The Tet Offensive, January 31, 1968

219th Military Intelligence Detachment, Long Binh, South Vietnam

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

– F. Scott Fitzgerald, THE GREAT GATSBY

KaBlamm….. The blast slapped me wide awake as shrapnel rattled on the aluminum roof of our barracks. I grabbed my helmet and flak jacket and rolled onto the concrete floor under my steel cot. I wondered which was more important to protect with the flak jacket – my chest or my crotch but lying on the floor, I could protect both parts. The shock wave of another blast swept over us, and more shrapnel rattled on the roof. Then it was quiet. A Zippo lighter clicked. Lt. John James was having his first cigarette.

It was 3 AM January 31, 1968, a national holiday for the Vietnamese, sort of like a combination of New Year’s and Thanksgiving. In the past there had been a truce as South Vietnamese (SVN) and Viet Cong (VC, shorthand for Vietnamese communist) soldiers went home to honor their ancestors and party with friends and family. Although we had picked up some indications that the VC were planning a big attack, we had gone to bed thinking that the traditional TET truce would be in effect. But as we welcomed in the Year of the Monkey, we were rudely surprised.

this was the first time I had been attacked by the VC

I was a 27-year old military intelligence officer stationed at a large military headquarters at Long Binh, a huge Army base twenty miles east of Saigon. Although I had been issued a rifle and  fatigues, the dark green uniforms worn by all men in the field, I had never fired a shot and had only seen a few hapless VC prisoners. After nine months in Vietnam this was the first time I had been attacked by the VC.

Even though I wore a fighter’s uniform, I had a 7 to 5 office job. I worked in an Order of Battle department which functioned as a reference library on the enemy units in our area. About a dozen officers and enlisted men studied translations of enemy documents, prisoner of war interrogations, and aerial photos to put together packets of information.

The two questions we were asked to answer most often were:

  • Where is this unit?
  • What is it going to do next?

We usually didn’t have the answers to those questions. To us, the VC were like ghosts.

There were ten officers in our barracks which was a one-story metal building about forty feet long with two rows of steel cots with mosquito netting and foot lockers for our clothes and personal items. We waited under our cots for about fifteen minutes, but there were no more rockets, so we moved to our assigned posts in case of an attack, where we met our enlisted men.

We had never practiced what to do if we were attacked, so we had to decide who would use what weapons. None of our enlisted men knew how to operate our machine gun (M60), so I took it because I had done well with it during training in the States.

Our bunker was a 10 by 12 foot room with chest-high walls, a 2-foot high opening, where we could fire our weapons and a roof. The walls and roof were protected with sandbags. Our bunker was located at the rear of narrow strip of ground that was about three football fields wide. Beyond our bunker was a barbed wire barrier and then several acres of underbrush and low shrubs.

If we had been an infantry unit, we would have sent out patrols to find out what this area was like and discover where the most likely places were that the VC could get up close to our bunker and attack it. This helped protect a unit against surprise attack. All we did was send men to man the bunker each night, where they peered out into the darkness. The main job of us junior officers who were in charge of these guard details was to make sure the men who had worked all day didn’t fall asleep.

firing the M60 was a big mistake

After waiting tensely on full alert with the adrenaline pumping on that Tet morning, we heard some firing from the other side of our narrow perimeter, so we started firing. I fired several rounds from the M60, and other guys fired their M14 rifles. But nothing moved in front of us, so we calmed down and stopped firing.

Fire discipline, firing only when there are targets and no friendly troops in the line of fire is a key indicator of experienced infantry. Panicky firing of vast amounts of ammunition at imaginary targets or firing because other guys are doing it is a sure sign of inexperienced troops. My firing the M60 was a big mistake. If the VC were in the brush in front of us, they would have spotted the fire from the machine gun and targeted it with their rocket-propelled grenades (RPG). The portal where I sat made an easy target. An RPG could have taken my head off.

a battalion of VC, about 400 to 500 men, was in the village

Luckily there were no VC lurking in the brush, so we settled down and waited even though we heard more firing from the front side of our perimeter. From their bunker on that side, our men looked out on a road that met up with Route 1 and went into Saigon. Beyond the road was a group of small houses where the widows of South Vietnamese Army soldiers lived with their parents and children. It was called the Widows’ Village. A battalion of VC, about 400 to 500 men, was in the Village, waiting for the signal to attack our narrow perimeter. The reason they didn’t attack was because their commander had been told to wait until all of 200 rockets had been fired into our base.

Fortunately our long-range patrols had found the place where the rockets were being fired and had called in helicopter gunships to knock them out. So the VC commander waited, and that saved us. If the VC had attacked us green headquarters troops, they would have cut through us like a hot knife through butter.

This delay gave our troops from the 9th Division time to attack the VC as they waited in the Village. They were supported by helicopter gunships that fired rockets and their deadly machine guns which spewed out thousands of bullets with a growling sound like a power saw on full power with a bent blade.

At our bunker in the rear we could hear firing from the Village, and an RPG exploded next to us. One of our men cried out, “Futato’s been hit.” When we examined him we found that Futato had been hit by a hot fragment of metal in his back right above his spine. The fragment was stopped by his web belt. He was rushed off by jeep to the hospital. He got the only Purple Heart awarded to our unit.

a very scared Lieutenant pointed his rifle at my chest and screamed, “What’s the password?”

A short time later, we watched as the Air Force came to our aid. A jet paused overhead and then dove down over the scrub in front of us and dropped two canisters of napalm. Scarlet flames and black oily smoke twisted up. We felt the heat on our faces.

This gave us courage. We felt that we were not alone. Someone was looking out for us and had sent the Air Force to help us. I can’t say that I was scared. I was pumped up; my adrenaline was pumping as it used to before a track meet. But nothing violent had happened to us.

Some people were scared. I remember going over to the next bunker where there were men from the Radio Research company that was based right beside us. As I approached the bunker, a very scared Lieutenant pointed his rifle at my chest and screamed, “What’s the password?” I tried to calm him down by saying, “Come on … We eat together in the mess hall every day. You know me.” He wouldn’t drop his rifle, so I turned away and went back to our bunker.

We weren’t a real fighting force; we were headquarters troops; we used our brains to support the real fighters: the grunts, the infantry. The brave men who have done the fighting from ancient Greece and Rome through Vietnam and today in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. We were lucky that the VC battalion hadn’t attacked.

When the fighting stopped in the Widows’ Village, we went to our Order of Battle office and tried to put together a report on what was happening to help our fighting units.

They were some of the first enemy troops that we had ever seen.

Our unit, the 219th Military Intelligence Detachment supported II Field Force, a large corps headquarters. It directed the 199th Light Infantry Brigade to the East, the Big Red One, First Infantry Division to the North at Lai Khe, the 25th Division to the Northwest at Cu Chi, and 9th Division based in the rich rice-growing delta to the South. Lt. General, Fred Weyand, a lanky non-West Pointer was in charge. He had seen enough information to realize that the enemy was planning a big attack; he just didn’t know when. Some of the men in our unit had discovered the reorganization of the VC local force units (part-time fighters) around Saigon. Each unit had a slice of the circle around the city where they would prepare the way for regular VC units to attack. Our Radio Research unit which listened to enemy radio calls had picked up an increase in radio traffic in that area.

So Gen. Weyand had convinced Gen.Westmoreland to let him pull combat units back near the Saigon Circle. It was a wise move. It helped us keep the the VC and North Vietnamese (NVA) from gaining a foothold in most of the cities and towns that they attacked. Most Tet attacks in our area were quickly repulsed except for the city of Saigon where it took weeks to clear out the enemy infiltrators.

Now we got orders from Headquarters to find out what unit had attacked us. Lt. Holland led a squad of us into the Widows’ Village to get the answer. When we got to the Village, we were shocked. Houses were smashed and torn to bits, oily smoke drifted up from smoldering fires. Bodies of VC littered the ground. Some were wounded and had rough bandages. Some were dead, and they were already turning stiff with a yellow waxy color in the heat.

They didn’t wear uniforms, so we could be pretty sure that they weren’t North Vietnamese regular infantry. They just wore the simple clothes, mainly the black pants and shirts of farmers. They were some of the first enemy troops that we had ever seen.

they had fifteen seconds to leave or he couldn’t guarantee their safety

There were piles of equipment scattered about: belts of ammunition, lots of RPGs, and canvas bags filled with food and clothing. In one pile of equipment, we found some documents. Some of them referred to “Unit 49.” We had our answer. These soldiers were part of the 275th VC regiment.

The VC never referred to their units by their correct name; they always used code names. An experienced intelligence analyst in our unit who had served in World War II and Korea figured this out. He set up a list of code names, culled from captured documents. We called this our Also Known As ( AKA) list. One of the AKAs for the 275th regiment was Unit 49, so we had our answer.

It was fortunate that we found the answer quickly because the 9th Division infantry who had cleared the village didn’t want us around. They let us know that we should find what we were looking for and get the hell out.

Years later when I read Keith Nolan’s THE BATTLE FOR SAIGON TET 1968, I found out why. As the men of B/2 -47th Mechanized Infantry of the 9th Division were searching for VC who were hiding in the Village, some Military Police (MPs) brought them some ammunition. Shortly thereafter, some firing broke out as some VC were apparently trying to surrender. As soon as they heard the firing, the scared and inexperienced MPs started firing wildly. Their fire hit Private First Class James Vielbaum, a replacement who had been in country just two weeks and killed him. The Lieutenant who was in command, seeing the murderous anger in the faces of his 9th Division men, told the MPs they had fifteen seconds to leave or he couldn’t guarantee their safety. The downcast MPs quickly fled. You can see why we weren’t welcome, and also why fire discipline was a sure sign of experienced, disciplined infantrymen.

Lt. Holland who was in charge of our small Intelligence detail had a small camera, and he got a few pictures while keeping the camera hidden. He gave me prints. Now when I look at those small photos, I return to the Village. I can see and smell the still corpses turning waxy in the sun. A chill runs up my spine as I remember how scared I was. Would some wounded VC lying nearby throw a grenade and blow us all to bits? Would a VC pop up from a hole and shoot us? Would a firefight start between the VC and the 9th Division troops and we would be caught in the deadly crossfire?

It was an unknown and terrifying time for us headquarters troops. We hadn’t been in combat like all the men around us. Luckily we quickly found the information we had come for. So we got in our jeeps and drove back to the office. This was my only exposure to what infantry fighting was really like. It was enough for me.

“Stop requesting those flares or we’ll turn our guns at you!”

That evening when we returned to our barracks from our offices at Headquarters, we found “The Cavalry Had Arrived!” The tanks and Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs) of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment were lined up on the road in front of us facing the Widows’ Village. Gen. Weyand wasn’t taking any chances of being overrun a second time.

That night we were on Alert, so those of us who weren’t manning the bunkers gathered in the 219th offices just behind the Cavalry. As night fell, one of our hotshot lieutenants kept radioing a plane circling overhead to drop flares. As they floated down, the flares swung like a pendulum beneath a small parachute.The flares lit up the whole area. The APCs and tanks were clearly visible to any VC with an RPG lurking in the darkness. We soon received a radio message from the Cavalry, “Stop requesting those flares or we’ll turn our guns at you!” That ended the light show for the night.

The alert was ended the next morning, February 1, 1968, and things got back to normal. Just another day at the office. Some time later, Rome Plows, bulldozers with blades with long teeth like a front-end loader cleared the brush from behind our perimeter. This let us see if any enemy tried to attack us and gave clear fields of fire to fight back.

There were no more attacks. Most of the VC units had suffered severe casualties, and their places would have to be filled by new troops and NVA regulars. So things were quiet for a while. We were hit a few more times by rockets in the next few months.They didn’t hurt anyone, but the blasts were scary. The rockets were sent off at apparently random times. This made it hard for you to keep the times when you would be anxious or afraid in nice neat compartments. At first you told yourself, well they fire off rockets early in the morning, but then they hit us at 11 PM. Later it was 7 PM, as we were watching a movie. The Fear Genie had slipped out of the bottle and swirled around you whenever it was dark.

The Fear Genie had slipped out of the bottle

Most people don’t realize that there was a Mini-Tet attack in May 1968. The VC and NVA probably attacked Saigon and several other cities just to show us the they still could infiltrate troops under our noses. I was a short-timer by then. Since tours in Vietnam lasted one year, each of us kept a calendar and carefully counted the days until we could go home and stop feeling like “A Stranger In A Strange Land.” The days remaining until I could fly back to The World had dwindled to a precious few. Since I was “short,” I got the assignment as the Intelligence Officer of a mini- headquarters that II Field Force sent into Saigon, the site of another major VC attack.

Our helicopter corkscrewed down inside and dropped us off in an old French barracks which was a South Vietnamese Army headquarters. It might as well have been a foreign country. I knew no one except for the men from the helicopter. I could barely speak Vietnamese because I hadn’t had the need to use it since leaving Vietnamese Language School at Ft. Bliss, Texas. I did one or two briefings in English for few reporters who didn’t ask many questions. My enlisted man and I slept in an upstairs hallway hoping that the Vietnamese around us knew how to fight – and would – if we were attacked. After a few anxious days, we picked up our rifles, hopped on a helicopter and headed back to Long Binh.

When I got back to Long Binh, it was time to start processing to return to the Real World – the Good Old United States of America, where there were riots in the streets. I packed up my stereo set, camera, and the silk suit tailored especially for me while I was on Rest-and Recreation (R&R) in Hong Kong. It came apart at the seams a few months later.

One of the last things I had to do was turn in my M14 rifle, but there was a problem. The serial number on the rifle I was turning in didn’t match the serial number of the rifle I was issued. “But Sarge,” I said to the Supply Sergeant, “It’s an M14, your inventory will be fine.” The reply was, “This isn’t the rifle you were issued, so we can’t accept it.”

Now what do I do? I’m scheduled to leave the next day. Finally I thought of my enlisted sidekick. Perhaps he had “my rifle.” Sure enough he did, and the supply sergeant now had the right serial number. The wheels of the Army supply units grind slowly but accurately.

No friends, no weapon, just a dark barracks

Next day as I boarded the brown Army bus with steel mesh over the windows to protect us against grenades, I thought of a Lieutenant who was a “short timer” and boasted about it to me when I had just arrived. I already felt lost and alone with 360 days to go before I could get out of Vietnam. I know he meant it in fun, but it hurt just the same. As our bus pulled up to the Long Binh replacement depot. Another bus was ready to pull out with newbies about to spend a long year in country. I spotted a familiar face and called, “Hey Dick. I’m short.” The lieutenant who had teased me one year ago was back in country for another tour. He gave me a wry smile and a wave as his bus pulled out.

There was one more step to leaving Vietnam behind. A bus took us soldiers who were leaving to barracks at Tan San Nhut air base in Saigon. I spent the night in officers quarters and felt alone and exposed. No friends, no weapon, just a dark barracks where I felt trapped.

Dawn brought a quick breakfast and then we boarded buses that took us to a commercial airplane with real stewardesses. After we were seated, they gave us nice warm towels to wash the dust of Vietnam from our faces. The men in the plane were quiet as we taxied down the runway, but as we took off and Vietnam shrank beneath us, we burst out cheering.

Fifty years have passed since I served in Vietnam. Good years – thirty-nine wonderful years with my dear wife who died much too young of kidney cancer. I’m blessed with a son and a daughter who look forward to my visits, and four grandchildren. Five years ago I met my second love online. I pledged my love to her at the foot of General Sherman, the largest sequoia in the world. We enjoy ten grandchildren, books, birds and butterflies. Life is good, and love really is wonderful the second time around.

My time in Vietnam was a watershed year for me. It has shaped the rest of my life. I am proud and privileged to have served, but I deeply resent the way we have been treated. We didn’t lose the war; the politicians did. I left the Ph.D. Program in English at Penn State to enlist because I thought the people in Vietnam needed our help to keep from being overrun by communists.

military service was a rite of passage for young men of my era

But I also enlisted because military service was a rite of passage for young men of my era. I wanted to see if I was tough enough to make it through 23 weeks of Officer Candidate School at the Home of the Infantry, Ft. Benning, Georgia. We referred to it in our unofficial school anthem, as “Benning School For Boys.” We started with a class of 249 in the 64th Company, and 159 of us graduated and were commissioned Second Lieutenants. Fortunately I was a good student and was commissioned as an Intelligence Officer. I didn’t have the calm control in the face of danger and violence that makes a good infantry platoon leader.

Now after fifty years of study and reflection I think our mission to South Vietnam was a failed mission from the start. Reading HUE 1968 by Mark Bowden recently has helped me come to that conclusion. It is the best book I have read about the Vietnam War.

I realized that what we call the Vietnam War, VC and North Vietnamese often called The War For Independence. We should have listened to them. For years under Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, we were hypnotized by the communist bogeyman. Think how differently things might have turned out if we had viewed the war as a civil war by the Vietnamese for control of their country and a war for independence from foreign intruders: the French and the United States.

we were hypnotized by the communist bogeyman

Imagine how the Union people in the United States in 1862 would have felt if France or Great Britain would have sided with the Confederacy. Do you think we would have given up before those foreign invaders were driven from our shores. Not on your life! And the institution of slavery was just as pernicious a way of government as communism.

Bowden describes how a full division of NVA and VC troops infiltrated into Hue along with their weapons and supplies, and NO ONE TOLD US OR THE SOUTH VIETNAMESE!

This didn’t just happen in Hue; it happened all across South Vietnam in one hundred towns and cities.

It happened to us at Long Binh. The widows of SVN soldiers across the road, the Vietnamese women who washed our clothes, cleaned our barracks, and served our food, never alerted us.

A full VC battalion doesn’t just march in and attack. Several days are needed to get all the troops and supplies in place and scout the objective. They even dug connecting tunnels between the wells in the village.

The destiny of Vietnam was never ours to decide

A good friend of mine was our Counter Intelligence Officer. He visited the headmen of all the villages around our base. He ate their food and got intestinal parasites, but he never got a warning.

As with most societies, the South Vietnamese could be divided into three groups: a group of VA and NVA supporters,  a group of South Vietnamese and US supporters and employees, and the huge group in the middle who just wanted to be left alone.

We were foreigners who looked different, smelled different, and ate different food. Most of us didn’t speak their language, and didn’t know or care about Vietnamese culture, history or customs. We were only accepted if we could pay.

That opinion may seem harsh, but we acted just like other soldiers who have invaded foreign lands through the centuries. Also this is just one aspect of our fight in Vietnam.

Almost all of the 2.6 million men and women who served in Vietnam served bravely and with honor. This is especially true of the small fraction of men who actually did the fighting: the Army and Marine infantry, armor, and artillery, who comprise most of the names on the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington,DC. Helicopter crews risked their lives and planes to transport troops, attack the enemy, and carry off the our dead and wounded. Navy ships patrolled on the rivers, and the South China Sea and provided fire support to our troops. Air Force, Marine and Navy flyers flew through intense fire to support our troops on the ground and bomb targets in North Vietnam. Incredibly dedicated combat medics and doctors and nurses saved thousands of young lives that would have been snuffed out in earlier wars. We answered our country’s call, but we were betrayed by our leaders.

The destiny of Vietnam was never ours to decide; only the Vietnamese could do that.

 

1st Lieutenant David M. Rieker
219th Military Intelligence Detachment
Long Binh, South Vietnam

May 1967 to May 1968