Vietnamization began in earnest when two brigades of the U.S. Army's 9th Infantry Division left South Vietnam in July 1968, making the South Vietnamese Army responsible for securing the southern approaches to Saigon. The protective area that Westmoreland had developed around the capital was still intact. Allied forces engaged in a corps-wide counteroffensive to locate and destroy remnants of the enemy units that had participated in the Tet Offensive, combining thousands of small unit operations, frequent sweeps through enemy bases, and persistent screening of the Cambodian border to prevent enemy main force units from returning. As the Military Assistance Command anticipated, the Communists launched a Tet offensive in 1969, but a much weaker one than a year earlier. Allied forces easily suppressed the outbreaks. Meanwhile, in critical areas around Saigon pacification had begun to take hold. Such signs of progress probably resulted mainly from the attrition of Viet Cong forces during Tet 1968. But the vigilant screening of the border contributed to the enemy's difficulty in reaching and helping local insurgent forces. Yet Saigon was not impregnable. With increasing frequency, enemy sappers penetrated close enough to launch powerful rocket attacks against the capital. Such incidents terrorized civilians, caused military casualties, and were a violent reminder of the government's inability to protect the population. Sometimes simultaneous attacks were conducted throughout the country. An economy-of-force measure, the attacks brought little risk to the enemy and compelled allied forces to suspend other tasks while they cleared the "rocket belts" around every major urban center and base in the country. War of Attrition In the Central Highlands the war of attrition continued. Until its redeployment of 1970, the Army protected major highland population centers and kept open important interior roads. Special Forces worked with the tribal highlanders to detect infiltration and harass enemy secret zones. As in the past, highland camps and outposts were a magnet for enemy attacks, meant to lure reaction forces into an ambush or to divert the allies from operations elsewhere. Ben Het in Konturn Province was besieged from March to July of 1969. Other bases Thien Phuoc and Thuong Duc in I Corps; Bu Prang, Dak Seang, and Dak Pek in II Corps; and Katum, Bu Dop, and Tong Le Chon in III Corps-were attacked because of their proximity to Communist strongholds and infiltration routes. In some cases camps had to be abandoned, but in most the attackers were repulsed. By the time the 5th Special Forces Group left South Vietnam in March 1971, all CIDG units had been converted to Regional Forces or absorbed by the South Vietnamese Rangers. The departure of the Green Berets brought an end to any significant Army role in the highlands. Following the withdrawal of the 4th and 9th Divisions, Army units concentrated around Saigon and in the northern provinces. Operating in Quang Ngai, Quang Tin, and Quang Nam Provinces, the 23d Infantry Division (Americal) conducted a series of operations in 1968 and 1969 to secure and pacify the heavily populated coastal plain of southern I Corps. Along the demilitarized zone, the 1st Brigade, 5th Infantry Division (Mechanized), helped Marines and South Vietnamese forces to screen the zone and to secure the northern coastal region, including a stretch of highway, the "street without joy," that was notorious from the time of the French. The 101st Airborne Division (converted to the Army's second airmobile division in 1968) divided its attention between the defense of Hue and forays into the enemy's base in the A Shau valley. Since the 1968 Tet offensive, the Communists had restocked the A Shau valley with ammunition, rice, and equipment. The logistical build-up pointed to a possible NVA offensive in early 1969. In quick succession, Army operations were launched in the familiar pattern: air assaults, establishment of fire support bases, and exploration of the lowlands and surrounding hills to locate enemy forces and supplies. This time the Army met stiff enemy resistance, especially from antiaircraft guns. The North Vietnamese had expected the American forces and now planned to hold their ground. Hamburger Hill On 11 May 1969, a battalion of the 101st Airborne Division climbing Hill 937 found the 29th North Vietnamese Regiment waiting for it. The struggle for "Hamburger Hill" raged for ten days and became one of the war's fiercest and most controversial battles. Entrenched in tiers of fortified bunkers with well- prepared fields of fire, the enemy forces withstood repeated attempts to dislodge them. Supported by intense artillery and air strikes, Americans made a slow, tortuous climb, fighting hand to hand. By the time Hill 937 was taken, three Army battalions and an ARVN regiment had been committed to the battle. Victory, however, was ambiguous as well as costly; the hill itself had no strategic or tactical importance and was abandoned soon after its capture. Critics charged that the battle wasted American lives and exemplified the irrelevance of U.S. tactics in Vietnam. Defending the operation, the commander of the 101st acknowledged that the hill's only significance was that the enemy occupied it. "My mission," he said, "was to destroy enemy forces and installations. We found the enemy on Hill 937, and that is where we fought them." About one month later the 101st left the A Shau valley, and the North Vietnamese were free to use it again. American plans to return in the summer of 1970 came to nothing when enemy pressure forced the abandonment of two fire support bases needed for operations there. The loss of Fire Support Base O'REILLY, only eleven miles from Hue, was an ominous sign that enemy forces had reoccupied the A Shau and were seeking to dominate the valleys leading to the coastal plain. Until it redeployed in 1971, the 101st Airborne, with the marines and South Vietnamese forces, now devoted most of its efforts to protecting Hue. The operations against the A Shau had achieved no more than Westmoreland's large search and destroy operations in 1967. As soon as the allies left, the enemy reclaimed his traditional bases. The futility of such operations was mirrored in events on the coastal plain. Here the 23d Infantry Division fought in an area where the population had long been sympathetic to the Viet Cong. As in other areas, pacification in southern I Corps seemed to improve after the 1968 Tet offensive, though enemy units still dominated the piedmont and continued to challenge American and South Vietnamese forces on the coast. Operations against them proved to be slow, frustrating exercises in warding off NVA and Viet Cong main force units while enduring harassment from local guerrillas and the hostile population. Except during spasms of intense combat, as in the summer of 1969 when the Americal Division confronted the 1st North Vietnamese Regiment, most U.S. casualties were caused by snipers, mines, and booby traps. Villages populated by old men, women, and children were as dangerous as the elusive enemy main force units. Operating in such conditions day after day induced a climate of fear and hate among the Americans. The already thin line between civilian and combatant was easily blurred and violated. Breakdowns In the hamlet of My Lai, elements of the Americal Division killed about two hundred civilians in the spring of 1968. Although only one member of the division was tried and found guilty of war crimes, the repercussions of the atrocity were felt throughout the Army. However rare, such acts undid the benefit of countless hours of civic action by Army units and individual soldiers and raised unsettling questions about the conduct of the war. What happened at My Lai could have occurred in any Army unit in Vietnam in the late 1960's and early 1970's. War crimes were born of a sense of frustration that also contributed to a host of morale and discipline problems, among enlisted men and officers alike. As American forces were withdrawn by a government eager to escape the war, the lack of a clear military objective contributed to a weakened sense of mission and a slackening of discipline. The short-timer syndrome, the reluctance to take risks in combat toward the end of a soldier's one-year tour, was compounded by the "last-casualty" syndrome. Knowing that all U.S. troops would soon leave Vietnam, no soldier wanted to be the last to die. Meanwhile, in the United States harsh criticism of the war, the military, and traditional military values had become widespread. Heightened individualism, growing permissiveness, and a weakening of traditional bonds of authority pervaded American society and affected the Army's rank and file. The Army grappled with problems of drug abuse, racial tensions, weakened discipline, and lapses of leadership. While outright refusals to fight were few in number, incidents of "fragging" -- murderous attacks on officers and noncoms--occurred frequently enough to compel commands to institute a host of new security measures within their cantonments. All these problems were symptoms of larger social and political forces and underlined a growing disenchantment with the war among soldiers in the field. As the Army prepared to leave Vietnam, lassitude and war-weariness at times resulted in tragedy, as at Fire Support Base MARY ANN in 1971. There soldiers of the Americal Division, soon to go home, relaxed their security and were overrun by a North Vietnamese force. Such incidents reflected a decline in the quality of leadership among both noncommissioned and commissioned officers. Lowered standards, abbreviated training, and accelerated promotions to meet the high demand for noncommissioned and junior officers often resulted in the assignment of squad, platoon, and company leaders with less combat experience than the troops they led. Careerism and ticket punching in officer assignments, false reporting and inflated body counts, and revelations of scandal and corruption all raised disquieting questions about the professional ethics of Army leadership. Critics indicted the tactics and techniques used by the Army in Vietnam, noting that airmobility, for example, tended to distance troops from the population they were sent to protect and that commanders aloft in their command and control helicopters were at a psychological and physical distance from the soldiers they were supposed to lead. Back to Table of Contents -- US Army in Vietnam Back to Vietnam Military History List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by Coalition Web, Inc. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com