Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [241]
Miscellaneous captured items included 13,871 NVA uniforms and 1,014 NVA tents. Various computations made to give these numbers coherency estimated that enough individual weapons had been captured to equip 55 enemy battalions, enough crew-served weapons to equip 82 enemy battalions, enough small-arms ammunition to provide the basic load for 52,000 enemy soldiers, and enough rice to feed 6 enemy regiments for a year. The real value in the emptied and burned base camps, wrote Lieutenant General Davison, CG, II FFV, in his official report, was not what had been captured, but “…the amount of resources and people and energy and money that will be required of the enemy to replace the stores he has lost…. As he is attempting to recover his logistical posture, he must undergo an operational hiatus of some degree…. He just won't be able to supply adequately his deployed forces in this part of RVN.”
Enemy soldiers, already psychologically traumatized by the destruction of the sanctuary, were further demoralized as their supplies no longer got through and the number of NVA and VC coming in with raised hands increased substantially. The defectors included political cadre and staff officers. They told stories of NVA/VC units ignoring orders to engage U.S. and ARVN units, while in combat operations it was becoming a common occurrence to drag NVA from bunkers who were really just scared teenagers with no ammunition for their weapons. Nevertheless, cautioned General Davison in his report, “one should not underestimate our communist foe. He is long-suffering and persistent. He endures. But we have gained an advantage over him for the moment. I hope we can properly exploit it.”
Wars, however, are not won by retreating.
After the 1968 Tet Offensive, Washington, faced with an enemy that had finally stood up to their firepower and been decimated, negated their advantage by stopping the bombing and placing their faith instead with negotiations. Likewise, after the 1970 Cambodian Incursion, Washington used the breathing space afforded them not to press on–not to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos, to cross the DMZ, to shut down Haiphong and Hanoi–but to accelerate the Withdrawals. There were many professionals who could commiserate with the bitter comments of one infantry battalion operations officer: “After Cambodia, you couldn't pick a fight. If only we had persisted we would have won the war.”
The Cambodian Incursion, an overwhelming tactical victory, was of limited strategic value because the republic no longer had the will to win. Hanoi did, and the people of Southeast Asia would be the real losers.
The saving grace of the Cambodian Incursion was that it, quite simply, saved American lives. That was a point not lost on a black captain of infantry named Joseph B. Anderson, Jr., who as CO, B/2-5 Cavalry, lost three of his men seizing a cache in Cambodia. A tragic loss, but as Anderson noted:
From that time in June until I gave up the company in November, we didn't receive another single shot. We'd wiped out all their supplies and demoralized them so greatly that they were not ready to fight. As we ran our patrols, we would find they were trailing us so they could eat our garbage, the stuff we'd throw away. As a company commander, I did not have any feel for the political and international ramifications of …going into Cambodia. But as a guy who had to live or die by how well the enemy was equipped or fought, there was no doubt in my mind that the correlation was very great between us going into Cambodia and then not taking any more heat from the