The Magic Box, Trigger of the Expanded War in Vietnam

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THIS IS THE STORY of a people who endured war for thirty years, who were driven from farm and home, and who had no way to get food, water, and the other necessities of life other than by banditry.

As veteran bandits they became good fighters—so good that we credited their success to Ho Chi Minh, to General Giap, to Mao Tse-tung, to the Soviets, and, at times, to our own doves. They fought to eat, to live. Some called them the Vietcong. In their own country they were know as the “dangerous brothers” rather than the enemy. They were terrorized refugees in their own homeland, the beggars, the people of a ravaged land.

If a person were to fly over the hills of Indochina, he might be reminded of the Green Mountain State of Vermont. He would see similar lush, rolling hills that pull a blanket of green up one side, over the top, and down the other. But the Vermont hills were not always that way, not always peaceful; read Kenneth Roberts’s great book of our own Revolutionary War, Northwest Passage. To the early American war heroes and to the British invaders, Vermont was a nightmare, a green hell. So, too, was Vietnam to the American GI and to the CIA’s underground warriors.

Glorified in the pages of National Geographic magazine as the home of the carefree, naked, little brown man, Vietnam has for centuries been considered one of Earth’s garden spots, a place where man had only to exist to live comfortably. Deep in the forest on the mountains, the Rhade (Rah-Day) tribesmen have lived for hundreds of years. They grow crops. They raise chickens and pigs. They have been lumbermen. They lived easily with the French for generations and managed to coexist with neighboring tribes, because they were strong. The Rhade are a closely knit, self-disciplined group.

After the great defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu by the Vietminh army under General Giap, the French lieutenant of police left the Rhade area, taking with him his family and his few belongings. In his place a Rhade corporal took over the police powers, and things continued about the same, except that European-style law and order ended. The village elders, or Huong-ca, resumed their political functions under their own traditional council.

The French padre stayed only a few more months. When he departed, European religion and medical care went with him. Then the French overseer at the lumber mill took off, and work there stopped, for with him had gone the European economy. With the cessation of the only real income-producing enterprises of the area, contact with the outside world was severed almost entirely. Now and then a Chinese trader would come with his few coolies, bringing salt, cloth, blades (axes, knives, machetes), and news. But the Chinese merchants, too, came less frequently. The Rhade farmers had to work all the harder to produce the extra provisions that the elders would have to take to the central village over the mountain to trade for necessities.

In a country where tall grasses and bushes shoot up about as fast as they can be cut down, it is nearly impossible to grow a crop in the fields. A field that has been standing uncultivated abounds with such a thick cover of grasses that the tiny sprouts of seedlings can never grow. These tribesmen farm by cutting, slashing, and burning the forest to get to cleared earth and luxuriant soil. They have learned from their forefathers to kill the trees at the margin of the forest and then, hurriedly, to plant their scant seeds in this new, bare ground. If the farmer diligently fights the inroads of the grasses and weeds, he may have a farm for several years. But if he turns his back, the grasses take over. This battle is eternal.

The Rhade have worked hard to clear more ground and to harvest more crops. But crops alone do not make an economy. Produce must be moved to market; there must be a place where one can buy and sell. Without this, produce rots. When the French and Chinese no longer came to the Rhade regions, the produce rotted, and the basic economy staggered to a halt.

When a basic economy deteriorates in a marginal area—in Indochina, in Africa, or in Oklahoma—the people must move on. When war, pestilence, flood, drought, or some other disaster strikes a primitive society, the people must search elsewhere for food and other necessities. Often this search becomes banditry, and banditry, that last refuge of the desperate and starving—is a violent business—so violent that in this case it led the uninitiated to believe that there was a wave of “Communist-inspired subversive insurgency” in the land, under the command of General Hunger.

During the early, amateurish days of the ten-year Diem dynasty, in that newly defined piece of real estate that was called South Vietnam, there was considerable misinterpretation. Little did Ngo Dinh Diem, that foreign mandarin and erstwhile Father of His Country, realize that by issuing an edict removing French influence he was bringing an end to law and order, such as it was. Nor did he realize that by promulgating a second edict banning the Chinese, he was causing the basic tribal economy—marketplace bartering and produce movement—to vanish.

The French did not return; neither did the Chinese. But one day the old padre came back. The tribesmen turned out to greet the familiar face. This fragile gentleman had new clothes and new shoes, and he rode into the village in a jeep. The Rhade had not seen such a thing since the return of the French after the Japanese had gone—the French lieutenant and his family had arrived in a jeep back in the mid-1940s. The padre dismounted and spoke to his old friends. Then he introduced the young driver of the jeep, explaining that this young white man was American, not French, and that the other passenger was a Vietnamese from the faraway city of Saigon.

The padre said that the French no longer governed the country but that a great man named Ngo Dinh Diem was the president of this new bit of land called “South Vietnam” and that his palace was in Saigon.

The padre avoided mention of Ho Chi Minh and the northern government. He knew it would be useless to try to explain that Ho Chi Minh’s Nationalist government was not the government of all Indochina. It would be too complicated, it would not be believed, and the Rhade would not care much one way or the other anyhow. The Rhade had lived in their ancestral areas for centuries and cared little for the outside, whether it was represented by Japanese, French, American, Vietminh, or Saigonese officials.

The padre, the young American, and the Vietnamese official returned many times. After a while, the American was welcomed without the priest and often stayed for weeks. He was interested in animal husbandry and agriculture. He brought with him some poultry and a new breed of hog that he taught them to raise. He carried with him new seeds and tried over and over to encourage the Rhade to plant them as he directed. On countless occasions he would persuade the villagers to dig holes in the fields and to plant the seeds as he had learned to do at the university in Ames, Iowa.

He never did understand the Rhade farmers and their primitive “slash and burn” farming. And they never could explain to this young expert that the seeds could not grow in that heavy grassland of the open fields. In any event, the American became a familiar figure, and his hard work and gifts of chickens, pigs, candy, and cigarettes were always welcome. Then one day he came with the Magic Box.

The padre, the American, and the Huong-ca sat in earnest discussion all that day. The Magic Box rested on the hood of the jeep while several young men dug a hole in front of the patriarch’s hut. They were unaccustomed to the American’s shovel, and work progressed slowly. Meanwhile, the American felled a tree and cut out a section to be used as a post. This post was put into the hole and the dirt replaced.

Now a tall, sturdy, upright pedestal stood in front of the chieftain’s hut. To this, the American affixed a tin roof as shelter. Then he removed the shiny jet-black Magic Box from the jeep and nailed it firmly to the post, about four feet above the ground, just the right height for the Huong-ca and above the prying hands of the children.

After the box was secured, the padre told the villagers all about the Magic Box and how it would work, about the wonders it would produce to save them from communism. He told them that this box was a most miraculous radio and that it would speak to their brothers in Saigon. It was, in their language, powerful medicine.

At the same time, he warned that only the village patriarch could touch the box. If anyone else did so, the kindly government in Saigon would be most angry, and the village would be punished. The padre told the villagers that whenever they were attacked, the patriarch should push the big red button on the box, and that was all.

At this point in their Village Defense Orientation Program, the Viet soldier and the American interrupted the padre and ordered him to repeat that if the village was attacked by the Communist Vietcong from the forest—emphasizing the “Communist Vietcong”—the patriarch was to push the button. To the Viet soldier and the American, the men in the forest were not starving and frightened refugees; they were the enemy.

Because the elderly padre knew that these native people had never heard of the Vietcong, he explained that his friends called all bandits from the refugee camps in the forest “Vietcong” and that the Vietcong were to be greatly feared because they were the puppets of the National Liberation Front, who were the puppets of Hanoi, who were the puppets of the Chinese, who were the puppets of the Soviets, ad infinitum.

The padre explained that when the patriarch pushed that shiny red button on the Magic Box, the powerful gods of Saigon would unleash vengeful armies through the air, and the dreaded Vietcong would be blasted by bombs from airplanes and napalmed from helicopters. And the village would be liberated and pacified. He also told them that every village that had been selected by the Father of His Country in Saigon to receive the Magic Box would forever thereafter be furnished food, medicine, and special care.

The Rhade would receive these “benefits” whether they wanted them or not. For they knew only too well that the villages that had plenty of food and medicine and that were the special elect of Saigon were always the first targets for the starving bandits. They knew enough to know that they would live in fear of the Magic Box and its munificence.

Ever since the day when the padre had returned with the American, the village had received special medicine and food relief. The “Extended Arms for Brotherhood” program of the new president in Saigon was caring for these tribesmen. Shortly after the first time this extra food had been delivered, the village had been visited by some young men from the camps in the woods. They sat with the patriarch all day and quietly but firmly explained that they came from a refugee camp that was hidden in the hills and that was caring for thousands of homeless natives from the south (Cochin China) who had been driven from their homes by the Diem-backed police and hordes of northern (Tonkinese) invaders.

These people had fled from their wasted homes. They had been enemies in every new region they came to, and now, terrorized and starving, sick and dying, they had had to turn to that last resort of mankind, banditry and pillage. These countless refugees, in their own homeland, had fled the careless deprivations and brutal massacres of the benevolent forces of Saigon. They wished to be peaceful, but they desperately needed food and medicine. They demanded that the village share some of its plentiful goods with them. This arrangement, although unappealing to the village, was accepted, and for a while it kept a fragile peace between the two worlds. However, the refugee numbers swelled, and their demands became greater and greater.

It wasn’t long before the Saigon political observer and the padre reported to the American that they suspected that the patriarch was collaborating with the “enemy.” This sharing of their meager goods with the refugees was called “the payment of tribute” by the Vietnamese. The refugees had become the “enemy,” and the Americans’ word for “enemy” was Vietcong.

The political leader had explained to the patriarch that collaboration with the Vietcong meant death for him and removal of the village people to a Citizens’ Retraining Camp or a “Strategic Hamlet,” as the Americans liked to call it. No matter what their benefactors chose to call these displacement centers, they were prisons to the natives.

The more or less peaceful demands of the refugees became adamant orders as their needs increased. What had begun as a reluctant sharing of food became submission to force and banditry. The ranks of the refugees swelled as the exodus from such areas as the no-man’s-land of the once-prosperous and fertile Mekong Delta area of the Camau Peninsula turned into a vast and relentless human wave.

A situation not unlike that of the Native American migrations westward took place. Each tribe, displaced from its ancestral homeland by the white man, became marauders and attackers in the territory of the next Indian nation. Thus it was that tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of once-peaceful, docile, and reasonably well-to-do rice farmers became the feared, terrorized bandits called the Vietcong.

Several nights later, the village was raided. The dogs barked, chickens and pigs ran about, the food huts were ransacked and burned, and several young men of the village were kidnapped. For the first time since the installation of the radio, the old man crept out of his hut and stood before the Magic Box. In the deep darkness of the forest night, the red glow of the buzzer filled the sky with its talismanic power. The chieftain had often wondered what would really happen if he pushed that red button. Even though the padre had told him of the wonders that would take place when he did push the warning device, he had never been able to fully comprehend it all.

The political observer had warned the patriarch of the punishment he would suffer if he turned in a false alarm. At times the red-eyed Pandora’s box proved too much for the villagers, and they dared the patriarch to push the button. He had steadfastly resisted these temptations. But now, in the heat of a raid by the starvation-crazed refugees, he stood before the box, knowing that he would be calling down the might of the Village Self-Defense Forces and that he would bring down the full wrath of the dread People’s Arms of Brotherhood1 upon his village.

Yet if he did not push that button, he and his people would suffer the fate of collaborators. He had no real choice. It was his turn, and that of his village, to become part of this war that was being made in Saigon with the expert advice of the American men of goodwill.

He called upon the wisdom of his ancestors. Banditry, pillage, and rape were not unknown in Asia. Whenever starvation, pestilence, and war had ravaged the land, the thin veil of civilization had been torn away, and the destitute had turned to banditry as the last stage of community life before surrendering to the relentless death of the ravaged.

Hunger is the general of these armies. Hunger provides a terrible motivation of its own. It needs no ideological boost from Moscow or Peking. The blind, ignorant actions of General Hunger are all it takes to create a war. In a lawless, unorganized society, this was the natural and inevitable reaction. This is especially true in a country where the natives eat by nibbling most of the day. They do not sit down to a hearty three meals a day. Tropical peoples eat a bite at a time, and as a result their stomachs are small, and they have very little fat. For these people, starvation sets in much faster than it does for the people to the north, who are fatter and who eat at longer and more regular intervals. Thus, the time between deprivation of food and the driving necessity to eat is much shorter, and such people strike out hard for food as soon as their supply is wiped out. This explains why napalm, bombings, and defoliation tactics created more instead of less war and created it in a short time. The victims were deprived of food and had to fight for it, without delay. The people who had raided the village were of this hungry, refugee populace.

As the patriarch sought the wisdom of his ancestors, he found nothing to explain this new terror, that is, the unknown “Vietcong.” Bandits and refugees he understood. But the ideological dilemma posed by his new friends, the American and the Saigon political activist, made him, the patriarch, their enemy if he rationalized and sympathized with the refugees, even under duress. This left him no alternative.

He knew that many other elders had resisted the refugees and had been slain by them out of the necessity for food. He knew that others who had sympathized with the refugees had been brutally taken to retraining camps (prisons) by the political observers and had suffered cruelly there. He knew that there was no hope. No alternative. The food, the medicine, and “Operation Brotherhood” from Saigon had sealed the fate of the villagers and doomed them to the dread final tactic called “Pacification.” He pushed the glowing red button. The Magic Box did the rest.

A sleep-dulled South Vietnamese Special Forces elite trooper saw the flickering warning light on the situation map. Grid Code 1052 was hostile! Grid Code 1052: The village of Thuc Dho in Rhade territory was under attack. There was no two-way capability with the village radio equipment, no way to discuss the attack or to evaluate the warning from the village chieftain. Any signal was hostile in the Village Defense Network, and “hostile” meant “retaliate.” The system could say only that there was an attack and automatically identify the location. It could not say that the “attack” was nothing more than a small raid by a few starving natives intent on stealing food.

The Viet trooper took one look at the American Green Beret soldier of the Special Forces “A” Team who was sleeping in a native hammock nearby. He knew that after two minutes the flickering red light would cease automatically. On so many other occasions when the American had been out in the village drinking beer with the other “A” Team members and with the young girls of the “White Dove Resistance Sisters,” he had let other warning lights flicker out without sounding the alert. He realized that the Pandora’s box problem caused many red-light alerts. He knew, too, that some elders, eager to flaunt their powers before the villagers, would push the button to bring out the helicopter patrols.

He understood that the desperate villagers, half-crazed by starvation and by bandit raids, were often “spooked” into pushing that glaring red eye on the Magic Box. And he knew that even when attacks were real, the Magic Box did not save the villagers. It simply brought on more retaliation, the dreaded wrath of a war of recounter in which the aggressor creates his own enemy. By the time the forces got there, the village would have been burned to the ground. The people would have been killed or be hiding in the forest, so that when the “avengers” arrived the chances were better than even that the villagers would be miscast as the enemy anyhow.

They appeared to be “enemy” on both sides, and the general rule was to shoot at anyone who ran, regardless of who that person might be. From such a “rescue” the villagers had but one alternative, and that was to flee with the refugees and become “Vietcong,” or “enemy” in their own homeland.

The trooper wrestled with these thoughts. Just then the American rolled over in the hammock and his rifle, which had been leaning against it, fell to the floor. He leaped to his feet. The Vietnamese trooper snapped into action and pointed to the glowing red alert signal, the warning from the Magic Box in Grid Code 1052, the Rhade village of Thuc Dho.

The Green Beret veteran of Fort Bragg’s stern indoctrination grabbed the single-sideband radio mike and called Division Alert. In minutes, sirens sounded and engines began to roar. Truckloads of South Vietnamese Special Forces—the elite civilian, CIA-trained troops of Ngo Dinh Nhu—roared off into the early-morning quiet of Ahn Lac Air Base.

Helicopter maintenance crews readied the ungainly craft. Twenty pilots dashed to the briefing room. Twenty crews were being assembled. This one was going to be all-out; it was the first attack reported from the Rhade zone.

Intelligence had predicted a vast enemy buildup in the area, including a reportedly heavy preparatory movement on the trails of Laos. The dread border of Cambodia was seen to be a beehive of activity. Everything pointed to a massive National Liberation Front/ North Vietnamese masterstroke against a new attack zone.2 The enemy must be stopped now with a resolute counterattack.

As the semitropical dawn burst in all its pink brilliance over Ahn Lac, twenty helicopters stirred up a hurricane of dust as they prepared for the convoy flight to Thuc Dho. Six of the choppers were gun carriers; the remaining fourteen carried 140 armed troops. As the briefing ended, the pilots were told that the refueling stop would be at Thien Dho because the loaded helicopters could not fly a greater than one-hundred-mile radius mission without refueling. The entire flight would be convoyed. This meant that cruising speed would be fifty-five knots for the cargo craft to assure the ability to autorotate safely to the ground in the event of engine failure at the planned “nap-of-the-earth” flight level. In convoy, with formation and linkup, this would mean an average out-and-back ground speed of twenty-five to thirty knots. Therefore, the returning choppers would RON (Remain Overnight) at Thien Dho after hitting the target.

The 280-mile round trip with midpoint touchdown at Thuc Dho and out-and-back refueling would take two days. This meant twenty choppers to take 140 men 140 miles in two days. Cheap for the price of avenging the attack on Thuc Dho? Hardly!

The Village Self-Defense Network helicopter force was an incredible organization. Each helicopter could carry ten armed men one hundred miles in one day. With a one-hundred-mile radius for the helicopter and a convoy speed of twenty-five knots, it would be four hours each way, for a total of eight hours in the air.

Since army/civilian helicopter maintenance was operating at a commendable 49 percent in-commission rate, it took no fewer than forty choppers to assure the availability of twenty for the Thuc Dho mission. The forty helicopters were supported by two aviation companies of about two hundred men each, a total of four hundred men.

These companies were in turn supported by a supply squadron and a maintenance squadron of two hundred men each. And all of these squadrons were supported by housekeeping units, transportation units, base-defense units, fuel-storage units, and fuel-delivery units. Never before in the history of warfare had so much been expended to accomplish so little as was being demonstrated by sending 140 fighting men in response to the flashing red light of the Magic Box of Station #1052.

While the chopper convoy was en route to Thuc Dho, advance-scout aircraft were dispatched to reconnoiter the area for a landing zone. This is no small task in this kind of country. The rotor blades of each Huey are fifty-five feet long. A helicopter must touch down on level ground, since any unequal or nonlevel touchdown, one in which a comer of the landing gear touches first, creates a destructive situation as a result of the dislocation of the center of force around the vertical axis of the craft.

The Huey is built especially strong to resist any uneven landing force, but fully loaded, with the rotors whirling at full power, the strain can be dangerous. Spotter aircraft must find an area large enough to accommodate several Hueys at a time, to assure the protection of massed firepower in the event of an ambush and to reduce costly fuel consumption.

By the time the choppers had refueled at Thien Dho and were back in the air, scout aircraft were able to report a landing site at an abandoned farm a half mile from Thuc Dho. It was estimated that three choppers could touch down at one time, in trail. It was also reported that although smoke was still rising from the village, there had been no enemy action against the spotter aircraft and no enemy sighted. Two troop choppers and one armed Huey had maintenance troubles and were forced to remain at Thien Dho. The remaining twelve troop-carrier choppers skimmed the earth at about fifty-five knots as the five gunships weaved across the course to Thuc Dho at full speed.

In the direct sunlight of early afternoon, the airborne force arrived at Thuc Dho. The spotter aircraft fired smoke flares to mark the landing zone. The gunships hovered over the area, ready to suppress any movement below with direct machine-gun fire. Meanwhile, the convoy began to form a circle around the zone as the first three choppers settled into the field to disembark thirty men.

Then, quickly, the choppers leaped upward, whirling dust and straw into the air, just before the next three Hueys landed with the next wave of troopers. These pilots were experienced and wasted no time. Crewmen saw to it that the silent South Vietnamese Special Forces elite troops jumped out immediately. The crewmen, too, were experienced and recalled stories of earlier days when untrained troops had to be ordered out at the point of a gun and a few well-placed kicks. In the commotion and difficulty of this maneuver, the second and third choppers of the third wave had touched blades as they neared touchdown. Both machines had disintegrated.

As the last wave settled on the field, two circling gunships opened fire into the high grass near the forest. This was the opening action. The troopers on the ground flattened out and fired rapidly and blindly. The spotter aircraft lobbed flares to mark the hostile target. The circling, unarmed Hueys began to back away. At that instant, two of them dropped back to the ground. Old hands recognized the pattern!

When the old H-19s were being used over the rice fields of the Camau Peninsula, the natives had learned that a crude bow held by the feet of a man lying on his back in the grass could be most effective against low-flying choppers. The arrow was a heavy stick that trailed wire, rope, or even a vine. Since the rotor is the most vulnerable part of the helicopter, this crude weapon, fired to “hang” this hazard in the air, brought down many a chopper. First reports indicated engine or rotor failure, since there was no gunfire or other hostile action observed.

The remaining gunships were nearly out of ammunition, and all the choppers were low on fuel, so the convoy, now down to thirteen Hueys, left the surveillance to the spotters and sped back to the refueling base.

At Thuc Dho, 120 men, plus a few injured Huey crewmen, were pinned down in the high grass. Gunfire from the ambush site was sporadic. Sixteen of the 120 were of a Green Beret “A” Team. The radio man was in contact with the spotter aircraft, which directed them to the village. Here in the smoldering ruin of grass huts there was not a sign of life. Even the half-starved dogs were gone. With only a few hours of daylight left, the “A” Team lieutenant placed his troops into defensive positions for the night. Thuc Dho had been regained. The Magic Box had proved its value.

In the early-morning hours when the first word about Thuc Dho had been relayed to the Division Combat Center, it was also relayed to USMACV (U.S. Military Assistance Command—Vietnam) Headquarters in Saigon.

Here all Village Self-Defense Forces information was collated into a report that was sent directly to the Pentagon. With the twelve-hour time differential, the Pentagon and the intelligence community were able to compile all data relayed from Southeast Asia into an early-morning briefing for the President and his immediate staff.

This material from intelligence sources, Combat Center input, U-2 and satellite reports, a master weather report, and certain domestic information were put together at the prebrief in the Command Center in the Joint Chiefs of Staff area at the Pentagon.

Thus the day begins for official Washington. The briefing of yesterday’s events sets up today’s work and tomorrow’s operations. Intelligence input replaces diplomacy and advance planning as the source of “things to do.”

However, on this special day in early December 1960, there happened to be some new faces at the prebrief. They were the secretary of defense designate and certain of his transition staff. The alarm from Thuc Dho was mentioned quite routinely by an army officer at the early-morning prebrief. The secretary of defense designate, absorbing the first flavor of Vietnam, requested full elaboration on this action at the briefing the following day. This special highest-level interest was duly noted by all service chiefs and their attending staff members. During the day a flood of messages filled the air to and from Saigon, placing top priority on the action at Thuc Dho.

The army arranged for a full supply and manpower buildup for the area. The air force announced heavy surveillance and bombing of all supply lines to Thuc Dho through Laos and the northern routes. Thuc Dho appeared in all news releases. Helicopter reinforcement and supply became a maximum effort.

Meanwhile, Green Beret “A” Team troops established their base, set out the area perimeter, and sent South Vietnamese Special Forces scouting teams to establish contact with the “enemy.” The efforts of these elite troops were ineffectual. The “enemy” had slipped away. A few elderly villagers, along with young children, were found cowering in holes and huddled in the forests.

When interrogated concerning the attack and the whereabouts of the village patriarch and the able-bodied men, the captives stared in ignorance. Most of all, they were confused when asked about the “enemy.” They kept referring to the “Viet Kha”—the Vietnamese term for “beggars”: the refugees—but the overzealous interpreter translated this to mean the Vietcong. This confirmed for the eager lieutenant that he had stumbled upon a major Vietcong encampment.

The lieutenant radioed along this valuable information, plus the routine body count, enriched to include those killed by bombardment and napalm. At this early stage of the operation, confirmation of any casualty figures was not required. The lieutenant estimated the enemy strength as a reinforced battalion or perhaps a regiment. All the dead were Vietcong. They had to be.

It was from such on-the-spot information that the briefing material was prepared by Saigon to be sent to Washington. Sensing the military’s concern with this action as a result of the secretary designate’s request, the intelligence community stepped up its own input.

Although it was no secret, it was not generally known that Ngo Dinh Nhu’s elite Special Forces were under the absolute control of the CIA. Since they were, it was in the interest of the intelligence community to assure that the role of these elite troops be at least the equivalent of the U.S. Army’s. Saigon’s CIA headquarters outdid itself building up all information available about Thuc Dho. The U.S. Army Special Forces “A” Team, all Fort Bragg trained, were bona fide army soldiers, but their commander, a rather unorthodox major, was a CIA man on an army cover assignment.

Along with South Vietnamese Special Forces officers and civilians under cover of the South Vietnamese Army, this major was among the first to reach Thuc Dho in the early wave of more helicopters on the second day.

The Pentagon prebrief was prepared, as usual, using data gathered from sources all over the world. Information on space, from the Congo, from India (where border skirmishes presaged later troubles)—all such data except that on Cuba—was kept to a minimum. The key item on the agenda was Thuc Dho. Extra chairs were placed in a second row around the polished walnut table behind the military chiefs for the CIA and Department of State guests in the Command Center.

By eight-ten the room was almost full. Everyone there had a clearance that surpassed “top secret”; all were admitted on a “need to know” basis. Three of the Joint Chiefs were there. The usual Office of the Secretary of Defense contingent was there. Everything pointed to a full account of the action at Thuc Dho. It should be recalled that as of that moment in December 1960, only one month after the election of John F Kennedy, the troubles in Vietnam were much less serious than they would become later, and all this attention was something special at the time.

For most of those present, part of this great drama was impressing and winning over the new defense secretary and, through him, capturing the eye of the new administration. The secretary designate, Robert S. McNamara, was particularly interested in the “reported” Vietcong battalion or regiment. If, as reported by the captive villagers, the battalion had fled into the woods, and if, as reported by the Green Beret (CIA) major, the battalion was now surrounded in the woods by the elite South Vietnamese Special Forces troops, then why wasn’t the Vietcong battalion being flushed out, then annihilated or captured?

Discussion of this question was limited somewhat by the fact that the army briefing officer had been ordered to stick to his notes. Then a general, in the second row behind his army chief of staff, rose to report that he had a message, just in from Saigon, saying that the elusive Vietcong battalion had slipped through the South Vietnamese cordon and that, according to army spotter-plane forward observers, there was no one in the woods. As he completed this report, he glanced at the CIA representatives in the audience.

The secretary designate grasped the significance of what had been said and fired another question at the briefing officer and at the room in general. “If we can create the capability to go to the aid of a beleaguered village, as we have done at Thuc Dho, but then having done this we find the village vacant and the enemy fled, how can we ever expect to win the war? We must destroy the enemy.”

An acorn had been planted, and a vast oak grew. Immediately one of the CIA men half-raised a hand, slid his feet out from under his chair, and prepared to rise. He was not the usual prebrief attendee; he was the chief of the supersecret Far East branch himself, an old Asia hand.

“Sir,” he said, “that is a most searching question. It gets to the root of our problem. We have been trying to control a Communist-inspired war of national liberation in South Vietnam that has spread out of control throughout the land. Diem’s forces are much too green. They do not like war, even for their own homeland. And we who have put so much effort into Laos, Thailand, and South Vietnam feel that the advisory role of the U.S. military forces does not go far enough. The Strategic Hamlets and the Village Self-Defense Forces are not enough.

“You have seen the example of Thuc Dho. Fortunately, the village had been prepared by one of our agents and they had a transmitter that linked them to the Village Self-Defense Network. As a result we were able to strike back at once. But this is too little. No network is any good if it is full of holes. We must organize every hamlet, every village, every tribe. Then this Communist-supported enemy can be driven from this peaceful country and these little people can be left to choose their own destiny in peace.”

The secretary designate bought it.

By January 1961, an “Advanced Counterinsurgency Course,” designed specifically to train thousands of Green Berets for Vietnam, had been hastily lifted from the Civil Affairs and Military Government School at Fort Gordon, Georgia, and put at Fort Bragg. One of the last official acts of the outgoing deputy secretary of defense, James Douglas, was to visit Fort Bragg to bless this new school.

But the corner had been turned. Quietly and efficiently, the orders went out. One of the key items was the radio transmitter. The one at Thuc Dho had been a test unit. Within weeks a special order for thousands of these transmitters had been placed with the manufacturer and given the highest priority. Shortly after the inauguration of President John F Kennedy, these transmitters were being bolted to posts in village after village to augment and facilitate the Strategic Hamlet campaign.

Not too many months later, the new secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, made his first visit to South Vietnam. Thuc Dho was now a model. By the time the secretary saw it, the villagers, the South Vietnamese Special Forces elite troops, and the American Green Berets had worn paths through the area rehearsing and reenacting the famous attack for visiting dignitaries.

The once-lush hills had been dug up by bombs, seared by napalm, defoliated by chemical genocide. But the center of interest was always the black plastic box with the red eye, the famous Magic Box number 1052, the trigger of the expanded war in Vietnam.



NOTE: There were many such villages as described in this story. Thuc Dho is a name created to represent a typical one. The story was compiled from the author’s personal trips to Vietnam and liaison with the CIA between 1955 and 1964.