During my daily reading I was encouraged to find in Michael Eggleston’s book, Dak To and the Border Battles of Vietnam 1967-1968, an affirmation of my analysis that the North Vietnamese communists were winning the war in the south after President Ngo Dinh Diem’s assassination.
Murphy also reinforced my claim that when the U.S. escalated and inserted into South Vietnam large numbers of ground forces the situation turned drastically against the communists. I maintain that MACV commander Gen. William Westmoreland’s strategic approach was correct, in fact, it was really the only approach that had any chance of success given the situation on the ground as it existed in 1965.
Furthermore, I suggest that the big-unit, search-and-destroy tactics employed by the U.S. succeeded in badly damaging North Vietnam’s war-making capabilities and virtually destroyed the National Liberation Front (Viet Cong). After huge losses in 1968, desertions from the NLF increased dramatically and although the anti-war movement in the U.S. seemed to gain new adherents daily the reality on the ground in Vietnam is that the NVA and the NLF were being badly hurt.
The conventional wisdom asserts that nothing the U.S. did in Vietnam had any chance of success and that our efforts there were futile. As a young man, before I voluntarily enlisted in the U.S. Army, I held similar views. I now think that the conventional wisdom was and is wrong.
What began to change my mind was my analysis of the 1972 Easter offensive when North Vietnam attempted to end the war with a full-scale invasion of the south.
At that time, most U.S. ground forces had left South Vietnam. Communist leaders assumed that without U.S. ground support the ARVN would collapse quickly when pressed. They were wrong and South Vietnamese troops fought hard and successfully blunted North Vietnam’s invasion. Of course, the ARVN benefited greatly from massive U.S. air support in the form of Operation Linebacker, as well as fire missions from the U.S.S. New Jersey whose giant guns lobbed shells onto Highway 1 from the South China Sea. U.S. advisors also exerted excellent command and control efforts that were instrumental in helping to hold the ARVN units together.
Still, despite some very serious battles, North Vietnam’s Easter Offensive did not succeed, the South Vietnamese military did not fold up., and it was not until three years later that they had built back their offensive capability well enough to defeat South Vietnam.
What happened? Many things had changed between March of 1972 and May of 1975.
President Richard Nixon, beset with political problems caused by the Watergate affair, resigned while I was in Basic Training at Ft. Ord, California in August of 1974. Our company commander called us into a quick formation while we were in the field and informed us that our chain of command had changed. I shrugged, having more pressing matters to attend to such as polishing my dirty combat boots.
But Nixon’s resignation created a huge hole in U.S. Vietnam policy. Nixon and Sec. of State Henry Kissinger had forced South Vietnam President Nguyen Van Thieu to accept a peace deal negotiated with the North in the fall of 1972. The U.S. presidential election was approaching and Nixon wanted a deal to say he had kept his 1968 promise to end the war. With little choice, Thieu swallowed hard and accepted the deal which left North Vietnamese troops in the south.
After Nixon’s landslide reelection, North Vietnam balked at the deal. An angry Nixon ordered Operation Linebacker II, the so-called Christmas bombing of North Vietnam. Despite advanced air-defense systems provided by the Soviet Union which shot down several U.S. bombers the bombing campaign was a success and North Vietnam quickly returned to the table and concluded the deal.
With an election mandate in his pocket, we can assume that the Nixon assured Thieu of continued U.S. support as he prepared for his second term. But by 1975 Nixon was out of office, and the U.S. Congress had banned any further military aid for South Vietnam.
With the Republic of South Vietnam politically and militarily isolated from the United States and the North Vietnamese Army bolstered with hardware and technology from the Soviet Union, the south’s fate was sealed. Despite some valiant attempts by the ARVN to make a stand and hold off the North, Thieu resigned and South Vietnam collapsed.
I know that was a bitter pill to swallow for the millions of U.S. service men and women who so selflessly gave so much to carry out U.S. policy in South Vietnam. It’s trite to say that their efforts were not in vain and that the lives lost there were not wasted; but I believe that is true. The lives lost and service given by U.S. forces in South Vietnam were not in vain. They delayed communist advances in southeast Asia and my well have prevented Thailand and possibly the Philippines from falling.
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