I was in the Navy but had a tank commander tell me that story. I don’t trust the reporting of it by anyone, whether true or not. Do you have a source that you are referring to, or did you have personal knowledge of it?
This claim might be more accurate, we did pay for various damages, including rubber trees, and tried not to damage them.
“The National Coordinators of Vietnam Veterans Against the War once wrote: “We supposedly valued human life while our enemy did not. Yet we paid the owners of the Michelin plantations $600 for each rubber tree we damaged, while the family of a slain Vietnamese child got no more than $120 in payout for a life.”
https://saigoneer.com/saigon-culture/17206-the-harrowing-history-of-vietnam-s-rubber-plantations