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To my knowledge we never lost a battle: Bill Chase
"The first year I lived in the capital with the South Vietnamese as a battalion advisor with the Vietnamese Infantry battalion. I went with the same battalion for nine or ten months. If my Vietnamese battalion wasn’t committed I’d act as a liaison and go on assaults with them. Also, I worked with the Korean marines on a couple operations.
I have a great admiration for the Vietnamese people. I felt they were a good people, and they were fighting to be free. Communism was what they were up against. I kind of believed the domino theory that Eisenhower put out, that if one of those countries fall they would all fall. I think it came true. Cambodia for awhile was under communist rule, and I think Thailand had their problems after Vietnam fell. Of course, China always was (a problem). So that’s my reason why I didn’t mind being sent there.
My favorite was Major Thao, who saved my life. Thao was probably the most feared South Vietnamese solider, because he had been making a big name for himself when (Ngo Dinh) Diem was president (of South Vietnam). The North Vietnamese were so concerned about Thao that they sent an entire battalion down to assassinate him. Thao was that highly regarded by both sides.
When they brought Thao out, they sent him up right on the Vietnamese borders. If you were going to get waxed pretty good, that was the place to do it. They called us advisors, but I didn’t advise a damn thing. I learned from that guy.
We were a mobile battalion. We’d go from village to village and set up and leave for another village. He’d always say “you die, me die first.” I’d say in Vietnamese that it was the same for me.
We knew within our own unit we had 20-25 Vietcong. We just didn't know who they were. The American artillery advisor called me to say we'd better look (at one Vietnamese soldier), he was adjusting rounds right on top of our own unit. The Vietnamese were tying him up to take him out of there, so I called an American helicopter to come in.While I was doing that, this guy all a sudden broke loose from the rope.
I didn't feel comfortable shooting him; he was South Vietnamese army, even though we knew he was Vietcong. So I backed up a bit, I had a .45 in a side holster. I fell over a log, and he came running forward with his .45. Thao saw this, and he couldn't get his .45 out in time. He ran out and came between us, got shot in the head. Then the guy swung around and shot my radio operator in the stomach. Why he didn't shoot me, I don't know.
I never saw anything like it in my life. The radio operator called everyone around, and said goodbye and died. Thao was killed instantly.
A hell of a lot of people died there, good friends of mine. About 26 classmates from West Point.
I think we had all the right reasons for being there, but they put political limitations – politics started to matter a lot. Especially my second year. I was in charge of this battalion, we had gotten the North Vietnamese pinned in a mountain complex. We were taking some losses, but we were getting great results and had them cornered in these tunnels.
And all of a sudden, we get a message from headquarters to pull back and withdraw. And we couldn't understand – we had them cornered. So we did that, and sat there for two days. In the meantime they had all got out a different set of tunnels.
Later I understood the reason. They put out a casualty rate every month for each week. A couple of the other units had heavy casualties this week. So they wanted us to pull back and disengage so we wouldn't take any casualties and the numbers would look better.
Another time they came down with this rule: Under no circumstances could you fire into a house. We had a guy on the ground after a combat assault lying outside a hut. I brought out a Medivac (helicopter). They weren't armed of course, so we had to have gunships traveling with them. A guy stepped out of a house in a brown Vietnamese uniform and shot at one of the gunships and hit the crew chief.
They radioed me and said they had shot the crew chief, he's seriously wounded and bleeding. But the guy went back into a house. Can we return fire?
So I said wait a minute. I radioed back to brigade headquarters and asked if we could return fire – this guy was holding an AK-47. They in turn radioed back to Saigon, and radioed back no my ship: No you can't. You can't return fire.
The gunship said, well, if we can't fire, there's no sense in us being here. We're going back. Well, the medivac said he couldn't go in without support, they're going back. So we had to go back and get the guy in morning. But he bled to death.
We weren't treated worth a damn. When we were getting off a bus in Oakland, we had people spitting on us when we got back. When I was teaching ROTC at Dickinson College, the students for a Democratic Society were very active. When they'd have a debate, they'd usually have me represent the department. This time they refused to admit that the North Vietnamese were even in the war. They thought it was all South Vietnamese in the civil war. I'd tell them that when I found a body, I search their uniforms for papers, and I'd find letters from their wives in Hanoi.
They accused us of being baby killers and things like that. We went to great lengths to protect the children. Some would get hurt from time to time, but it certainly wasn't intentional.
People asked me what was the toughest thing in Vietnam. The toughest thing for me, the worst thing was when I spent that year and a half in between (tours of duty) teaching ROTC. I was also the death notification officer. I would have to put on dress blues and drive out there and knock on their door. They knew damn well why I was there; odds are I'd be crying too.
It could have been won. To my knowledge we never lost a battle. We could have gone into Hanoi and things like that.
It didn't have the popular support. That's my greatest fear in Iraq and Afghanistan is if we lose the support. Then we had the draft going, so every family in the neighborhood was involved."
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