Wednesday, May 3, 1972
The First Battle For Quang Tri And Hue
QUANG TRI, South Vietnam --After an initial success, the North Vietnamese army has lost the first battle for Quang Tri and Hue. There is no mistaking Hanoir'"s heavy defeat, if you spend three days seeing the ugly sights of war and talking to commanders of all ranks in the two provinces where the enemy made his main attack.The loss of the first battle does not necessarily imply that the North Vietnamese army will also lose the second battle. Reserves for a second battle, seemingly comprising all of the few remaining regular troops in North Vietnam, are now being brought up with visible haste. But given the character of some of the stuff people at home are now being told, the plain fact of ARVN's victory to date needs to be plainly recorded.Under the enormous confusion of the bitter day-to-day fighting, the pattern of what has happened so far is also very plain. The initial enemy success -to begin at the beginning -was scored against the newly formed South Vietnamese 3rd Division.Units of the 3rd were holding the string of firebases along the DMZ. The firebases were softened up with the kind of immensely heavy artillery barrages the North Vietnamese have never used before. In the ensuing assaults by the enemy, the firebases then fell without exception.The performance of the ARVN 3rd Division in fact closely resembled the performances of the green American divisions in the first two months of the Korean war. Fortunately, the 3rd Division's able commander, Brig. Gen. Vu Van Giai, shrewdly reformed what remained of his force. Meanwhile, the corps commander, Gen. Hoang Xuan Lam, rushed reinforcements northward.On April 4, despite the regrouping and reinforcement, almost everything still favored the North Vietnamese. They still had the momentum. The weather still prevented air support for ARVN. The new ARVN positions had not yet been solidified. But at this point the enemy commander on this front, Gen. Chu Van Tan, made his fatal mistake.Gen. Tan's mistake was to pause. Maybe he feared outrunning his supplies. Maybe he was overconfident because of his initial success. Pause he did, at any rate, and so he lost his momentum, and with it, his best chance.Gen. Tan's pause lasted until April 9, when he mounted a massive and classic attack. One division, led by tanks, thrust south toward Dong Ha. Another division, also led by tanks, thrust eastward at a point in the line guarded by ARVN marines at Firebase Pedro. Still another division, with still more tanks, pressed forward at Firebase Bastogne.All three North Vietnamese columns were beaten back with fearful losses.At Pedro alone, the enemy left 396 men on the wire. The approaches to Dong Ha, to Pedro and to Bastogne were all but littered with knocked-out tanks. The worst was over, too, before 10 that morning, when the weather cleared enough to let the South Vietnamese get serious air support.The big thrust on April 9 was a dismal, sanguinary failure for over a week thereafter. There was hard fighting, but there was no important enemy thrust. Then on April 18, Gen. Tan ordered a second major thrust. It was patterned on the first. But this time the North Vietnamese has lost both drive and hitting power and the second thrust was easily repelled.Since then, the South Vietnamese have been moving forward, cautiously and methodically, and Gen. Tan's forces have been losing ground. Some of the ARVN reinforcements rushed to the two northern provinces are also being sent away again to fight in other areas of South Vietnam. The first battle for Quang Tri and Hue is really over, in fact.One must wait to see the result of the second battle. Yet it is worth noting that the biggest single battle of the present fighting has been, on balance, a solid, deeply reassuring success for the South Vietnamese army."The First Battle for Quang Tri and Hue", by Joseph Alsop, published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes on Wednesday, May 3, 1972 and reprinted from European and Pacific Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense publication copyright, 2002 European and Pacific Stars and Stripes.