Garden of Eden 3: Battle of the la Drang Valley

Garden of Eden 3

A heart-warming novel sharing love, heroism, and the rite of passage during the Vietnam War

Battle of the la Drang Valley

Technically, la Drang was a series of battles spread out over several miles. Highway 51, south of Pleiku: Two ambushes against an ARVN column sent to relieve Plei Me, October 23-25; Plei Me: Under siege, October 19-25; la Drang Valley: Several skirmishes beginning November 6, 1965. This analysis describes briefly what happened at LZ X-Ray and LZ-Albany which has come to be known as the Battle of la Drang.

This two-part slugfest took place November 14th through November 18th in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. American forces consisted of the 1st Battalion, 7th Calvary, 2nd Battalion, 7th Calvary, and the 2nd Battalion, 5th Calvary of the United States Army.

General Giap’s forces included the 33rd, 66th, and 320th Regiments of the People’s Army of Vietnam, PAVN, plus the National Liberation Front, NLF, of the H-15 Battalion. General Giap’s intentions were to cut Vietnam in half by driving a wedge through the ARVN forces before the Americans could establish a military buildup.

ARVN, Army of the Republic of Vietnam, was for the most part poorly led and poorly trained. Many of their officers had no formal military training. Nor were they enthusiastic about fighting. The ARVN major who led the ARVN column to relieve Plei Me drug his heels for two days causing additional casualties at the camp. Many of the South Vietnamese soldiers were capable, they simply had ineffectual commanders.

General Westmorland and his staff wanted to test their newly developed air mobile cavalry. A search-and-destroy mission was planned to track down the enemy insurgents that besieged the Special Forces camp at Plei Me. The insurgents had withdrawn to their sanctuary in the la Drang Valley.  Army Intelligence was lousy. The untested Americans were about to enter a region where they would be up against what some considered the best light infantry in the world.

It was soon discovered there were 1,600 communist troops on the Chu Pong Mountain northwest of Plei Me. The Americans were told not to attempt scaling the mountain, bombers would do the job. What they didn’t know at the time, there were additional communist forces in the valley superior in numbers to the Air Cavalry.

Just before 1300 hours on the first day, the Vietnamese attacked in force. At first, all went well. Casualties were inflicted on the enemy. The Americans held the advantage of air superiority and field artillery. But soon the situation grew critical. Massive attacks, repeated frontal assaults, flanking maneuvers. The enemy was relentless, attacking again and again. The Americans held on, calling down artillery and air strikes against the communist forces besieging them from every direction.

Valor became a common virtue those first fifty hours. The United States Army stood their ground against a relentless enemy that seemed impervious to death. Hundreds were slaughtered, hundreds more wounded. Seventy nine Americans were killed and one hundred and twenty one wounded. The battle was won. A great victory has been achieved. Colonel Brown then requested permission to withdraw his men from the battlefield. His troops were exhausted, having not slept for two days, and more PAVN soldiers were reported in the valley.

General Westmoreland refused Brown’s request, stating he wanted to avoid the appearance of a retreat. B-52 Stratofortresses were on the way from Guam to bomb the Chu Pong Mountain, so the Americans were ordered to march to a safe zone away from the target area. They walked straight into the 8th Battalion, 66th Regiment, 1st Battalion, 33rd Regiment, and headquarters of the 3rd Battalion, 33rd Regiment of the PAVN.

A nightmare ensued. Vicious hand-to-hand fighting. Air strikes were called down which resulted in American casualties by friendly fire. The six foot grass made it impossible to see. Trees rose up one hundred feet. The tide of battle ebbed and flowed. In the end, an additional one hundred and fifty five Americans lay dead, and over a hundred more wounded. General Westmorland had just made his first tactical blunder of the war.

It should be noted that Captain Ed Freeman, United States Army, flew his Huey helicopter in and out of the combat zone fourteen times that first day bringing in ammunition, water, and medical supplies, and flying out approximately thirty critically wounded. The fighting was so intense the Medevac commander ordered his crews not to land. That was wrong. The men on the ground fought bravely and honorably. They needed all the support they could get against a courageous and determined foe. Ed Freeman was eventually awarded the Medal of Honor by President George W Bush. Major Freeman passed away in Boise, Idaho in 2008.

The kill ratio was 12 to 1 in favor of the Americans. General Westmorland saw that as a winning strategy. He never deviated from his WW2 experience. He failed to see the significance of Dien Bien Phu or the centuries of Vietnam battling the Chinese.

General Giap is portrayed by Hanoi and others as one of the great generals in history. His tactics were straight out of the pages of WW1. US casualties ran over 58,000. General Giap’s losses were estimated near 1,000,000.

Garden of Eden: Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy & Johnson

Garden of Eden

 A heart-warming novel sharing love, heroism, and the rite of passage during the Vietnam War

Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, & Johnson

Ho Chi Minh was our friend during the Second World War. His men rescued American fliers shot down by the Japanese. They performed heroic acts on behalf of the Allies against Imperial Japan. Toward the end of the war Ho sent word to President Roosevelt requesting recognition of Vietnam as a sovereign nation to get the Colonial French off the backs of the Vietnamese people. But Roosevelt was preoccupied with the Pacific, and a dying man. 

President Truman chose to ignore Ho's request because France was an ally during WW2. Charles De Gaulle was an arrogant windbag similar to Bernard Montgomery. Harry Truman was more of the same vintage. This led to the first Vietnam War where French forces were defeated at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu by General Giap's Viet Minh Communists. The French might have prevailed had the French politicians sent a relief column to the trapped soldiers, but like so many times in France's checkered political history the politicians dithered while their Foreign legion fought and died. 

Ho Chi Minh was a national hero. He had driven the French out after nearly 100 years of colonial occupation. A national election was to be held to determine a new president. But the Diem regime in South Vietnam, friendly with the United States, was against elections. Ho might win, and Diem and his gang of political thugs would be out of power. Fighting broke out between the North and the South. 

The British and the French both warned President Eisenhower not to get involved. They called it a civil war, telling him Ho Chi Minh would probably win the election. But Eisenhower believed in the Domino Theory. If one country goes communist, it spreads like a bad habit to its neighbors. Ike sent 300 military advisers to help train the South Vietnamese Army. The elections were blocked by the South, with help from the Central Intelligence Agency and American Special Forces. With Washington plotting against him, Ho Chi Minh turned to Moscow. 

Ho was a nationalist more so than a communist, but Kennedy viewed North Vietnam with skepticism. President Kennedy believed in the Domino Theory the same as President Eisenhower. Ike advised John to send additional troops. In the meantime Ngo Dinh Diem had become a thorn in the side of American diplomacy. The South Vietnamese government was as crooked as a barrel of fishhooks, and their military was a mixed bag of professionals and clueless incompetents. The ARVN leadership in Saigon was no match for the battle-hardened North Vietnamese Army of Hanoi. 

Two years into his presidency JFK was coming to believe that Vietnam was unwinnable. Many factors played a role, but Diem and his generals were the major stumbling blocks. The people didn't like Diem, and they didn't appreciate their dictatorial treatment at the hands of Diem's military. JFK was probably going to pull the plug if he won reelection. 

Dallas doomed the United States to a land war in SE Asia. That was the very thing General MacArthur warned President Kennedy against in 1961. President Johnson and Robert McNamara didn't know a squat about the centuries old conflicts between China and Vietnam. They knew even less about Vietnam's culture or religion, and very little about Diem and his wicked brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu. The stage was set for disaster, and President Johnson jumped in with both clod hoppers. 

Lyndon Baines Johnson micromanaged the Vietnam War from his air-conditioned oval office in Washington, DC. The Pentagon was seldom allowed to make independent decisions. The Air Force was told to bomb Viet Cong villages and the Ho Chi Minh Trail, while Westmoreland scattered his ground troops across South Vietnam in WW1-style fire bases. Johnson and McNamara both feared China might enter the conflict on the side of the Communists. So North Vietnam was never invaded, the Trail was never cut, and Hanoi and Haiphong were never blown off the map. The war was run by a Texas school teacher and an Ivy League business executive. Militarily, both men were hopeless failures. 

Garden of Eden and Plato's Cave

The Garden of Eden was a first class bordello on the outskirts of Da Nang under the political protection of a South Vietnamese general. Madame Mimi Le Beau owned and operated this gynecological hay market. Sexual Salvation in the Far East with Terry and the Pirates. Fancy House frolics with Blondie and that Sweet Thang from Thailand with the far away eyes. Madame Mimi was an engaging French beauty left over from the French Colonial Period after Dien Bien Phu fell to the Communists. That sent the Frogs hightailing it back to Paris. Back then the entire region was called French Indochina. France colonized Vietnam in 1887. The Japs came along in 1940 and shot up the place. Then the Sons of Nippon collaborated with Marshal Petain and Vichy France against the Chinese. We won. They lost. Johnny came marching home. Next came Korea. Then Vietnam and the '68 Tet Offensive.

Garden of Eden and Plato's Cave is the saga of three boys from Knoxville, TN. I won't ruin the stories by revealing what happens, but you will find my style of writing is historically accurate and entertaining. This is more than a tale of war and adventure, love and heartbreak, suffering and sacrifice. It is the beginning of what Ayn Rand foretold sixty five years ago about today. Vietnam was a carte blanche expenditure of blood and American treasure. Nothing has changed!

Come with me now on our journey into yesteryear where one's fate hung in the balance of the lady wearing the blindfold, where boys became old overnight, and death waited in the shadows back among the trees.