Battle of Ap Bac - Background

Background

Small-scale military actions, which would eventually escalate into the Vietnam War, started in the late 1950s, when South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem instituted an anti-Communist campaign aimed at rooting out "left behind" Viet Minh forces. At that time, North Vietnam was hoping for an election, promised under the Geneva Accords of 1954, that would unite North and South Vietnam. It was also worried about inciting the United States into directly supporting South Vietnam, and had recommended a policy of avoiding battle at all costs. However, Diem's campaign was too successful to allow them to do nothing, and small-scale actions broke out across the country. North Vietnam remained worried about U.S. involvement and refused any sort of military support, forcing the remaining Viet Minh to retreat into inaccessible areas in the hills and river estuaries. A stalemate of sorts followed, as South Vietnamese forces took so long to reach these areas that the guerilla fighters were able to retreat with little difficulty.

Large-scale American support began during the Kennedy Administration in the early 1960s, with the arrival of large numbers of the U.S. Special Forces to help out in the field. The arrival of helicopters changed the nature of the battle considerably; it enabled South Vietnamese soldiers to quickly fly to almost any point in the country, leaving little time for a retreat. Throughout 1962, the combined forces were increasingly effective in routing the Viet Cong. These tactics, combined with the use of armored personnel carriers, took a heavy toll on various fledgling Viet Cong units. The lightly armed Viet Cong had no weaponry capable of stopping the armored carriers and inevitably were forced to flee, taking heavy casualties.

The most successful South Vietnamese force had been the 7th Infantry Division, then under the command of Colonel Huynh Van Cao. His U.S. adviser was Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann, who orchestrated much of the unit's activity in concert with his planner, Captain Richard Ziegler. They had scored the biggest successes of the pacification campaigns of 1962, killing thousands of Viet Cong fighters and leaving thousands of others cut off from supplies.

However, South Vietnamese officers were often reluctant to absorb heavy casualties. On several occasions, Cao's forces were in excellent position to trap and wipe out whole battalions of Viet Cong, but he would fail to close the trap on one pretext or another and allow the enemy to escape. This behavior initially mystified Vann, who was attempting to build Cao into an aggressive commander. Unknown to Vann, Diem would reprimand or demote any officer who lost too many men, no matter how successful the operation. Diem was more interested in using the military to protect his regime than to take on the Viet Cong. His solution was to fill the ARVN with Catholic political cronies and friends like Cao, Le Quang Tung, and Ton That Dinh, who had little military ability, but were very likely to help stop a coup attempt. After a skirmish on a highway that resulted in a small number of South Vietnamese casualties along with several trucks destroyed, Cao was called to Saigon and reprimanded by Diem. Upon his return, Vann and his group of advisers were forced to end the joint planning sessions that had been so successful earlier, and action essentially wound down in their region. Cao used the excellent military intelligence network they had developed to find areas devoid of the Viet Cong, and planned operations only in those areas. In many other cases, operations were executed on paper only, in order to report an increasing tempo of operations that did not actually exist.

In 1962, Diem decided to split the command of the area in the south around Saigon into two, the former III Corps area being reduced in size to cover the area northeast of Saigon, and the newly created IV Corps taking over the west and southwest. Cao was promoted to general and assumed command of the new IV Corps Tactical Zone, which included the area of operations of his 7th Infantry Division. Command of the 7th was given to Cao's chief of staff, Colonel Bui Dinh Dam. Dam expressed concerns about his own abilities when the promotion was first presented to him by Diem. Nevertheless, he took Cao's former position and welcomed Vann's advisers back into the planning effort. Despite the change in leadership, the same problems continued to manifest themselves in the 7th Infantry Division.