I remembered reading about this several years ago, and the last stand of the ARVN Army. The General was one of the two best general the ARVN had, the other was "Ngo Quang Truong", I remember reading an article in a book about the Vietnam war I read in high school ( bought a copy in the 90's) when it discussed the ARVN Soldiers and the quote was "When they were lead well, they fought well"
I took a picture off the page, here is the full page it is referring to.
I have known since the 80's that the democrats were the original
apologist for the Soviet Union, they would take the side of the Soviets
over the American issues. I guess they would rather be "Red than
dead". The stuff continues, from my history it was the democrats that
shafted the South Vietnamese when they wanted help and aid against the
North Vietnamese and this culminated in the "Easter offensive" where the
North overran the South and South Vietnam ceased to exist as a country.
It was the Democrats that had all the hearings against the U.S. in the
Vietnam war with the "Winter Soldier" where Flipper A.K.A. John Kerry
made a bunch of lies against the U.S. Military because it was
politically expedient for his budding career as a politician. I always
commented that to the democrats, it is Party First, then self, followed
by Gaia and the country is the last priority. President Nixon Promised the South that we would support them with supplies when we signed the "Paris Peace Accords" but Richard Nixon resigned rather than get impeached and President Ford pardoned him which was the right thing to do for the country, but he had no political capital to push the issue and the democrats were emboldened by this and since most of the democrats supported North Vietnam and protested American involvement in the war and actively supported the North with supplies and money and positive media coverage.When the South needed supplies and munitions for their military, it was voted down by the democrats and President Ford didn't have the political stroke to make it happen.
I got this article from "Vietnam Cherries" a postings about the Vietnam War, I wish I could have asked my Dad about this since in the past I would have asked him about Vietnam War stuff because he was a Vietnam War Veteran.
The
last major battle of the Vietnam War was fought at Xuan Loc, only 37
miles east by northeast of Saigon. In April 1975 the town was the
eastern anchor of South Vietnam’s final line of defense against the
North Vietnamese rush to the capital. That line ran west through Bien
Hoa, just north of Saigon, to Tay Ninh, near the Cambodian border. Once
it broke, Saigon was doomed—and with it the Republic of Vietnam itself.
When
the North Vietnamese Army attacked Xuan Loc (pronounced Swan Lock) on
April 9, the communists and almost everyone else expected the Army of
the Republic of Vietnam’s 18th Division to collapse like a house of
cards, as had so many other ARVN units during the NVA’s massive Spring
Offensive of 1975. But ARVN forces under Brig. Gen. Le Minh Dao fought
fiercely in a last-ditch effort to save their country. By the time Xuan
Loc did fall 12 days later, most of the world was amazed at how well the
ARVN had fought, and the NVA had paid a far steeper price than it
expected. Indeed, the valiant stand at Xuan Loc by heavily outnumbered
ARVN soldiers echoes the famed sacrifice of King Leonidas’ 300 Spartans
facing Xerxes’ Persian masses at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C.
Greece. The Persians then marched south and captured Athens.
Xuan
Loc, the capital of Long Khanh province, had always been a
strategically sensitive place. The town sat astride the French-built
Highway 1, near the junction with Highway 20. From Xuan Loc, Highway 1
ran almost 40 miles east until it reached the South China Sea, where it
turned north and went up the coast past the Demilitarized Zone and on to
Hanoi.
From
March 1967 to January 1969 the U.S. 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment’s
Blackhorse Base Camp was some 4 miles south of Xuan Loc. During that
time, Highway 1 was relatively secure from Xuan Loc west toward the
northern edge of Saigon. But since 1962 the road east to the coast had
been shut down completely, as it ran through the heart of the May Tao
“Secret Zone,” a mountainous area where the Viet Cong 5th Division was
based and U.S. intelligence hadn’t penetrated. From November 1967 to
early 1968, Operation Santa Fe, conducted by the U.S. 9th Infantry
Division’s 1st Brigade, the 1st Australian Task Force and the ARVN 18th
Division, attempted to open Highway 1 to the coast. Although the road
was eventually opened, the VC 5th Division mostly avoided contact as it
positioned itself for the Tet Offensive in late January 1968.
During
the war, North Vietnam launched three major offensives against South
Vietnam. The Tet Offensive of 1968 and the Easter Offensive of 1972 were
military failures. The 1975 Spring Offensive would succeed. By that
time, all U.S. forces were out of Vietnam, and legislation passed by
Congress in June 1973 prohibited the use of government funds for
military operations in Southeast Asia without congressional approval.
In 1975 North Vietnam,
which had organized its army divisions into four corps, committed all
four to attacks on the South. The NVA force in South Vietnam totaled
270,000 troops, 1,076 artillery pieces and mortars, 320 tanks and 250
other armored vehicles.
After
successful probes in early 1975 in the northern sector of the South
Vietnamese III Corps Tactical Zone (a military region encompassing
Saigon and provinces to the north), the NVA on March 8 launched Campaign
275, directed at Ban Me Thuot, a provincial capital in the Central
Highlands, part of the II Corps zone. The ARVN held out for eight days.
When Ban Me Thuot fell, Pleiku and Kontum, also in the Central
Highlands, were outflanked and cut off from the south. NVA forces
quickly drove toward An Khe and the coast—effectively cutting South
Vietnam in two. The NVA then took the northern I Corps zone cities of
Hue and Da Nang, which fell on March 29.
VIETNAM
(South). Da Nang. 1975. A soldier of the North Vietnamese army guards
discarded US helicopters, after the city was occupied by the Communists.
ARVN
units in those areas had quickly collapsed during the relentless NVA
advance. They abandoned their positions and joined tens of thousands of
panic-stricken refugees trying to escape to the south, bringing
widespread looting and destruction in their wake. By the end of March,
the NVA effectively controlled the entire northern half of South
Vietnam.
Ignoring
frantic pleading from South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu, the
United States would not intervene, despite security guarantees given to
Saigon in the January 1973 Paris Peace Accords. Even if the president
wanted to provide military support, the War Powers Act, enacted in
November 1973, severely restricted his ability to commit U.S. forces on
his own.
The
NVA, meanwhile, positioned its forces for the Ho Chi Minh Campaign, the
final phase of the conquest of South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese IV
Corps advanced on Xuan Loc from the northeast, while the NVA II Corps
converged on the town from the northwest. The ARVN 18th Infantry
Division was essentially all that stood in their way.
Earlier in the war, the 18th Infantry Division
had the reputation as one of the ARVN’s worst units. That changed
rapidly in March 1972, after 39-year-old Dao assumed command. Dynamic
and aggressive, he was one of the best officers in the ARVN. Unlike so
many other ARVN senior officers, whose careers had been built on family,
social and political connections—even on bribery and corruption—Dao
advanced on sheer ability. Despite the youthful good looks and large
dark sunglasses that gave the impression he was just another playboy
from the elite, privileged class of South Vietnamese, Dao had an inner
core of steel and one of the finest tactical minds on either side of the
Vietnam War.
The
general eschewed a palatial villa in favor of a modest two-story house
close to where his troops were billeted. During the battle, Dao spent
much of his time moving among his frontline troops rather than issuing
orders from a secure command post bunker. He insisted that all his
officers maintain close contact with subordinates at least “two levels
down.” It was an unorthodox style of leadership in an army characterized
by a rigid class stratification between officers and enlisted men.
Dao’s troops repaid their commander with unstinting devotion and
loyalty.
Before
the fight at Xuan Loc, Dao defiantly told foreign journalists: “I am
determined to hold Xuan Loc. I don’t care how many divisions the
communist will send against me. I will smash them all! The world shall
see the strength and skill of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam.”
Dao
and his commanders prepared well. First, they evacuated the soldiers’
families to the relative safety of the huge logistical base at Long
Binh, close to Saigon, enabling the men to focus on the fight because
their families were out of immediate harm’s way. Dao also had the
foresight to establish two fully functional alternate divisional command
posts.
After
studying the approach routes the communists had used to attack Xuan Loc
during the 1968 Tet Offensive, Dao moved his 36 divisional field
artillery pieces to positions where they could mass their fire into a
triangular kill zone on the western side of the town. He placed his guns
in reinforced revetments, stockpiled with ammunition, and had them
adjusted for pinpoint accuracy on enemy artillery positions and all
potential routes of attack. He sent infantry patrols to occupy key
pieces of high ground the NVA could use as artillery observation posts.
One
of the most important pieces of high ground was Nui Soc Lu, known as
Ghost Mountain, astride Highway 20 and just outside the northwestern
edge of Xuan Loc’s defensive perimeter.
Dao
positioned two long-range 175 mm M107 self-propelled guns at Tan Phong,
his first alternate command post, near the southern edge of Xaun Loc’s
defensive perimeter. He had his communications and intelligence troops
monitor all known NVA radio frequencies, and he studied the intercept
reports daily.
In
addition to the 18th Division’s own 43rd, 48th and 52nd Infantry
regiments and the 181st and 182nd Field Artillery battalions, Dao’s
attached forces included troops from South Vietnamese militia
organizations—four Regional Force battalions and two Popular Force
companies.
The
NVA’s IV Corps, commanded by Maj. Gen. Do Van Cam, whose nom de guerre
was Hoang Cam, moved toward Xuan Loc with its 6th, 7th and 341st
Infantry divisions, supported by two armored and two artillery
battalions, an anti-aircraft artillery regiment, two combat engineering
regiments and a signals regiment. Cam’s forward command post was at Nui
Chua Chan mountain, outside the eastern end of the Xuan Loc defensive
perimeter. The NVA attackers numbered some 20,000, the ARVN defenders
about 12,000.
To
disrupt the NVA deployment, Dao sent a battalion-sized blocking force
from the 52nd Infantry Regiment north along Highway 20 on March 28. For
two days those troops held off the NVA 341st Division. By April 1,
however, the South Vietnamese soldiers were pushed back to the Xuan Loc
perimeter. They brought with them several prisoners of war, and
interrogations revealed that many of the 341st Division POWs were barely
16 years old and largely untrained, although all were carrying modern
Soviet bloc weapons.
The battle for Xuan Loc started
at 5:40 a.m. on April 9 with an intense artillery barrage. The NVA
gunners’ well-targeted very first shell hit Dao’s house and exploded in
the bedroom. It was followed by 2,000 more rounds. At 6:40 a.m. the
barrage ended, and NVA tanks and infantry moved against the town from
three directions. When the shooting started, Dao was in Long Binh, where
he had gone the previous day to coordinate logistical support for his
division. Alerted to the attack in a phone call from his chief of staff,
Dao left by helicopter for Xuan Loc. En route, he received situation
reports by radio from regimental commanders.
The
communists were certain Dao’s troops would break and run as soon as the
artillery barrage lifted, but the ARVN soldiers held their ground. The
NVA’s 7th Division carried out the main assault, attacking from the
northeast without tank support. It was slowed by eight belts of barbed
wire and minefields, then pummeled from the air by the South Vietnamese
air force A-37B Dragonfly attack planes and F-5E Tiger fighters.
Later
that morning the North Vietnamese reinforced the 7th Division with
eight T-54 tanks. ARVN soldiers destroyed three of them but lost seven
of their own M41 Walker Bulldog tanks. The attack from the northeast
finally stalled, but not before the 7th Division overran Dao’s main
command post. The general, however, had already shifted his divisional
headquarters to the alternate command post at Tan Phong.
The
NVA 341st Division, attacking from the northwest, entered Xuan Loc and
captured an ARVN communications center, along with a local police
station. But the untrained North Vietnamese teenagers could not exploit
their initial gains. They were driven back by the ARVN 52nd Regimental
Task Force, supported by a South Vietnamese C-119 gunship.
The
6th Division made the only significant NVA gains. Attacking from the
south, its troops interdicted Highway 1 east of the Dau Giay
intersection with Highway 20, cutting off Xuan Loc from Saigon. When the
battle’s first day ended, the NVA had suffered about 700 dead and
wounded, the ARVN 18th Division fewer than 50.
The
battle seesawed back and forth for the next two days. At 5:27 a.m. on
April 10, NVA artillery opened up with a 1,000-round barrage. The NVA
7th and 341st divisions attacked in their respective sectors but were
driven back repeatedly by ARVN counterattacks, sometimes in hand-to-hand
fighting. The communists lost five more tanks. Dao ordered two
battalions to attack two 341st Division regiments that had reached the
heart of the town, and many of the teenage NVA troops broke in panic,
scattering into Xuan Loc’s sewers and ruined cellars. Some captured
later had not fired a single bullet from their 72-round basic load.
Meanwhile,
fighter-bombers in South Vietnam’s 3rd and 5th Air divisions, operating
from the Bien Hoa and Tan Son Nhut air bases on the outskirts of
Saigon, flew more than 200 sorties in support of the besieged garrison.
That night, North Vietnamese artillery fired 2,000 rounds into Xuan Loc,
but Dao’s gunners kept up an effective counterbattery fire.
Early
in the morning of April 11, NVA artillery opened fire with a 30-minute
barrage. The 7th and 341st divisions then resumed their attacks, but
again without success. IV Corps commander Cam, who had led a battalion
of Viet Minh independence fighters against the French at Dien Bien Phu
in 1954, later wrote: “This was the most ferocious battle I had ever
been involved in! My personal assessment was that, after three days of
battle, even after committing our reserves, the situation had not
improved and we had suffered significant casualties.”
Cam
estimated that during the battle’s first three days his 7th Division
had suffered 300 casualties, and the green teens of the 341st Division
1,200. Virtually all of the NVA’s 85 mm and 75 mm artillery pieces had
been knocked out by ARVN counterfire.
Despite Dao’s strong defense of
Xuan Loc thus far, the South Vietnamese Joint General Staff knew it had
to reinforce him. The 11th Armored Brigade was committed from the west
on April 11 to clear Highway 1 to the Dau Giay intersection, but the
brigade’s 322nd Armored Regiment lost 11 tanks and could not dislodge
the NVA.
The
1st Airborne Brigade, taking off from Bien Hoa in 100 UH-1B Huey
helicopters on April 12, landed near the Bao Dinh rubber tree plantation
south of Xuan Loc. CH-47 Chinook transport helicopters brought in the
brigade’s supporting artillery and 93 tons of ammunition. On their
return to the base, the choppers evacuated wounded 18th Division troops
and local civilians in the last large-scale helicopter operation of the
war.
Two
marine battalions were ordered to form blocking positions between Xuan
Loc and Bien Hoa, while ranger, infantry and artillery battalions
provided reinforcements against an NVA attack toward Dau Giay.
Meanwhile, the air force continued to pound the NVA, dropping several
huge 15,000-pound BLU-82 “Daisy Cutter” bombs from C-130 Hercules cargo
planes.
By
the end of the fourth day, NVA dead totaled close to 2,000. Col. Gen.
Tran Van Tra, the NVA officer who commanded the Viet Cong and the
southern region, assumed personal control of the battle on April 13, and
IV Corps was reinforced with additional troops, tanks and artillery.
That same day, Dao was hit in the arm by artillery shell fragmentation.
Tra shifted the NVA’s main thrust away from the center of Xuan Loc. He
ordered the 6th and 341st Infantry divisions to concentrate instead on
hitting Dau Giay, the linchpin of Xuan’s Loc’s defenses, from the north
and the south, while establishing blocking positions to the west along
Highway 1.
In
Saigon, Thieu declared that Dao’s successful defense of Xuan Loc had
ended the long string of communist successes and the ARVN had “recovered
its fighting ability.” He spoke too soon. The NVA reinforcements
included the 95B Infantry Regiment, one of North Vietnam’s elite units,
which had been in the Central Highlands.
Tra
quickly recognized the mistake of the original attack strategy: The NVA
had not been interdicting South Vietnamese aircraft taking off from
Bien Hoa. Communist gunners shifted their targets from Xuan Loc and
began shelling the air base with heavy rocket and artillery fire on
April 15. Almost immediately the 3rd Air Division at Bien Hoa was forced
to suspend flight operations. NVA commandos infiltrated the base and
blew up part of the ammo dump.
The
South Vietnamese tried to shift air support operations to the 4th Air
Division, flying out of Binh Thuy Air Base in the Mekong Delta, a switch
that in the end didn’t matter. That same day, the NVA 6th Infantry
Division and 95B Infantry Regiment captured Dau Giay. During the next
two days the 6th Division beat back all ARVN attempts to retake Dau
Giay. Simultaneously, the 7th and 341st Infantry divisions relentlessly
hammered the defenders all around Xuan Loc, inflicting especially heavy
losses on the 1st Airborne Brigade.
Xuan Loc was now cut off from
reinforcement by land. Air support from Bien Hoa was drastically
reduced. And the North Vietnamese II Corps was moving down from the
northwest. The capture of the town was inevitable. Yet, the fierce and
skillful ARVN resistance had shaken the NVA and disrupted the schedule
for a final assault on Saigon. Hanoi postponed a planned April 15 attack
to allow more forces to converge from the north and finally overrun
Xuan Loc.
On
April 17 the Senate Armed Services Committee rejected President Gerald
Ford’s request for $722 million in emergency support for Saigon. On
April 20, South Vietnam’s Joint General Staff ordered Dao to evacuate
Xuan Loc and withdraw to Bien Hoa to establish a new center of
resistance.
The
withdrawal began that night under cover of heavy rainfall. In a
skillfully coordinated maneuver, Dao’s troops pulled out by echelon,
south through the rubber plantations, along the dirt-road Route 2. The
1st Airborne Brigade acted as the rear guard. NVA troops, taken by
surprise, could do little to disrupt the withdrawal.
Unlike
so many other ARVN generals who had flown out by helicopter during the
1975 communist offensive, Dao marched out on foot with his troops. In
the early morning hours of April 21, the NVA scored its only success
against the withdrawal when it destroyed the rearguard 3rd Battalion,
1st Airborne Brigade, near Suoi Ca hamlet. Later that day Hanoi’s troops
moved into the deserted Xuan Loc, then little more than a pile of
rubble.
In
Saigon, Thieu resigned as president and was replaced by Tran Van Huong.
The air force, however, still had one final blow to strike. On April 22
a C-130 dropped a 750-pound CBU-55 fuel-air bomb, approaching the
explosive power of a nuclear bomb, on the headquarters of the 341st
Division. The bomb sucked the oxygen out of the air and killed an
estimated 250 NVA soldiers in the only time a CBU-55 was used in
Vietnam.
South
Vietnam’s 18th Division had suffered 30 percent casualties in defense
of Xuan Loc. Its attached Regional Force and Popular Force units were
virtually wiped out. The division spent three days at Bien Hoa preparing
for the final defense of Saigon. On April 23 Huong promoted Dao to
major general. The 18th Division was in defensive positions near the
National Military Cemetery close to Bien Hoa when Saigon surrendered on
April 30.
Dao
wanted to keep on fighting. Dressed in civilian clothes, he made his
way south into the Delta, trying to reach Can Tho, the ARVN headquarters
for the IV Corps Tactical Zone. Before he got there, however, the corps
commander, Maj. Gen. Nguyen Khoa Nam, and his deputy, Gen. Le Van Hung,
committed suicide. Dao surrendered on May 9 and spent the next 17 years
in brutally repressive “re-education camps.” In May 1992 he was one of
the last four senior ARVN officers freed. Dao arrived in the United
States in April 1993.
Throughout
the war Americans asked themselves how the North Vietnamese could fight
so well and the South Vietnamese could not. The Battle of Xuan Loc
indisputably proved the ARVN could fight. The key was leadership. The
ARVN’s great weakness was that it never had enough generals like Dao,
who at Xuan Loc went head-to-head with far more experienced NVA
generals, Do Van Cam and Tran Van Tra. Le Minh Dao was the Leonidas at
South Vietnam’s Thermopylae.
Retired Army Maj. Gen. David T. Zabecki is editor emeritus of Vietnam magazine.
This feature originally appeared in the April 2020 issue of Vietnam magazine.
