“In the Mekong Delta… one Vietnamese division commander told me that a year ago he wouldn’t think of undertaking an operation in less than three-battalion strength. Now, he can move with a third of that force, indicating a sharp drop-off in Viet Cong capability and a marked improvement in Vietnamese Army capability. The Vietnamese Army has suffered from an uncertainty about our intent to stay with them.”
—U.S. News & World Reports, September 11, 1968
August 26–27, 1967
The list would appear soon. Everyone waited for the list; each of us was eager to find his name on it but dreaded the news announced by it. The list of new assignments was posted on the bulletin board near the water jug every day at midmorning. When your name appeared on the list, you shipped out the next day to your unit of assignment.
Several days of processing at Koepler Compound gave the new cannon fodder an opportunity to recover from jet lag and break in new jungle boots and uniforms. I hated the way I looked, smelled, and felt in new boots and dark-green jungle fatigues. Being new was bad enough, but being stigmatized with the appearance and smell of a new soldier in a combat zone was an insult. While everyone understood that you had to earn the old, worn appearance of an experienced Vietnam hand, I disliked broadcasting my tyro status. I would have gladly traded my new green uniform for a worn out old brown one from some departing soldier, but that just was not done. It was not the army way.
The first break in our morning lectures found me at the big glass water bottle for a cool drink. I tried to appear nonchalant as I glanced over the shoulders of those peering at a newly posted assignment list, and I spotted my own name there! I was on the list, but I lost sight of it before I could read my assignment. Casting nonchalance aside, I pushed my way through the less enthusiastic to get a better look.
I was dazed to actually read my own name typed on a paper announcing that I would be leaving this strange but safe compound in Saigon for the great unknown war zone. Some unknown place with strangers awaited the arrival of an FNG, or “fucking new guy." I also realized that there was a Viet Cong soldier waiting to kill me (perhaps the cleaning lady’s cousin).
I read my assignment: the ARVN 7th Infantry Division Advisory Team—Team 75—in the IV Corps tactical zone. My stomach knotted as a panicky impulse seized me. I was going to the Mekong River Delta, the one place I never anticipated, and dreaded most of all.
I had spent my spare time in college preparing for this day by hiking in North Georgia’s mountains. And while studying at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, I had always assumed I would be assigned somewhere in the mountainous jungle and therefore dozed through most of the orientations on the Mekong Delta. I recalled pictures of flooded rice paddies, large swollen rivers, and the inundated Plain of Reeds from a travelogue about an itinerary I never intended to take. My worst fear had been realized: this was primarily an ARVN tactical zone. Only the U.S. 9th Infantry Division’s Mobile Riverine Force provided an U.S. presence there. “So,” I supposed, “seven is my lucky number, and somebody has my number!”
My day to depart arrived with the next rising sun. I arose very early that morning, shaved in time for a final greasy slider, drew my M1 carbine. The Vietnamese, because of their small stature, carried M1 carbines, scaled down versions of the World War II M1 Garand rifle. U.S. soldiers normally carried standard M14 rifles or the newer M16s, but U.S. advisors were obliged to carry the same older weapon as their Vietnamese counterparts.
Both the M1 and M14 were too large and packed too much punch for the ARVN soldiers. I had carried the M1 in the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) for four years and was familiar with the rifle, its capabilities, and its feel. The smaller carbine was insignificant in comparison with the mighty M1; it had been designed as a self-defense weapon for officers, or as a second, lighter rifle for mortar and artillery gunners. The carbine was not a fighting man’s weapon. Here its use was simply an accommodation to the smaller Vietnamese. We were clearly outgunned by the Soviet- and Chinese-made AK-47 assault rifles. I didn’t like it.
But I was thoroughly excited about getting out of Saigon and discovering the real war story for myself. I packed a few belongings, and caught the wild bus back to the Tan San Nhut airfield.
The MACV flight scheduler told me to catch the helicopter that ran a daily shuttle between Saigon and Can Tho, the capital of the delta region. The chopper was making a special stop in My Tho just to drop me off on the way. I was one of two passengers aboard, the other being the normal courier on the once-a-day flight. I felt I was flying into isolation—where no one else would be.
The helicopter vibrated and bounced for forty-five minutes with hot air swirling through open doors. I anticipated miles of flooded rice paddies streaming by below, and I was not disappointed. Watery fields stretched endlessly. I was no stranger to farmland, but I had never seen crops growing in water before.
Eventually, I was deposited on a lonely helipad at the fringes of My Tho City, next to a cemetery. The earlier feeling of isolation returned like a strangling claw. Without an encouraging word the chopper lifted off, leaving me perplexed and standing with my carbine, a flight bag, a duffel bag, and a brown envelope of orders. I snapped off my carbine’s safety and wondered which of the Vietnamese scurrying about were Viet Cong. I strained to see if any resembled the cleaning lady, but they all did. Five minutes later I was relieved to see a jeep speeding toward me, bouncing uncontrollably in potholes that punctured the road. The rattling vehicle left a cloud of dust in its wake, even though the road was still wet from a recent rain.
I climbed in and began the roughest ride I have ever experienced on a paved road. The jeep bounced so hard that I kept my teeth tightly clenched to avoid chipping them. No one dared talk in the jeep.
After a short ride that seemed much longer, I spotted a large, white two-story building flying U.S. and Vietnamese flags on parallel flagstaffs in front, the entire compound surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. Sandbag bunkers had been erected at the corners of the fence.
I learned that this was the Seminary, a Roman Catholic school leased in 1962 by the U.S. Army from a diocese exiled from North Vietnam and in need of funds. The U.S. advisory team was in need of a facility, so it was a match made in heaven. The stuccoed brick structure was of French colonial style, sporting a red tile roof. The building was roughly a four-sided trapezoid, with one side running parallel to the Rach Bao Dinh River and the opposite side adjacent to the access highway connecting My Tho with National Highway 4. Highway 4 ran from Saigon through Can Tho, joining the lower rice-growing regions to both capitals.
Advisory team administrative offices were in the front of the building, sleeping bays for eight people each were in the center, and the dining facility and bar were in the back. The dining hall was used for church on Sundays and movies in the evenings. The bar served one purpose, but only after noon. The courtyard was used for parking jeeps, landing helicopters, and playing volleyball. The roof was ideal for sunbathing, being closer to the sun and out of the line of fire. Sandbag bunkers along the barbed-wire fence supported the defense, the warlike purpose quite different from what the original tenants envisioned.
The Seminary served as headquarters for Advisory Team 75—a U.S. fortress in a foreign country. The ARVN 7th Division headquarters was situated in a former French Army caserne in My Tho City, about two miles away—far enough that the real war fighters and surrogates maintained a decent separation. My Tho City was the major population center for the northern river delta and the upper rim of the rice bowl that fed the country. It was a city of about fifty thousand people and the capital of Dinh Toung Province.
In 1962, Lt. Col. John Paul Vann began his saga as the original American legend in Vietnam in Dinh Toung Province, with the first air-mobile action that eventually enlarged the hostility into a U.S. war. At that time Vann was senior advisor to the ARVN 7th Division.
The 7th Division’s area of operations consisted of four provinces: Go Cong, Kien Hoa, Kien Toung, and Dinh Toung. Geographical features made this terrain essential for both sides. Here were major communication routes that included National Highway 4 connecting the Delta’s rice bowl to the capital, Saigon; the Mekong River that connected Laos and Cambodia to the South China Sea; and 100 miles of coastline on the east and 130 miles of international border with Cambodia on the west. This network consisted of 490 kilometers of waterways navigable by ocean-going vessels and 735 kilometers of major highways. In addition, the flat region was highly navigable by infantry in all directions, provided the warriors did not mind getting their feet wet.