About this time came the climax of another action that was part of the fight for Hill 1338: On an adjoining ridgeline about two kilometers to the west was a dug-in NVA gun position that for a few days had been shooting at the ammunition dump down at Dak To, so far without hitting it. From its "crack," we thought it was a 57mm recoilless rifle, well-concealed and protected in a cave. The gunner would fire only six rounds or so a day, obviously hoping he wouldn't be detected.
A reconnaissance patrol had been sent to the area where he was believed to be located, but hadn't found his position. For some reason he did not fire while the patrol was in the area. After that, brigade headquarters assumed the mission of neutralizing him; they leveled an eight-inch howitzer and fired directly at the shooter's position — but had no more luck than the recon patrol.
He continued to shoot, but not daily, and he varied the time on those days he did fire, then pulled the weapon back into the cave before counterfire could be placed on his position.
After a few days of this cat-and-mouse, he finally hit an ammo bunker filled with 155mm rounds — causing an explosion of something like 1,100 tons of various calibers of ammunition, including 8-inch and 175mm.
From my location on the 1,000-foot-high ridgeline, it looked and felt like an atomic explosion, with the mushroom cloud blossoming 1,000 feet above us.
A couple of moments after it went off, I called my Leavenworth friend, Maury Edmonds, who was still the brigade S-3, and said, "Maury, did you just get nuked? It looks like it from my location."
"I don't know what happened," he answered, "but there's eight-inch and 175mm unexploded shells lying all over this area."
The explosion was so intense that it caved in many of the bunkers, and it took days to clean up the mess, and several ammunition convoys to restock the ammo.
After the battle for Hill 1338, a lot of fighting was still going on throughout the brigade area of operation, and my battalion was given the mission to secure Hill 660, near the intersection of the Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnamese border. It also turned out to be a very hot area, and we continued to be involved daily in significant contacts until the twenty-seventh of December, our first day in a long time without enemy contact.
At this time some of the reinforcing units that had arrived at the beginning of the battle began redeploying elsewhere within the division area of operations. The First Brigade, with its three organic battalions, would now assume responsibility for the mopping-up operation, as well as security for the entire Dak To area of operation.
All our units had fought magnificently, and we were very proud of our accomplishments — essentially, thwarting the 2nd NVA Division's plans for taking control of the Central Highlands and the major infiltration route that would have permitted them either to cut Vietnam in two all the way to the coast or turn south toward Kontum and Pleiku.
I have never known a more dedicated and selfless group of men: men who were motivated for the right reasons and who were willing to lay their lives on the line for our freedom. We were fighting for what we believed in, what we thought was right, and 1 can never recall a time when a single soldier refused to fight or showed cowardice in the face of the enemy.
Near the end of the war, newspapers in the States carried stories of pot-smoking, rapes, and fraggings of officers and NCOs. None of that happened in my unit.
After the battle, the 3/12 Infantry received a Presidential Unit Citation for its accomplishments, and many individual soldiers received medals for heroism. When General Westmoreland visited our battalion around Christmas, he told us that our battalion had seen more combat than any other battalion in Vietnam.
IN retrospect I would like to emphasize our respect for the NVA soldiers. They were outstanding fighters, who had little material support beyond what they carried on their backs. They knew how to survive, and they were tough.
On the other hand, it's hard for me to understand the ways they chose to motivate their troops to fight. Or at least their ways were alien to our culture.
If they had one weakness, it was in their noncommissioned officers' corps. They neither trained nor trusted their NCOs with enough authority to exercise flexibility in reacting to changing battlefield situations. I'm baffled by a culture whose leaders will chain their troops to trees to make sure they remain in position and fight. It is equally hard to understand a culture where political indoctrination forms the basis for motivation.
Every NVA soldier carried in his combat pack a small bag of marijuana wrapped in plastic. Before each battle, the troops would assemble to hear a lecture by the political officer (one for each company). As part of this preparation process, everyone would smoke the marijuana. You could often smell the aroma a good distance away from their attack position, and you knew they were ready and coming when you started smelling it and started hearing the bugles blowing.
Once they'd launched, they stuck to their attack plan — without any obvious ability to change it — until they had either suffered so heavily they could not continue or had been ordered to withdraw.
During the Battle of Dak To of November and December 1967, we were involved in almost continuous daily fighting, yet we had inflicted heavy casualties on the 2nd NVA Division, forcing it to withdraw into their Cambodian and Laotian sanctuaries for refitting.
During this same period, the Special Forces detachments in the Central Highlands reaped the benefits of their Village Defense Program efforts to organize and direct the Montagnard tribesmen. Their outstanding work denied the Viet Cong supplies and recruits from the area tribes, and reduced the Viet Cong's capability primarily to small-unit activities such as occasional ambushes and weapons attacks.
The main threat, however, still remained: the NVA units using the Ho Chi Minh Trail to infiltrate into the "sanctuary" and resupply areas located in Laos and Cambodia, and from there directly into Vietnam, a one-night march.
In response to the change in mission assigned to Special Forces in 1965—"border surveillance and control, operations against infiltration routes, and operations against VC war zones and base areas" — most Special Forces camps had been relocated closer to the border near the main infiltration routes. Because their activities disrupted the NVA, they were prime targets. That meant in practice that they became vulnerable to attack by battalion- or regiment-size units at any time.
Two years earlier, there had been six SF A-Detachments (at Ben Het, Dak Pek, Dak Seang, Dak Sut, Poly Klang, and Plei Me) in what was now the First Brigade's operational area. All had been heavily involved in organizing and training the Montagnard tribesmen. But by January 1968, only Ben Het, Dak Pek, and Plei Me remained.
Although all of them had been well fortified, Dak Seang had suffered heavily during a three-week siege (all resupply had to be air-dropped), and the camp was closed. Dak Sut and Poly Klang, subjected to repeated attacks, had also been closed.
Two of the remaining three, Ben Het and Dak Pek, were close to the border astride major infiltration routes. Their exposed location made them very vulnerable. The A-Detachment at Plei Me was in better shape, since it was in a much less threatened location.
Ben Het, fifteen kilometers west of Dak To, and only ten kilometers from the triborder area, was a typical SF camp: heavily fortified bunkers with interconnecting trench lines; observation towers; rows of concertina wire fencing, interspersed with Claymore antipersonnel mines; fifty-five-gallon drums of phu gas (napalm); and a short airstrip — too short to accommodate aircraft larger than C-7A Caribous.
Two batteries of 175mm howitzers had been positioned there for support of SF teams operating across the border against NVA infiltration and base areas. A U.S. infantry company had also been placed there for additional security. With maximum charge (110 pounds of powder), the 175s could hurl a 500-pound high-explosive projectile thirty-six kilometers; they were highly effective against targets discovered by the SF teams.