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Chapter 08

  by Kathy Hufford

   WE WERE WINNING WHEN I LEFT

NuBauDin Mountain , 45 miles NE of Saigon, the only "mountain" in the southern 1/3rd of Viet Nam.  

The US had lots of communications equipment on the top. It also had Intelligence collection units up there. The Viet Cong attacked it about once a week. Translated name means “ Naked Virgin Mountain ”.  

One of the most asked question I received when I came home from Viet Nam in February 1968 and August 1971 was “are we winning the war?” Both times I said yes. Now, after more than 30 years to look back at it, and spending 4 years at the Air War College teaching military history, to include the US war in Viet Nam , I still feel “we” won the war.

How can this be? The US Viet Nam war was in three distinct phases. The first phase was the guerrilla war fighting the Viet Cong from about 1962 thru TET in February 1968. It was mostly Viet Cong forces that conducted the attacks that TET. And those Viet Cong forces were wiped out and destroyed. After February 1968 we did not see much guerrilla warfare in Viet Nam . The enemy ground forces the US encountered were main line North Viet Nam regular army units. This second phase ended when President Nixon withdrew all US ground forces in December 1972, and the return of our POWs in January 1973. Every battle or operation that the US conducted in Viet Nam during this time frame, the US won. The third phase then started with the backing of South Viet Nam forces by US airpower and supplies, equipment and dollars. A major defeat of NVA units by the South Vietnamese Army happened in of 1974, proving that the South, with US support could go it alone. No US ground troops were in Viet Nam after December 1972. The end of the third phase, the end of the Viet Nam war, and the end of the South Vietnamese government happened when the US Congress withdrew all its support for South Vietnam in early 1975. The South could not operate without US funds and strategic airpower.

When Nixon was elected and took office in January 1969 he started a program called “Vietnamization”, Training Vietnamese to conduct their own war. I was a helicopter flight instructor after my first tour. I had lots of South Vietnamese students at Ft Wolters Texas . On my second tour, we had sister South Vietnamese Army Helicopter units. We would have Vietnamese Co-Pilots fly with us, so we could orientate them to Viet Nam . I always thought it was strange that a guy from Spokane Washington had to teach a guy from Tay Ninn , Viet Nam where was Saigon and the South China Sea was. The South Vietnamese pilots were good. Their helicopter maintainers were not so good.