Meditations on the Vietnam War: The Ia Drang Valley 1965

"When Robert S. McNamara became Secretary of Defense in 1961, he ushered in sweeping changes aimed at completely reorganizing the Department of the Army and its methods of warfare.  He was highly displeased with Army Secretary Elvis J. Stahr, Jr.'s, report on the status of Army aviation plans.  McNamara realized the current Army procurement program was hopelessly inadequate in every category of aircraft and considered it dangerously conservative.  Furthermore, McNamara felt that the Army failed to exert any strong, unified aviation effort and was plagued by reticence and budgetary restraint which were blocking the adaptation of necessary aircraft and equipment.  Most important, he believed that officers with progressive ideas about airmobility were not being heard.

"McNamara was convinced that a breakthrough in airmobility was possible with the new Bell helicopter models.  He was given a list of officers who also believed Army aviation needed new direction, and the substance for letters which he sent to the Secretary of the Army." (Stanton, page 14)

“By mid-1962, Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, pursuing President Kennedy's vision, seized on the airmobility idea.  McNamara ordered the Army to determine if the new UH-1 Huey helicopter, the big CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter, and their sisters in rotary-wing aviation made sense on the battlefield of the future.” (Moore, page 11)

Airmobility was one innovative technological approach (among many) that distinguished and defined the American military effort in the Vietnam War.  Orthodox military minds drew on the rather unsuccessful, often disastrous experience of airborne operations in World War Two.  They were stuck with the idea that deploying infantry via aerial assault was an ineffective use of combat troops.  Robert McNamara and his team not only disagreed with this assessment, they forcefully advocated the implementation of infantry airmobile tactics in Vietnam.  The earliest large-scale manifestation of airmobility was the formation of the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) and its use in the Ia Drang Valley campaign of October- November 1965.

This meditation looks at that campaign as it is discussed in three excellent books about the military aspects of the war.  Vietnam at War by Phillip B. Davidson is one of the best general histories of the war from a military perspective.  Shelby L. Stanton's Anatomy of a Division is a fascinating history of the airmobile First Cavalry Division's creation and deployment.  Finally, Lieutenant Colonel Harold G. Moore's We Were Soldiers Once...And Young is a superbly written, popular narrative of his experiences commanding the 1st Battalion of the famed 7th Cavalry in Vietnam. 

The Ia Drang Valley is situated near the Cambodian border in South Vietnam's central highlands.  In 1965 it was sparsely populated with plenty of rough terrain and jungle cover.  It had been controlled by Viet Cong (VC) units for years, which often used it as a staging area for attacks throughout the region.  In October two independent North Vietnamese Army (NVA) regiments entered the area from Cambodia.  The valley was supposedly secured by Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) units stationed in Pleiku.  Special Forces camps were situated at Duc Co and Plei Me to protect the roads winding through Gia Lai Province.  

The war's first large-scale search-and-destroy mission would be undertaken on this terrain.  At the time, it was a test of several things.  Would US airmobility work?  Were expectations for "search-and-destroy" operations realistic?  General William C. Westmoreland wanted to prove some things.  Meanwhile, the North Vietnamese had strategic and tactical questions of their own.  What tactics should be used against the helicopters?  How would VC and NVA troops hold up against the massive firepower potential of the US forces?  The Ia Drang Valley would provide answers to both sides, though the opponents probably would have disagreed on the lessons learned.  

"As Westmoreland developed his strategic concepts through the summer and early fall of 1965, a basic question disturbed the United States military professionals running the war.  Put bluntly, that question was: how would American soldiers do against the veteran NVA Main Force units in the difficult terrain and weather of South Vietnam?  The answer was soon forthcoming, and it would come, ironically, from the only unit in the American army which traditionally celebrates its own massacre - the 7th United States Cavalry.  This was the regiment which had ridden to death and glory in the Valley of the Little Big Horn under George Armstrong Custer.  These modern 7th Cavalrymen rode helicopters, not horses, but they cherished the regimental history and sang the old regimental song, "Garry Owen."  The 7th was part of the First United States Cavalry Division (Airmobile), a unique unit, and by training, equipment, and motivation, the elite division of the American army.

"The stage for this first test was to be the Ia Drang Valley in the Western Highlands of South Vietnam.  The actors were two regiments of the NVA Main Forces and the 1st Battalion of the 7th Cavalry, later reinforced by other elements of the 1st Cavalry Division.   Both sides were looking for a fight.  The cavalry division wanted to seize the initiative from the NVA, which had been attacking isolated Special Forces camps in the area.  The NVA commander, Gen. Chu Huy Man, an old friend of Giap's, wanted to win a victory over the newly arrived American troops.  In the Ia Drang Valley, they collided." (Davidson, page 360)

Delivering troops via helicopter to the mountains and jungles of Vietnam required certain areas be cleared (or that existing clearings be enlarged) so that the choppers (preferably several at once) could safely land and so reinforcements and supplies could be readily inserted even after combat started.  Landing Zones (LZs) cut or bombed out of the elephant grass or jungle served as flexible operational and logistical bases that were created on-the-fly as the military situation evolved.  But they also served as a huge red flag to nearby VC and NVA units, signaling where the Americans were located.  The communists, who knew the terrain far better than the Americans, could then maneuver to the best location for attacking US ground troops.  One of the first LZs established in the Ia Drang Valley was called X-Ray.
  
"On November 14, the 1st Cavalry Division threw the first punch by helicopter-lifting the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry into a remote landing area (named X-Ray) which was the middle of a suspected NVA base area in the valley.  General Man responded by rushing three NVA battalions to X-Ray to annihilate the cavalry troopers.  By late afternoon, the American position had become desperate.  Lt. Col. Harold G. Moore, the battalion commander, radioed his superior, Col. Thomas W. Brown, the 3rd Brigade commander, for reinforcements.  Brown responded immediately by sending in one company from another battalion by helicopter and alerted another whole battalion to reinforce Moore by foot.

"On the morning of 15 November, General Man launched a violent and coordinated three-battalion attack on X-Ray.  Here some of the fiercest fighting in American history took place, some of it hand-to-hand, almost all of it within the length of a football field.  The United States Army's official account of the action reports graphically the closeness in intensity of the combat." (Davidson, pp. 360-361)

"Several perimeter sectors were under simultaneous attack, and the entire situation became chaotic.  Supporting fires and airstrikes were brought in as close as possible and ordinance spilled into friendly lines.  In many instances combatants were intermixed and any distinguishable edge of battle ceased to exist.  The array of colored marking smoke mixed with thick clouds of powder and haze drifting over the battlefield.

"Lieutenant Colonel Moore exerted a forceful, professional coolness in the midst of the confusion and near panic. One A1E Skyraider misdropped napalm close by his command post, setting all the stacked rifle ammunition and grenade reserves on fire.  Air Force F4C Phantoms and F100 fighter-bombers streaked in low on the horizon to hurl bomb clusters into the midst of massing North Vietnamese infantry.  The NVA attack waves disintegrated under this prompt air support, enabling the fatigued and hard-pressed cavalrymen to hold their positions during the most critical hours." (Stanton, pp. 60-61)

American air power would make a decisive difference on the battle fields of South Vietnam from 1965 - 1973.  The battle at LZ X-Ray saw such power used in novel ways.  “...shortly after noon on November 15 the Air Force's high-flying B-52 bombers out of Guam placed the first of six days of “ARC LIGHT” strikes on the Chu Pong massif.  For the first time ever, the B-52 strategy bombers were being employed in a tactical role in support of American ground troops.” (Moore, page 203)

The American army also vastly exceeded the NVA army in terms of artillery throughout the American presence in the war.  "By midmorning the vast firepower available to the American troopers began to take a murderous toll.  A total of over 33,000 rounds of 105mm artillery was fired.  United States Air Force fighter-bombers furnished constant air support, and even the 'big birds,' the B-52's, pounded the area with their 500-pound bombs.  By the morning of the next day, General Man had had enough.  He rounded up what was left of his force and headed for the nearby Cambodian border.

"The first major United States/NVA encounter had resulted in a major victory for the Americans.  The 1st Cavalry Division lost 79 men killed and 121 wounded.  The NVA had 634 known dead, at least the same number of dead dragged away, plus an unknown number of wounded.  The two NVA regiments which had tangled with the 'Garry Owens' had been destroyed." (Davidson, page 362)

It is overstating the case that two NVA regiments were “destroyed” at LZ X-Ray.  One of them, the 33rd, though badly understrengthed, was still strong enough to attack again, and did so just two days later, this time at LZ Albany.  Located just 2 miles northeast of X-Ray, LZ Albany was infiltrated by the remains of the NVA 33rd and the fresh 66th Regiment, which had just arrived from Cambodia.  These NVA elements set an ambush for the American troops, which were marching overland toward LZ Albany.  What followed was an even bloodier battle that caught the Americans off guard.

“The most savage one-day battle of the Vietnam War has just begun.  The 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry had walked into a hornet's nest. The North Vietnamese reserve force, the 550-man 8th Battalion, 66th Regiment, had been bivouacked in the woods off to the northeast of McDade's column.  The understrengthed 1st Battalion, 33rd Regiment, coordinating its movement and actions with the 8th Battalion, was aiming its men toward the head of the American column.  And the point men of Lieutenant Payne's recon platoon had marched within two hundred yards of the headquarters of the 3rd Battalion, 33rd Regiment.  A senior lieutenant grabbed up the 3rd battalion cooks and clerks and joined the attack.  Lieutenant Colonel Phuong says other North Vietnamese soldiers in the vicinity on rice carrying or outpost duty 'came running to join the battle.'

“While many of Colonel McDade's troopers lay in the grass resting, North Vietnamese soldiers swarmed toward them by the hundreds.  A deadly ordeal by fire was beginning in the tall elephant grass around Albany and along the column of American troops strung out through the jungle, waiting for orders to move.  It was 1:15 p,m,, Wednesday, November 17.  By the time the battle ended, in the predawn darkness of the next morning, 155 American soldiers would be dead and another 124 wounded.  Those who survived would never forget the savagery, the brutality, the butchery of those sixteen hours.” (Moore, pp. 267-268)

"The first elements had already reached LZ Albany when the 8th Battalion, 66th NVA Regiment, attacked the length of the column.  The ferocity and scale of the ambush split the battalion in two.  Machine gun, grenade, and automatic rifle fire raked the cavalry ranks as snipers shot down leaders and radio men.  The middle of the column caved in under the force of the attack as North Vietnamese soldiers charged completely through the cavalry lines in several places.  As the column was shattered, the battle disintegrated into a largely leaderless gel of individual melds and skirmishes between splintered groups." (Stanton, page 62) 

"For hours the amorphous battle prevented artillery and tactical air support, but by midafternoon two large, ragged pockets of American resistance had formed.  The stunned remnants of Company C joined McDade's command group, which combined to fight west toward the clearing where both Company A and the recon platoon were making their stands.  Company D and the 5th Cavalry's Company A were separated and pushed to the east by the flow of battle.  This gave enough semblance to the battlefield to enable rocket-firing helicopters to sweep across the front, followed by close-range napalm bombing.  The roaring fireballs spewed across the burning grass and through onrushing NVA riflemen, although some Americans trapped outside the tree line were also burned to death." (Stanton, page 63)

Lt. Col. Moore was impressed with the NVA soldiers that attacked his command at LZs X-Ray and Albany. “They were damned good soldiers, used cover and concealment to perfection, and were deadly shots: Most of my dead and wounded soldiers had been shot in the head or upper body.  The North Vietnamese paid particular attention to radio operators and leaders.  They did not appear to have radios themselves; they controlled their men by shouts, waves, pointing, whistles, and sometimes bugle calls.” (Moore, page 120)

Moore quotes Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Huy An, the NVA commander, regarding the battle at LZ Albany: “I think this fight of November seventeenth was the most important of the campaign.  I gave the order to my battalions: When you meet the Americans divide yourself into many groups and attack the column from all directions and divide the column into many pieces.  Move inside the column, grab them by the belt, and thus avoid casualties from artillery and air.  We had some advantages.  We attacked your column from the sides and, at the moment of the attack, we were waiting for you.  This was our reserve battalion and they were just waiting for their turn.  The 8th Battalion has not been used in the fighting in this campaign.  They were fresh.” (Moore, pp. 269-270)

“I will tell you frankly, your soldiers fought valiantly.  They had no choice.  You are dead or you are not.  It was hand-to-hand fighting. Afterward, when we policed the battlefield, when we picked up our wounded, the bodies of your men and our men were neck and neck, lying alongside each other.  It was most fierce.” (Moore, page 293)

Other battles would be fought in the Ia Drang Valley, as the campaign lasted for a little over a month.  During that time an ARVN airborne brigade was brought in to support the Americas.  The brigade was choppered in to the Duc Co Special Forces camp and then humped it through the rough terrain to position themselves behind the NVA units as they retreated from the vigorous and persistent US attacks.  In this manner, the NVA were herded into the pre-positioned ARVN units, who managed to surprise the remnants of the North Vietnamese throwing them into further disorder.  Yet, the NVA did not panic nor completely lose cohesion.  Though decimated, they were able to reform in their Cambodian sanctuary in a few weeks, but the new troops were inexperienced, of course.  Afterward, the opposing sides assessed the campaign from differing perspectives.

“In Saigon, the American commander in Vietnam, General William C. Westmoreland, and his principle deputy General William DePuy, looked at the statistics of the thirty-four day Ia Drang campaign – 3,561 North Vietnamese estimated killed versus 305 American dead – and saw a kill ratio of twelve North Vietnamese to one American.  What that said to the two officers who had learned their trade in the meat-grinder campaigns in World War II was that they could bleed the enemy to death over the long haul, with a strategy of attrition.

“In Hanoi, President Ho Chi Minh and his lieutenants considered the outcome in the Ia Drang and were serenely confident.  Their peasant soldiers had withstood the terrible high-tech fire storm delivered against them by a superpower and had at least fought the Americans to a draw.  By their yardstick, a draw against such a powerful opponent was the equivalent of victory.  In time, they were certain, the patience and perseverance that had worn down the French colonialists would also wear down the Americans.” (Moore, page 399)

While, in total, one VC and three NVA battalions were rendered ineffective, the campaign took a large toll on the First Cavalry Division as well.  "Unexpected levels of combat outstripped division capability to reinforce adverse situations, especially in the Battles of LZs X-Ray and Albany, where the lack of properly assembled reserves almost resulted in disaster.  The inability to aerial firepower alone to effectively stop NVA close assaults was manifested in the Battle of LZ Albany and a number of other firefights.  The October division logistical crises produced severe shortages of essential supply stocks, such as aviation fuel, during the entire period.  There were initial difficulties maintaining radio communications over the long distances involved, although orbiting CV2 radio relay aircraft offered a partial solution.  The division spent the month of December rebuilding its logistical posture, extensively overhauling its overworked helicopters and equipment, and replacing personnel.

"The frightful casualty levels seriously eroded division strength.  In the two months of October and November the division suffered 334 killed, 736 wounded, 364 nonbattle injuries, and 2,828 cases of malaria, scrub typhus, and other serious diseases. This total represented more than 25 percent of the division's authorized strength (15,955).  Even though many men were eventually returned to their units, the division used 5,211 replacements to complete rebuilding by the end of the year.  Division assigned strength thus stood at 16,732 in December, but nearly a third (31 percent) were newly assigned.  Such a high turnover rate invariably crated turmoil and reduced overall efficiency." (Stanton, page 65)

"In the final analysis the Ia Drang Valley campaign was military history's first division-scale air assault victory.  The 1st Cavalry Division accomplished all of its assigned objectives.  Airmobile reinforcement insured the survival of a remote but critical outpost; cavalry surveillance followed and found the enemy, and Cavalry air assault brought the enemy into battle and pinpointed his strongpoints.  Major General Kinnard resorted to strategic B52 bombing to shatter these jungle redoubts once they were identified, as in Chu Pong after LZ X-Ray.  In the process two regular North Vietnamese Army regiments were largely annihilated and had to be completely reformed in Cambodia." (Stanton, page 66)  

"The North Vietnamese disaster in the Ia Drang Valley intensified and broadened the strategic dispute which had been raging for at least a year between Giap and Nguyen Chi Thanh." (Davidson, page 362)  Davidson is overstating his case that the Ia Drang Valley campaign was a "disaster" for the NVA.  Though they were redeployed to other areas of the war, the NVA regiments would fight again, even more fiercely, while the Ia Drang Valley itself was never fully under either American or South Vietnamese control.  America’s big tactical victories on the battle fields amounted to a strategic draw, hardly a disaster at all.  But he is insightful in detailing the strategic debate in the North that resulted from the campaign.  

"...the strategic problem of combating the United States troops in South Vietnam evoked a stormy, high-level controversy between the old adversaries.  On the one side there was Nguyen Chi Thanh, commander of the South, and Le Duan, and opposing them were Giap and Truong Chinh.  The gist of the debate turned around the tactics and forces to be used in South Vietnam now that they Americans had arrived in strength.  Thanh and Le Duan argued for a largely conventional war of Main Force units, while Giap's concept emphasized small-unit and guerrilla tactics while holding the Main Force in reserve.

“Thanh held that the Viet Cong and the NVA units almost won the war in late 1964 against ARVN, and that the entrance of the Americans called not for retrenchment, but for a continuation of large-scale attacks by which Thanh would keep the initiative and generate psychological momentum against the arriving Americans….In truth, however, the Communist troops lost the initiative in late 1965, in part due to the heavy casualties of such battles as in the Ia Drang Valley.  It was this battle that brought Giap charging into the conceptual fray.

"The dispute between Giap and Thanh turned fundamentally on their wildly differing estimates of the combat effectiveness of American ground troops and their supporting air power....If Thanh was correct - that American ground forces could be defeated in set-piece battles involving large, conventional units - then his strategy of attacking United States units made sense.  By this means, Thanh could seize the initiative and frustrate Westmoreland's search and destroy strategy.  In addition, such attacks would produce heavy American casualties - 'coffins going home' - which would erode support for the war in the United States.  On the other side of the argument, Giap built his concept of a 'Southern strategy' on the somber premise that NVA and Viet Cong units could not defeat American troops without taking excessive, and unacceptable, casualties.  If Giap's basic assumption was correct, the only sensible Communist strategy was to avoid large, Main Force battles and shift to a more elusive, less costly, mode of operation - guerrilla warfare." (Davidson, pp. 364 - 365)

"Giap based his concept not only on what he saw as unfavorable disparity of forces, but on an even more fundamental set of factors.  First, be believed that Hanoi had to view the war against the Americans as a test of wills, not of military might.  The essential element of any such strategy was time.  Protract the war, prolong the killing, and sooner or later the United States would give up and agree to conditions acceptable to the Communists.  This strategy, Giap reasoned, would be particularly effective against the Americans, the most impatient of peoples, who in 1965 were already beginning to show some of the divisive rents in the national fabric resulting from the war.  Conversely, Giap's concept of the protracted guerrilla war made the most of the one factor which the Communists had in greatest abundance - perseverance, the ability to continue the war for 'five, ten, or twenty years,' to use Giap's words." (pp. 365-366)

So, as a result, the Ia Drang Valley campaign served as the basis for Westmoreland ramping up his strategy of attrition against the VC and NVA.  Theoretically it "proved" that if the US could consistently deliver kill ratios of 12-1 it would eventually reach a "cross-over point" where the North Vietnamese could neither recruit nor replace their losses faster than the US could destroy their units in the field.  From the NVA perspective, despite their internal strategic disagreements over how to conduct the war, the campaign "proved" that their infantry could withstand the punishment of US firepower without disintegrating.  If the NVA could not outright win a major campaign against the US forces, it could at least absorb the losses, retreat, and rebuild to fight another day - essentially transforming any tactical or operational defeat into a strategic draw.  In a long war, with time on their side, the NVA believed such resilience would wear the Americans down.  In a nutshell, each side concluded that the projection of its willpower would bring victory over the other - the Americans via highly concentrated firepower, the North Vietnamese through sheer, unrelenting persistence.

After the Ia Drang Valley, the First Cavalry Division recuperated for a few weeks at its An Khe base.  Its next deployment was the Battle of Bon Song in late January 1966.  Lt. Col. Moore's troops were again successful in delivering punishing attacks against more NVA/VC infantry.  But, Moore noted that, despite his division's military success after weeks of fighting, there was a problem regarding the newly cleared area. 

“Within one week after we pulled out, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong Main Force units had returned to the villages of the Bong Son.  My brigade would be sent back in a show of force in April and again in May when we lost many more men killed and wounded.  After the May operation it was clear to me, a battlefield commander not involved in politics at all, that the American Mission and the Military Assistance Command Vietnam had not succeeded in coordinating American and South Vietnamese military operations with follow-on Vietnamese government programs to reestablish control in the newly cleared areas.  If they couldn't make it work in Bong Son – where the most powerful American division available had cleared enemy forces from the countryside – how could they possibly hope to reestablish South Vietnamese control in other contested regions where the American military presence was much weaker.” (Moore, page 404)

Moore's question exposes the underlying issue in the Vietnam War that transcends the military pursuit of victory on the battlefield.  For various (mostly cultural) reasons, the South Vietnamese government could not effectively compete with the communists anywhere outside of the immediate scope of America's military presence.  As shown in the previous meditation, this was what McNamara and his policy-makers feared all along.  The battle for the "hearts and minds" of the South Vietnamese people was being lost and, as we will see in a future meditation, it ultimately made the American military effort and all of its successes irrelevant.  America was now committed to defeating the enemy without any effective means of winning over the population it supposedly defended - the central absurdity of the war.

The Battle for LZ Albany, “the most savage one-day battle of the Vietnam War,” was fought 52 years ago today.