Eastertide Offensive Lessons for the Gulf War

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People, mainly those who never fought there, have questioned the value of our combat experience in Vietnam. But for Lieutenant General Walter E. Boomer, commander of the corps-level I Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF) in the Gulf War, and Brigadier General John Admire, commander of the 3rd Marine Regiment in the Gulf, their combat experiences in Vietnam, and especially their experiences as advisers to the Republic of Vietnam Marine Corps (VNMC), had direct battlefield payoffs.

In March 1972, then-Major Boomer was serving as an adviser to a VNMC battalion in Quang Tri province. As he relates: ‘the battalion was at a mountaintop outpost called Fire Support Base Sarge. It was the farthest western outpost, overlooking Route 9 near the Cam Lo River. We were seeing North Vietnamese Army (NVA) units moving into our area from Laos. They were rolling in large truck convoys and becoming pretty blatant.

Heavy monsoon rains prevented helicopters from flying supplies to us. We were desperately low on food. So Major De, the South Vietnamese commander, split our battalion in two. I stayed at Fire Base Sarge with two infantry companies, a mortar platoon and the battalion commander’s headquarters. Captain Ray Smith went with the other half of the battalion about 1,000 meters north on Nui Ba Ho mountain.

General Boomer continues: On March 30, the Thursday before Easter, three North Vietnamese divisions attacked across the DMZ into Quang Tri province. Sarge and Nui Ba Ho were hit with a devastating artillery and rocket barrage. Infantry units of the NVA 308th Division moved into assault positions. We were surrounded. Storm clouds prevented Air Force gunships from providing us with fire support because the North Vietnamese were too close to our own position. Around 75 percent of our north perimeter defenses were pulverized by the relentless incoming explosions. They just killed us with artillery and rocket fire, then followed it with waves of ground forces.

After 24 hours, I received a radio message from Captain Smith that Nui Ba Ho was being overrun. My troops bravely kept fighting, but my counterpart Major De and I knew that we could not hold Sarge much longer. After midnight, with the NVA swarming through our defenses, Major De made the decision for whoever was still alive to escape from Sarge.

It became a desperate matter of pure survival. Close to half of our battalion was killed or wounded. Using the cover of smoke and darkness, we had to escape and evade in the jungle down the side of the mountain. It was not an organized ‘fighting’ retreat. We had a lot of walking wounded with us. We struggled through the dense jungle undergrowth down the jagged slope.

Everywhere we turned there were North Vietnamese units hunting for us. They were above us and below us. After two days of running, on Easter Sunday, at around 9 o’clock in the morning, we were in 6-foot-high elephant grass–almost out of the jungle. The NVA discovered us. We were surrounded and getting hit pretty hard. At that point, my troops broke and ran. I tried to stop them from running and turned around. In fact, I was yelling and shooting over their heads. The damn NVA heard me. I distinctly heard a North Vietnamese exclaim, ‘Co van! Co van!‘ [American adviser]. I said, ‘Crap! It’s time to get out of here.’

We finally regrouped and fell back to the Cua Viet River and dug in for a last stand. The Eastertide Offensive was a product of the North Vietnamese having changed to commanders who were well schooled in Soviet conventional tactics. That included saturation artillery fire and armor assaults. My unit faced sporadic tank attacks, from Soviet- or Chinese-built T-54 and T-55 models. We used a combination of weapons to stop one column of 15 to 20 tanks. We used field artillery fire very effectively. Other units stopped tanks at short range with LAWs [shoulder-fired, light anti-tank weapons]. We came away from that experience with the knowledge that once you overcome your initial fear, you certainly can fight tanks effectively.

Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts

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