Being the typical geek engineer that I was back then, it struck me that every attack we suffered (which usually began about 0300 hours) started and stayed at the tree line… out at the 300 meter point.

Charlie’s intentions were clear and obvious: get our attention by massing men along the 300 meter line, on one side of the site, and lay down enough fire to keep our attention until their Sappers on the other side of the site could successfully penetrate our perimeter. At that time, if enough havoc ensued from the Sapper attack, the line of VC on our side of the site would move forward and try to penetrate our perimeter, if at all possible. If and when they did, they would then rush through the site, firing at targets of opportunity until they came to the side where the Sappers had entered, at which point they would then exit and disappear into the forest, having done as much damage as they could without being annihilated themselves.

Variations of this tactic took place often. Sometimes from the North, sometimes from two corners at the same time, and sometimes from three or more sides. In effect, it was a Viet Cong version of a hybrid of infiltration, penetration and frontal attack. When they pulled it off, it was a ballet of beauty. When the Sappers failed to gain entrance to our site, the main enemy force stayed out at the 300 meter line, plinking away at us to their heart’s content until they tired of it and went home.

Watching this time after time, what I couldn’t figure out was why they stayed at the 300 meter line? Was it because that’s where I and my Infantry squad had left the tree line, or did they settle in at the 300 meter point simply because they knew we couldn’t hit anything out that far?

To find out, and there from devise a better set of tactical plans our site’s CO could use to defeat Charlie when he hit us, I asked for and received permission to level our field of fire out to 500+ meters along the most dangerous section of our perimeter: the section I and my men defended.

Setting about with backpacks full of C-4 and DET (detonation) cord, it took us about 3 weeks to fell the trees from the 300 meter mark out to around 500 meters from the perimeter of the site. With that done, we sprayed the newly cleared area with Agent Orange, and then sat back to wait and see what would happen when Charlie hit us.

If you know of Agent Orange, then you know it doesn’t do its magic over night. It normally takes one or two seasons before the vegetation it is used on dies, and another year or so before all of it wastes away to the point that the ground is clear. Either way, for our purposes we now had a good, solid 500 meter deep field of fire along the perimeter where Charlie tended to congregate for his 0300 parties.

Sure as shootin’, the next time Charlie came at us along this sector he advanced through the 500 meter clear fire zone and on up to the 300 meter line, where he then took up his normal position and held it. I was incredulous. It seemed that even though the ground was clear for another 200 meters behind him, he was still content to come up to the 300 meter mark and set up shop.

Tracking the number of times this happened, and talking to a few fellow Signal Officers from other signal sites like Ghia Nghia and Pr’line Mountain, I soon developed the opinion that the VC in the Central Highlands area had been schooled in the fact that the men who manned Signal Sites couldn’t hit anything beyond 200 – 250 meters… and so digging in at the 300 meter range and firing RPGs and mortars at us all night was about all they had to do to create the havoc they needed to draw our fire to one side of the Signal Site, while their Sappers worked their way in through the other.

So how could we stop this? For all practical purposes there was no way we could stop determined Sappers from coming through the fence, Claymores or not. Similarly, we couldn’t exactly ignore the fact that concentrated frontal fire was coming at us from the opposite side of the site. This, plus when you consider that for us to succeed in stopping the frontal fire we had to pick out and hit a large number of what appeared to my Signaleers-cum-infantry men as tiny little moving spots out at 300 meters, where most of my men couldn’t even focus, the whole thing seemed absurd and un-doable. This was especially the case since out where they were, at 300 meters, all they had to do was aim for the general area of the Signal Site itself, fire whatever they had, and they were bound to hit something. I mean, if nothing else, sitting there as a concentrated Signal Site with all manner of buildings, equipment, generators, antenna towers, and people, we were a target rich environment for them. Their job was considerably easier than ours.

Over time I tracked these early morning firefights, and found that fully 68% of the fights took place with the enemy settling in along a line that ran parallel to our perimeter… out at the 300 meter level. And with the exception of the Sappers themselves, rarely, if ever, did Charlie come in any closer. Lots of RPGs, lots of mortar work, but no in-close fighting unless the Sappers hit what they came for and our men, who normally would be busy mounting a frontal facing perimeter defense, turned to chase down the Sappers roaming around behind us.

Night after night I stewed over this issue. Why was it that the Signal Corps sent men into the field that couldn’t hit targets out to 300 meters. Did they not have to qualify at that distance? What about 400 meters? The Infantry boys I commanded did… most of them could hit targets out to 500 meters. Why not my men?

Eventually I came to understand that this wasn’t the problem at all. Instead, it appeared that those above me knew something I did not know. They knew that the enemy couldn’t hit us any better than we could hit him. As far as they were concerned, Vietnam was a 300 meter war, and that was that. At that distance we both could throw rocks at each other every day, all day long, and 99% of us would still make it home for dinner. The only thing that changed this scenario was artillery fire, which we on our side quickly and happily called in on our friends out in the bush, while they lobbed mortar after mortar at us, and fired RPGs until they were blue in the face. Vietnam being a 300 meter war, when it came to hitting forward bases or Signal Sites, the real war fighters were the VC Sappers that tried to work their way up to and through our lines.

For me, there was something unsettling about this. What I found disconcerting was the presumption— doubtlessly by those above me—of an assumed set of preconditions that set the framework for how this form of “Signal Site under attack” combat would take place. To wit: the enemy would engage and we would respond. By virtue of the fact that a Signal Site was a target rich environment the enemy would gain a little bit of ground such that a few signal systems would be blown up and a few communication links would be knocked out of service. While all of this took place a few men on both sides would be shot, until eventually the enemy would feel it had accomplished its goal and disengage. As to the damage the enemy left behind, with the exception of our wounded and dead, because we had logistical strength on our side, it would take little more than an hour or so for us to bring up to speed new UHF, microwave or whatever communication links were needed to bridge those circuits lost during the firefight. All of this having been accomplished, both life, death and the war would go on.

So for this young Second Lieutenant the problem at the time wasn’t that my men couldn’t hit a barn door at 300 meters, the problem was something completely different. From my earlier perspective I had come to believe that what we were fighting on our signal sites was a 300 meter war, and that what our side needed to do was raise the rifleman skills of our Signaleers such that they could conduct effective long range fire. What I now came to realize however was that the problem was much deeper. The problem was that at Brigade level or higher a decision had been made to let enemy engagements at the Company Grade level—my level—those involving remote fixed base Signal Sites, play themselves out. Some harm might be done, but in the end whatever damage occurred would—most of the time anyway—be minimal and could be quickly fixed.

In other words, the combat strategy decided upon for fixed Signal Sites seemed to be such that Company Grade Officers in charge of remote sites were expected to remain in place and defend the site, rather than proactively go out and engage the enemy and destroy him. Or put another way, our tactical plan for a site attack was to play defense, not offense.

Just so that what I mean by "defense" is clear, I am not talking about our having been left to our own devices to fight the enemy without any ability to take the fight to him. For sure, we had everything at our disposal from artillery that we could call in from miles away, to gunships, “go fasts” and even naval fire. All of that and more was at our—my—Company Grade level command to bring down upon Charlie… sitting out there at 300 meters. But what we—I—did not have were the resources or the authority I needed to leave the site and engage the enemy on the ground and defeat him.

Why? Because that was not the objective.

In a fixed base environment, like that of a Signal Site on top of a hill, tactical responses to enemy actions against the site took a different route than in a non-fixed base environment. Thus, for example, if a convoy of resupply vehicles and troops on their way up to our Signal Site came under fire (as in fact happened), then just about any Junior Grade Officer could organize a team to go to their rescue, me included. But when it came to defending the site against a frontal attack, leaving the base to engage the enemy in tactical ground combat was out of the question.

My task as a Company Grade Officer fighting a battle at a remote site like Lang Bien Mountain… far from my Company’s headquarters back in Nha Trang… was to toss rocks at the enemy until he went away. If in the process I could scare him off and minimize my own losses, all the better. If not, then the Army would pick up the pieces after the battle was over, bring online a few of the spare communication systems we held in reserve for just such an event, and soldier on. What we would not do however was close with the enemy by maneuver and destroy him. To do that would have required a different set of tactics, and a different manpower strength for both the Signaleers and Infantry men that manned our and most other sites… different than what had been allocated to the 32 remote Signal Sites that existed in Vietnam in 1962.

Let me say again, we are not saying here that the Signal Corps or Company Grade Signaleers throughout Vietnam were not authorized to and/or avoided closing with the enemy. Tons of stories abound of circumstances where they did just that. From the archives of Signal Corps files we can provide example after example that make the point that Signal men were in the thick of ground fighting, and often took it to the enemy by initiating and carrying out a proactive tactical response to his presence. For instance, look at this one example: a proactive engagement that took place at the base of Lang Bien Mountain itself—the same mountain I'm talking of—during the Tet Offensive. And to make the point even more salient, two separate tactical engagements were launched, by two different Company Grade Signal Officers:

"At Dalat, in the mountains of south central Vietnam, signal-men of the 362d Signal Company and Company E, 43d Signal Battalion, both attached to the 1st Signal Brigade's 73d Signal Battalion, were in continuous action from 1 through 6 February 1968. During the afternoon of 1 February members of the 218th Military Police Detachment were pinned down in their small compound by fire from an estimated two platoons of Viet Cong. Major William R. Crawford, the commander of 362d Signal Company, upon learning of the plight of the military policemen, immediately organized and led a 20-man rescue team. The small force of signal-men engaged the enemy with individual weapon and grenade fire, evacuated wounded military policemen, and laid down a base of fire that enabled the uninjured soldiers to withdraw. At the same time, inside Dalat, Captain Donald J. Choy, the operations officer of the 362d, led a heavily armed convoy to the Villa Alliance Missionary Association compound, which was surrounded by Viet Cong. The signalmen fought their way to the compound and successfully evacuated the thirty-four occupants. All told, the signal troops of the 362d Signal Company and Company E, 43d Signal Battalion, rescued and provided shelter for more than sixty non-combatants."[1]

Clearly, Signal men planned and engaged in tactical ground battles, closed with the enemy, and destroyed him whenever it made sense or seemed necessary. But not from perfectly defensible Signal Sites to the extent that Signal men left the site to engage the enemy attacking it. In my view, as a simple shave tail Second Lieutenant, this unwritten rule said more about the Vietnam war than anything one could imagine. What it said was that the overall goal of the war was not to defeat the enemy by doing everything one could, every time one could, to destroy him, but instead the goal seemed to be to to keep him at bay and unable to gain more influence in the South until some mysterious political or other global event occured.

Whatever it was, on Lang Bien Mountain anyway, the goal was certainly not to engage our enemy on the ground and defeat him every time he popped his head up.

So what was going on? Why such a milquetoast approach to ground combat from fixed base Signal Sites? Did this feed into a larger theater of war plan? Was the goal to keep the pressure on the NVA with search and destroy missions from Infantry units, while us fixed base folk were told to just sit there, defend ourselves, and not make any noise? Was the goal to wear down and tire the VC and NVA, ultimately lowering  their expectations until they gave up and went back North, from whence they came? Was the goal to wait until the South got strong enough to fight its own war, without us? Was the goal to wait for Henry Kissinger to declare in his basso profundo voice that he had brought peace to the world, while golden rays of sunlight streamed down from the heavens above and violins played in the background? Whatever it was, it sure didn't include Company Grade Officers like me launching a full on press from a Signal Site, to destroy the SOBs shooting at us.

Dramatics aside, I do not want to paint too bleak a picture... but the strangeness of our not acting to engage the enemy more aggressively and directly does raise the question: what kind of war strategy was this? To let the enemy live for another day? To let him engage with you when he wanted, but leave you penned up in your little fire base or Signal Site, acting all heroic by running around firing mortars and M-14s out at him somewhere along the 300 meter line, but otherwise knowing deep down inside that there was no way in hell you were going to stop him from walking away intact, and coming back another day? What kind of war was this?

Anyone that knows anything about war strategy knows that winning a war requires three interlocking pieces: an effective strategy, sitting atop of an effective operational plan, designed to achieve tactical goals. When we faced Charlie on our signal site, we had none of these, except, again, that of calling in fire support from afar and hoping for the best.

Am I saying that by being discouraged from going after the enemy our commander's combat tactics and intent were lacking? Yes, because at the very least it seemed to this Officer that the goal of war... even at my level... should have been to destroy the enemy. Destroying the enemy is the fundamental strategy that underlies any war, isn't it? When Eisenhower got his orders from the Combined Chiefs in WWII they were simple and to the point: “enter the continent of Europe and, in conjunction with other Allied nations, undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces.”

What were the orders that the Infantry Captain that ran our Signal Site held? Did they contain the phrase destroy the enemy and her armed forces? Likely not… they probably contained little more than “protect the Signal boys running the equipment on your site.”

The fact is, we were not manned to close with and destroy our enemy by fire and maneuver, so even if our Signal Site's CO wanted to he could not have. Instead, all we were able to do was work to keep our Signal equipment humming, and if we came under attack engage the enemy in a long distance fire fight, calling in air strikes and artillery until he tired of the game and went home. In other words, let him live for another day… another day of shooting at my men and trying to kill them.

I'll say it again, and then I'll let the issue rest: to me this one example of just one remote Signal Site speaks volumes about the underlying problems of the entire Vietnam War. The objective seems never to have been to close with the enemy and destroy him.

Taking On The Enemy

As to how a remote site like ours could, when we came under attack, have easily closed with the enemy and destroyed him, remember that tactics work both ways. For us, the tactical choice of maneuvering warfare… via small fire teams and/or squad or platoon level actions, to say nothing of a site level engagement, while it did not exist, could have done the job if someone had allowed it to exist and ordered it. But allowing such a scenario to exist just wasn’t in the cards. Stopping this from happening were a number of factors, including the reality that the Army seemed from a tactical level to treat forward operating bases and Signal Sites as some sort of strange appendage where, because of the number and type of differing services (Signals, Engineers, Infantry, MPs...) that inhabited them, unified command ceased to exist.

Let’s look at my situation up on Lang Bien Mountain:

My own Company HQ was light years away from where I was. It was in Nha Trang. I, on the other hand, was up on Lang Bien Mountain, outside of Dalat. For me, as a matter of routine, to undertake a tactical maneuver whenever I felt it necessary, by leading a squad of men to press the enemy in a, say, envelopment action, would have required both my CO’s permission back in Nha Trang as well as that of the Captain running the site I was on.

From my CO’s perspective (518th Signal Company), what he expected out of me in any engagement was "the normal routine." As such, when we came under attack I was to send an urgent message back to the Operations Room in Nha Trang and let them know our Signal Site was under attack. There the OD would send a runner over to the CO's BOQ, about 15 minutes away by Jeep. That runner would then rouse the CO from his bed, drive him by Jeep back to Company HQ, order a cup of coffee for him, and settle him into a chair next to a squawking, static driven radio… to listen frantically until the sun came up for me to call in updates.

If I had asked him for permission to engage with the enemy via, for example, a squad level envelopment movement, he would have gone apoplectic… as that probably would have required him to get the Battalion Commander (459th Signal Battalion) out of bed too… by sending someone down to the Duy Tan Hotel in downtown Nha Trang to bang on his door and also rouse him from his sleep. All for what? A Second Lieutenant that wanted to mount a squad rush around the flanks of the VC attacking a Signal Site populated with an Infantry Captain commanding it, and two more Signal Officers too boot? A Second Lieutenant whose day job was keeping AN/TRC-24 VHF gear running?

Ah me… it brings a smile to my face even today… the idea that if I had been a little bit more proactive I could have had all of that brass running around in Nha Trang at 0300 hours, trying to figure out what the hell to do with some junior Company Grade Officer asking for permission to leave his Signal Site and engage the enemy. A Signal Officer at that.

Harrumph. Not on my watch they would have said.

Humor aside, the truth be told, there was nothing my CO could do to change the situation I was in. Too many people would have had to coordinate with each other and agree to let me go forward to allow such a thing to happen. Additional trained men would have had to be assigned to our Signal Site… men with the capacity to perform this kind of operation… and all of this would have had to be set up in advance… for every Signal Site in-country. And if all of this could come to pass, then the whole operation—or more correctly—capability to mount such an operation—would have had to come under the command of the Infantry Captain that commanded our site, not some shave tail Second Lieutenant fresh out of Signal OCS.

Still, it makes one wonder: why wasn’t this most simple of tactical capabilities provided to the FOBs and Signal Sites that peppered Vietnam? A small team of soldiers capable of mounting a squad rush or distributed operation, based on a small unit development of enfilading fire. If I could see the need for it, surely someone else above me must have too. Was this really what the Vietnam War was all about? Company grade tactics that avoided engaging with the enemy in all cases except where crossed rifles sat on your collar, or something like the Tet Offensive was in play? If you were in any branch other than the Infantry, was the idea that you were simply not supposed to engage the enemy… instead, your lot in life was to go into defensive mode and tolerate him until he went away or someone came to your rescue? Again... I’m not suggesting that fights with the enemy were ever avoided in Vietnam, or that all possible was not done to kill him when the opportunity presented itself… what I’m talking about is the absence of planned offensive actions when a FOB or Signal Site came under attack.

Yes, we did our share of search and clear missions to keep the area surrounding our Signal Site empty of Charlie. But those maneuvers were planned in advance, held during times of non-conflict, and had nothing to do with an 0300 firefight.  

At the risk of boring you, allow me to belabor the point one more time: why did we not have offensive tactics planned to counter each and every form of attack Charlie might level at us… especially at night? If I, a fresh Second Lieutenant, could see the facts relating to how Charlie placed his men at the 300 meter line, how they maneuvered, when they would attack and when they would hold back, then surely others did too. Regardless of how you look at it, our goal should have been to do more than just keep our Signal gear humming. It should have been to close with the enemy, by chasing the bastards until we trapped and annihilated them.

What we should have had at our disposal was the manpower needed to use any of the five forms of maneuver that are most commonly used to fight small scale engagements.[2] Considering that most of the men on Signal Sites back then were, well, Signal Corps men, clearly what was needed was to train Signaleers (and their Officers) as much like Infantry men as Signal men. If you think that’s self defeating, consider then the simple fact that the bulk of the fighting done on Signal Sites was done by Signal men anyway. Why? Simply because there were more of us on those Signal Sites than the Infantry boys they sent to keep us out of trouble. Unfortunately, the Signal men I commanded were neither trained for small scale offensive tactical engagements, nor was I… not for the kind of basic tactical engagements of the type we would have needed to mount to not just drive the enemy away, but destroy him in the process.

We could have folks… that’s all I am saying here. When he came at us, we could have engaged and destroyed him.

Let me close this by demonstrating how easy it would have been from the perspective of a Signal Site on top of a mountain in Vietnam to close with the enemy and, if not destroy him, make him think twice before he came back again.

Let's take Lang Bien Mountain, and let's look more closely at the relatively simple envelopment movement and how it could have been applied along the perimeter that Charlie was most fond of attacking us from.

Generally speaking, along the perimeter shown in the pictures in Views #1 – #3 we had between 300 and 500 meters of a cleared field of fire. From the "first line of defense" (see above picture) it would have been relatively easy for the Signal men in the trenches along this perimeter to keep Charlie engaged—conducting a shaping operation if you will—while a small squad of 8 to 12 men worked their way through a pre-planned spot in the perimeter fence until they could take Charlie on from the side, or better still, in the rear, where the command and control for both his frontal assault and his Sappers took place. You can see a scenario such as this in Views #1 and #2. View #1 shows where the Signal men that normally ran the site would set up shop when the site came under attack, along what we called the first line of defense. If you look back from the position of the guard dog pen shown in View #1, what you would see is shown in View #2.

The tree line center-left in View #2(delineated by the relatively flat upper portion of the red, heavy dotted line) is in an area just to the left (as you look at the picture) of the entrance to the site. It lies at the far edge of the free fire zone we had cleared (foreground of picture), and would have made an ideal path along which our men could have made a concealed exit from the Signal Site, to work their way back towards the VC, who would have been lined up along the 300 meter line just off of the bottom left side of the picture. Note that while the picture does not show it, in mounting such an envelopment action the men would have been able to keep themselves concealed in the brush and tree line that lay along their path, again, just off to the left side of the View #2 picture, until they had Charlie in a position to pour enfilading fire on him.

Considering that a Signal Site such as the one shown here, perched on top of a hill, provides an ideal line of entrenchment from which a shaping operation can be maintained, while fire support from local artillery or gun ships could, in our hypothetical situation, have been called in to contribute to that shaping operation, having a dozen or so men trained and ready to slip through the wire to engage the enemy in an envelopment action from the side would have been extremely effective. This is especially the case considering that, as earlier stated, we were the ones exercising control over the clearing of the field of battle in the first place. That is, with a little fore thought on our part we could have structured the tree line in front of our perimeter to allow us to conduct an envelopment action designed to target the very spot that Charlie came back to occupy, time after time, night after night. In other words, since we were the ones cutting down the trees and clearing the field, we could easily have shaped its size and layout so that during an attack we could mount a squad rush and move a team of our Signal men, undetected, to envelope Charlie’s line. 

A basic form of small scale tactical engagement, envelopment movements like this are designed to seize objectives to the rear of an enemy, so that the enemy can then be destroyed in his then current position. As most of our readers know, envelopments avoid the enemy’s front, where he is protected and can easily concentrate fire. Single envelopments maneuver against one enemy flank; double envelopments maneuver against both. Either variant can develop into an encirclement. If, as in our hypothetical case, Sappers were pressing at one point along our perimeter, while Charlie was keeping up a hot field of fire at another to take our attention away from the Sappers, we could have run a double envelopment… allowing the Sappers to breach the perimeter and funnel their way into a trap where we could have then taken them on from the side, while at the same time a squad of Signal men could have taken to the field to envelop the area where Charlie had mounted his frontal attack.

- - - - -

Sitting back in a defensive position, squatting down inside a line of trenches, and hoping and praying that the Sappers to your rear do not overrun you while you wait for the artillery and gunships to drive the enemy from in front of you is no way to fight a war. Small battle tactics have been known for centuries. Given the right training, the Signal men I saw in Vietnam were fully capable of mounting any of the five basic tactical forms… if only we had been given enough manpower… and the authority… to do so.

Fifty years removed from that war, I am now of the opinion that the Vietnam War was lost because starting at Corps level and going up, right up to and including the Joint Chiefs, DOD and White House, the tough decision to engage with and destroy the enemy every time the opportunity presented itself was never made. It wasn’t made on the Signal Site I sat on, it seems not to have been made by either Westmoreland or Abrams when they sat in Saigon and approved operational plans for services like the Signal Corps, and it wasn’t made in the White House, by any of the Presidents that led that war, a war in which an order could readily have been given to destroy North Vietnam’s capacity to wage war. An order only slightly different from the one Eisenhower received, but with the same import. An order, perhaps, worded like this:

“enter the region known as Vietnam and, in conjunction with other Allied nations, undertake operations aimed at the heart of Hanoi and the destruction of her armed forces.” (emphasis added)

To me it appears that order was never given. The Vietnam War was not lost, it was given away.