03/07/2020
The Fight for Hoi An
D. C. Fresch
The period of Tet 1968 was a strange week for the 2d Platoon, Charlie Company. The Khe Sanh combat base had its second battle of the year in the saddle of Hill 881 on January 20, 1968. An uneasy truce was declared by the Viet Cong for the Tet lunar holiday and was to run from January 27 through February 3. Rocket attacks against Da Nang, the Marble Mountain area, and Chu Lai put the truce to rest on the night of January 29–30.
The “Death Dealers” had been out with the infantry of the 2d Battalion, 3d Marines, cruising the tree lines for about three days looking for the enemy. We were all about to become heavily involved in what was probably the biggest running gun battle of the Vietnam war, the Tet lunar new year offensive.
Tet was the culmination of a long-planned offensive by Hanoi. The enemy had managed to attack almost every installation and city of any significance in South Vietnam. At the time, they believed that this would lead to a popular revolutionary uprising of the common people to overthrow and eject the Saigon government as well as the American allies. During the offensive the American press speculated that we had lost control of the war, despite the fact that virtually every battle was won by U.S. and South Vietnamese forces. Later in the war there were questions concerning the full commitment of Viet Cong forces as a means for the Hanoi government to avoid sharing power with the forces of the south. The Viet Cong were effectively eliminated from the battlefield during the aftermath of the offensive, and northern supply lines were drained to the extent that it would be two years until they were back at their previous effectiveness.
As gunner on an M48A3 tank, designated as C23, I often didn’t leave the turret for three days at a time. Like the other crews, I ate and slept in the tank, urinating into the tank hull to be flushed out later. My tank commander, Sgt. Ralph MacDonald (Sargeant Mac), let me out every now and then to see the light of day for about five minutes.
Because tankers are cockier than most marines, we were having trouble coordinating with the infantry. Working as close to the tree lines as we did while evacuating wounded, it was essential that we have a team of infantry to suppress RPG attacks. It took a considerable number of complaints to get the support, and then it was quite a production to finally get our grunts to pull back when we needed to engage the main gun. Our second problem turned out to be the 2d Battalion, 3d Marines, commanding officer’s inexperience at tank-infantry operations. As the sun was setting on about the third day of operations, after having found recent evidence of enemy activity in the area, he insisted on a night assault of the next tree line. Against our complaints and explanations of bad terrain, the assault went off, with our predicted result of two tanks severely bogged down in the mud and the other two engaged in removing them. It was a nasty job to recover a tank in the mud of a Vietnamese rice paddy.
The assault was called off and we spent an uneasy night in the open. Artillery dropped harassment and interdiction (H&I) fire around us, and gunships and fireflies overflew our position throughout the night. Very spooky. Considering we had yet to engage the enemy, someone higher up was taking great care to protect us. Did they know something we didn’t?
It was the night of January 29–30. The next dawn would see all five provincial capitals attacked and the I Corps headquarters compound breached by VC and main force NVA. The communists had come out of their holes and hideouts to do battle.
With the arrival of morning, we hurriedly had our C rations and coffee and saddled up to hit the tree line from the night before. Monitoring the radios, we heard reports from the infantry of fighting holes and abandoned web gear. The enemy’s positions had been hastily evacuated during the night.
Everyone cleared the tree line and stopped to regroup. Mac got out to confer with the infantry, and I climbed up to get a little daylight and man the TC’s fire controls. Something did not feel right. I believe that everyone who has lived through combat has experienced this feeling at one time or another. I climbed down into the TC’s seat and started to traverse the tree line by sweeping left to right across our front. The gun sights drifted across some horizontal banana trees and my alarms went off. “Bunker.” Suddenly, I was looking down the tube of a 75mm Chinese recoilless rifle manned by six NVA ready to put a window in my tank’s turret.
I squeezed off the main gun and got a click for my effort. I didn’t know what the problem was, but I also didn’t have time to deal with it. I climbed up on the tank, yelled to Mac what I had, opened up with the machine gun, and radioed the next tank down the line to put some 90mm cannon rounds where my fire was going. At that moment, all hell broke loose. About seven hundred NVA, the main effort of the NVA 2d Division, were moving out of the hills west of An Hoa to attack the Da Nang air base as part of the Tet offensive.
We were engaged most all day, working right up in the tree lines with canister rounds and beehives (90mm shells loaded with hundreds of small, arrowlike flechettes). When we needed more ammunition, we evacuated wounded, then returned to the fight.
As the battle wound down, the crew was talking on the intercom about how we could wrap this up and get back to the area for some rest and showers. I had been monitoring the radios and listening to the 1st Platoon mixing it up in Hoi An. From the transmissions I heard, it sounded as though they were in a very tough fight. Hoi An was about fifteen miles south of us on the Song Thu Bon River. An undetermined number of NVA had crossed the river from the south, out of the barrier island area, entered Hoi An, and not so politely requested that the ARVN soldiers leave town. There was a pitched battle, but the NVA won out, with most of the town in their hands. The small Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) compound in Hoi An was surrounded, and the Americans there were fighting a desperate battle for survival. I had a friend with the fourteen-man marine security detachment at Hoi An. Our tanks based there took hits, most from RPGs, and several were knocked out of the fight.
We were low on ammo, and also running low on fuel from fighting for three days and being heavily engaged all morning. Just the same, we were instructed to head for Hoi An. We would be refueled and rearmed there. The trucks to resupply us were already on their way.
Leery of an ambush on the roads, we headed cross-country, flat out through the desert area above Hoi An, and arrived at the outskirts of the city without incident. Blitzing into the city proper, we crossed a bridge, which terrorized some locals, and soon passed a Shell gas station. We joked that we should pull in and fill up. We arrived at our rally point with the 1st Platoon to find that our fuel supply convoy had been ambushed on the road and blown up on Highway 538 west of the city. I since learned that a bulk fuel specialist was killed in the ambush attempting to get our fuel to us. I learned from another friend who was part of the convoy es**rt that the explosion was caused by a command-detonated mine.
We were facing a potentially disastrous situation. No fuel and no ammo is no way to enter a battle. Firefights were raging throughout the city as we linked up with elements of the 2d Blue Dragon Brigade of the Korean Marine Corps. We solved our resupply problem by dragging out the hand pumps and hoses and siphoning fuel from the tanks that were out of service. We also stripped those tanks of their ammunition and distributed it among our four tanks.
Hoi An was a mess. There were firefights taking place all over, and four different military organizations were involved: the Korean Marines, the cut-off U.S. Army compound, the widely scattered ARVN, and us. In addition, the civilians were trying to get out of the middle of everything. Taking into consideration the damage to the 1st Platoon, it was decided that we would try to run two tanks north into the city from both the east and the west, then turn into the city. We’d just blow it away house by house by moving toward the MACV compound, supported by the Koreans. Language and communication problems quickly arose. This was the 2d Platoon’s first time working with the Koreans and we were not communicating well. It was a moot point; everything would soon come apart.
The second of two tanks, we started up a narrow street to the west of the city. Closed in by buildings, we had limited visibility and maneuverability. We crept down the street, guns facing to the northeast, looking into every nook and cranny. The ROK troops were following us rather than supporting us as I watched our lead tank start its turn to the east.
WHAM! BLAM! The tank rocked to the left nearly on its side, and I saw smoke and flames shoot from both hatches. It slammed back to the street and just sat there and smoked. I couldn’t believe what I had just seen through the limited vision of the gun sights. My world went into slow motion and all sound dropped away as I waited for movement from our lead tank and anticipated continued fire on ours. It seemed to take forever, but the crew, covered in soot, finally crawled out and sought cover at the side of the tank. They had taken two rapid-fire RPG hits in the space of a heartbeat. I would like to think that we always reacted quickly to circumstances, and perhaps we did; I suffered time compression throughout this incident. It seemed to take some time until several tankers with their .45 grease guns ran up to provide cover fire, allowing the crew to get back to us. We were effectively stopped in our advance. I remember thinking f—— this, just f—— this, I’m going home, good-bye! All I could see in my mind’s eye was the next RPG coming through my gun controls and turning me into paste. I actually pushed up from my seat to leave when I thought, where the hell am I gonna go? It’s just as bad if not worse anywhere out there.
I really didn’t want any of this, but I sat down and was determined to find that jerk with the rocket before he found us. I’m sure that other things were going on out there, but in the gunner’s seat it was just the NVA and me. I traversed and traversed that street. I felt as though I burnt out both my eyes one at a time and soaked myself in nervous and real sweat while we idled in the street. I was trying to will those gun sights to show me something, anything.
The radios were squawking something about the NVA trying to withdraw as refugees, and we should try to separate the wheat from the chaff. A steady stream of civilians started to move out of the street that we had tried to turn into. An old man carrying a straw package appeared out of the alley and took cover under the front of the blown tank. Thinking that the package could conceal a rocket, I notified Mac, and was going nuts trying to get permission to fire. Permission was slow in coming, and understandably so, because there was a flood of evacuees leaving the area. We finally bounced some .50 under the tank and ran him off.
When our lead tank was hit, the ROKs left us, but the ARVN showed back up and fought like hell. These ARVN were fighting for their homes. They lived in Hoi An, and so did their families. I guess that made all the difference in the world.
Hearing that we were out in the street alone, I renewed my efforts to find the site from which the RPGs had been fired. I damned near went blind searching but finally noticed a slot at street level that looked like a storm drain. I keyed my combat vehicle crewman (CVC) helmet to tell Mac what we had, and in short order we ripped a load of .50 into the slot. Later exploration would reveal two dead North Vietnamese with an RPG in a belowground room. Unlike the fighting at Hue, we never got the opportunity to engage our main 90mm guns in the city. We were effectively blocked almost immediately by our damaged tank and were reduced to fighting a careful defensive machinegun battle due to the flood of refugees fleeing the city.
We eventually worked our way into the city, but I couldn’t tell you how. The rest of the day was a blur as we fought through the narrow streets. The next thing I remember was night falling as we had all of our tanks sitting outside the gates of the MACV compound. Some of the officers from the installation came out to bring us food and thank us for the rescue. They shared their tales of the last few days’ madness. They were glad to have us there.
Everything about Hoi An seemed a bit otherworldly that night. We had never worked within a city before and were faced with an entirely new set of circumstances. As if to punctuate this feeling, a jeep with driver and a Vietnamese passenger roared out the gate and down the street. The vehicle ricocheted off the buildings on both sides of the street like a ball in a pinball machine, then flipped over. I just stood there and stared. The driver was drunk and taking one of the Vietnamese employees home. This was the capstone to this whole weird past week. They lay in the wreckage of the jeep moaning, and I was waiting for Rod Serling to step out of the wings and explain all of this. Strange days. .
What We Learned
The challenges of using tanks were exacerbated by the harsh conditions of the urban environment. Tanks that were protected by infantry could act as effective close-in fire support. Tank main guns used against hardened targets yielded more precise results than could be achieved from artillery. Tank fire caused less collateral damage. Tanks that advanced with infantry protection also delivered a shock effect that intimidated defending dismounted troops.
Effective tank-infantry cooperation requires detailed coordination. Communication and command relationships must be established prior to an operation. Infantry and tank crewmen alike must be aware of each other’s capabilities. All elements of the tank crew should be kept apprised of the tactical situation throughout the vicinity of their vehicle. The accompanying infantry must guard against snipers. The tanks must be regularly resupplied with fuel and ammo. We tried to move off the main roads to prevent creating easy targets for the enemy. Tanks could be used as armored resupply vehicles to meet the needs of the screening dismounts as required.
Used with the expressed permission of the author. The USMC VTA would like to thank D. C. Fresch for his cooperation in the use and editing of this article.
