Pulling back from where the blue on blue had occurred, D’Lupo’s seven-man point squad, the first rifle platoon HQ, and three other platoons behind them — including Martinez’s Special Forces group and the retreating troops of General Vinh — ran into some isolated sniping but managed to establish a half-moon-shaped defense perimeter. It was about three hundred yards in diameter, its edge just beyond a V-shaped gully formed by a creek bed which the PLA would have to cross before climbing fifteen feet at a forty-five-degree incline if they were to attack the allied force. Behind the half-moon-shaped perimeter there were the burial mounds of a deserted village. The villagers, terrified of the PLA, had left, heading south for Phu Lang Thuong well before the retreating advance patrol of the EMREF and Vinh’s troops had arrived.
On the lip of the gully, EMREF’s Special Forces had planted antipersonnel, puck-sized disk mines. Using K-bar knives, they’d gently lifted patches of grass, not cutting out the patches but lifting them up carefully from one side, as one would gently prise up a scab, then scratching out a two-inch hole beneath the grassy trapdoor, placing the disk mines, and covering them with the patch. Farther back from the gully’s lip, members of the two rifle platoons placed claymores, just as cautiously laying the trip wire. Johnny D’Lupo ordered some claymores on the flanks and in the rear.
“You think they’re gonna get behind us?” Dave Rhin asked.
“What d’you think, man?” Martinez, from the Special Forces platoon, replied. Rhin was on the field phone to HQ platoon, reporting that everything was set up and confirming that, in their capacity as the advance patrol for the EMREF, they were now in contact with Vinh’s forces, who had joined the defensive line above the southern side of the gully. After further consultation with Vinh’s English-speaking operator, the HQ squad ordered the flank mines to be dug up lest either of Vinh’s flanks gave way under a PLA attack and were forced into the American perimeter. Instead, the mines were to be placed on the Vietnamese flanks, several hundred yards away from both EMREF flanks.
“Shit!” one of D’Lupo’s seven-man squad complained. “Nothing I like better, man, than to dig up mines we just laid.”
“Right,” D’Lupo agreed. “Some fucker oughta thought of this ‘fore we started laying the fucking things!”
“Stop your whinin’, man,” Rhin advised. “Go take the fuckers to the Vietnamese flanks. They’ll love yer for—”
There was a high, whistling sound followed by the crash of an explosion, then another and another, men screaming, scrambling for cover as more explosions of red earth and undergrowth vomited skyward. The soil fell like rain for several seconds after the first mortar salvo, the smell of cordite and freshly uprooted vegetation pungent in the hostile air.
Some of the EMREFs who had been digging slit trenches lay unmoving, dead now, one beheaded, another sitting quite still, the victim of the tremendous force of the concussion and perhaps shrapnel as well. D’Lupo dived behind one of the loamy burial mounds, an 82mm Chinese mortar round landing close to the lip of the gully, sending shrubs and sticks into the air. Immediately, he moved to a mound in front of him that had been hit dead center, D’Lupo noting that there was an advancing pattern of small, mortar-made craters in front of him. He now dived into a burial mound, the peak of its cone blown off, the incoming round he’d just fled landing ten yards behind him. To his amazement, as he came up for air, he noticed his arm covered in blood.
He had no recollection of being hit. Despite the explosions of incoming and the steady Bomp! Bomp! Bomp! of outgoing 81mm rounds from the Special Forces platoon, D’Lupo pulled his bleeding arm quickly from the protective burial mound. He was staring at a completely emaciated skull, a sandy-white loam spilling over it like sand in an hourglass, the skull’s teeth red where D’Lupo’s arm had scraped them as he’d dived for cover.
As suddenly as it started, the heavy mortar barrage ceased, only to be replaced by the tearing tarpaper sound of light and medium machine guns using not only the heavier 7.62mm ammunition of the old Type 68 assault weapon but also that of the newer 5.6mm CQ automatic rifle.
Following the blare of a Chinese bugle, someone on the west U.S.-Vietnamese side of the gully shouted, “They’re coming!” Rhin cussed like the trooper he was, disgustedly releasing his radio pack, which was now so much junk, the only thing intact being the handpiece, which he now tossed away. Through the undergrowth, they could see Chinese regulars, whose “piss-pot” helmets were covered in camouflage netting, branches of leaves draped from them, and whose black-green-brown combat uniforms were so difficult to see against the background of the gully’s bush-lipped opposite bank.
Even knowing that his platoon was cut off from HQ— they’d have to use runners, if necessary — Rhin was impressed by the Chinese assault. No sooner had half of them, fifty or so, been chopped down by the American and Vietnamese fire than the remaining fifty, having rushed across the shallow streambed, were out of sight, now at the base of the forty-five-degree-angle dirt cliff. The ocher-colored dirt cascaded down like a waterfall as the Chinese, without stopping, immediately began scaling the steep incline of loose soil by running up as far as they could go with supporting machine-gun fire from the bank behind them, from which they’d descended.
At the apogee of their climb, unable to make it alone up an almost vertical dirt face of ten to twelve feet, they took hold of long, arm-thick pieces of bamboo stilts shoved up to them as an assist from the men below.
Up and down the creek a hundred yards in either direction, more and more Chinese began scaling the cliff. Those first up to the edge were machine-gunned immediately and fell down amid their comrades at the base of the cliff. But without a pause, others took their place on the cliff and held ground, helped by a rain of stick grenades being flung up and over the cliff’s edge, lobbed amid the forward American and Vietnamese U.N. troops.
The explosions and concussions of earlier mortars had set off many of the antipersonnel mines. One Chinese at the middle of a ten-man-line charge tripped a claymore, and all ten were killed either outright or fatally felled by the ball bearings that had exploded toward them in a steel curtain at supersonic speed. But the Chinese kept coming and dying. D’Lupo and Martinez’s Special Forces knew that unless the Chinese resupply of troops could be cut, numbers alone would soon overwhelm them. Some of the USVUN machine guns were so hot, rounds were cooking off.
D’Lupo and Special Forces platoon were firing flares down into the gully, knowing that some of the units behind them must have gotten through to U.S.-Vietnam-U.N. troops headquarters at Kep or Phu Lang Thuong, and they hoped that despite the poor visibility in the low ceiling of stratus, TACAIR would be on the way. D’Lupo, by prior agreement with TACAIR’s forward air controller, had an understanding that should radio contact be lost, the enemy position would be indicated by a white/red/white flare combination.
Early in the Vietnam War, such arrangements were often made on the spot via radio contact between pilots and the men in trouble on the ground. But “Charlie,” as the enemy was then known, had often listened in on the U.S. radio messages with English-speaking radio interpreters, and would quickly fire the flare sequence onto American and ARVN positions, creating a blue on blue.
Now D’Lupo’s forward squad fired a white/red/white sequence into the gully’s eastern sector to the right of them. TACAIR, if it was on its way, should make visible contact in plus or minus two minutes, coming in beneath the blankets of the gray stratus.
Down in the gully, the Chinese immediately began a barrage of small-arms fire, shredding the flares’ chutes so they fell faster, giving the Chinese more time to pick up the unburned section of the smoke flares and, having cut their chute straps, lob them into the brush beyond the western side of the gully. Nothing like this had happened in Iraq, where, not surprisingly, there was no bush.
Some of the Chinese, already ensconced in dugouts along the lip, kept up a sustained fire into the American positions, making it impossible for the Americans to rush forward and secure the flares, now burning furiously, supposedly marking the enemy position to be bombed. As a result, two Intruders sent in from the Enterprise dropped their ordnance, including two free-fall pods of napalm-jellied gasoline, within forty-three seconds killing sixteen Americans in the EMREF’s advance recon force. Nine of them were burned to death, running torches of fire in the brush, setting it afire before they collapsed, or throwing themselves onto the earth in futile attempts to smother the fire with soil. Friends used their cupped hands, digging with spades, whatever, to save two men who were so horribly burned they now wished they were dead.
At least three of the stricken men had made a rush toward the gully to try to extinguish themselves in the water holes of the gully bed. They were cut to pieces by Chinese small-arms fire before they got beyond the lip, falling, rolling down the steep red dirt slope, Chinese troops immediately stripping them of what weapons they could, some of the Americans’ flesh sticking to their M-16s like melted cheese.
The remainder of the USVUN were also hit by napalm, and seconds after the terrible beauty of an enormous orange flame rolling through a backdrop of green fields and brush, five Vietnamese had been burned black with five U.N. soldiers, including two from the British SAS contingent. Only their badges, “Who Dares Wins,” were recognizable after their own ammunition packs exploded.
By now the forward air controller had seen the Chinese rush the gully, realized about the flare balls-up, and redirected the Intruders. This cleared the gully nicely, an even more devastating attack than upon the USVUN line, since the sharp-angled sides of the gully made it a natural conduit for the flame that raced like a flood of molten hot steel from a furnace down the gully floor. Over two hundred Chinese assault infantry were incinerated, and the presence of the American planes ready to bomb again had dissuaded the PLA from any further rushes, the air filled with a stench of burned chicken.
To further dissuade the PLA, the planes on another run dropped napalm pods a hundred yards in from the gully on the PLA side. The screams of those caught in the swath of burning gasoline attested to the pilots’ having guessed right that the next wave of PLA assault troops had been assembling not far from the gully’s edge. The hesitation this caused the Chinese, along with the fact that much of the underbrush had been set aflame, thus denying troops cover close to the gully, saved the USVUN force, which had pulled back after several units found themselves badly mauled and their positions untenable, though in numbers lost the Chinese had suffered considerably more than the USVUN.
For Douglas Freeman, the retreat was a decision he abhorred. His intuitive reaction was to hold ground and take the gully while TACAIR kept the Chinese pinned down with napalm and rocket fire. But he was too good a soldier to pretend he could hold the gully against the PLA if he had no backup and/or no support from the flanks. He’d trusted the Vietnamese to fight if they were ordered by General Vinh to hold. But it was systematically built into the Communist cadre, as it had been in the PLA by Mao Zedong in his Little Red Book, to attack only when one had overwhelming strength, to withdraw when the odds of winning dropped. You struck where you thought the enemy was weakest, but withdrew once the maximum amount of damage had been achieved and before the enemy could rally in force against you. Though he knew this tactic well enough, Freeman hoped that Vinh’s troops would stay and assist his own men in securing and holding the gully while more USVUN troops could be brought up on the Lang Ro-Lang Son road.
Vinh disagreed. “No,” he explained through the interpreter, “the Chinese main force would come south down the Lang Son-Lang Ro road, so it would be unwise to withdraw USVUN troops from there to come here. It is vital,” he continued, “for the Chinese to take the road if they wish to move supplies quickly to feed the head of their snake.”
Major Cline asked whether he might not have a word with General Freeman.
“What is it, Major?”
“Sir, with all due respect, we’ll get nowhere if you argue with Vinh, particularly in front of his political commissars. He’ll lose face and then he won’t agree to anything.”
“Of course,” Freeman said, nodding, beaming at Vinh and his advisers. “I have full confidence in the fighting ability of the Republic of Vietnam’s armies—” He deliberately left out the Socialist before Republic. “—they’ve proved themselves in battle against us many times.” He paused, then smiled politely. “All I want to be sure of is that if we commit ourselves to an overall strategy, we stick with it till we have a touchdown.”
Vinh and the others were unsure about this term, and the translator had to spend some time imitating the huddle, et cetera. “Ah!” Vinh finally said, nodding and smiling. “Football.”
“Right,” Freeman said. “No good agreeing in the huddle, then having some joker suddenly decide it’s not for him — ruin the whole goddamn play. Right?”
There was a huddle of Vietnamese advisers while Freeman explained softly to Cline, “Point is, we’ve got to have the will to stand ground and use it as a launch pad from which to direct our heavy stuff — arty and TACAIR. For that I need those around me to hold the goddamn perimeter and not suddenly decide to retreat ‘cause we’re taking heavy fire. I meant what I said, Major. These Vietnamese troops are first-rate, but this constant hit-and-run business could suddenly leave me with a flank in name only.”
“We agree,” General Vinh said in heavily accented English, “but…”
Here the interpreter took over. “The general,” he told Freeman, “agrees but wishes to point out that what the Americans might think is a good strategic move, the Vietnamese might see as a simple tactical move in a local battle and therefore wish to break off if casualties are too high.”
Freeman could have spit wood chips. “Please tell the general that he and I must first agree on the overall strategic plan. My strategy is simply this — to pulverize the border area around Lang Son and Dong Dang by bombing, and then to roll forward along the road with arty until we clear the area once and for all and reestablish the correct political line between the two countries.
“Christ,” Freeman said in an aside to Cline, “I’m sounding like one of their damn commissars!”
The interpreter begged the general’s pardon, but what was the meaning of this word “arty”?
“Artillery!” Freeman replied. “Pound the area flat— reestablish a cordon sanitaire — hopefully secure a DMZ.”
Vinh nodded agreement but asked whether the other USVUN forces would agree to it or not, given what, in time, would have to be their countries’ postwar relationships with China.
Freeman was getting annoyed with what he perceived to be the Vietnamese preoccupation with minor players, and he told the translator straight, “You tell General Vinh that there are really only three players on this field: his forces, mine, and the PLA.”
“You have no respect for your allies?” Vinh asked.
“I have respect,” Freeman replied honestly, “but I won’t always have time to consult with my South Korean allies or the Japanese, for example. I know what I can expect from the British and Australian troops. Besides, their numbers aren’t high and they’re integrated with my command.”
Vinh understood Freeman’s underlying concern and brought the conversation to an end by saying, “I am not against nonconsensual decisions or massed fixed battles if they strategically make sense.”
Freeman smiled. “You mean the battle for Khe Sanh?” The Americans had dug in, in and around the airstrip, ringed as it was by Vietnamese artillery, and aided and abetted by U.S. airpower, had won by breaking the siege.
“No,” Vinh said without a smile. “I meant Dien Bien Phu.”
Vinh extended his hand, and Freeman, a sardonic look on his face, as if to say, You old fox, took it in the spirit it was offered.
Vinh bowed and said, “We will try to agree in the ‘huddle.’ A consensus. Yes?”
“Right,” Freeman said, thinking that Vinh would make a hell of an adversary.
Press aide Boyd looked, puzzled, at Major Cline. Boyd had noticed that this general agreement to work together on one plan rather than two had somehow been sealed by the mention of this Dien Bien Phu.
“Who’s this Phu anyway?” Boyd asked Cline.
“You dork,” Cline said good-naturedly. “Don’t you know any history? It’s a place—a valley ‘bout 230 miles west of us — near the border of Laos. During the French-Indochina War in ‘fifty-four, French were always bitching about the Viet Minh’s hit-and-run tactics, never being able to fight a one-place pitched battle with them. Well, the Viet Minh decided on just such a battle, and General Giap ringed twelve French battalions with more than thirty of his own. Viet Minh had brought in artillery — and I’m talking 105mm and triple A — a lot of it piece by piece on their backs through the jungle. French commander called for reinforcements, and six battalions of paratroops were flown in. The French were dug in, and the Viet Minh dug miles of tunnels around the French firebase. Often they came right up to the wire, fired a burst, then disappeared before the French could get a bead on them. French were finally overrun. Over twelve thousand Frenchmen were killed or taken POW. Absolute disaster. Put an end to all the crap about the Vietnamese not being able to win a set-piece battle.”
“What’d it cost the Vietnamese?” Boyd asked.
“Well over twenty thousand. Some on both sides were never found — blown to bits by the artillery.” Cline paused, glanced at Vinh and Freeman and explained to Boyd, “That’s why old Vinh mentioned Dien Bien Phu. He was telling Freeman that he can play it either way — hit-and-run or dig in. He’s flexible.”
“Well,” Boyd said, adopting an air of authority beyond his years, “they’d better agree on something pretty soon. All we’ve been doing so far is falling back.”