What Really Happened at Cam Ne

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In the days that followed, newspapers, television networks and wire services ran additional reports on the impact of Marine operations on South Vietnamese civilians in the Da Nang TAOR. In a subsequent report, Safer claimed: "These [civilians] are the people to whom the war is a curse. Intimidation and atrocity by the VC, and now to them, equal brutality by the government and its allies." Safer interviewed Marines involved in the operation at Cam Ne. "You treat everyone like an enemy until he’s proven innocent," one claimed. "That’s the only way you can do it….Yesterday we were in that village of Cam Nanh [sic], we burned all the houses, I guess."

Asked if this burning was necessary, the Marine replied that it was, and that his company had done a good job. He said his was the only Marine company that was in Cam Ne that hadn’t had Marines killed, that they showed the civilians the Marines were done playing with them, and that the Marines had proved their point. Another Marine was quoted as saying that he had no remorse for the civilians because they were the enemy, that one couldn’t do his job and also have pity for the people.

Pulitzer Prize–winning author and journalist David Halberstam claims the Marines injured at Cam Ne had been wounded by friendly fire, not enemy fire. "All three wounded in the initial operation," he said, "received wounds in the back caused by their own men. When the Marines occupied the village they reacted in anger and tore the place apart." The Americans threw grenades and used flamethrowers in holes and tunnels where Vietnamese civilians were sheltering. Some were burned to death. At one point, cameraman Ha Thuc Can, the only one present who could speak both Vietnamese and English, saw Marines about to fire a flamethrower into a hole and began arguing with the infantrymen, pointing out there were women and children in the hiding place. The cameraman talked to the civilians, urging them to come out. Finally about a dozen people emerged. When Safer asked a Marine officer why no one in his group could speak Vietnamese, the lieutenant answered that he did not need anyone who could speak Vietnamese. Later, Pentagon official Arthur Sylvester tried to have Can fired, objecting to the use of a South Vietnamese cameraman by CBS.

The Marines’ Account
The men of Company D, 1st Battalion, 9th Marines, which conducted the mission at Cam Ne, gave a somewhat different account. Their goal was to clear the Cam Ne village complex. U.S. intelligence reported that Viet Cong local and main force troops were present in company strength. The attack began at 1000 hours on August 3, and the attacking force arrived in amphibious tractors (amtracs or LVTs). Three of the LVTs quickly became stuck in the mud. After dismounting from the armored tractors, the Marines took small-arms fire from a tree line to the southeast. Three platoons advanced across open rice paddies along a 1,000-foot front. One Marine was wounded during that stage of the attack. As the Marines pushed forward, the VC withdrew into the hamlets of Cam Ne.

According to the commanding officer of the units involved, Cam Ne had been fortified by the Viet Cong into something not unlike what the Marines had encountered in World War II. Caves, tunnels, fortified trench lines, spider holes and punji stakes were in evidence. Nearly impenetrable hedgerows ran around the perimeter of the village and between village structures. LVTs were used to breach and crush the hedgerows, setting off booby traps as they pushed into the village. The civilian population was uncooperative. Marines received heavy and concentrated small-arms fire, including from automatic weapons and probably one machine gun, from VC hiding in the village.

The Marines returned fire with small arms and 3.5-inch rockets. The impact of one of those rockets caused secondary explosions in the tree line from which fire was being received, indicating the presence of booby traps. That secondary explosion caused a further detonation of explosives from booby traps and mines located in hedgerows around the village. According to the commander’s report, heavy small-arms fire continued throughout the period the Marines were in the village (1000 until 1500). Reportedly most of the structures were burned by rocket fire directed toward hostile fire from the huts. Others were destroyed by flamethrower or grenade action used to neutralize VC positions.

One platoon leader, 2nd Lt. Ray G. Snyder, claimed Cam Ne was an "extensively entrenched and fortified hamlet." The battalion commander noted that "in many instances burning was the only way to ensure that the house would not become an active military installation after the troops had moved on past it." By midafternoon Company D had uncovered 267 punji stake traps and pits, six Malayan whip booby traps, three grenade booby traps, six anti-personnel mines and one multiple booby-trapped hedgerow. Fifty-one huts were demolished along with 38 trenches, tunnels and prepared positions. At that point, during midafternoon, it became evident that the Marines would not be able to complete their mission before darkness. Captain Herman West ordered his men to withdraw back to the Yen River. While leaving the village, the Marines received automatic-weapons and small-arms fire from VC who had resumed positions in a nearby tree line. The Marines called in artillery and mortar fire on the VC positions. The fire stopped and the Marines boarded their amphibious tractors. When they entered the Cau Do River, the Marines again came under enemy fire from the south bank. They returned fire and enemy fire ceased.

The Marines estimated the enemy force at Cam Ne at between 30 and 100 soldiers. When the VC withdrew they carried off their dead and wounded; no bodies were found, although estimated VC casualties were placed at seven. One 10-year-old Vietnamese boy was killed and four villagers were wounded, having been caught in a firefight between the Marines and VC. Total Marine casualties at Cam Ne were three killed in action and 27 wounded.

Marines had been in the Cam Ne village complex on July 12 and had taken casualties. The subsequent operation of August 3 was not envisioned to be a routine patrol. The Marines expected that Cam Ne would be occupied by VC soldiers, that it was mined and booby-trapped, and that the operation would be dangerous. Those factors governed their conduct. The action at Cam Ne included more than CBS showed during its news report of August 5. Marine commanders were resentful that this was not made clear during Safer’s report. "War is a stupid and brutalizing affair," wrote the editors of the Marine Corps Gazette. "This type of war perhaps more than others. But this does not mean that those who are fighting it are either stupid or brutal. It does mean that the whole story should be told. Not just a part of it."

Cam Ne’s Aftermath
The fact that senior American commanders in Vietnam considered Safer’s report to be both distorted and incomplete does not mean the U.S. military was unresponsive to it. The killing of civilians and the intentional destruction of village property was felt to be a serious political mistake in a war in which political success was an essential component of military victory. As one Vietnamese observer explained it, "The 10-year-old children who witnessed their village being burned are the ones who at 15 will take up rifles for the Viet Cong." Morley Safer noted in an interview that subsequent to his report, several Marine officers told him his story kept things from getting worse, that it was the kind of reporting that kept them honest.

On August 9, another Marine unit operating near Cam Ne was taken under fire. Two men were killed and more than 20 were wounded. The Marines decided to secure the area once and for all. On August 18, the Marines returned to Cam Ne in force to complete the search for Viet Cong hideouts–but this time, the villagers were given full warning of the Marines’ arrival. In addition to searching Cam Ne, the Marines built shelters for the Vietnamese civilian homeless. The entire village was cleared with no difficulty; no casualties were taken by the Marines, and no VC were found in Cam Ne. By then, Marines had expended their TAOR from the Tien Sa Peninsula and the South China Sea in the east, to the Yen River west of Cam Ne.

During that period CBS made a continuing and conscious effort to present positive aspects of Marine Corps operations in the area in order to balance the initial Safer reports. General William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, operating under pressure from the JCS in Washington, directed his staff to prepare a new set of guidelines governing the relationship between the U.S. military and civilian noncombatants. Those rules, published in September 1965, explicitly prohibited the indiscriminate destruction of populated areas. Whenever possible, units in the field were to use loudspeakers and aerial leaflet drops to warn villagers of upcoming air and ground assaults. South Vietnamese troops were to fight alongside Americans in order to assist in searching dwellings and communicate to the civilian population that the South Vietnamese government had endorsed the military operation.

Pentagon official Arthur Sylvester assigned various officers the task of drawing up plans to censor American reporters working in South Vietnam. Others were convinced that censorship would be both unwise and counterproductive. Eventually all plans to enforce field press censorship in South Vietnam were ended, and the Saigon press corps was allowed to report the war as it saw best.

Regular contributor Peter Brush, a Marine veteran who participated in the Battle of Khe Sanh, is a librarian at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. For additional reading, see: William M. Hammond’s Public Affairs: The Military and the Media, 1962-1968; and Jack Shulimson and Charles M. Johnson’s U.S. Marines in Vietnam: The Landing and the Buildup 1965.

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Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts, Vietnam War

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