It might feel safer inside as long as nothing happens, but you couldn’t hope for a pleasant death if anything did happen shut up in a blazing steel room that was rapidly becoming white-hot and filled with an infernal symphony of fireworks as your own ammunition caught fire and added to the horror.
STEPHEN BAGNALL, The Attack1
The rains came late that year. Usually, the rain blew in with May. As long as the dry season persisted around Saigon, the skies stayed relatively clear, and U.S. helicopters and jet fighter- bombers flew freely.2 Drier ground allowed MACV rifle units to keep hunting Charlie. For a mechanized battalion like 2-47th Infantry, every day without the wet monsoon offered another opportunity to get the 12-ton M113s off the roads and trails to find the enemy. The Viet Cong K-34 Artillery Battalion remained unlocated, of course. They knew how not to be seen.
The NVA and their VC auxiliaries would move in early May, rain or no rain. The opening of the peace talks in Paris set that timing. In the weeks before the planned attack, the enemy went to ground, even underground. North Vietnamese Army doctrine taught their officers one slow, four quicks. Slow preparation came first, followed by quick advance, quick assault, quick clearance, and quick withdrawal.3 April 1968 was for preparation.
Waiting for the NVA to act did not work for Major General Julian J. Ewell. He hounded the 9th Infantry Division’s battalions to get out and get after their elusive enemy. While he had a strong personal regard for Lieutenant Colonel John Tower, whom Ewell regarded as a fighter, the division commander considered the 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Infantry an asset of limited utility.4 The 2-47th could keep roads open, escort supply truck convoys, and, in emergencies like Tet, move quickly to the sound of the guns. Yet except for the clashes during Tet, 2-47th did not register much of a body count. And once the wet monsoon blew in, the constraints of weather on M113 mobility guaranteed even less production. As an old paratrooper determined to find and kill Cong, Ewell preferred walking infantry inserted by helicopter. He disliked the slow, predictable riverine guys. But he hated the mech.
So 2-47th stayed not just busy, but hyperbusy, as if a frenetic pace of activity could make up for lack of results. The costly firefight on March 28 came from this push. With the internal dissension over the King assassination resolved, operations continued day and night. When pressed, the American intelligence analysts kept pointing to the Binh Son rubber plantation and its environs, right on the doorstep of the 9th Infantry Division’s Camp Martin Cox at Bear Cat, as the most likely place to find the VC. For his part, Charlie stubbornly refused to be found.
JUST AFTER NOON on April 22, the village chief of Phuoc Thien reported that the VC had moved into his village, just west of Route 15 and about five miles south of Bear Cat. He contacted the 9th Infantry Division headquarters and demanded help. Normally, such bleatings were ignored unless the local South Vietnamese official had a really good reputation. This guy did not. But it had been a long time between contacts, and the 2-47th battalion commander was desperate to placate Ewell. So Lieutenant Colonel John Tower gave the order to Company B. Search and clear the cluster of buildings that made up Phuoc Thien.
Company B’s captain received the mission. He had 3rd Platoon twenty-five miles to the east, way out on Route 1 past Xuan Loc, protecting the engineer rock quarry and signal relay site at Gia Ray. The other two rifle platoons operated much closer to Bear Cat.5 Either would do. The company commander tagged 2nd Platoon.
Chuck and Tom Hagel were with 2nd Platoon when the call came. The Americans had been guarding a bridge, one of the mundane tasks allotted to 2-47th. While keeping the bridge intact secured a key U.S. supply line and permitted the South Vietnamese to get to and from the farmer’s market, it offered almost no possibility of meeting the enemy, especially in daylight. The U.S. troops were bored. The radio message to go search a VC-held hamlet got the men interested, particularly the new guys. But most of these missions came to naught. In daytime, right near Highway 15? This smelled like a wild goose chase. So guessed the old-timers.
Those wary veterans now included Chuck and Tom Hagel. Their lacerations from the March 28 engagement had healed enough. Chuck served as a squad leader. He’d lead some of the riflemen that would dismount from the track once they got to the village. As usual, the infantry rode on top of the boxy armored personnel carrier. With all the ammunition packed inside, one hostile land mine would pulp anyone below the deck. So the riflemen sat on the armored vehicle’s flat roof, hanging on to antenna mounts and tie-down rails.6 Nobody expected trouble, but you never knew. Because he and his brother remained reliable navigators, Chuck’s squad would lead the way.
Tom was Chuck’s track commander, standing in the M113’s little open-topped turret to man the M113’s .50-caliber machine gun. On his head, Tom wore a small combat vehicle crewman helmet with built-in earphones and a mike. By flipping a switch, Tom could talk to his driver in a private intercom or switch to the radio to talk across the platoon or higher. When Chuck and the other soldiers hopped off, Tom and the other track commanders intended to stay mounted, covering the movements of those on the ground.
It took the platoon of four M113s about a half hour to reach Phuoc Thien. The run down Route 15 crossed through a washed-out, ashen dead zone, stark tree trunks and bare branches without a hint of green on them. The cleared area came thanks to a lot of sprayed defoliant chemicals, the infamous Agent Orange, as well as some Agent Blue and White, too. U.S. Air Force C-123 “Ranch Hand” propeller planes dusted the stuff all along both sides of the roadway, weed killer applied thousands of gallons at a time. In the dry season, it worked, and created what Tom Hagel later described as a “moonscape.” Once the monsoon rains came, the chemicals washed away, the greenery rose resurgent, and the spray planes had to go back to work.7 Agent Orange’s long-term effects on the Vietnamese farmers who lived in it, not to mention the U.S. soldiers who walked through it, remained to be seen. But even in 1968, just looking at the desiccated mess, you knew planeloads of toxic chemicals could not be good for all things great and small. As the Americans approached, Phuoc Thien and its immediate set of trees and fields stood out of the gray background like some lunar colony, a spot of color and greenery in the prevailing defoliated wasteland.
The four tracks slowed to turn into the place. From his vantage point up in the lead M113 turret, Tom Hagel noticed the burnt-out French villa near the village entrance. It had been a nice place once. But now only a blackened shell stood there, a mute monument to France’s colonial regime.8 Nobody had time for history lessons.
The tracks rolled into the center of the hamlet in a row, one behind the other. Ideally, Americans established a cordon before searching such a settlement. That required outposts to block each of the key egress routes.9 To encircle this aggregation of a couple dozen dingy houses, huts, and sheds would have tied up all of Company B. And even then, a determined guerrilla—in other words, a standard-issue VC—might easily find gaps in the cordon, typically by slipping out through a tunnel or working slowly through heavy vegetation, clandestine paths the locals knew well and the Americans did not. Pressed for time and bristling with firepower, the U.S. mech platoon just plunged right into town. The M113s spread out as best they could, with the .50 caliber gunners like Tom scanning the thinned, defoliated woods. Nothing.
No VC fire greeted the tracks. Rather, the bewildered South Vietnamese inhabitants stopped whatever they’d been doing and stood there, no doubt wondering why these four U.S. armored personnel carriers clanked onto their central dirt road. That village chief? Well, nobody could find him. Like many in the corrupt Saigon government, he did not live among “his” people. Now it fell to twenty-five Americans to figure out if Charlie was really here, had ever been here, or seemed likely to return.
Chuck Hagel and his five riflemen slipped off the track. The men shook themselves out. The machine gunner carried his long black M60 pig and, criss-crossing his body like some Hollywood bandit, two belts of gleaming 7.62mm rounds, two hundred each.10 Another man had the M79 grenade launcher. The rest, including Chuck, carried M16 rifles. Two other squads also dismounted. Sergeant First Class William E. Smith took charge. The platoon didn’t have an officer (again). The company had lost another lieutenant a week ago. So Smith, an eighteen-year veteran, ran things by himself, as good platoon sergeants do.
Searching a ville took time. Soldiers had to enter every structure. One man covered, weapon at the ready, while his partner checked out each place. Even at midday, the hovels were dim inside. Pawing through civilian clothing, bedding, pots and pans, and rice jars hardly endeared the Americans to the Vietnamese. Every turned cloth smelled pungent. Flies buzzed lazily here and there. The abject poverty just stared you in the face. These people had nearly nothing, and now big men from the far side of the world insisted on rooting among what little they had.
The small, slight Vietnamese, to a man and woman, regardless of age, wore faded black pajama trousers. Certain of the people, perhaps the fashionable sorts, sported white or pastel-colored shirts. Most of the older ones wore matching black tops. Sometimes “experts” announced that the VC uniform consisted of black pajamas, which is another way of saying the opposition didn’t have a uniform. It would be like telling a security patrol in America to look for the guy wearing a T-shirt and blue jeans.
As usual, only women, children, and old men sullenly eyed the inquisitive Americans. No young men hung around. Maybe they all had jobs in Saigon. Well, they had jobs, all right… Tom summarized later: “You never knew who your friends were, or if you had any at all.”11
Trying to figure out what you saw made the search doubly difficult. If you found a big ceramic jar of rice, did that serve to feed the family? Or had the VC made them keep it? If a military item turned up, even an innocuous thing like a canteen cover, did that reflect a VC quartermaster’s work, a stolen ARVN-issue item, or a child’s souvenir? A paper map might feature pencil marks identifying property limits or cultivated fields. Or maybe those light etchings demonstrated carefully gathered intelligence about U.S. and ARVN locations and movements. Everything had dual uses. Everybody seemed to have two faces. Most of these quiet civilians looked to have hedged their bets. In the old game of with us or against us, they’d checked both boxes.
Many of the homes had what U.S. intelligence officers referred to as “bunkers.” These were really just holes in the ground with a plywood cover and a rug on top. Used to having Americans comb through their belongings, smart Vietnamese never left rice or anything remotely military in the family hidey-hole. That allowed them to shrug and claim the dugout strictly as a prudent safety measure, what with the constant fighting in the region. Naturally, any shrewd VC guerrilla could move in and move out as suited him. As Chuck Hagel summarized: “They were very inventive.”12
Now and then, the rummaging unearthed a real VC tunnel. Those tended to go right out of town. If one of them turned up, then the fun started. The Americans had some smaller soldiers—tunnel rats—picked and trained to crawl into the tight spaces, .45 automatic pistol in one hand, flashlight in the other. Alternatively, you could just toss in a hand grenade or three and call it a day.13 This afternoon in Phuoc Thien, Chuck Hagel and the other riflemen found no tunnels.
Soldiers also checked out pigpens and chicken coops. The VC liked to squirrel away weapons and ammunition in unpleasant, slimy, smelly spots. So all had to be examined. The U.S. riflemen poked around. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary.
One final location got attention. In soggy areas, the Vietnamese interred their dead in stone crypts, about six inches of which protruded above ground. A big slab topped each tomb. Hard experience taught the Americans to look inside. Soldiers hefted the heavy rectangular lids. The VC often stashed AK-47s, RPD machine guns, PRG launchers, and ammunition in grave sites. But not this time. Annoyed villagers “said we were desecrating graves,” Tom Hagel remembered.14 It was one of the few times that day when the locals said anything. The older ones learned long ago that when the Americans came calling, go with the poker face. Anything else might get you taken away.
Americans took away two kinds of Vietnamese. Clearly, if the platoon met resistance, prisoners of war went out for interrogation. In the lull after Tet, the entire 9th Infantry Division took only 203 battlefield prisoners. But they took ten times as many “detainees,” people in civil dress scooped up on sweeps. These needed to be screened as possible bad guys. Of 2,303 detained, only 853 were eventually classed as innocent civilians and released.15 The other 1,500 or so went into long-term captivity as VC or NVA.
Because the hostiles hid in plain sight, any VC or likely VC was nabbed, and that meant a younger man with a weapon (even a single AK bullet), or military web gear, or a bellicose stare. A military-age male, anything from twelve to fifty or so, who couldn’t account for his daily activities usually became a detainee. Women also found themselves apprehended if they possessed military gear or communist documents; the VC included many female members, including fighters and leaders. When in doubt, Americans picked up anybody at all shady. Better safe than sorry.
The Hagels’ platoon didn’t take anyone captive. The search found no VC material, either. It took all afternoon, right into the dusk. But the Americans came up empty. With night coming on quickly, the platoon needed to get out of Phuoc Thien and get back on its bridge site. Sergeant First Class Smith ordered his men to mount up.16
Chuck Hagel and his guys scrambled aboard. Chuck sat just behind and left of his brother Tom, still in the turret. That let Chuck, as squad leader, pull up the radio handset through the open cargo hatch. The radios were on the track’s left side, just below where Chuck sat. Once all his men were on top and set, Chuck Hagel notified Smith by radio: good to go.
At that, Smith’s track gunned its diesel engine and the 12-ton aluminum box spun about like the Batmobile—very nifty. The tracked M113 could turn two ways. For wide moves, the driver up front on the left side yanked on a lever to brake the tread in the direction of the turn. Pull the right lever, and the right tread slowly halted while the left one kept churning. And the track swung about like a garbage scow, fast or slow, depending on how far down the driver pushed the acceleration pedal. But for tight spots, like Vietnamese villages, the driver had the option to use two little curved handles hanging from a sideways fixture just above the normal driving levers. Those smaller handles allowed pivot steering. Pull on the right one, and the right side stopped instantly as the left side kept going.17 That’s how an M113 turned on a dime.
All four tracks quickly slewed into position, one behind the other, a 180-degree reversal in how they entered the ville. Tom and Chuck Hagel now had the fourth track to head out. A light wave of dust settled. The lead track spouted some exhaust, hard to see in the near darkness. But even over the radios and rumbling motors, you could hear it. With a squeak, the first M113 headed out.
The second one allowed about ten yards, then followed. After a short delay, another ten yards, and number three rumbled forward. Finally, the Hagels’ track jolted a bit and crawled forward, slowly creeping out of the hamlet. Behind them, a few cooking fires twinkled in the cloud of dirt raised by the departing American vehicles. Well, so far—
Ka-whang!
The dusk lit white, a bolt of hot ground lightning, a flashbulb the size of a house. The explosion shot up the left side of the Hagels’ M113, tossing the 12-ton sideways like a toy. Then came the yammering of RPD machine guns and AKs, green tracers reaching out of the dark village. And for every bullet you saw, there were four you did not. Those VC nobody found? Well, here they were.
For Chuck. the tracer display played out in near silence. No Americans shot back. Chuck Hagel’s left eardrum had been perforated. So had the right one, although not as badly. His entire left side felt like he’d been roasted on a spit. Bright flames climbed up the side of the track. Along with Chuck and the radio rack, the explosion blew right under the APC’s 95-gallon tank of diesel fuel. Diesel didn’t explode, but it burned just fine. And the M113 was full of ammunition.18
Chuck couldn’t hear much, but he quickly took charge. Get the guys off this thing before the ammo goes. The other riflemen slid off okay. One had finally started shooting back. Then the pig gunner joined in, a healthy dose of red tracers back at Charlie.
What about Tom? What of the driver? That land mine—and it was a mine, a 500-pounder, maybe a former U.S. Air Force bomb repurposed by the ingenious Mr. Charles—knocked them out. The driver, up on the left but a bit away from the detonation, stirred some, then woozily crawled out of his hatch, seemingly oblivious to the green tracers zipping overhead. Thank God Charlie shot high.
Tom Hagel didn’t move.19 Chuck grabbed him under the arms and pulled up. The intercom wire popped loose. Chuck tossed his brother bodily off the track then fell on him. Not exactly proper first-aid technique, but staying low was a good idea right now.
Chuck pulled off Tom’s crewman’s helmet, working the earphones loose. Even in the dark, the firelight showed blood trickling from Tom’s ears and nose. Trouble, for sure.
About then, the welcome hammering of .50 calibers announced the return of the other three M113s. That drove Charlie away. As the firefight petered out, strong hands grabbed both Chuck and Tom and bundled them into another track. Someone—a medic, maybe—rubbed some kind of ointment on Chuck. Tom was alive but not moving and not conscious.20
As the platoon cross-loaded their men into the three intact vehicles and the stricken track burned, with bullets cooking off like deadly firecrackers, it occurred to a few Americans that the Vietnamese settlement had just done duty as a shooting gallery. All of the mayhem couldn’t have been a happy thing in the ville. But Sergeant First Class Smith and the other U.S. NCOs didn’t have time to deal with that. Smith focused on pulling out his guys, getting out onto the open highway, bringing in a medevac chopper for Tom Hagel and Chuck, too. Tom lay still as death.
When they finally flew out, Tom remembered almost nothing: noises, lights, people talking that he couldn’t hear. Chuck, in extreme pain from his raw skin, later mentioned hearing Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys, maybe while waiting in the other squad’s M113, maybe even on the medevac helicopter, singing about traveling to the beat of a different drum.21 Linda sure got that right. This one beat damn hard.
TWO BROTHERS, THREE weeks, four Purple Hearts, all in a period of allegedly low-intensity enemy activity—what the hell. At this rate, the Hagels didn’t look like a good bet to see Nebraska again. Being a good soldier in Vietnam put you at risk. And the brothers were fine soldiers, acting NCOs. They lived in a degree of danger unimaginable to those back home. And just like drill sergeant William Joyce told Chuck way back at Fort Bliss, people counted on both brothers.
Blown eardrums healed. So did second- and first-degree burns. Both men, Tom more than Chuck, also endured an unseen wound, what later medical researchers termed traumatic brain injury. It’s what happens when the brain slams a few too many times against the unyielding skull bone. Boxers get it, as the sad later lives of Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali taught many. Football players suffer also, as did Chicago Bear Dave Duerson and San Diego Charger Junior Seau. Combat soldiers face this peril, too. If you sustain too many concussions one after the other, the brain gets permanently damaged. Over time, paranoia, depression, homicidal urges, and suicidal tendencies can result. By luck, rather than design, both Hagels benefited from the exact right treatment—a break, a chance for their bruised brains to repair battered cells before getting scrambled again.22 For almost two weeks after the mine blew, both men did only light duties around Bear Cat.
Chuck’s burns, mostly severe first degree with some second-degree blistering, kept him swathed in bandages “like a mullah.”23 He had salve to apply, easy to do in base camp. Doing that out on missions looked to be pretty tough. But at least for a while, that wasn’t an issue.
The April 22 explosion didn’t move the ball, at least as far as Major General Ewell reckoned matters. The division scoreboard showed “negligible contact” at the cost of two wounded in action, one M113 “damaged” (burned to aluminum slag), and no VC body count. To Sergeant First Class Smith’s credit, he refused to game the system and claim phantom dead opponents. But the 2-47th Infantry battalion commander couldn’t let this go on. On May 4, 1968, Captain James B. Craig, an officer with a superb combat record in the 101st Airborne Division, took charge of Company B. He was the outfit’s fourth commander in a bit more than three months.24
Days later, Mr. Charles reintroduced himself as only he could.
THEY BLEW THE SIREN for this one. The horn wailed, loud and long, warbling out from the green metal speaker mounted high on the thin wood pole over the 2-47th motor pool. Men scrambled to their M113s, like Spitfire pilots running to the flight line to meet a Luftwaffe raid on London. Lieutenant Colonel John Tower had insisted on this procedure, just in case the battalion was in the Bear Cat base camp when something really bad cropped up. At 12:20 p.m. on May 9, 1968, it did.
Company A wasn’t there; they had the routine task twenty-five miles to the east at Gia Ray, of defending the engineer rock quarry and the radio site. Aware the battalion had to roll short one company, Companies B and C gathered up every man they could. Specialist 4 Jimmy Dye, a squad leader in 3rd Platoon, recalled: “All the tracks in the motor pool was up and runnin’ and people was jumpin’ on ’em.” Dye had a fever, but he went. Cooks and clerks came at the double, gripping rarely fired rifles.25 Chuck and Tom Hagel went, too. Light duty was over. That screaming siren meant all hands on deck.
The urgent order to assemble and head out immediately came directly from Major General Ewell himself. The irascible division commander thought little of his mech guys, but even he recognized that nothing matched an M113 outfit for firepower and speed in an emergency. Just such a situation had boiled up in south Saigon.
At 4 a.m. on May 5, those pesky VC battalions supposedly defeated in the Tet Offensive in January–February rose from the dead, thanks to a huge influx of North Vietnamese regulars. All the usual suspects emerged: the Phu Loi II Battalion, 2nd Independent Battalion, 5th Nha Be Battalion, 265th Battalion, 506th Battalion, even the slippery K-34 Artillery Battalion. That last bunch rained rockets and mortar rounds on Tan Son Nhut Air Base, to include the MACV headquarters compound. Two battalions (5th Nha Be and 506th) went after the Y-bridge, a key interchange in south Saigon. A third battalion (Phu Loi II) supported that effort, moving to block Highway 232 east of the Y-bridge.26 It wasn’t as big as Tet—a lot fewer communist troops, fewer targets, and a lot less follow-through. But it was big enough, especially in South Vietnam’s capital city. Troops called this major enemy push Phase II, the Second Wave, the May Offensive, May Tet, Little Tet, and most often, Mini-Tet.27
For a day or so, MACV tried to let the ARVN deal with the attacks around Saigon. The South Vietnamese couldn’t pull it off. Even with substantial U.S. supporting fires, South Vietnam’s best troops—airborne, marines, and rangers—proved unequal to the challenge.28 So Americans went to work. Before 2-47th cranked up the siren, II Field Force had already sent two battalions (1-5th Mech Infantry and 3-4th Cavalry) from the 25th Infantry Division to sort out an attempted perimeter breach at Tan Son Nhut Air Base. Ewell’s 9th Infantry Division rolled an entire brigade-plus into south Saigon—5-60th Mech Infantry, 3-39th Infantry, 6-31st Infantry in the urban zone, and 4-39th Infantry into the arc of VC-infested villages southwest of the city.29 It wasn’t enough. Despite all of that troop strength, artillery, helicopter gunships, and air strikes, the enemy held on to the neighborhoods seized. The call went out to 2-47th: pile on.
Captain Craig and Company B led, each M113’s bow decorated with a snarling black panther. It was time to live up to the nickname. In a cloud of rusty red dust—the dry season lingered—the long column of tracks left Bear Cat, en route to the Route 232-230 intersection in south Saigon. Over the radio, the commander received his orders. The good guys had the Phu Loi II Battalion pinned in Xom Ong Doi, a pro-government Catholic district of small shops and shabby houses, as well as a large number of temporary shacks inhabited by refugees driven into town by combat in the countryside. To the west stood the understrength 5th Battalion, Republic of Vietnam Marine Division, an outfit maybe the size of a U.S. rifle company. South of Xom Ong Doi, two companies of 6-31st Infantry tried to block VC exfiltration. A wide waterway made exit to the east unlikely. Craig’s Company B and the rest of 2-47th were supposed to seal off the north. Once that happened, U.S. firepower could pound away, to be followed by a sweep of what was left of the VC… and Xom Ong Doi.30
When they neared the objective area about 1:30 p.m., the Americans slowed. The dirty dark-green M113s passed groups of civilians, maybe two hundred in all. The people trudged east, away from the fighting. Women and children and a few old men walked by slowly. The American vehicles’ throaty diesel engine noises blocked the sound, but looking at facial expressions, many Vietnamese were crying. A lot of the females, even the elderly ones, balanced bundles on their heads. Children lugged bags of clothing and brass pots tied by strings. These folks wanted out, and they were heading there. Company B was going in.
Black smoke towered like a thunderhead over Xom Ong Doi. Somebody had been busy making a mess. Now it fell to Captain Craig’s Company B to slam the door to the north. Route 232 beckoned. To the right of the idling tracks, a single line of dilapidated market stands and small sheds to the north fronted a canal. To the south loomed quite a few two-story buildings, some of stone and brick dating back to the French era. Between the aging colonial structures, one-story hovels filled the gaps. The four-lane road between the canal- side shacks and the taller buildings stood as empty as a street in a Hollywood western, high noon indeed.31
The word went down the column. Dismount. Get the riflemen out and forward. Second Platoon led, with both Hagels out on the ground, Chuck with his squad, Tom as a fire team leader. This time, they did not go first. Sergeant First Class Smith pushed another squad up. The M113s followed, one to the right, another echeloned to the left, freeing two .50 caliber gunners to fire as necessary.
A point team of two riflemen moved out, shaded to the south side, toward the old French buildings. Behind them, one squad picked along, sliding from doorway to doorway right near the walls. Nobody messed with the flimsy wood, canvas, and sheet metal shanties on the north side, near the canal. No cover there—bullets would rip right through that light stuff. And for God’s sake, stay out of the road. The veterans, those like Chuck Hagel who’d fought at Widows Village, knew that deal. They warned the rookies.32
Trailing the foot troops came the four tracks, creeping up at walking speed. A squad of riflemen followed each of the lead tracks, with a drag team of two soldiers behind the fourth one. The rest of Company B followed, riflemen on the road surface, gunners and drivers mounted.
Nobody saw any more civilians, at least no live ones. Here and there, a stiff corpse sprawled against a building. Bloated dark-gray pigs and limp, tattered ducks littered the road on the canal side. Slain chickens dotted the cracked pavement, feathers moving, but nothing else. You smelled all of them before you saw them. And they smelled bad in a way only dead things can.
It reminded Tom Hagel of a “World War II style of fighting,” like Aachen or Manila. Both Hagels knew this would be intense. Although 2-47th occasionally patrolled just outside this end of Saigon, the troops had never been in or around congested Xom Ong Doi. One thing for sure—nobody wanted to be on the tracks, sure magnets for trouble and trundling along exactly where not to be, in that open street.33 Guys scrunched down in their bulky flak vests. Take it slow. Stay ready.
Up in the cupola of the first M113, Specialist 4 Philip Streuding watched with his hands on the grips of the M2HB .50-caliber machine gun. He saw the point duo gingerly approach an overturned jeep. Two South Vietnamese national policemen, the ones the Americans called “White Mice” after the color of their helmets and gloves, lay facedown on the street. Back in the column, Specialist 4 Dye saw “a guy in a ditch who looked like he’d been hacked to death with a machete.”34 Wafting in the hot, humid air, the stench from all the remains, human and animal, made Americans gag. Even the old-timers felt it.
At 2:20 p.m., the point team crossed carefully to the far side of the Route 320 intersection. So far, so good.
Then it wasn’t.
Cracking and barking with a purpose, dozens of AK-47s opened up. The point man and slack man, Specialist 4 George W. Darnell and Private First Class Larry G. Caldwell, both collapsed to the stained pavement. Caldwell came from Omaha, Nebraska.35 He wouldn’t see it again.
Streuding opened up, working the big .50 caliber up and down the building that he thought held the VC guerrillas who’d shot the two soldiers. Plaster and underlying brick flew away in chunks. In one doorway, a 55-gallon drum of gasoline exploded in an orange fireball. Right out of the movies, a few guys thought. Then the riflemen kept right on shooting.
As Streuding fired, the gunner in the next track back began to tear up other suspicious buildings. They taught you back at Fort Ord to engage known, likely, and suspected targets. This afternoon, that amounted to pretty much everything.
As the lead element exchanged fire, VC all along the column also opened fire. Shadows flitted in doorways and second-story windows. Other VC crouched on the rooftops. AK-47s and RPD machine guns stuttered away. Nobody fired RPGs. They were too close; the warheads wouldn’t even arm. The enemy couldn’t be more than ten yards away, sometimes closer. But you still couldn’t really see them—you hardly ever did. But you saw movement. And muzzle flashes. Lots of those.
Company B’s tracks pivoted left. Dismounted U.S. soldiers sought cover near doorposts, ditches, wall corners, and on the sheltered sides of the stationary tracks. All of that training back in the States, and all of the hard-won field experience—this is why it mattered. Officers and NCOs didn’t have to say or do anything. The American rifle company convulsed with fire, a wounded, cornered carnivore lashing back. Riflemen, pig gunners, and M79 grenadiers banged away. As Jimmy Dye said, “You’re not thinking, you’re just reacting.”36
Captain Craig had slid behind his track on the north, the canal side. AK rounds pinged off the exposed flank of the M113. With one radio, Craig talked to his embattled platoons. With the other he reported to Tower, circling overhead in a bubble-top chopper. Over him orbited the brigade commander. And another layer up, Ewell watched. It sounded like even Major General Fred Weyand from II Field Force was up there somewhere. And they were all on his communications net, “helping.”37 Good Lord.
Fortunately, the artillery had their own radio frequencies, and spectating great men didn’t talk on them. On his own initiative, forward observer Lieutenant Paul H. Bowman called in artillery, starting a way out. He opened with a white phosphorus round to mark. The projectile smacked in just south and west of the front of Company B’s column. A brilliant white cloud rose up. Good enough—Bowman told the battery to fire for effect.38 Bowman sure hoped those South Vietnamese marines had their heads down.
Company B’s soldiers ducked as the artillery began blowing into the south side of the row of old French buildings. Unwilling to endure the pounding, the VC backed off. Their shooting died away, and by twos and threes, the guerrillas began slithering south, squirreling themselves into the center of the ramshackle hootches of Xom Ong Doi. They’d have to be blown out or dug out, probably both. But for now, Charlie had had enough.39
About an hour into the fight, as the VC tried to pull away to the south, Company B started to take fire from the north, across the canal. A keyed-up pig gunner shot right back, zipping through a belt of 7.62mm ball and tracers, and joined by some riflemen. It took a few minutes of back and forth on the radio, and tossing out colored smoke grenades, to figure out that those were probably ARVN over there, although some Americans thought they saw NVA uniforms. Anyway, Craig made his men cease fire.40
Specialist 5 Phillip Rogers and his medics had already been carrying out their usual heroic work. He did what he could for poor Darnell and Caldwell, but they were too far gone. Doc Rogers and the rest of the medics helped the other eleven wounded men.41 For a change, that number did not include Chuck and Tom Hagel. It had been a vicious close-quarters firefight, but this time, both brothers came through fine.
Company B’s street clash attracted plenty of attention from the high-ranking gallery in the helicopters overhead. Tower exerted his authority to clear the command net, and to their credit, the higher- ranking officers backed off, hopefully a bit chastened. Seeing the good done by Bowman’s artillery fire mission, the 2-47th commander worked to get helicopter gunships into action. He also requested fighter-bombers. The proper headquarters acknowledged Tower’s transmissions. Then… nothing.42
These steps, calling in helicopter gunships and close air support, amounted to standard U.S. tactics out in the countryside. Inside populous Saigon, even days into Mini-Tet, the use of such violent means generated lengthy consultations with Saigon city officials, ARVN generals, MACV staff types, and even senior figures at the U.S. embassy. On a good day, South Vietnam couldn’t locate most of its own police elements and ARVN units, let alone thousands of random civilians. The cross-canal dust-up typified the confusion. Firepower looked sure to kill friendlies. How much of that could be tolerated? The big guys debated. Minutes ticked away: ten, twenty, thirty, forty. Americans on the ground bled. Some died.
Ewell had already permitted artillery. He owned it, and he cleared its use. The notoriously impatient division commander also got tired of waiting and soon unleashed his armed helicopters, too. But to get air force jets took MACV approval. The general ensured John Tower got the word. It would be hours before the heavy stuff arrived.43
That meant 2-47th had to use its own resources. Accordingly, while arranging the big hammers and awaiting the pleasure of the high command, Tower told Company C to move up to close off the north side between Company B and the river. Once that defensive array was set, then 2-47th could really bring in the firepower and powder the VC stuck in the noose.44
Old soldiers recognize that friction, confusion, and misunderstandings characterize combat, especially in close quarters. Bad things happen. Late on the afternoon of May 9, one of those problems occurred. Tired, keyed-up, and trying to hear over a roaring engine and rampant explosions, the Company C commander misunderstood his orders. Lieutenant Colonel Tower wanted him to block, facing south. That captain heard attack south. He did.
It did not turn out well at all.
Company C’s tracks faced south, came on line, and charged into a grassy field on the northeast quarter of Xom Ong Doi. Some bogged down. Others backed away. American riflemen piled out of the stuck vehicles, trying to work their way toward the buildings. Offered this opportunity, the VC opened up with a vengeance: RPD machine guns, AK-47s, and rocket-propelled grenades. Out on that wet grass, the RPG gunners had plenty of range. The fat rockets slammed into the aluminum tracks.
A squad or so of fast-moving Company C soldiers sprinted through the gunfire and somehow made it into the first row of structures in Xom Ong Doi. Others pulled back to the tracks, crouched down behind the inert aluminum boxes as bullets ricocheted off the bows and sides. Casualties piled up—two dead, twenty-two wounded, an entire platoon knocked out, and more to come if something didn’t change.45
Right on time, right overhead, a team of two UH-1C Huey gunships clattered past, top cover for the floundering rifle company. The choppers’ rasping mini-guns quelled the VC fire. Then the aviators switched to rockets. Pods of flashing 2.75-inch munitions blew off sheet metal roofs and started fires in the rows of huts that made up Xom Ong Doi. Under this pummeling, the VC finally quit shooting.
One rocket went awry. It slammed into a stalled Company C M113, killing two American soldiers and wounding a third. As their mates attempted to recover the stricken troops, U.S. artillery landed in their midst. More confusion—maybe a mistake by the distant howitzer crews, or transposed numbers, or perhaps misreading the military map, where an inch on paper equaled ten football fields of jumbled shacks and smoking buildings. Who could be sure at this point? Thankfully, the errant 105mm rounds did no additional damage. Company C consolidated its position, some tracks out in the open grassy field, anchored by the squad with a foothold in the town. They lost two more killed and another wounded in so doing. 46 It had been expensive, but the Americans now held that stretch of the ring.
To their west, Company B also settled in, holding on to their dearly won string of shot-up houses and stores along Route 232. Track machine gunners and individual soldiers with M16s traded shots with VC marksmen. Radio reports titled these hostiles as “snipers,” the common way to refer to any lone enemy banging away.47 Had any of the VC been real trained snipers, Company B’s casualty list would have been much longer. And it was already long enough.
With both companies in position, the lengthy discussions about close air support finally wrapped up. Emphasizing the mounting U.S. infantry losses in Xom Ong Doi, Major General Ewell prevailed. That released the aerial hounds. At about 5:45 p.m. on the battalion command radio net, a warning went out. The air force jets were inbound. Captain Jim Craig told the men of Company B to take cover.
Two F-4 Phantoms roared overhead, confirming the designated target, and low enough that as they streaked past, the riflemen on the ground could see the two bright orange circles of their jet engines. It had been more than three hours since Lieutenant Colonel Tower asked for them. Better late than never. They did the job, and then a second set of screaming Phantom fighter-bombers overdid it. The two pairs of aircraft dropped high-explosive 250-pound Snakeye bombs and unloaded napalm canisters—snakes and nape, shake ’em and bake ’em. Xom Ong Loi, already smoldering, erupted in awful black clouds and raging fires. Each set of jets then strafed the streets of Xom Ong Loi, punching 20mm slugs all through the shantytown.48 That pretty much did it for Charlie.
As the jets pulled away and the sun set, an angry red disk behind the roiling dark smoke clouds, a stray piece of hot metal whirred into Company B. It hit Doc Rogers right on the shoulder. The steady African American medic smiled broadly, thinking he’d gotten his “million dollar wound” and with it, hopefully, a ticket home to North Babylon, New York. He was the last American in Company B medically evacuated from the great fight on May 9.49
FOR THE COST of eight killed and thirty-six wounded, plus three M113s trashed, 2-47th Infantry set its part of the cordon. When they swept the blackened wreckage of Xom Ong Loi after daylight on May 10, the battalion claimed 202 VC dead. But only 16 VC bodies turned up. The 2-47th picked up one confused, unarmed VC prisoner. Where did the rest of the Phu Loi II Battalion go? Who knew?
Far more disturbing, U.S. riflemen found thirty-six South Vietnamese marine family members, all dead in their wrecked homes. It wasn’t clear who got them—vengeful VC with AKs, American artillery and air, or both. A few dozen more dazed, shell-shocked Vietnamese civilians, some injured, came out on Route 232. The Americans sent them east, out of the beaten zone.50
After a day of unopposed searches and reorganization, to include taking aboard a lot of ammunition to replace the thousands of rounds so liberally expended on May 9, Captain Craig received new orders. At first light on May 11, Company B shifted to control of 3-39th Infantry for unfinished business more to the west on Route 232, past the Y-bridge. That big highway span crossed the canal, and at the outset of Mini-Tet, a VC assault team had blown a hole in the bridge deck. Most of two VC battalions (5th Nha Be and 506th) tried to take the big edifice, but couldn’t hold it. They pulled back and remained hunkered down in Xom Cau Mat, pretty much the same kind of place as the pulverized Xom Ong Loi. The leg infantry of 3-39th had the place surrounded but needed some oomph to finish the job. Company C of 2-47th was too beat up. So Company B, a bit less bloodied and with more operational M113s, got the job.51
Craig ordered his men into action. They moved mounted to the big Y-bridge, an incongruously modern sight, seemingly transplanted intact from the Los Angeles freeway. Once west of the overpass, the riflemen dismounted, Chuck and Tom Hagel among them. Again, Route 232 stretched due west, devoid of movement. Left of the Americans, to the south, ran storefronts and houses, the now familiar mix of old French two-story buildings and newer single-floor structures. To the right, north, squatted another row of sheds and huts, with the canal bank just behind them. Different day, same story.
The men of 5-60th Mech and some doughty South Vietnamese national police—a bolder section of White Mice than usually seen—held the west. The scheme called for 3-39th to push up from the south, with a 6-31st rifle company attached to block the north exits. Craig’s Company B drew the mission of forcing a defended dead-end street to the east.52 If not taken, the remnants of both VC battalions would probably escape that way. It fell to Captain Craig and his men, including Chuck and Tom Hagel, to prevent that.
About 2 p.m., the company started south on the dead-end street. Craig, who’d been wounded twice in his previous service in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne Division, didn’t like the look of things. His wife served in country as an army officer, too, a nurse at 3rd Field Hospital at Tan Son Nhut. Craig wanted to visit her, but not on a stretcher.53
The Americans did not mess around. They knew the VC were there and waiting. It sure would have been smart to level the street with bombs, but the Saigon city fathers had again prevailed, and that wasn’t yet permitted on May 11. Every day required a renegotiation between the Americans and their South Vietnamese allies. So this would be done the hard way.
Chuck Hagel noted that in these “urban areas where the VC had gotten in” the opposition “had worked and changed their tactics.” Inside the city, the enemy hadn’t had time to set up booby traps or bury mines. So the guerrillas depended on direct fire, the old school.54 In Xom Cau Mat, Mr. Charles sought belt-to-belt contact, at least long enough so that the unengaged portion of the VC unit could escape and evade.
The two lead tracks, almost abreast, went first, with no point team in front of them. Behind the hulking M113s walked the riflemen, bent slightly forward, stepping methodically from doorway to doorway. The lead .50 caliber gunners “reconned by fire,” which is to say that they opened up on anything that didn’t look right. Not much looked right. The big U.S. machine guns chugged away.
The VC replied right away. In the two-lane (if that) side street, the cracks and snaps and snorting machine guns echoed and reechoed. One .50-caliber round hit a 55-gallon drum full of gasoline and it blew, bright and yellow. The shower of hot debris started a junked Renault car afire. The lead track passed right through the flames.
Riflemen aimed at fleeting VC on the rooftops. Some guys later alleged they saw khaki uniformed hostiles, but if so, not for long. Americans fired at muzzle flashes, dust puffs, and any movement, known or guessed. As Tom Hagel later explained: “You had to watch every window, and every door, and if you saw something, shoot.”55 American riflemen stayed low. Men passed ammunition from the stopped tracks. The Company B soldiers ran through a lot of bullets that afternoon.
About ten minutes into the firefight, a guerrilla nailed Captain Jim Craig, drilling a hole through his right lung, and thereby causing the dreaded sucking chest wound. Every breath bubbled up bloody froth on the company commander’s chest. If not treated soon, the buildup of blood in his chest cavity would suffocate the officer. With Doc Rogers gone, another medic took over. A few men carried Craig back to Route 320. Within a half hour, a medevac chopper took him and a few other wounded away.56 They all survived, and Craig saw his wife, too. At least that worked out okay.
The company executive officer, Lieutenant Skip Johnson, took charge. He never got too excited. Even the raucous fusillade all around him didn’t rattle the young officer. Coolly sizing up the situation, Johnson halted the advance and told the lead APCs to back off about twenty yards. With fourteen more wounded, Johnson decided it was time to let the artillery, helicopters, and jet fighters go to work.
They did.57
For the rest of the afternoon, helicopters and fighter-bombers traded runs over the trapped foe. Once night fell, U.S. Army artillery took over. Xom Cau Mat burned, the red glow of flames masked by the endless, stinking smoke. That sick-sweet odor of roasting flesh sullied the night breeze every time another clutch of 105mm howitzer shells impacted.58 Maybe this is what Sergeant Charles Dean Hagel saw and smelt from his tail turret over Japan in that final terrible summer of 1945. If so, no wonder he never wanted to experience it again.
At daybreak on May 12, Company B sent a platoon south to check out a smashed-up set of houses south and east of the dead-end street. A firefight developed. Again the Americans resorted to supporting arms. The artillery settled things.
Unfortunately, 3-39th troops under fire also brought in artillery. One round fell well out of the predicted sheaf, blowing right on the dead-end street where Lieutenant Johnson was assembling his men to sweep south. Specialist 4 Antony P. Palumbo and PFC Philip M. Wooten both fell, as did two others. Palumbo died, but Wooten hung on long enough to see his brother, a soldier also serving in country, although not in 2-47th. Lieutenant Johnson got on the radio and told 3-39th’s artillery observers to cease fire.
Eager to finish off the VC, and no doubt feeling the usual heat from Ewell at division, the 3-39th lieutenant colonel overruled Johnson. The senior commander demanded a repeat of the artillery fire mission. It was too bad about the stray projectile, but the 3-39th commander insisted. When his artillery forward observer officer refused, the lieutenant colonel fired him. Not that it mattered—during all the confusion, the VC stopped shooting.59 As usual, Charlie found a way out.
THE FIGHTING ON May 12 ended Mini-Tet, although follow-on sweeps continued for a week. The 9th Infantry Division counted 39 Americans killed in action and 265 wounded in action, a battalion’s field strength lost. In return, the division chalked up 976 NVA/VC killed, 10 prisoners taken, and 253 civilians detained. In the Ewell calculus, the division achieved a 25 to 1 ratio of dead enemy to dead Americans. The general saw it and found it good, and he publicly praised the battle in south Saigon as “one of the biggest allied victories of the war.” 60
Up at MACV, General Westmoreland agreed. Almost at the end of his fifty-four long months in country, the general found time to announce yet one more sterling success. Mini-Tet had been repulsed, “more nuisance than threat,” with 40,000 more North Vietnamese killed.61 That count pretty much matched the final toll assessed for the countrywide Tet Offensive back in January and February. Few bought it.
For the umpteenth time, MACV’s numbers did not add up. Most of Mini-Tet happened in Saigon. Ewell, aggressive as hell and not averse to choosing the higher-end figures when filling in the ledger on dead foes, only accounted for one-fortieth of MACV’s total estimate of enemy fatalities. While there had been sharp encounters in the U.S. marine area near the Laos border and in Central Highlands as well, “the enemy accomplished nothing more in the north than mortar and rocket attacks,” in Westmoreland’s words.62 Even allowing for a coincident major operation by the 101st Airborne Division under way up north in the forbidding A Shau Valley, where and how did all those other tens of thousands of North Vietnamese die?
The ones killed in Saigon also raised questions. The 9th Infantry Division’s battalions fought hard in the streets near the Y-bridge. In both Xom Ong Doi and Xom Cau Mat, combat proceeded at short range inside some of the tighter cordons achieved in the war. Post-action searches and tabulations were extensive. Yet the Americans only recovered 238 enemy rifles and pistols and forty-two mortars, RPG launchers, and machine guns. Moreover, the Phu Loi II Battalion, 5th Nha Be Battalion, and 506th Battalion all somehow survived the battle intact, passing like ghosts right through the formidable American encirclements.63 Skeptical journalists in Saigon and anti- war voices in America took note.
Customary rationalizations ensued. Perhaps a great many weapons vanished in the general devastation, certainly possible given the 23,450 rounds of artillery used, not to mention the high volume of helicopter rockets, aerial bombs, and napalm pumped into the embattled pockets of resistance.64 U.S. intelligence analysts also observed that the NVA/VC had an excellent battlefield recovery program, ruthlessly policing up key gear. Maybe so. It sure seemed to be a convenient corollary to the standard shibboleth about Charlie dragging off his side’s bodies with an efficiency that would be the envy of any U.S. graves registration outfit. Or maybe less than half of the hostile dead carried arms. That would be quite a hazardous way to go to war, but it was possible.
Such dubious accounting led invariably to other suspicions. South Vietnamese authorities and U.S. embassy personnel estimated the number of civilian casualties in south Saigon as anywhere from three hundred to three thousand, depending on who you asked. The 9th Infantry Division’s medical teams treated “many thousands” of civilians after the Saigon fighting, and MACV estimated that a quarter million residents of the city lost their dwellings, with 150,000 homes utterly destroyed. As a final gesture, designed to curb disease, the 9th Infantry Division sprayed insect-killing DDT (already known to have distressing side effects) all over what American officers termed “the entire disaster area.”65 Amen to that.
When the fierce engagements happened in south Saigon, conveniently close to their downtown offices, American television, radio, and print journalists swarmed to almost every scene of the deadly action. In testimony to the hazards, six reporters perished trying to chronicle Mini-Tet. But they and their colleagues covered the story.66 The prevailing themes were destruction and death.
Those kind of bleak thoughts occurred to at least one senior officer in country, too. Returning by air to his Tan Son Nhut headquarters after a meeting at II Field Force headquarters at Long Binh Post, deputy MACV commander General Creighton Abrams looked down past the Huey’s skid. In June, Abrams would take command from Westmoreland. He had a lot on his mind. Abrams said later:
As I rode back in my helicopter after hearing how well we were doing, smoke was billowing up in Saigon, flames shooting up in the air. I have estimated that we can defend Saigon seven more times, and then we’re going to be faced with the embarrassment that there’s no city left. And I don’t know how we’re going to explain these nine successful defenses of Saigon, but no goddamn city.67
The week of Mini-Tet saw more Americans killed than any other during the entire Vietnam War.68 To what end? For the remaining true believers, men like Ewell and Westmoreland, all that mattered was the scoreboard. But back home, with peace talks beginning and Lyndon Johnson neutered, it all looked like good money after bad, precious American blood down a rat hole. How many more lives, how many more Chuck or Tom Hagels, was this lost war worth?