Grab Their Belts to Fight Them

GRAB THEIR BELTS TO FIGHT THEM: The Viet Cong’s Big-Unit War Against the US, 1965-1966

Warren Wilkins

Naval Institute Press, 2011, 283pp

Warren Wilkins has drawn extensively on North Vietnamese and Viet Cong records to write this compelling account of the battles between Viet Cong Main Force units and US forces in 1965-66.  While mention is made of North Vietnamese units, the principal focus is on the Viet Cong.  The battle of Long Tan, however, is mentioned as an example of allied use of firepower.

Many western historians discussing the Vietnam War offer a narrative of indigenous Viet Cong fighters, largely part-time guerrillas wearing black pyjamas and sandals made from old truck tyres, and armed with captured weapons, defeating a clumsy US force armed with the latest military technology.  Wilkins demonstrates the falsity of this narrative.

Using North Vietnamese documents, Wilkins traces the North’s involvement and leadership from the earliest stages of the conflict, with deployment to the south of ethnic South Vietnamese who had ‘regrouped to North Vietnam in the aftermath of the North-South division’.  They were armed with modern Soviet weapons, and followed orders from the Central Office for South Vietnam, which was wholly subordinate to the North.  Northern soldiers reinforced even nominally Viet Cong units.

The major limiting factor for the Viet Cong was US firepower.  This caused a Viet Cong squad leader to tell his men to ‘grab the enemy’s belts to fight them’, to close with US forces to prevent them using the full force of their firepower, to avoid causing friendly casualties.  As Wilkins demonstrates, the real difficulty was in passing through the firepower zone to grab the belts!

Wilkins’ descriptions of battles between Viet Cong and US forces highlight the courage of many Viet Cong soldiers, but demonstrate their command structure’s inflexibility, which restricted Viet Cong options once their forces were committed.  US firepower also led the Viet Cong to develop another tactic that became a hallmark of their activities – digging.  Whether for the construction of field fortifications, bunker systems, or tunnel complexes, the spade became a key Viet Cong tool.

Wilkins uses North Vietnamese documents to show that the communist leadership was not unanimous in supporting the big-unit war.  Many, including some southern leaders, preferred to revert to a guerrilla campaign while the north built up its economy, but they were over-ruled.  The result of this debate, and the failure of the big-unit strategy to cause the US to withdraw, was the 1968 Tet Offensive. This cost North Vietnam and the Viet Cong massive casualties, but gained them a psychological victory that paved the way for ultimate military victory, though not as quickly as desired.

Both sides fought a war of attrition, the US intending to use its firepower advantage, the Viet Cong to close with their enemy for hand-to hand combat.  In attritional terms the US should have prevailed; even in less successful engagements, the casualty ratio favoured the US by a factor of three; in more successful battles, ten or more Viet Cong casualties were inflicted for each US casualty.

Had Field Marshal Haig or Marshal Joffre been able to inflict casualties at that ratio on the Western Front in 1915 or 1916, they would probably have won their war of attrition.  The North Vietnamese, however, were prepared to accept heavy casualties to gain victory.  Whether the victory was worth the cost is for them to judge, but the key lesson for western nations might be to choose tactics other than attrition when fighting opponents who place a low value on their subordinates’ lives.

JOHN DONOVAN