Goodnight Saigon Read online

  Seeing the streaks through the dust on Cui’s face, Tuan said nothing of it, pretending to not notice.

  “Extra pork,” Cui said, surveying an ample amount of meat heaped in his bowl.

  “Apparently, someone’s pigs slipped through their fence and wandered to our camp,” Tuan said, chuckling as he sprinkled over the top of his food a mixture of hot chilies and other spices in an oily concoction called nuc mom and then offered the pungent sauce to Cui.

  As the two men ate their dinner on the edge of a stream in the hills southwest of Pleiku and northwest of Ban Me Thuot, they watched the sky turn orange and the shadows grow long.

  Nguyen Duc Cui and Nguyen Sinh Tuan had walked with the majority of soldiers of the 320th NVA Division from the mountains west of Da Nang into Laos, where transport trucks then carried them southward down the newly constructed crushed rock and gravel roadway. The secret highway built by North Vietnamese Army engineers, along with a petroleum pipeline that paralleled it, followed Vietnam’s border southward to a point where the new road terminated at the Y-INTERSECTION of Vietnam Highways 13 and 14 in Quang Duc Province, on the Cambodian border north of the provincial capital, Gia Nghia.

  A hundred miles prior to reaching the highway’s terminal, the 320th Division disembarked the transport trucks and then walked overland for five days, zigzagging eastward. Once in the densely covered mountains southwest of Pleiku and northwest of Ban Me Thuot, they consolidated their forces with the 10th and 316th NVA divisions and the regional cadre of Viet Cong, forming the 968th NVA Corps.

  This new army held the important mission of breaking the enemy’s back in the Central Highlands and then linking up with the 301st NVA Corps, which currently held Phuoc Long Province on the 968th’s southern flank. The two armies would eventually merge on their eastern fronts with other Communist forces that, by that time, should have already campaigned well southward from Dong Ha, Hue, Da Nang, and Chu Lai, clearing the enemy from his strongly fortified enclaves throughout the coastal provinces, primarily following Vietnam Highway 1. Once the Communist armies had united, their combined forces would then victoriously culminate the war in Saigon.

  On Saturday, March 1, their unit would commence preparatory strikes west of Pleiku to draw the attention of the region’s primary defenders, the ARVN’s II Army Corps, led by the notorious South Vietnamese commander, Major General Pham Van Phu. They hoped their diversion would leave only the understrength Fifty-third Regiment of the ARVN’s Twenty-third Division to defend Ban Me Thuot, their initial objective for this region.

  Then, on Tuesday, March 4, a sister unit would knock out the bridges on Highway 21 that linked Ban Me Thuot to the coast. Meanwhile, farther north, near Pleiku, other elements of the 968th NVA Corps would blockade Highway 19 at Mang Yang Pass and cut off that route of ARVN retreat from Pleiku and Kontum to Binh Dinh and the coast.

  A week from Saturday, March 8, Cui and his comrades would take positions around Ban Me Thuot. The following day, elements of the 320th Division would cut off Highway 14, which connects Ban Me Thuot to Pleiku, the ARVN’s last route of escape.

  Then, before dawn, on Monday, March 10, Viet Cong sappers would initiate the primary strike from within Ban Me Thuot while Cui and his comrades closed from outside the city, and thus would begin in earnest the first battles of the Blooming Lotus, Campaign 2/75.

  “Are you frightened?” Tuan said to Cui.

  Cui laughed and set down his empty bowl and sipped hot tea from his tin cup.

  “I cannot remember,” Cui said. “I think that I became frightened the day Huong and I left Hanoi for training. I do not regard that I have ever ceased that fright. Over time, I believe that I simply learned to live with it always in my heart. So perhaps I am frightened. But since I am always frightened, I am accustomed to its presence, and it is now my normal life.”

  “I consider that is how I am too,” Tuan said. “I don’t feel frightened anymore, but I know that it is there.”

  “Panic, on the other hand, comes and goes,” Cui said. “When the bombs land dangerously near, or a bullet surprises me, I feel panic. Not all the time, just when I step too close to death.”

  Tuan laughed.

  “I had not considered fright and panic differently,” Tuan said.

  “Fright and anxiety seem to me the same things,” Cui said. “I consider panic quite different. It we must always control. Panic can cost us our lives if we do not keep the upper hand on it.”

  “It can save you too,” Tuan said. “Feeling it stir and reacting. I have had close encounters, and I can attest that had I not acted when panic struck me, I would not be here.”

  “Reflex reaction, perhaps sounds better,” Cui said thoughtfully. “Panic and fear sounds somewhat cowardly.”

  Cui lay back on his pack, again feeling the shoes as he looked up at the stars in the clear indigo sky. The world lay quiet.

  “COMRADE GIANG, I leave you with the politics and madness of the so-called Joint Military Commission and International Oversight Committee,” General Tran Van Tra said with a smile, greeting his old friend and battlefield companion, Colonel Vo Dong Giang, now one of North Vietnam’s deputy foreign ministers and the man that many Western newsmen had come to know as Colonel Ba.

  “Of course, we know the priority of your departure,” Colonel Ba said, “but, nonetheless, we will miss your spirited wit and inspiring, if not entertaining, leadership on the commission. The enemy still reels from your response on our seizure of Phuoc Long Province. What was it that you said? Our mere occupation of lands already our own pales in comparison to the thousands of attacks, in clear violation of the Paris Accords, committed by South Vietnamese forces against the Provisional Revolutionary Government? Your brilliance and wry audacity will be sorely missed by us, but I am afraid its absence celebrated by our enemy.”

  The general clapped his left hand over the shoulder of his friend and said, “I expect, Comrade Giang, they will be happy to have me gone from their presence, but I suspect they will do their utmost to discover the business that takes me away. I am sure their spies have us all under surveillance tonight, so we must act carefully.”

  “By all means,” Giang responded.

  “With my departure to the front line,” General Tran said, “our colleague,General Trong Vinh, of course, will now become senior representative since he is the ranking military officer from Hanoi. However, I am trusting you, my dear friend, to remain our voice with the Western press. After all, they are the ears of the American people and their Congress.”

  “Yes. By all means, sir,” Colonel Ba said, smiling as he carefully tucked a fresh cigarette tight in the silver tip of a black-plastic-stemmed holder. Then he clenched the devise in his teeth and lit the tobacco.

  Drawing his lungs full of smoke, he added, “We have a very cordial relationship with the newspeople, including some of our own personnel among their ranks. The CBS News cameraman, Ha Thuc Can, works very closely with the reporter, Morley Safer, and is one of our loyal comrades, as is Ky Wahn, a photographer with the Associated Press.

  “We have others like them, mostly drivers, clerks, and translators, but given these two men’s status as journalists with the Western press, over the years they have provided invaluable intelligence for us. They have also proven very helpful in our propaganda missions.”

  Colonel Ba laughed and coughed, choking on his cigarette’s smoke, and added, “The Americans trust these men without question. Good for us!”

  Vo Dong Giang, Tran Van Tra, and Trong Vinh had joined another of South Vietnam’s top Communist Party bosses, Tra Bach Dang and his close friend, Nguyen Xuan Ky, Saigon’s regional Viet Cong commander, in the garden of Dang’s villa, near Tan Son Nhut. They met for a social farewell for General Tran and a final coordinating conference for the Communist leaders.

  In a few hours, General Tran, the commander in chief of the Viet Cong, would board a diplomatic flight to Hanoi. There he would meet with General Van Tien Dung, North Vietnamese Army chief o
f staff, and receive final briefings. Then, with orders in hand, he would secretly return south to his tactical field headquarters, currently located just across the Cambodian border, northeast of the Communists’ newly controlled Song Be Airfield, at the border crossing called Tuy Duc, known under French occupation as Camp Le Rolland.

  “Perhaps in a year or two, we will again celebrate together in Comrade Dang’s fine home and toast our victory,” Colonel Ba said.

  “Yes, we shall, Comrade Giang,” Tra Bach Dang responded, raising his glass. A tall, heavyset man with a large, round face and deeply receding hairline, Dang was the consummate politician. Likewise, as Communist chieftain for the most populated and influential region of South Vietnam, he maintained a reputation of ruthlessness and viciousness. Even men like Tran Van Tra accorded the man a respectful and capacious standing.

  “Salute,” General Tran said and drank a sip of the Scotch whiskey in his glass. “All goes well.”

  “Tell me, sir,” Dang said.

  “Today in Hanoi, Party First Secretary Le Duan has succeeded in winning full support of the politburo for our planned offensive,” the general said jubilantly.

  “Then by all means, we must celebrate!” Dang said.

  More than a year earlier, Communist Party First Secretary Le Duan had sat with generals Tran Van Tra and Van Tien Dung and others of the Communist military staff in Hanoi, and devised the Blooming Lotus, Campaign 2/75 plan.

  Recognizing that the Soviet Union would no longer support their war and that with each passing day North Vietnam grew weaker from a supply and logistics standpoint, the Vietnamese Communist military leaders concluded that timing to launch a major offensive could only worsen by the day as they consumed their fixed tonnage of war materials. Conversely, with American aid now virtually cut off to South Vietnam, visibly demoralizing not only the military forces, but government leaders as well, the opportunity for the Communists to seize and hold the initiative, and even turn the balance of the war to their favor, could exist no better than at the present time.

  Le Duan boldly concluded that in order for the campaign to succeed, however, the Vietnamese Communists must commit to the fight all military assets that they held. If they chose to take any other approach, conservative tactics of holding forces and supplies in reserve, their effort would likely fail. Such tactics would most likely lead to a long, slow decline in capabilities on both sides. Furthermore, since South Vietnam had greater stores of wealth and materiel, they held more favorable odds over the long course. Therefore, a decisive and overwhelming campaign launched immediately represented Communist Vietnam’s best hope for winning the war.

  To prevail, Duan and the generals concluded, they must mobilize all of their forces to the battlefront. Furthermore, since they held insufficient equipment and supplies to allow keeping anything in reserve, all bullets, beans, and Band-Aids must go to the front as well.

  Like a gambler at the card table, with this campaign North Vietnam put all of its poker chips into the pot and wagered everything on this final hand. They had to either go big or stay home.

  Thus, the opportunity to finish the war with Communist victory was literally at hand. Yet the risk of losing the war was equally as great.

  South Vietnam had always fought well in defensive positions. They also had significant caches of ammunition and equipment stored within those defenses. General Dung and General Tran cautioned that should their forces become bogged down for any significant period of time, such as a month or more, the initiative could very well fail.

  With no war supplies held in reserve and all their munitions depleted in a stalemated battle, they could easily find themselves retreating from a South Vietnamese counteroffensive with no stopping. South Vietnam could turn the tables, sweep across North Vietnam, and win the war.

  Therefore, the generals all agreed that maintaining the initiative and moving at or ahead of their timetable was imperative. With no reserve, they had no room for error. Their futures, their nation, their very lives rested on the success of their plan.

  Since October, Party First Secretary Duan had worked fervently to win support for the campaign in a sharply divided politburo. Despite reservations held by many party members, Duan had nonetheless authorized the initial probes and assessments that the plan had established in order to remain on its timetable. Now, with more than two months passed and the United States doing no more than condemning the North Vietnamese incursion at Phuoc Long, the Hanoi regime finally reached agreement.

  “Once we achieved our victory at Phuoc Long,” General Tran said, “and the Americans made no response, Comrade Duan has concluded, quite correctly I believe, that they will also make no efforts to repel this campaign. The United States has no more stomach for this war, at any level.

  “Furthermore, our forces have never fought better. They can smell victory in the air. At Phuoc Long, our army defeated the very best forces that South Vietnam has fielded, their rangers. Many of these units are the very same that overwhelmed us so badly two years ago at An Loc. Loss of Phuoc Long, for many of these soldiers, represents a very demoralizing defeat. Much more so than many in South Vietnam or the United States appreciate.

  “Today First Secretary Duan presented this very case to the politburo and has, at last, won approval for our timetable,” General Tran said. “We will commence our campaign in a matter of days.”

  SWEAT ROLLED OFF Le Van Reung’s face, arms, and back as he struggled behind a U-shaped handlebar that pulled a two-wheeled cart heaped with half a dozen sacks of rice, each weighing nearly 100 pounds. Beneath the burlap bags of grain, wrapped in brown-stained cellophane and looking like squared sticks of white modeling clay, 150 quarter-pound blocks of C-4 high-velocity explosive lay hidden, nestled alternately between layers of rice straw. Next to them rode a 10-pound roll of TNT-composition engineering cord, commonly called det cord; a box of 50 electrically triggered detonating caps; two 500-meter rolls of 18-gauge, twisted dual-lead, electrical fuse wire; Reung’s Soviet-made SKS semiautomatic assault rifle, and two 500-round cans of 7.62-millimeter ball ammunition.

  While the hard work of pulling the heavy cart generated much of Reung’s perspiration, the emotional tension of hauling the highly sensitive blasting caps, hidden among so much explosive, churned a greater amount of sweat, and it soaked the guerilla’s shirt and shorts. White salt rings crusted around his waistband and back. Even the conical straw hat that he wore showed a wide ring of wetness. There seemed no end to the ocean of perspiration that his jangled nerves sent pouring from his skin.

  A two-way radio signal keyed too closely to the cart, an errant short circuit in the ignition system of a passing automobile, or even the mere discharge of static electricity generated from the rice bags rubbing together and then brushing something grounded could ignite any of the highly sensitive electrical detonators. Just one of the caps, exploding with hardly more than a firecrackerlike bang, would send Le Van Reung, his 600-pound cargo of rice, and his rifle and ammunition skyward in vapor-sized particles, as it set off the 47.5 pounds of high-velocity explosive that he negotiated through the streets of Ban Me Thuot.

  Such a blast would certainly maim and kill a countless number of other people crowded in the traffic circle near Reung as he guided the load through the center of the city. It would also kill the nine other explosive-and-munitions-laden Viet Cong guerillas under his command,scattered among the people who bustled near him, and set off their cargos as well. Disguised as farmers and blending in with the masses of local citizenry who made their way along the busy main street, several of the soldiers pedaled and pushed bicycles, carrying explosives and ammunition-filled bundles similar to those hauled by Reung, stacked several feet high and strapped onto racks above the wheels, front and back. Other soldiers carried similar packages and boxes tied to the ends of long poles balanced across their shoulders.

  Killing himself, the citizens of Ban Me Thuot, or even his comrades troubled Le Van Reung very little. However, such an event in
volving ten Viet Cong soldiers would clearly reveal that his unit had begun infiltrating the city for an imminent attack. It would immediately trigger South Vietnamese redeployment of forces to the Ban Me Thuot garrison. Such an action could prove a disastrous blow to the entire NVA and VC division’s objective. More importantly, initial victory in Ban Me Thuot held vital importance for the overall Communist strategy. It provided them the momentum to roll the great campaign forward. It also held untold psychological value.

  Although a poor peasant warrior, the thin little man possessed much more intelligence than his simple appearance revealed. As a seasoned, small-unit leader, he deeply appreciated the significance of the role that his men played in this historic moment. Thus sweat poured from Le Van Reung. His stomach churned and knotted with each step and bump.

  Already, since he had guided his cart into the town of Ban Me Thuot and entered its busy main street, several well-meaning people had offered to help the wiry, bantam-sized fellow with his load. One person even gave him water.

  After turning away several good Samaritans, a pair of young South Vietnamese soldiers dashed behind the two-wheeled wagon and started pushing. Reung began to shout at them and tell them that their assistance caused him more discomfort than ease. So they trotted around to the front of the cart, grabbed the U-shaped handlebar, and began pulling alongside the weathered and salt-stained Viet Cong guerilla.

  A block before they reached the traffic circle, the two lads patted Reung on his tired shoulders, calling him grandpa, bid him farewell with his heavy load, and departed, jogging through the open gate of a small military compound on the left side of the roadway. A row of dark green jeeps with white stripes and black lettering painted below their windshields sat parked in front of the four-story, square-looking, metal-and-glass building, the local military police station.