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Marine Corps Tank Battles in Vietnam

Casemate Publishing

TWO THOUSAND YEARS OF WAR

"We have a secret weapon.... It is called Nationalism."

Ho Chi Minh

We badly underestimated our enemy.

With the arrogance of citizens of a young and vigorous nation, Americans tend to pay little attention to the long and often complex histories of other lands. What we ignored about Vietnam was that it was assembled from many disparate kingdoms over two thousand years of unrelenting and savage warfare, and possessed a long and proud history of resistance to occupiers from both neighboring and distant lands. Like so many peoples, the Vietnamese squabbled amongst themselves – to deadly effect—but their most ruthless struggles were against the many foreign troops that had marched over the unhappy land for centuries before America was even dreamt of.

The exact ethnic origins of the Vietnamese are lost in history, but they are a people who moved south out of China's Yangtze Basin to displace the indigenous tribesmen whom the French and later the Americans would one day call montagnards. Although careful to distinguish themselves from the Chinese, the Vietnamese built a culture along Confucian Chinese lines, complete with a Mandarin intellectual class. With an economy based on wet rice agriculture, the Vietnamese largely left the mountains to the hill tribes.

In 208 BC the renegade Chinese warlord Trieu Da established his kingdom in Canton. From there he governed a small empire that included northern Vietnam and southern China. In 111 BC, forces of the Chinese Emperor Wu Ti overran the kingdom; it was the beginning of a thousand years under the Chinese yoke. Chinese colonists and indigenous Vietnamese staged numerous revolts, with varying degrees of success. Several prominent revolutionary leaders were women, and women held higher status in Vietnamese culture than would have been conceivable in China, or in Europe for that matter. One revolt, led by two sisters, successfully evicted the Chinese, who returned two years later to crush the short-lived independent state.

In the south the Hindu kingdoms of Funan and Champa ruled over what is now the Mekong Delta and most of southern and southeastern Vietnam, respectively. Funan fell to the Khmer (Cambodian) Empire in the 6th century AD. In the 10th century AD a series of bloody revolts against the tottering Tang Dynasty of China culminated in a spectacular naval victory by Ngo Quyen in 938 AD, and the establishment of an independent Vietnamese state. From 1009 until 1225 AD the Ly Dynasty ruled from a base near modern Hanoi. Sandwiched among the Chinese and Khmer Empires and the Kingdom of Champa, the Vietnamese were in a near constant state of war. Between 1057 and 1061 the Chinese again battered unsuccessfully at the Vietnamese borders. Under the Tran Dynasty in the thirty-year span between 1257 and 1287, General Tran Hung Dao decisively repulsed three major invasions by the Mongol armies of Kublai Khan.

In 1400 a renegade general, Ho Quy Li, usurped the throne and in the ensuing struggle to retain his position invited the hated Chinese back into Vietnam. The Chinese Ming Dynasty imposed a brutal occupation marked by serfdom and an attempt to destroy the Vietnamese culture. From 1418 until 1426 Vietnamese rebels fought a series of savage battles against the Chinese, culminating in a decisive Chinese defeat near modern Hanoi at the hands of Le Loi, one of the towering figures of Vietnamese history. Le Loi instituted many reforms, and his heir, Le Thanh Tong, led Vietnam to its era of greatest power.

Under the lengthy Le Dynasty the real powers were rival clans, the Trinh and the Mac (eventually destroyed by the Trinh) in the north and the Nguyen in the south. For nearly a hundred years in the 14th and 15th centuries the Nguyen waged a prolonged and brutal war against Champa. In 1471 the Vietnamese captured the Champa capital and slaughtered its inhabitants.

THE COLONIAL ERA

In 1516 Portuguese traders appeared, followed by the Spanish and the French. Through trade and the introduction of modern technologies and Christianity, eventually to be followed by colonial rule, the French exerted a lasting impact on the region.

Between 1700 and 1760 the Nguyen at last wrested control of the Mekong Delta from the Khmer Empire, and the modern Vietnamese nation took shape.

During the long struggle between the Trinh and Nguyen, the two Tay Son brothers revolted against the moribund Le Dynasty and seized Hanoi in 1786. They were immediately confronted by another Chinese invasion, which they repulsed in 1788.

Soon Vietnam began to feel the influence of rivalries on the other side of the globe. The French, driven out of their richest colonies in the Americas, became the dominant European economic and social influence in Indochina. Oddly enough, the French government had little interest in the Southeast Asian backwater. Instead, the Roman Catholic Bishop in the small city of Saigon, Pigneau de Behaine, raised a force of European mercenaries who helped the usurper Nguyen Anh seize control of the Delta and Saigon in 1788 while the Tay Sons were distracted by events in the north. With French assistance Anh captured the major economic center, Hanoi, in 1802 and from his new imperial capital at Hue became Emperor Gia Long, ruling over all of Vietnam.

Gia Long's heirs were rightly suspicious of French influence and the rising influence of the Roman Catholic faith. This suspicion was manifested through the persecution of Christian converts. The French bombarded the port of Danang in 1847 in retaliation, but otherwise the situation continued at a low boil.

The accession of Napoleon III, with his global imperialistic ambitions, affected both Southeast Asia and far away Mexico. In 1857 the revitalized French demanded trade concessions in Vietnam. When rebuffed they used the pretext of protecting native Catholics against persecution (which they had tolerated since about 1820) to invade. Danang fell to the French in September 1858, and Saigon the following February. Despite extensive Spanish aid, the French—crippled by the failure of the Christian Vietnamese to support their "liberators"—soon became bogged down, defeated by terrain unsuited to European armies, the climate, and tropical diseases. After a protracted campaign, in April 1863 the Vietnamese ruler Tu Duc ceded control of the major seaports of Saigon and Haiphong to the French.

Unfortunately for Tu Duc he soon enough repeated the mistake of Ho Quy Li, soliciting French aid in suppressing an 1867 revolt among his own citizens. The cost was the dismemberment of Vietnam. The French gained outright control of southern Vietnam, which they renamed Cochin China. Stung by their defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and taking advantage of Tu Duc's death with no heir, the French once more moved against Vietnam. In August 1883 they bombarded the Imperial City at Hue, and threatened the big commercial center at Hanoi. The terrified and vacillating court advisors succumbed to French threats. The sack of Hue and treaty of 25 August 1885 completed the dismemberment of Vietnam and established the Protectorates of Tonkin (northern Vietnam) and Annan (central Vietnam). In 1887 the French created the illusion of legitimacy with the Indochinese Union, made up of the three bits of Vietnam, the Cambodian Protectorate (which they had conquered in 1863), and eventually Laos (ceded by Thailand in 1893). Though the Vietnamese retained their Emperor, he was ruler in name only.

While they never formalized the barbarities of some other European colonial administrations, the French still proved cruel masters. The motivation was for quick financial profit from a land poor in any of the mineral or agricultural resources coveted by the European powers. The French exploited the country by proxy, ruling through a tiny minority of trusted indigenous Roman Catholic administrators and landlords. The landlords in turn used their positions and manipulated the repressive system of laws, burdensome taxes, and trade monopolies on virtually every product to seize ever-increasing tracts of agricultural land and to exploit the peasants as sharecroppers and indentured workers. Soon the French, and a few thousand fabulously wealthy Vietnamese collaborators, controlled the entire wealth of the nation. It was a situation ripe for small resistance movements, which were brutally suppressed by the French.

THE COMMUNIST RESISTANCE

In 1926 an obscure and self-educated man of Mandarin origins living in China formed the Revolutionary League of the Youth of Vietnam, or Thanh Nien. Born in the north of Vietnam as Nguyen Sinh Cung, as a boy he witnessed the bloody aftermath of several revolts against French rule. He ran away to the south, shipped out as a merchant seaman (calling himself Van Ba) and visited numerous ports before fetching up in New York City as a laborer. Moving on to London as a pastry chef named Nguyen Tat Thanh, he eventually joined the large Vietnamese expatriate community in Paris, under the new name Nguyen Ai Quoc.

Six years in Paris converted him from an idealistic nationalist to a socialist, and he moved on to Moscow (as Linh), where he briefly associated with the likes of Trotsky and Stalin as they struggled for the dead Lenin's crown. Moving on to China and adopting the name Thanh Nien, he fled the massacre when Chiang Kai-shek turned on his Communist allies. He moved from Moscow to France to Siam (Thailand) to Hong Kong, where he helped found the Vietnamese Communist party. He spent another dozen years wandering the globe under uncounted assumed names.

Following the fall of France to the Nazis in 1940, Japan seized the opportunity to informally incorporate Vietnam into their sham Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. Faced with a considerable demand for troops, the Japanese allowed Vichy France to rule by proxy, along with the collaborationist figurehead Emperor Bao Dai.

In 1941 the itinerant revolutionary slipped across the border from China, returning to his beloved homeland after thirty years. In a cave he met with confidants such as Pham Van Dong and history professor Vo Nguyen Giap to form the Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh (Vietnam Independence League), or Viet Minh. The wanderer was ambitious and a shrewd judge of character. His years on the run had hardened him into a ruthless and pragmatic man who could skillfully utilize the talents of others for his own ends, or destroy his opponents with equal ease. Assuming yet another name and persona, Ho Chi Minh ("Bringer of Light"), the revolutionary had at last found his mission in life.

By 1942 the Viet Minh armed forces under Vo Nguyen Giap were, with the aid of the Chinese (both Nationalist and Communist factions), British, and Americans, conducting an armed resistance to the Japanese occupation. In March 1945 the Japanese launched a takeover worthy of a Shakespeare play, inviting French military officers to dine with them. They seized the officers, and killed or captured the leaderless troops. These events prompted increased aid to the resistance through the Deer Mission, run by the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS), predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

As the Japanese Empire collapsed, on 2 September 1945 Ho Chi Minh took the opportunity to proclaim the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) in the north. The puppet Emperor Bao Dai abdicated to become a senior advisor, and both the northern factions and the Communist-dominated Provisional Executive Committee of South Vietnam (PECSVN) sought Allied recognition through moderation. Instead the great powers, meeting at Potsdam, Germany, divvied up the nation. North of the 16th Parallel the Nationalist Chinese occupiers more or less ignored Ho's machinations, and his presumptive government operated openly. In the south the British were far more repressive. Fearful of the effects of Asian nationalism on their own tottering Empire in India, Major General Douglas Gracey used his 20th Indian Division, liberated French prisoners, and Japanese Army units under British leadership to ruthlessly suppress the PECSVN and impose harsh conditions on the populace.

On 23 September a peculiar alliance of Vichy and Gaullist French forces stormed the Viet Minh party headquarters. As the French and Vietnamese jockeyed for position, Ho admitted non-Communists to his DRV government, and in November dissolved the Indochinese Communist Party. In March 1946 the Chinese and French reached an agreement for Chinese withdrawal. With both sides still weak, Ho agreed to let 25,000 French and French-led native troops garrison the country. The French in turn agreed to recognize the DRV as an independent state within the French Union, and withdraw their forces by 1952. Other nationalist forces denounced the agreement, prompting the French and Viet Minh to combine forces to destroy them.

Now confident in their power, the French immediately reneged on the deal. In June 1946 they declared Cochin China autonomous, and "granted" the powers promised to the DRV to the French-controlled Indochina Federation. By mid-October the French felt confident enough to reassert control in the north, seizing Haiphong. A revolt on 19–20 November collapsed but at considerable cost to the French, and on 23 November the French bombarded the city's native quarter, killing over 6,000 civilians. Giap and his military forces slipped away into the interior to pursue a guerrilla strategy. Bao Dai briefly fled the country until the French reinstalled him as a puppet.

Bao Dai and the French were also engaged in other uneasy alliances in the south. The Cao Dai were a local religious sect who practiced a mixed Asian and Christian theology, but more importantly had what amounted to a 30,000-man private army. The schismatic Hao Hao Buddhist sect in the Delta commanded another 15,000-man army. The most influential was the Binh Xuyen organized crime cartel that controlled all the vices of the ethnic Chinese Cholon District of Saigon; their 2,500 "soldiers," augmented by bribed police and hired muscle effectively kept the Viet Minh out of Saigon proper.

The French continued to dally, waiting for American aid, making no effort to pacify the countryside—the source of the Viet Minh's strength - through meaningful reform, and hamstrung by their constitutional ban on using French conscripts outside Europe. The Viet Minh grew in power after the fall of China to Mao Tse Tung's Communists.

THE WAR AGAINST FRANCE

In September and October 1950 the Viet Minh captured two large border forts along the rugged ridges that form the border with China, and decimated the French relief columns. Strategically more important than the 6,000 French casualties and loss of materiel was that the actions secured an overland supply route from China. Overconfidence now led Giap to face the French in conventional battles for control of the populous Red River valley west of Hanoi, and between January and June 1951 the French, under their new commander, General Jean de Lattre, inflicted three major defeats on the Viet Minh. The road bound French were unable to pursue and exploit their victories, so Viet Minh power remained relatively intact.

In October 1951 the French repulsed an attempt to seize another border fort, Ngiah Lo, and in November a French airborne assault secured the big Viet Minh staging area at Hoa Binh. Though a tactical victory, the French were unable to open a land route and the force was left stranded in the countryside. Following the death of de Lattre from cancer, General Raoul Salan oversaw a costly breakout from Hoa Binh.

Both sides licked their wounds through most of 1952, until in mid-October Giap at last captured Ngiah Lo, securing yet more of his logistical lifeline. In late October 30,000 French and Vietnamese troops drove west into the Red River valley from Hanoi, but the offensive floundered to a halt amid relentless ambushes and its own logistical shortcomings.

In May 1953 General Henri Navarre replaced Salan, but by now the French effort was failing from the unreliability of the native troops that made up most of their force. Despite American aid, the ruinous financial costs and the ever-increasing demands for troops made the war increasingly unpopular in France.

In late 1953 a French airborne attack secured the isolated village of Dien Bien Phu, in a valley near the Laotian border. The place itself had no strategic value, but Navarre saw it as a remote place for a "land-air base." In his vision, he could supply the position by air while the Viet Minh would exhaust themselves in both the struggle to move troops into the region and futile assaults, giving the French increased bargaining power in peace negotiations in Geneva. Navarre underestimated his own logistical limitations, and particularly his requirements for artillery. But most of all he underestimated Giap. Through immense effort the Viet Minh dragged American artillery and munitions, captured in Korea and China, to the remote valley.

In March 1954 the Viet Minh commenced unrelenting bombardments and costly infantry assaults, nibbling away at the French fortress. The Americans continued to supply the French, but General Matthew Ridgway advised against direct intervention in the form of long-range B-29 strikes, much less the nuclear intervention desired by some. On 7 May 1954 Dien Bien Phu fell, eleven thousand French and Vietnamese troops entered a brutal captivity, and the French lost all bargaining position in the Geneva negotiations.

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Excerpted from Marine Corps Tank Battles in Vietnam by Oscar E. Gilbert. Copyright © 2007 Oscar E. Gilbert. Excerpted by permission of Casemate Publishing.
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