12 February 1968
The First Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment’s opening maneuver into the battle for the Citadel of Hue could have easily resulted in a catastrophe.
The battalion CP group, on point as directed by our new battalion commander and obviously unfamiliar with the responsibilities and subtleties of walking point, proceeded merrily down the road toward the Citadel and promptly missed its first turn. In their defense, I didn’t notice it at first either, and it took Estes, who was walking a few Marines behind me, to call it to our attention. We had just walked past a small, insignificant intersection in the road. If we had continued straight ahead, as the battalion CP group had done, we would soon walk into the center of the snail, the area called Bach Dang and a suspected enemy stronghold. The cutback hairpin corner was there, all right, at about the right distance from the bridge over the canal we had just crossed, but it had been very easy to miss.
The hairpin corner led back to our right, north, under an umbrella of low-hanging vines, into a narrow alleyway that widened out after a few meters. This looked like the correct route into our backdoor entry of the Citadel, but the battalion CP group, to a man, had missed it, and Charlie One had almost missed it as well.
I called for a quiet halt and signaled for the men to take up hasty defensive positions on either side of the road. I quickly told Estes he was in charge until Sergeant Mullan came up. Then I grabbed Benny Benware and we took off after the battalion CP group, the last few of which were being swallowed up into the increasingly built-up neighborhood of Bach Dang.
As I ran forward, I hollered over my shoulder, “Benny, get on the horn and let the skipper know what’s going on. I’m certain the battalion CP group has missed their turn and that they are walking right smack dab into Charlie territory. Son of a bitch!” My thoughts were much more obscene than that lightweight epithet, but being scared shitless while trotting down the road to overtake the battalion CP group with only the combined firepower of my .45-caliber pistol that had never been fired in anger, Benny’s M-16, and the probably seldom-used weapons of the CP group Marines, I couldn’t command my voice into any further noise.
When we caught up with them, true to their nature, the battalion CP group was huddled in a formation that can only be described as a clusterfuck in the middle of a street intersection. During normal times, this crossroads was probably a significant intersection in a mediumsized business district for the people who lived in the Bach Dang area. A quick glance around the surrounding neighborhood confirmed that there were very few civilians out, and those who were visible weren’t very friendly looking. Shit, what a spot for an ambush. What a great time for a total clusterfuck.
Surrounded by the ever-present clutch of whip antennae waving over the heads of the battalion CP group, Major Thompson was studying his map. He appeared to be mentally scratching his head. A couple of staff NCOs in the CP group were kneeling between me and the battalion commander. The kneeling men were the only people in this group with at least the sense to get down (their many years of military service obviously provided them a sixth sense of danger signals that were—from the strained expressions on their faces—firing off at will). Accosting one of them, I quietly let him know by pointing it out on the map, that we were at least five hundred meters past the turnoff and probably in the middle of enemy territory. He looked at me with a knowing look of disgust on his face and reluctantly but determinedly rose and walked toward Major Thompson and the grove of whip antennae to give them the scoop. Having performed my duty, Benny and I started back to the relative safety of the Marines of Charlie One.
Fortunately, nothing happened at that intersection, and the rest of 1/5’s movement into the Citadel went off without a hitch. The 1/5 battalion arrived at the back door of the Citadel, and like a fairy tale castle opening to let the heroes in, the door was opened from the inside by the First ARVN Division and 1/5 slid quietly into the back door of the Citadel.
Although none of us was aware of it then, in the aftermath of the battles that raged in and around Hue, the Viet Cong and NVA had taken total and ruthless control of the snail-shaped area called Bach Dang. Many of the thousands of murders later reported to have been committed during the NVA occupation of Hue were carried out in this neighborhood. Evidently, the few Vietnamese “civilians” seen that afternoon casually observing the 1/5 battalion CP group approach that intersection in the heart of the Bach Dang area were most likely Viet Cong cadre, with the civilians either already dead or cringing in terror behind the walls of the homes and businesses of Bach Dang.
Hindsight, especially in combat, is always twenty-twenty. Using hindsight later on, it seemed likely to me that the 1/5 command group possibly came within inches of, or moments from, a serious brush with the enemy.
All the Marines of 1/5 arrived inside the First ARVN Division complex unharmed, well-supplied, and ready to carry out the next objective of our mission. As I followed the point fire team and stopped for a moment while the rest followed, the walls of the Citadel took on a different hue and shape, beginning to surround me for the first time. I couldn’t help feeling a momentary rush of joy. We were inside. We didn’t know just exactly what was going on. But at least we were all inside without a scratch. The backdoor approach had worked.
The brief elation of having gotten inside those huge walls without significant difficulty passed quickly, for now the feeling of being surrounded and confined seemed to permeate the air. The Citadel was cloaked with smoky air that only slightly muted a scene of utter, hellish pandemonium.
The Vietnamese soldiers of the First ARVN Division had fiercely resisted the initial NVA attacks, having held their headquarters position in spite of repeated attacks from the Viet Cong and NVA fighters since the long night of 31 January. Their compound had not been held without cost, however. Row after row of wounded men were lying on low cots or pallets inside some large warehouselike buildings missing large chunks of their outside walls. As we arrived through the back door, more wounded Vietnamese soldiers from the First ARVN Division were staggering into the compound through the front gate. Many of their faces and arms and legs were tied up with white and red dressings and bandages, as new squads and platoons prepared to leave the front gate in their repeated efforts at patrolling and beating the enemy back out of RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) range.
One glance out through the barbed wire at the front gate’s barrier pinpointed the source of the injuries, evidenced by a pall of heavy, gray smoke rising from an area about a click due south, the direction we were due to travel in soon. Small-arms fire could be heard sporadically from that direction, with brief but persistent exchanges of weapons of slightly different calibers and rates of fire. There was definitely a firefight going on down that street. Number fucking ten.
The wounded Vietnamese soldiers bore their lot much like any group of fighting men who have given the best parts of their lives and, in many cases, their limbs for their country. Most of the wounded men sat or lay quietly, smoking cigarettes and suffering more or less than the others, depending upon what the gods of war had served them for breakfast that morning. Some, unbelievably, slept in the midst of the chaos. A couple of them, inevitably, were screaming with the pain known only by those who have lost large chunks of flesh carved out by the high-speed lead projectiles and jagged hunks of high-explosive shrapnel that rip the battlefield apart with deadly intent. There were always some who screamed, no matter how sedated they were, until the unconsciousness of morphia or death overtook them and released them to their final fate.
As my mind adjusted slowly and reluctantly to this new, yet somehow familiar environment, the rest of Charlie Company filed through the back door. We were guided to our assigned staging area by an ARVN first lieutenant. He stiffly showed us into our quarters for the rest of that day and night, our final assembly point prior to launching our attack in the morning. It was nothing more than an abandoned warehouse, or possibly a barracks completely stripped. It had four huge walls, a tin roof peppered with small and large holes, and a dirt floor. The Vietnamese lieutenant, using halting English, let us know that we could make ourselves at home.
We did. Like all Marines during the many different chapters of our distinguished military history, we had become extremely adaptive to almost any environment. In this case, we were fortunate to have tall walls to hide and sleep behind, and the obvious gaping holes in the corrugated tin roof high above our heads didn’t detract too much from our having a roof over our heads for the second night in a row. The dirt floor didn’t bother us much either, as it was softer than concrete or wood, both of which were harder to sleep on than dirt. So, with very few complaints and a noticed absence of horseplay, Charlie Company took over the warehouse. We immediately started our final preparations for the attack, which was due to be launched first thing the next morning.
Shortly before dusk The Gunny came and asked Sergeant Mullan and me to join the rest of the platoon commanders and platoon sergeants for a company briefing. First Lieutenant Nelson had received our final operational orders, and it was now time for shit to roll downhill.
Briefings of this type were usually just that: brief. And usually, they were very unsatisfactory. This one was no exception. It took Scott Nelson about ten minutes to explain our situation and to cover what was expected of us. The shit that was currently rolling downhill in our direction was explained as follows:
Division Intelligence estimated that an NVA force of undetermined size, probably a reinforced company or two (in the NVA, a company usually meant approximately one hundred fighting men) had seized control of the Citadel and the Imperial Palace. The 1/5 battalion had been assigned the job of clearing them out.
Scott Nelson pointed out the enemy’s estimated location on his 1:10,000 plastic-covered map of Hue, which now had seven multicolored parallel lines drawn in crayon over the seven streets that separate the houses in southeast Hue. The first of these cheerfully colored lines was green, the second orange, and each ensuing line was a different and contrasting color. Nelson explained that since our mission involved street fighting, unit coordination would be critical. He had decided to use “phase lines.” Phase lines were imaginary lines frequently established in conventional warfare for coordination and control during an assault. Charlie Company would use phase line green as our initial line of departure, as our best intelligence indicated that if there were in fact a company or two of NVA inside the Citadel (which should have been quite evident from the constant firefights we had been hearing since entering the Citadel), most of them were probably concentrated inside the Imperial Palace walls. The rest of them would most likely be located on or behind phase line orange. The 1/5 battalion should be able to deploy for a frontal assault on phase line green and begin the assault from that position.
Alpha Company would be assigned the battalion’s left flank position for the assault, covering the eastern wall of the Citadel and the first adjacent block, and Charlie Company would be responsible for covering the next three blocks, which comprised the majority of the center and the right flank of the battalion’s assault force. Charlie Company’s forces were totally committed to the initial assault. Charlie One would take the left-most block, Charlie Three would take the center block, and Charlie Two the right block. Charlie One would coordinate with Alpha Company’s Marines to make sure that our left flank (and their right flank) was secure during the assault. One platoon from Delta Company, recently released from 2/5’s fighting in south Hue and rejoined with 1/5, would be held in reserve and would accompany the battalion CP group as a security force, and would protect our rear. Bravo Company, still detached to 2/5, was continuing the cleanup operations in south Hue and therefore was unavailable for 1/5’s operations.
Nelson asked for questions, and when there were none at this point, he continued, “Because the Citadel of Hue is a national landmark, and because it and the Imperial Palace are considered by the South Vietnamese as sacred ground, the decision has been made to carry out our assault without prep fires. Because the enemy force is limited to an NVA force of only a company or two, battalion and division expect that we will be able to reach our objective by the end of the day tomorrow. Our objective is the southern wall of the Citadel, seven blocks south of phase line green. From that position, we should be able to assault and recapture the Imperial Palace with little difficulty. If necessary, you may authorize the use of M-79 rounds and hand grenades, but we should be able to wrap this up with small-arms fire by the end of the day. Although there will be a platoon of M-48 tanks in support, they are under direct orders not to fire their ninety-millimeter cannons under any circumstances. They will, however, be able to make good use of their .30-caliber and .50-caliber machine guns to support you. Time of departure is first light. We should be deployed on phase line green by 0800 hours, and the initial assault will take place at that time. Since we should be done by late afternoon, and since speed and mobility are the order of the day, battalion suggests that we leave our packs behind to lighten our loads. Questions?”
There were no questions. If any others had the same thoughts that were swarming through my mind at that point, they were, like me, too stunned to speak. Squatting next to The Gunny, I heard him mutter, “I don’t know what the fuck anyone else thinks, but I’m sure as hell taking my pack!” His muttering was not intended to be overheard by anyone, lest he be considered insubordinate or disrespectful of his superior officer, and Scott Nelson seemed not to hear. I heard him, but it was all I needed to decide to ask only one question: “Skipper, is it okay if we take our packs, just in case? My men can move just as fast with their packs as without, and I don’t want to hear any griping about them missing chow at lunch time.” Nelson looked at me out of the side of his face and nodded his affirmation of my request. The briefing broke up, and we all returned to our platoons to start briefing our men.
Sergeant Mullan and I walked slowly back to our platoon area without speaking or looking at each other. I can only speak for myself, but I’m sure that Mullan had been taught the same strategy, tactics, and Marine Corps history that I had. So I’m also certain that right then, he was dealing with the same internal struggle that I was.
None of this made any sense at all. During boot camp (and, in my case, during boot camp, OCS, and Basic School), we were continuously exposed to a plethora of “training films” about the glorious victories of the U.S. Marine Corps. In all those movies depicting a situation like this—an impending frontal assault on an enemy that had been given significant time to dig in and fortify their positions—the assault was always preceded by prep fires. That meant that mortars, artillery, naval gunfire, and air support would hammer the enemy to “soften” their position, keep the enemy’s heads down, and demoralize the enemy soldiers. In some cases, in particular during the amphibious assaults of World War II, these prep fires lasted for many days before the assault began. I remembered sitting in darkened theaters at MCRD San Diego, watching reel after reel of the famous landings of U.S. Marines on Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa during World War II, and Inchon and other locations during the Korean War. The constant theme of these historical battles was “bomb, blast, and burn.”
We certainly understood that these preparatory fires, no matter how devastating, were never enough, and that ultimately the basic Marine would have to go in and, by force of arms, personally kill the enemy that had survived the preparatory fires before these battles could end. But the basic infantry Marine took great comfort in knowing that the U.S. military possessed a vastly superior capability in firepower in comparison with our NVA and Viet Cong enemies, and until this moment, we had all seen ample evidence that we had little reluctance to use it. To be sure, there were many frustrating cases where the rules of engagement in Vietnam restricted the use of this superior firepower, and we knew full well that these rules of engagement were often very arbitrary. In some cases, the rules of engagement were downright stupid. I once witnessed a Huey gunship flying over a Viet Cong squad, who had been caught red-handed and flat-footed out in the open shooting an 82-mm mortar at an American position. Unfortunately, this Huey gunship could not get clearance to shoot for nearly a half hour because they were flying over a “restricted fire zone.” The lousy result was that these particular VC got under the camouflage protection of the jungle canopy before the Huey could shoot at them, and the VC most certainly slipped away to come back and shoot at us again another day. But in most cases we could bring our heavy firepower to bear on the enemy with devastating effect. In unfriendly and unfamiliar terrain, such as the rice paddies and jungles of South Vietnam, amid an indigenous population that were supposedly friendly, but who most certainly, out of deadly necessity, screened and protected our avowed enemy force, having superior firepower was one of our only advantages. And now, poised on a frontal assault against an enemy force who were most likely dug in and waiting for us, this advantage was being totally removed.
This part of our operational plan was made more unbelievable considering that we had heard that our sister battalion, 2/5, had been up against the same rules of engagement in their battles with the NVA in south Hue starting a couple of weeks ago, and that they had taken heavy casualties, at least until they started using the heavy stuff. This was certainly not information that had come to us through the appropriate channels, but we all knew what had happened in south Hue via the rumor mill, and I was completely baffled as to why these rules of engagement had been established. I wondered who thought that these rules of engagement would work any better inside the Citadel, where the enemy had many more buildings for fortified positions and we had less room to maneuver, than the rules worked in south Hue.
There wasn’t much time to let these questions take hold, and I couldn’t let my men know that I was troubled. I didn’t dare talk to Sergeant Mullan about it, as we both knew that the Marine Corps demanded absolute discipline, and an immediate, 100 percent effort to carry out our orders, regardless of our opinions. Sergeant Mullan would most certainly have dealt with any misgivings on my part by playing back that old, often used refrain heard in the ranks, “Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die.”
Sergeant Mullan went to get the squad leaders, who quickly converged on my position in the growing darkness, ready to receive their orders. I would like to report here that the briefing was greeted by the same stoic acceptance of these difficult circumstances, but that was not to be. During the Vietnam era, the discipline demanded by the Marine Corps was often met conditionally. A Marine who had survived a few months in the bush, who had been an eyewitness to the many other stupidities that dominated our daily lives, and who had been friends with other young men killed or maimed as a result of those stupidities was often reluctant to carry out orders not well thought out. Many NCOs, who were the backbone of the enlisted ranks and who often found themselves outside the direct influence of a superior officer (such as when they were assigned night ambush patrols in fire-team- or squad-sized units), would often accept those orders and then modify them on the fly, so to speak, after they left the compound. In Vietnam, there were already many documented cases of direct insubordination, and the overall discipline of this legendary fighting force had come, in my opinion, very close to breaking down completely. In some cases, orders were simply ignored; in others the changes were much more subtle. But I learned very quickly that I could not simply yell, “Jump,” and expect fifty-plus Marines to start lifting their feet. In Vietnam, a Marine wanted, and often demanded, to know the reasons why. This briefing was no different. I dutifully passed on the information and operational orders to the squad leaders of Charlie One and then asked for questions. I’m certain that there were many more questions in the minds of these young men than were asked that day, but the ones that were asked were good ones:
“How the fuck do they expect us to execute a frontal assault on a dug-in enemy without at least some prep fires?”
“Don’t them assholes at division and battalion know that them tanks will be sitting ducks rolling down them streets, and they can’t even fire their ninety-mike-mikes?”
“Does the skipper realize that these Marines have been trained to fight a jungle war, and that we’ve had about two hours of training on how to clear a house? Fuck, we’re more likely to blow each other away than the gooks.”
That last question got my attention. As usual, it was Estes who put his finger squarely on the biggest problem that we faced: Unless we had a chance to practice a frontal assault on a house, we could very easily screw up and accidentally kill other Marines. I spent a couple of minutes remembering the extent of the training I had received on house-to-house fighting. Marines had been exposed to this type of fighting in the past, most notably in Korea during the fighting shortly after the Inchon landings. But most fighting in the recent history of the Marine Corps had been on open terrain, like the South Pacific islands, the open countryside of Korea, and up to this point, in the rice paddies and jungles of South Vietnam.
I was unique in this gathering of Marines, because I had received the benefit of training during enlisted boot camp, the three-week ITR training in Camp Pendleton, and an additional nine months of combat tactics training at OCS and the Basic School in Quantico. With a sinking feeling, I realized that I could count on one hand the combined number of hours that had been spent teaching me and my colleagues about house-to-house fighting.
Worse, one of the main lessons during the limited training was that small-unit coordination was absolutely critical, or the end result would be the deaths of Marines at the hands of friendly fire. That coordination took practice, and we had been given no time or place to practice.
Since there was obviously nowhere else to go in this situation and mutiny was out of the question, all the other questions seemed to pale by comparison. We were in deep shit without prep fires, but we had absolutely no control over that. Even if he had been so inclined, Scott Nelson could not request artillery or air support directly with our supporting units; the chain of command went through battalion, then through regiment, and finally to division, who then ordered the heavy ordinance. Once clearance for heavy support was established, then our supporting forward observers could call in fire missions directly to the providers. But until the chain of command provided the clearance, that simply would not happen. The commander of the tank platoon had his hands tied equally as well, and Scott Nelson was under direct orders to not use the sixty-millimeter mortars assigned to Charlie Company or the 3.5-inch bazooka rocket launchers. We could use M-16s, M-60 machine guns, hand grenades, and our one breech-loaded M-79 (the forty-millimeter grenade launcher lovingly referred to as a “blooper”) per squad. That was it. We could only hope that the chain of command would quickly see the error of their ways, as they eventually had in south Hue, and then we would get the support that we would almost certainly need.
The only thing we could do to get prepared for the events of the next morning was to discuss (there was no place to practice) the proper procedures of clearing buildings that were suspected to be occupied by the enemy and to have the squad leaders try to teach their men at least the basics during the remaining hours before morning. We had all been trained to fight an elusive enemy in jungle and rice paddy terrain, with a great deal of emphasis on small-unit patrolling and ambushing techniques. The search and cordon/destroy training we had received supposed that we would be searching and cordoning/destroying flimsy village hooches made of straw and thatch. The houses inside the Citadel were definitely a horse of a different color, and unless we understood that quickly, we would pay for our ignorance.
Vague snatches of memories of the cursory training we had received on house fighting techniques were not at all that comforting: things like remembering to let a couple of seconds tick away after releasing the “spoon” of a grenade before tossing it through a window of a house that might contain the enemy, so as not to give the enemy any time to catch the grenade and toss it right back out at us. Or remembering that a glass window could be a barrier that, if not broken immediately, could result in the embarrassment of the damned grenade bouncing off the glass and blowing the wrong person up. Or remembering that once inside, it would be frightfully easy, unless we called out loudly to each other, to blow away your best friend who, without your knowledge and ahead of you, had gotten into a room you were about to clear. As the evening passed into gloomy night, the leaders of Charlie One struggled with our limited combined knowledge, and we tried our best to provide some last-minute command and communication training that would maximize our efforts and minimize our casualties.
Another sticky issue would be maintaining the security of our flanks. With Alpha Company on our left flank and Charlie Three on our right flank, communications with those groups would be critical. Parallel, intersecting streets would separate those units from the Marines of Charlie One, and one of my most important responsibilities as platoon commander would be to constantly ensure the security of our flanks. We would be confronting an entrenched enemy of unknown size directly in front of us, and we must think only of attacking frontally. It was unthinkable to consider the potential disaster of allowing any enemy units to slip between us and our flanking elements, as we had heard had happened to 2/5 in south Hue. The result was casualties for 2/5, and the battalion had to backtrack several different times. The area between the Citadel wall, which would define the left flank of Alpha Company, and the Imperial Palace wall, which would define the right flank of Charlie Company when we had advanced a couple of blocks past phase line green, was only four city blocks in breadth; if we kept constant contact with our flanks, it would be very difficult for any enemy units to slip between or behind us.
Further, without making sure that our flanks were covered, a frontal assault could become a very exposed and highly dangerous maneuver. Therefore, coordination along the phase lines was absolutely critical.
My final words to the squad leaders as they prepared to retrain their Marines last-minute in the little we had agreed upon regarding the capture of each house in our area of responsibility will haunt me for the rest of my life. I looked at them all, without looking anyone in the eyes in the encroaching gloom, and told them, “Under no circumstances are any of your men to cross phase line green until I give the order to attack.”
These words seemed right at the moment. It seemed to be a simple enough situation that confronted us. We had to assault the enemy from the front, and I wanted to make damned sure that Alpha had our left flank secured and Charlie Three had our right flank secured before we attacked forward. So I told them not to cross the street until I gave the word. It’s funny how a single word can change men’s lives.
The squad leaders acknowledged their orders and moved away to do the best they could to instruct and prepare their men regarding their mission in the morning. I found a corner, wrapped up in my poncho liner, and told Benny to wake me for the early morning watch.