Black april, p.33
Black April, page 33
Soon after the Tri Tam/Ben Cau attacks, and after learning of the enemy movement toward Dinh Quan, on 16 March Toan ordered Brigadier General Le Minh Dao of the ARVN 18th Division to send two battalions of the 43rd Regiment to defend the town. The 2nd Battalion, 43rd Regiment, arrived in Dinh Quan that day and was deployed northwest of the town. The 1st Battalion and the regimental headquarters deployed to the La Nga Bridge. Dao left the 3rd Battalion near Hoai Duc to assist the RF in that area against the expected attack by the 812th Regiment. Dao’s 52nd Regiment held Xuan Loc and the critical road junction of Routes 1 and 20 northeast of Saigon, called Dau Giay by the Vietnamese. With his 48th Regiment detached to help defend Tay Ninh, Dao was now out of troops, as was the rest of III Corps. The territorial forces stationed on Route 2 south of Xuan Loc and east along Route 1—the targets of the 6th Division and the 812th Regiment—were on their own.
On 6 March the PAVN 7th Division departed Phuoc Long for the long march to Route 20. The Dong Nai River, however, lay between it and the road. With no ford or existing bridge, the division’s engineer battalion worked diligently to build a bridge to allow the troops and heavy equipment to cross. It was a tough assignment. “Countless problems and difficulties were encountered moving . . .across the river, but . . . in just three nights the entire division and its attached elements successfully crossed the Dong Nai and in total secrecy.”18
The delay in crossing the river, however, disrupted Tra’s plan to hit Tri Tam and Route 20 at the same time. On 12 March PAVN 4th Corps commander Major General Hoang Cam sent a cable to Bui Cat Vu, his deputy who was leading the Route 20 attack, encouraging him to get moving. Although the element of surprise was now lost, after receiving Cam’s message, Bui Cat Vu ordered the 7th Division to attack immediately. Early in the morning of 17 March the 141st Regiment struck Dinh Quan. Savage battles erupted on the ridgeline held by the ARVN 2nd Battalion, 43rd Regiment. After fighting lasting more than twenty-four hours, the PAVN forces finally secured the high ground overlooking the town. The 2nd Battalion retreated south to nearby Tran Mountain and dug in on the high ground near the La Nga River bridge. The 141st Regiment quickly attacked Dinh Quan, and the town fell late on 18 March.
The next target was the La Nga Bridge. The 2nd Battalion was on one side of the river, the 1st Battalion garrisoned the other side. The bridge itself was held by an RF company. But following the original plan, the PAVN forces soon pushed down Route 20. On the morning of 20 March, their commanders threw two fresh battalions from the 209th Regiment against the 2nd Battalion on Tran Mountain. The 141st remained behind at Dinh Quan to recover. The Communist troops charged the 2nd Battalion’s positions several times, but were driven off. On the third assault, the 2nd’s commander, Major Nguyen Huu Che, ordered two 105-mm howitzers loaded up with anti-personnel rounds and fired straight into the massed Communist attackers. The devastating blasts halted that attack.19
Ignoring their losses, in late afternoon the Communists attacked again. To deal with this new threat, Major Che called in air support. Unfortunately, a VNAF F-5E mistakenly hit the battalion’s position with its bombs, causing many ARVN casualties. After the errant bombing, Che’s hold on the mountain was growing tenuous. In fighting two PAVN regiments for four days, the 2nd Battalion had suffered over eighty casualties. Because of other attacks in Long Khanh province, Brigadier General Dao was unable to reinforce the battalion. With no choice other than to retreat or be over-run, at midnight Dao ordered the battalion to pull back to Xuan Loc. At dawn, the PAVN regiment swept down toward the bridge. Unable to hold off the advancing enemy, the RF commander at the bridge called in an artillery strike directly on his own position next to the bridge abutment. In an effort to prevent PAVN from seizing the bridge, the RF commander had deliberately sacrificed himself. It was in vain. Although the artillery killed a dozen PAVN soldiers, not to mention the valiant RF commander, the bridge still fell to the North Vietnamese. Its flank now unhinged, the 1st Battalion also retreated. The 7th Division had succeeded in its first mission.
Meanwhile, unknown to ARVN, in late February the 341st Division had secretly arrived in the B-2 Front from North Vietnam and was officially assigned to the 4th Corps. On 2 March, after attaching the 273rd Infantry Regiment to the 9th Division, COSVN ordered the 341st Division commander to “Study the Route 20 area from the La Nga Bridge to the Dau Giay intersection and Xuan Loc City. Make all necessary preparations to conduct a large-scale massed battle of annihilation when so ordered.”20 The division commander and his staff officers left to make a personal reconnaissance of this sector. In late March the 4th Corps ordered the 341st Division’s two newly arrived regiments, the 266th and 270th, to take over the Dinh Quan area from the 7th Division. The 270th Regiment was to defend the newly captured territory, while the 266th would attack southwest along Route 20 to seize the next district town, Kiem Tan.
Dao was well aware of the need to prevent the Communists from pushing further down Route 20. On 28 March he sent the 2nd Battalion, 52nd Regiment, to recapture the lost territory. As the battalion slowly moved north, it ran straight into the deploying 270th Regiment. This was the regiment’s first combat action. The battle raged from early in the morning of 29 March to late the next day, but ended in a stalemate.
On Dao’s second front, the PAVN 6th Division timed its road and outpost clearing operation to coincide with the 7th Division’s attack. Between 15 and 18 March, the PAVN soldiers swept north along Route 2. The 6th then struck east of Xuan Loc, overrunning Chua Chan Mountain, the important high ground due east of the town. By 28 March, the 6th controlled a thirty-mile section of Route 1 from Chua Chan into Binh Tuy. The last road artery from Saigon to central Vietnam had been cut, preventing ARVN from using Route 1 to assist II Corps.
A few hours before the 7th’s attack on Dinh Quan, the 812th Regiment opened fire on Dao’s third front, attacking the town of Vo Dac, the Hoai Duc district headquarters. The stalwart RF troops of Vo Dac, who had survived a thirty-day siege during the Phase One attacks, fought off repeated attacks for three days. Becoming impatient with the failure to seize the district headquarters, Tra demanded on the night of 19 March that the 812th immediately finish off the town. In the early-morning hours of 20 March, after a massive preparatory artillery barrage, the 812th Regiment’s assault troops stormed into Vo Dac. After capturing the town, the 812th turned on the last remaining ARVN element in the area, Dao’s 3rd Battalion, 43rd Regiment, which was defending some nearby high ground. After two days of fighting, Dao ordered his battalion to retreat back to Xuan Loc. Shortly thereafter, the 812th linked up with a 6th Division reconnaissance element. The 812th had accomplished its mission, and Hoai Duc was added to the liberated area of Tanh Linh. Although badly behind schedule, the 812th now turned to complete the second part of its mission: helping the 7th Division clear Route 20 and capture the provinces of Lam Dong and Tuyen Duc.
A LONELY RETREAT
Back in II Corps, with Major General Phu’s attention focused on the column of soldiers and civilians retreating down Route 7B, he had ignored the three surviving provinces in the southern Highlands: Quang Duc, Lam Dong, and Tuyen Duc. Although the South Vietnamese had resettled many civilian refugees from Loc Ninh and An Loc in Lam Dong, the three provinces remained isolated and sparsely populated. Only the city of Dalat in Tuyen Duc province held any true significance for the South Vietnamese. It was the home of their National Military Academy and the old summer residence of the emperor and his family. Many of the country’s elite owned vacation residences around the city.
After the PAVN 10th Division’s capture of Duc Lap in northern Quang Duc in early March, the three battalions of the 24th Ranger Group pulled back to defend the southern part of the province, including the district seat of Kien Duc and the capital, Gia Nghia. On 20 March COSVN’s 271B Regiment surrounded the 82nd Ranger Battalion at Kien Duc, preventing the Rangers from retreating.21 Shortly thereafter, the 271B left one battalion behind to pin down the Rangers, and then advanced toward Gia Nghia. Two days later the Quang Duc province chief radioed Phu to report that Gia Nghia was under heavy artillery attack, and Communist forces had reached the local airfield. Despite two days of resistance by RF forces, on 24 March the 271B Regiment captured Gia Nghia. The seizure of Quang Duc province secured Dung’s southern flank and prevented any counterattack against Ban Me Thuot from that direction.
Although encircled, the 82nd Rangers refused to surrender. On 21 March, in hand-to-hand combat they fought their way through PAVN lines and linked up with the rest of the Ranger group the next day. But with the fall of Gia Nghia, the 24th Ranger Group was stranded far from the coast, without a means of being resupplied with food, water, or ammunition. Since all II Corps helicopters were tied up helping the retreating column on Route 7B, the group commander was ordered to march his unit southeast through the jungle to Lam Dong province to help friendly units defend the city of Bao Loc. It was a long walk to Bao Loc, yet the Rangers set off. Misfortune struck the next day when a Ranger stepped on a mine, killing him and wounding the group commander. The injured colonel was flown out by helicopter, and the 82nd Battalion commander, Major Vuong Mong Long, took over command of the column.
At the same time as the 24th Rangers began their retreat, the PAVN 7th Division turned its attention to taking Lam Dong province and its two major towns, Bao Loc and the provincial capital, Di Linh. The main attack element, supported by tanks and anti-aircraft artillery, drove straight up Route 20 to attack the cities head on. By 4:00 P.M. on 31 March both towns had been captured, the RF survivors were escaping toward Dalat, and Lam Dong province had fallen. Now Tuyen Duc was only the Highland province that remained under South Vietnamese control.
Surrounded by a sea of red, Dalat had been preparing its defenses for an attack. Major General Lam Quang Tho, the commandant of the Dalat Military Academy, had received orders to command Dalat’s defense. But with the fall of Di Linh, Tho knew he was surrounded. He had only two options: stay and fight, or retreat. Since the Academy’s cadets were desperately needed to recoup the terrible losses the South Vietnamese armed forces had suffered, Tho decided to retreat. After securing Route 11 to the city of Phan Rang, the only road to the coast, the cadets and instructors departed by truck on the night of 31 March. They reached Phan Rang with relative ease on the morning of 1 April and continued on to Binh Tuy province, from which they were airlifted back to Saigon.
However, Tho had left everyone else behind. Shocked by the sudden evacuation of the school, the RF troops crumbled. Monitoring ARVN radio networks, the 812th Regiment learned that Dalat was defenseless, and it moved quickly to occupy the city. It arrived in Dalat on the morning of 3 April and took control of the city. Dalat had fallen without a shot being fired.
The retreating 24th Rangers, however, knew none of this. Cutting through the dense jungle, they stayed alive by ambushing Communist trucks and raiding old guerrilla bases for food and water. The Rangers finally reached the outskirts of Bao Loc on 2 April, but Major Long realized they were too late when he saw “the red flag on the roof of the city hall. We turned north hoping to see a friendly force in Dalat. On 4 April, BBC radio said that Dalat had fallen. . . . On 5 April 1975, I made radio contact with Lieutenant Colonel Loc, who was flying around the Dalat area searching for my force.”22 The 82nd was flown to Phan Thiet and then to Xuan Loc. The other two battalions were picked up over the next couple of days and also taken to Phan Thiet, where they remained to help defend the city. Major Long had led the 24th Ranger Group on a harrowing retreat for almost two weeks, surviving on captured rations and stream water. When he departed Quang Duc, he had 450 men in his 82nd Battalion; only 310 made it to Xuan Loc. But of all the Ranger groups in II Corps, only the 24th survived largely intact.
While Tra’s plans were bearing fruit on the western, northern, and eastern side of Saigon, they were not going smoothly to the south, in the Mekong Delta. After receiving the initial COSVN guidance on targets, MR-8 requested permission to instead concentrate its efforts in only three districts west of My Tho, the Delta’s second-largest city. These three districts had always been hotly contested, mostly because they were heavily populated, were a rich rice-producing region, and controlled a long section of Route 4. The capture of this territory would enable the Communists to directly threaten My Tho. Tra especially wanted to link his troops in this region with the 303rd Division elements advancing south from Hau Nghia province.
As in III Corps, the South Vietnamese in the Mekong Delta knew the Communist forces were coming and strove to disrupt their plans. In early March ARVN communication intercepts located the PAVN 8th Division headquarters approximately five miles northeast of My Tho. The ARVN 7th Division made several sweeps looking for the division headquarters, and uncovered two large ammunition caches. Between the new intelligence, heavy PAVN casualties earlier in the year, and the ammunition loss, Le Gro was convinced that any attacks by “PAVN units would be . . . with inexperienced fillers and with inadequate tactical advantage.”23
He was right again. While several outposts were lost, the ARVN 7th Division kept the critical Route 4 open and repulsed the attacks by the PAVN 8th Division near My Tho. In spite of these successes, however, ARVN prospects in the Delta looked bleak. According to DAO analysts, “The apparent overall objective during the past week has been to expand and consolidate PAVN terrain holdings, while playing upon scare factor to keep ARVN reaction forces locked into potentially critical trouble spots. They have succeeded somewhat on both counts and have forced RVNAF to utilize its entire monthly allotted air support by the 13th of the month. The IV Corps Commander, Major General Nguyen Khoa Nam, recently stated that Communist forces can replace men and equipment with less trouble than RVNAF, and it is just this factor, among others, that the PAVN will try to exploit. Their ability to continue the deterioration process is underscored by the fact that a respectable [series of attacks] was launched following over three weeks of preemptive RVNAF strikes.”24
While PAVN had made dozens of small but sharp ground attacks all across the Delta, it had not seriously disrupted the ARVN formations or seized any significant territory. It had, however, accomplished the important goal of tying down the three ARVN divisions in the Delta. Any hope of moving units to support III Corps, as had been done with the ARVN 21st Division during the 1972 offensive, was now out of the question, unless the South Vietnamese were willing to cede large tracts of the countryside to the enemy.
KHOI SAVES TAY NINH
While Toan believed the pincers north and south of Tay Ninh City would attempt to link up at Go Dau Ha, the junction of Route 1 and Local Route 22, in fact Tra’s plan called for the bulk of the 303rd Division pincer to turn in the opposite direction, into Hau Nghia province. The division left one regiment to take Go Dau Ha while the rest marched away from the town. Unaware of the PAVN strategy, Brigadier General Tran Quang Khoi stopped his efforts to retake Tri Tam and turned his attention to holding Go Dau Ha. Taking advantage of numerous air strikes, Khoi succeeded in holding the town, although enemy elements came within one mile of it. Believing Khoi had stopped the PAVN assault, Toan then ordered him to use his attached 48th Regiment to recapture Route 1 from Go Dau Ha to Cambodia. Using more air strikes and heavy amounts of artillery, the 48th began slowly advancing against stiff resistance. For the North Vietnamese, a successful move by the 48th along Route 1 would dangerously threaten the rear of the 303rd Division as it continued the attack into Hau Nghia. To prevent this potential disaster, the 303rd Division commander pulled back one of the infantry battalions headed to Hau Nghia to reinforce the regiment trying to block the South Vietnamese advance.
Despite the orders to hold Route 1, PAVN gave ground. In one engagement, most of one company was wiped out. Seeing ARVN forces pushing along Route 1, Tra ordered the PAVN 9th Division to attack on Khoi’s other flank near Tri Tam to force Toan to pull the 48th back to assist the 3rd Armored against this sudden maneuver. On 23 March one regiment from the 9th drove the newly reconstituted 2nd Battalion, 7th Regiment, 5th Division (the unit that had been decimated at Phuoc Long), from the town of Truong Mit near Local Route 22, shattering the ARVN battalion in the process. Three-quarters of the unit were killed, wounded, or missing.
Khoi immediately reacted to the loss of Truong Mit by sending two of his brigade’s combined armor and Ranger task forces to retake the town. The 9th Division was pressing south when it ran into the 3rd Armored. A major battle erupted on 24 March. After fierce fighting, Khoi’s tanks and Rangers blasted through the Communist forces and recaptured Truong Mit, killing over one hundred soldiers and capturing many weapons. Still, the 9th Division gambit paid off. Faced with the larger threat at Truong Mit, Khoi pulled the 48th Regiment advancing on Route 1 back to hold Go Dau Ha.
Overall, it was a desperate game Toan and Khoi were playing, with Khoi as fireman, bouncing back and forth between the two flanks within Tay Ninh province, putting out one blaze after another. It was a brilliant orchestration of men and equipment, one that required excellent staff work and logistical planning. But if more units were chewed up as the 2nd Battalion, 7th Regiment, had been, Toan would have even fewer options.
Simply put, Toan needed more reserves. Earlier, at the GVN National Security Council meeting on 13 March, President Thieu had given Toan permission to redeploy his Ranger units. III Corps controlled three Ranger groups: the 31st, 32nd, and 33rd. The 33rd was working with the 3rd Armored. The battle-tested 31st Ranger Group was the former 3rd Ranger Group, which had gallantly withstood the hell of An Loc. It currently defended the town of Chon Thanh on Route 13, but it was surrounded by Communist troops and could only be resupplied by air. The nearest ARVN outpost was ten miles south of Chon Thanh. The 32nd, stationed at An Loc, twelve miles north of Chon Thanh on Route 13, was even more isolated. An Loc was the Binh Long province capital and held the III Corps Ranger Command, but the town’s psychological importance was far greater: the heroic defense of An Loc in 1972 had been the most glorious South Vietnamese feat of arms of the war. However, neither An Loc nor Chon Thanh was of any further military value. Each Ranger group had three battalions, and these veteran units were needed to bolster the hard-pressed ARVN defenders closer to Saigon.
