UNHERALDED VICTORY: The Defeat of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army 1961-1973
by Mark W. Woodruff
Available from News Weekly Books for $22.95 plus $5.00 p&h)Roughly 25 years ago, on April 30, 1975, a North Vietnamese army tank crashed through the gates of the South Vietnamese Presidential Palace heralding the end of the South Vietnamese Republic’s resistance to the communist north.
The involvement of the United States, Australia and other regional Allies in that ultimately tragic war can only be understood as a part of the US’s grand strategy to counter the expansionist intentions of the former Soviet Union. The US’s policy of containment excluded the option of a direct war of liberation aimed at toppling the former Soviet Union, a strategy that could never be countenanced in the nuclear age, but rather aimed at building up a world wide system of military alliances with sufficient strength to deter further communist expansionism; to force upon the Soviet’s a dispersion of their forces; whilst simultaneously applying economic and political pressure in the hope that they would ultimately collapse.
The glue holding this strategy together was confidence. Confidence on the part of the US’s allies that the US would not only come to their aid in time of need, but indeed was prepared to risk nuclear retaliation upon itself in order to defend them.
In his inauguration speech in January, 1961, President John F. Kennedy affirmed the US position when he vowed “we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty”. Thus, assisting the South Vietnamese was as much about reassuring Japan, Germany, NATO and other Allies as to the credibility of the United States as it was about resisting the expansionism of communism in South East Asia.
Ultimately the strategy bore fruit. The ‘Cold War’ was won by the US and its Allies and yet, even today with history to vindicate the strategy of containment, the US’s involvement in the Vietnam War is still regarded by most of our political elites as illegitimate.
Mark Woodruff’s excellent new book, Unheralded Victory, demolishes many of the myths and exaggerations concerning the US’s role in the Vietnam War. For example, the myth that the US soldiers were an undisciplined rabble to the point of killing their own officers is shown for what it is. Australian soldiers never suffered such a reputation and yet their “fragging ratio” was 4.0 per 100,000 troops versus the US ratio of 3.4 per 100,000 troops. Similarly, Woodruff takes a critical look a the myths concerning combat refusals, deserters, the incidence of drug usage, punjis and other booby traps, body counts and how media “spin” was substituted for the facts.
A good example of this concerned a photograph taken during the Tet Offensive showing a man about to be executed. One of the VC’s targets during the Tet Offensive was the Chief of the National Police, Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan. Woodruff states that “while unsuccessful in attempts to assassinate General Loan, the Viet Cong did manage to break into the home of one of his best friends, a colonel in the National Police. They murdered the colonel, then turned their rage on his family, slitting the throats of the colonel’s wife and six young children, several of whom were General Loan’s godchildren.” Subsequently the leader of the VC assassination squad was captured and brought to General Loan who, upon hearing the circumstances of his capture, immediately put a pistol to the assassins head and executed him. Prior to reading Unheralded Victory I had never heard an explanation of the execution.
As to body counts, it was alleged that the US exaggerated the number of enemy soldiers killed in order to gain extra kudos. The US military estimated their actions killed 500,000 enemy troops. Woodruff points out how in 1995 Hanoi admitted that they had in fact suffered 1,100,000 troops killed, more than twice US estimates.
But, primarily, Unheralded Victory is about the on the ground war in South Vietnam. Woodruff documents how in battle after battle the US and its Allies defeated first the Viet Cong and later the North Vietnamese Army. Two of the famous battles Woodruff recounts in detail are the Tet Offensive and the battle for Khe San.
On November 17, 1967, the Viet Cong announced that they would observe a truce during the forthcoming Tet festivities, effective for the period January 27 to February 3, 1968. They had hoped to capture South Vietnamese and US forces off guard, to simultaneously orchestrate a civil uprising, capture or destroy a wide range of targets prior to the North Vietnamese Army following up with a knock-out blow. The VC failed completely, suffering 32,000 troops killed, another 5,800 captured and the complete destruction of their intelligence infrastructure. US and Allied losses combined amounted to less than ten percent of those suffered by the VC.
At the same time, NVA divisions attacked the US Marine base at Khe San located in the north west corner of South Vietnam. Khe San was positioned near the DMZ so as to enable the interdiction of NVA units infiltrating into South Vietnam, but primarily “Khe San was a ‘bait’, drawing the NVA into a position for obliteration from the air, far from any populated areas”.
The battle for Khe San began on January 20, 1968, with four NVA divisions, numbering some 40,000 regular troops, pitted against four US Marine Battalions (at full strength a battalion usually numbers about 500 soldiers) and some 318 men of the South Vietnamese Rangers Battalion.
When the battle ended on April 14, 1968, “a total of 1,602 enemy bodies was actually counted in the immediate defensive areas, but estimates of the total enemy casualties in the surrounding area were between 10,000 and 15,000.
The NVA had been prevented from seizing the base and then pouring through the DMZ to relieve and reinforce their comrades at Hue”. In addition, the NVA lost a further 1,304 soldiers killed during the two week period from the April 1-14 as Allied troops relieved Khe San. US losses amounted to 250 troops killed.
Even though US military operations were severely restricted by strict rules of engagement* designed to minimise the prospect of the war widening into a confrontation with the Soviet Union and China — the effect being to deny the US and its Allies a swift victory — by the time the Paris Peace Accords were signed on January 23, 1973, a rough military parity existed between the North and South.
The US had earlier used this favourable military transformation to justify its decision to withdraw the last of its combat troops during 1972.
The extraordinary events that led to the military defeat of South Vietnam some two years later are recalled. Woodruff explains the deal between the US and the former Soviet Union whereby the US granted the Soviet Union Most Favoured Nation Trading status in return for the Soviet’s strictly limiting their supplies of weaponry to the North Vietnamese and how this deal subsequently unravelled. But whereas the Soviet Union thereupon began to resupply North Vietnam, political paralysis in the US Government saw the South Vietnamese effectively abandoned.
This book is a great antidote to the myths about the Vietnam War that are still prevalent today.
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