Tet Offensive and Hue

[Misterfixit]

Hue and the Tet Offensive of 1968:

Our Hue area Military Intelligence detachment consisted of the 1st Battalion, 525th Military Intelligence Group, CI and bi-lateral human intelligence elements. The main location was in a 3-story walled villa in Hue. I spent the day of January 29th changing safe combinations, doing a classified document inventory and repairing some of the Technical Surveillance equipment. I flew out that afternoon on an Air America Huey flight back to Danang. At about 0230 on 30 January 1968, the Tet Offensive began. The following is a summary of events collected from a variety of sources, including POW debriefings, personal interviews and annecdotal information from military personnel such as myself who were direct participants.

The personnel in the villa held out during the attack, but rapidly went through all of their ammunition. They were armed with the ubiquitious "Special Agent Special" a Smith and Wesson 2" barrel .38 revolver, some M-14 rifles, several Swedish K sub-machine guns, and grenades. During the small arms exchange, Special Agent (SGT E-5) (MOS 97B40) Ron Ray, a CI Agent, was wounded by rifle fire from the NVA; he died several hours later. It was during that time that the radio equipment was disabled; Special Agent (MAJ O-4) Ted Gostas, the Field Office Commander, had attempted to warn the USMC G-2 elements that there was a strong indication of a city-wide invasion, but was unable to raise the USMC or the USA MACV compounds. The detachment house was located in the middle of a residential area of Hue and from the roof, Gostas and the others could see fighting going on all around them. The detachment's short-range communications equipment consisted of an AN/ PRC-25 VHF radio with a base station adapter and a roof-mounted "two-niner two" antenna. For long range communications, the villa had an AN/FRC-77 series Collins KWM-2A single-sideband high frequency radio system equipped with a wire dipole antenna strung between the building and some nearby trees. During the initial attack, the antennas were shot away and thus useless.

After several more exchanges of small arms fire, the NVA main element played a waiting game, withdrawing and then returning. They left a small element, perhaps 4 or 5 NVA soldiers to shoot at the building occasionally. On 3 February 1968, the main NVA element attempted to enter the building and fired a B-40 rocket towards the upper floor. The rocket explosion killed Special Agent (CPL E-4) Barry Wolk and knocked Special Agent Gostas unconscious. Special Agent (SFC E7) Donald Rander, the detachment's second in command, together with Special Agents Robert Hayhurst (SGT E-5) and Edward Dierling (CPL E-4) and Human Intelligence Case Officer (SSG E-6) (MOS 97C40) "Barry Savage", swiftly returned fire using their remaining Swedish K 9mm ammunition and M-14 7.62 ball ammunition. When NVA soldiers attempted to gain access to the building's central staircase, Rander and "Savage" laid down supressing fire while Hayhurst threw fragmentation hand grenades down the stairwell. When the fragmentation grenades were expended, Dierling threw the only other grenade in the field office, a thermite document destroyer. It was during this exchange of fire that "Savage" was wounded by enemy fire.

At some point, the NVA may have thought they were up against a larger force soldiers inside the building and again they withdrew momentarily. However, within a few minutes they returned and stormed the building. MAJ Gostas was still only partially conscious due to his serious head wound and SFC Rander had assumed command of the detachment at MAJ Gostas' request. The NVA quickly overwhelmed the personnel and made them captive. After disarming and binding their hands, the POW's were led out of the area, joining up with a larger group of civilian prisoners. At this point it is probable that the NVA knew that they were holding the key operating elements of Army Intelligence in Hue. Treatment of the POWs at that time appeared to be correct, without maltreatment. The NVA team leader inspected Savage and noted that he was wounded. Case Officer "Savage", who spoke some Vietnamese, asked the NVA to treat them humanely and to leave him behind. The NVA allowed the US personnel to make sure "Savage's" wound was treated with a bandage and then left him lying on a couch with a canteen of water.

Gostas, Rander, Hayhurst and Dierling were escorted with other prisoners on a northward journey; on 23 February 1968, while pausing for food and water, S/A's Hayhurst and Dierling spotted what appeared to be an opportunity for escape. They were being guarded by either two or three NVA soldiers and the group with whom they were captive numbered about 23 to 25 non-Vietnamese civilian men and women. When the two indicated to SFC Rander that they wanted to make a break, Rander informed them that Major Gostas was not able to make the trip due to his extensive head injuries and told Hayhurst and Dierling to move out and get help.

After wading through a nearby stream, Hayhurst and Dierling encountered a USMC patrol. They informed the patrol leader about the group of captives and offered to lead the patrol back to the POW's rest site. Several radio transmissions were made, but permission to return and recover the POW's was refused personally by the G-2, III-MAF ; no record of this refusal is known to exist in the G2 radio log, thus this is only annecdotal information and cannot be verified. Rumors of the "feud" between the G-2 III-MAF and the commander of the I Corps Army Intelligence elements, while true, could not possibly have any bearing upon the decision to not recover captives. By this time, almost three weeks after the offensive, it was known that groups of US and Foreign military and civilian personnel had been captured, including high-level CIA and military intelligence personnel. Practicality during combat operations sometimes overrides compassion and the author opines that the G2 probably knew that the group of POW's had been moved immediately after the guards discovered their charges missing and that a rescue unit consisting of a small recon patrol might also end up killed or prisoners if they attempted to return to the area. Hayhurst and Dierling were flown first to Danang and thence to Saigon for debriefing. Of the group remaining, they continued on to North Vietnam and captivity where they were either killed, died or survived until Operation Homecoming.

The bodies of Ray and Wolk were recovered by an investigation team sent up from Danang on 21 February 1968. The investigation team found that the field office security containers had been severely damaged by attempts to open them, but the classified documents within were still secure. The documents inside the containers included the true name identity lists of all US intelligence assets in the I Corps area; their loss would have been extremely serious. The containers were eventually lifted out of the MACV compound underneath a helicopter and dropped into the ocean about 30 miles off the coast of Hue in about 5,000 feet of water. Personal effects and other items were recovered and returned to the Danang HQ. After Hayhurst and Dierling were debriefed, it was discovered that the NVA had come into possession of their Army Intelligence Badge and Credentials and various pieces of official South Vietnamese intelligence agent identification, along with several sets of cover identity documents. Information received by a DIA CI damage assessment team conducting an entirely unrelated investigation during the mid-1980's discovered that the Badges and Credentials had made their way to Moscow and were in the possession of Soviet Army Intelligence (GRU), a potentially valuable resource for their bogus documentation people. As an interesting "deja vu moment" the principal investigator of the DIA incident in 1987 had participated in the initial inventory and inspection of the Hue field office after the Tet Offensive and thus knew the progeny of the sensitive documents.

When the investigation team returned to Hue, part of the job was to clean out the Hue Field Office and assist the MACV area commander with counterintelligence damage assessments and inspection of captured material, enemy bodies and bodies of US and foreign military and civilians who were victims of possible war crimes. It was during that trip that they examined several hundred bodies of Vietnamese and foreigners. In many cases the people had suffered close-range gunshot wounds; usually to the back of the head or to the chest region. Since the unburied corpses were in an advanced state of decay and insect infested, it was difficult to establish identity. There was extensive rotting and fluid draining from the decomposition process. Generally, when the corpses were turned, large pieces of the body flaked off or stuck to the ground. Clothing assisted in keeping the bodies in a semblance of human shape. The children's bodies had decomposed more quickly, especially the babies, since they were either nude or wearing only a diaper. It was estimated at the time that of the 200 to 350 corpses looked at, about 100 had had their hands tied behind them, usually with a pieces of woven bamboo fiber. The American civilians who had been captured while rousted from their homes, had been shot by a high velocity bullet to the head; in some cases their family members including children had been hacked with what probably were machetes. The children appeared to have been hacked or shot without binding, possibly because they were held by their mothers during the actual moment of killing. It is unknown if the family members were killed before or after the American civilians. The US military member personnel bodies appeared to have been killed from either gunshots or missile fragments; there were no US military who appeared to have been killed execution-style, which indicates a pre-planned operation to capture military personnel rather than shoot them out of hand. Many of the civilians who were missing were members of the intelligence community, another factor which suggests a careful plan by the NVA to recover valuable POW's for future interrogation or exploitation. The family members were all identified after the fact as Vietnamese or other oriental origin, married to or living with their American or other occidental husbands. The American and other occidentals worked for a wide variety of support organizations including engineering firms, aid organizations, medical and health activities, religious and voluntary groups. None of them were active participants in the war, but according to the North were "active combatants by complicity".

In the case of the Hue Field Office, it advertised its location by the fact that Americans came and went frequently, there were antennas on the roof, there were M151 jeeps in the yard, and most of the people coming and going were in civilian clothes. Although the obstensible cover was 'The US Army Central Registry Detachment", a detachment which carried out administrative record keeping, the detachment was known to have intelligence-related functions. Since these were the days before OPSEC (Operational Security) was mandated, the whole idea of a cover name military organization was ludicrous.

Major Gostas and SFC Rander were returned to the USA during Operation Homecoming; they spent 5 years being tortured at the Hanoi Hilton prison camp. Major Gostas was medically retired from the US Army: his head injury was exacerbated by frequent beating with a wooden cudgel in the hands of his North Vietnamese interrogators; SFC Rander, also maltreated, returned to active duty and retired as a Chief Warrant Officer Four (CW4). SGT's "Savage", Hayhurst and Dierling served out the remainder of their military obligation and returned to civilian life.

SSG "Savage" is referred to in this narrative by his cover name.

There are a few web sites dedicated to the Hue City murders, but then, as now, historical revisionists would have the public believe that the only "war crimes and attrocities" were committed by the Americans.

I welcome comments from anyone having personal knowledge which would add to or provide correction to the information I have posted here.

Here are some WWW links:

http://www.saigon.com/regions/hue

http://www.vietquoc.com/0002vq.htm

http://www.history.navy.mil/wars/tetintel.htm

http://www.britains-smallwars.com/Vietnam/tet.htm

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query