the ARVN’s First Division general that PAVN and PLAF forces had blown over forty bridges on Highway 1 and were attacking the ARVN military post on the highway just seventeen kilometers north of Huế. Two captured soldiers wore PAVN unit insignia, and they confessed that their battalion-sized force (six hundred men) had camped and trained with PLAF units for ninety days in the A Sầu Valley before commencing the attacks. Helble cabled this news to Washington, as it constituted a direct attack by North Vietnamese soldiers across the DMZ on Americans. William Westmoreland, a new American commander at a rapidly expanding headquarters for the Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) in Sài Gòn, discounted Helble’s report and denied PAVN involvement.55 The combined attacks that summer marked Hà Nội’s decision to wage all-out war in the south, and this concerted uprising (đồng khởi) focused on demolishing the RVN’s strategic hamlets and, if possible, overrunning the mountain bases supported by US Special Forces.56

Regardless of Westmoreland’s political maneuvers with Washington, for the American soldiers camped at Nam Đông war began decisively on July 6, 1964, when the PLAF 802nd Battalion supported by PAVN troops attacked the American special forces A-team there. Approximately nine hundred communist troops attacked the special forces camp with artillery and human wave assaults just after midnight. Twelve Americans served in the A-team with a protection detail of sixty Nung ethnic minority soldiers, highlander mercenaries who fought with French troops near the mountainous Chinese border before 1954. Outside the American camp was a base with over three hundred ARVN troops. Anthropologist Gerald Hickey, one of the only Americans to have studied the Katu, happened to be at the camp the day before to interview local Katu residents.

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