A Shau Valor

by Thomas R. Yarborough

  Donlon’s intuition had been spot on. The Viet Cong attack began at 2:26 a.m. on July 6, 1964, when the first mortar rounds crashed into the A-team’s mess hall and team quarters, setting them both on fire. At the same instant, two VC battalions, approximately 900-strong, assaulted the camp from all four sides, with the largest attack pressing in from the southeast. There was no advance warning because the six-man CIDG outpost just beyond the outer perimeter had their throats cut in their sleep. During the initial onslaught, 45-year-old Master Sergeant Gabriel R. Alamo from Lyndhurst, NJ, sprang into action and promptly directed the team radio operator to transmit an emergency message requesting support, then rushed into the burning command post to assist in the removal of weapons and ammunition. Ignoring the burns he received while in the blazing structure, Alamo, known to everyone as “Pop,” then ran through a hail of enemy gunfire to a 60mm mortar pit partially buried below ground with sides protected by sandbag parapets, and readied the weapon for firing. When he saw the enemy attempting to breach the main gate, he again dashed through a heavy volume of automatic weapons fire to meet the threat head on. Although Pop sustained a serious wound in this courageous action, he reached the gate and took out the enemy troops with his AR-15. Bleeding badly from a shoulder wound and a fresh hole in his right cheek just below the eye, Pop returned to the 60mm mortar pit, refused evacuation for medical treatment, and directed the fire of the 60mm mortar while simultaneously manning a 57mm recoilless rifle. As the waves of VC broke through the outer perimeter trenches and barbed wire with suicidal fanaticism, Alamo cranked his mortar to maximum elevation, bringing the rounds practically down on to his own position. Undaunted by the vicious VC assault, Pop Alamo remained in the mortar pit defending the camp until mortally wounded by the enemy.15

  At the height of the battle the enemy resorted to psychological warfare. From the edge of the outer perimeter a loudspeaker blared out in English and Vietnamese, “Lay down your weapons. We are going to annihilate the Americans in your camp. Surrender or you will all be killed.” Exchanging anxious looks with several other A-726 teammates, Sergeant Thomas Gregg, one of the team medics, summed up the feelings of everyone when he said, “We’ll lay down our weapons when we’re too dead to pick them up.” At that point Sergeant Thurman Brown, a Korean War veteran, calmly adjusted his mortar while Sergeant Vernon Beeson indicated where the loudspeaker voice was coming from. Brown fired ten high explosive and white phosphorus rounds against the target. The voice abruptly stopped.16

  When the first VC mortar rounds hit the camp, 22 year-old Sergeant John L. Houston from Winter Park, FL, immediately began removing the radio equipment from the burning hut in order to save it. Although blown to the ground and wounded by a large explosion, Houston climbed out of the debris to continue the fight. As he was moving through the darkness, he noticed that one of his team members, Sergeant Terrance Terrin, had been knocked down by an exploding mortar round. With complete disregard for his own safety, Houston rushed through a hail of small arms fire and grenade blasts, succeeded in reaching the unconscious soldier, placed him in a covered position, and stayed with Terrin until fully conscious before proceeding to his battle station. After he had moved only a few yards and was injured for the second time by shrapnel from an exploding mortar round, Sgt Houston climbed to the top of a large seven foot mound of dirt which afforded him excellent observation and fields of fire. From this exposed position he single-handedly broke up the vicious human wave assaults in his sector and killed many of the enemy troops who had completely overrun Strike Force Company 122 and were at the inner perimeter barbed wire. While the outgoing mortar and automatic weapons fire kept the VC pinned down, they were still within grenade throwing distance, tossing the Chinese-made old-fashioned “potato mashers.” As the hostile forces continued to assault Houston’s position, he again blunted the enemy action with his deadly fire. Although his ammunition was running out, he refused to take cover, called out to a fellow soldier to throw additional rounds to him, and reloaded the magazine while exposed to extraordinarily heavy VC gunfire. Undaunted by the overwhelming onslaught, John Houston remained in this dangerous position for over two hours until cut down by the marauding enemy.17

  Throughout the five-hour battle at Nam Dong, Roger Donlon was the glue and inspiration that held the camp together. The 30-year-old captain from Saugerties, NY, directed the defense operations in the midst of a coordinated enemy barrage of mortar shells, hand grenades, and extremely heavy automatic weapons and small arms fire. During the initial onslaught, he swiftly marshaled his forces and ordered the removal of the needed ammunition from a blazing building. Donlon then dashed through a hail of bullets and exploding hand grenades to repulse an attack near the camp’s main gate. En route to this position he detected an enemy sapper team and quickly annihilated them. Although exposed to an intense grenade attack, he then succeeded in reaching a 60mm mortar position despite sustaining a severe stomach wound when he was within five yards of the gun pit. Donlon stuffed a handkerchief in the wound, cinched up his belt, and kept fighting. When he discovered that most of the men in this mortar pit were also wounded, he completely disregarded his own injury, directed their withdrawal to a location 30 meters away, and again risked his life by remaining behind and covering their movement. Noticing that his wounded team sergeant, Pop Alamo, was unable to leave the pit under his own power, the detachment commander crawled toward him; Donlon got one of Alamo’s arms around his neck and started to straighten up. At that instant an enemy mortar shell exploded, killing Alamo and inflicting a debilitating wound to Capt Donlon’s left shoulder. Although bleeding profusely from multiple wounds and realizing that Alamo was beyond help, he then carried the abandoned 60mm mortar tube to a new location 30 meters away where he found three wounded Nung defenders. After administering first aid and encouragement to these men, he left the weapon with them, headed toward another position and retrieved a 57mm recoilless rifle. Then, with great courage and absolute coolness under fire, he returned to the abandoned gun pit and while recovering and dragging the urgently needed ammunition, he was wounded a third time in the leg from an enemy hand grenade. Disregarding his injuries, he crawled 175 meters under fire to an 81mm mortar position and directed firing operations which protected the seriously threatened east sector of the camp.

  Donlon then moved to another location and upon determining that the vicious enemy assault had weakened, crawled back to the gun pit with the 60mm mortar, set it up for defensive operations, and turned it over to two defenders with minor wounds. Without hesitation he left this sheltered mortar pit and moved from position to position around the beleaguered perimeter while hurling hand grenades at the enemy and inspiring his men to superhuman effort. As he continued to move around the perimeter, another mortar shell exploded, wounding him in the face and body. Undeterred, he kept fighting, leading, and inspiring his men. At daylight the enemy forces began a retreat back to the jungle, leaving behind 54 of their dead, many weapons, and grenades. Donlon immediately reorganized his defenses, administered first aid to the wounded, and waited for the relief force to arrive. His dynamic leadership, fortitude, and valiant efforts inspired not only the American personnel but the friendly Vietnamese defenders as well and resulted in the successful defense of Nam Dong against overwhelming odds.18

  At 9:45 a.m. Marine H-34 helicopters arrived with 100 Special Forces and CIDG reinforcements. When the choppers landed, many of the camp’s CIDG began to storm the helicopter pad, forcing members of the relief team to brandish their weapons to keep the panicky mob at bay so the wounded could be loaded.

  What the relieving force found was incredible. Virtually all the American survivors had been wounded, their faces and bodies covered with blood and blackened from explosions and thick smoke. They were barely able to move. Two A-726 members were dead along with the Australian advisor, Warrant Officer Kevin G. Conway. The strike force companies lost 55 dead and 65 wounded, and during the battle approximately 100 of the CIDG had stripped off
their uniforms and rallied to the VC. In addition to the 54 dead attackers left behind, as many as three times that number of VC were believed killed and many more wounded. Almost every building in the camp had burned to the ground, so all members of A-726 were evacuated to Da Nang. A few days later anthropologist Gerald Hickey, fluent in Vietnamese, debriefed with General Westmoreland in Saigon. When Hickey described the attackers as having North Vietnamese accents, there was no comment.19

  For their heroic actions, both Master Sergeant Gabriel Alamo and Sergeant John Houston were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross posthumously. Captain Roger Donlon became the first American in the Vietnam War to receive the Medal of Honor.

  Unfortunately, the battle for Nam Dong ended on a bureaucratic sour note. Warrant Officer Kevin Conway, veteran of the Malaya and Borneo emergencies and the first Australian killed in Vietnam, was recommended by his Australian commander for the Victoria Cross, the equivalent of the Medal of Honor. Conway, a member of the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam, was alone in his pit at Nam Dong firing his mortar into the assaulting enemy in ever decreasing range until he was forced to bring his mortar fire upon himself to save the perimeter of the camp. Warrant Officer Conway never received the valor ward. According to several sources, his commander suggested that because of the award to Donlon, Special Forces politics denied Conway his Victoria Cross. No proof was ever found to substantiate that claim. The U.S. Army awarded Kevin Conway the Silver Star for gallantry in action.20

  Immediately after his post-battle visit to Nam Dong and his meeting with American anthropologist Gerald Hickey, General Westmoreland and the MACV staff began contemplating several disturbing revelations. First, while ARVN and CIDG forces were winning a few victories like Nam Dong, it was becoming clear that they were being out-gunned. Throughout 1964, VC units attacked with a new weapon, the AK-47, a superior assault rifle provided by the Soviet Union. And as Capt Donlon and A-726 discovered, the enemy had also been issued modern rocket launchers, mortars, and recoilless rifles. Against these new weapons, the ARVN still used World War II models, including the Garand M-1 rifle, whose powerful kick when firing often knocked the small Vietnamese soldiers off balance. For regional and CIDG forces, the light semiautomatic M-1 carbine proved to be little more than a “pea shooter” against the AK-47.

  The firepower imbalance was disturbing enough, but intelligence sources confirmed a second, more unsettling fact. As Gerald Hickey had suspected, infiltrators included separate North Vietnamese units. At its core, that information revealed a decision by Hanoi that went beyond mere support for the NLF; it indicated direct intervention by units of the NVA—and the point of infiltration for those units was the A Shau.21

  Just one month after the battle at Nam Dong, American focus once again shifted away from fighting in the A Shau to an event that ultimately committed the United States to war in Southeast Asia. On August 2, North Vietnamese patrol boats attacked the U.S. Navy destroyer Maddox operating in international waters. Two days later the Pentagon received a message that patrol boats had attacked again, this time engaging the Maddox and the destroyer C. Turner Joy. Although there was and still is controversy concerning the veracity of a second attack, President Johnson nevertheless ordered a retaliatory airstrike against the North Vietnamese patrol boat base and on a major oil storage tank facility. On August 5, aircraft from Seventh Fleet carriers Ticonderoga and Constellation destroyed the oil storage facility at Vinh and damaged or sank 24 enemy naval vessels along the North Vietnam coast. In the attack the North Vietnamese downed two American strike aircraft; Lieutenant J.G. Everett Alvarez, Jr. was captured and endured eight years and seven months of brutal captivity. Then on August 7, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that gave the President authorization “to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” The resolution further empowered the President “to take all steps necessary, including the use of armed force, to assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting assistance in defense of its freedom.” The vote in the Senate was 88 to 2, while in the House the vote was 416 to 0.22

  Throughout the remainder of 1964, the 1st and 5th Special Forces Groups’ monthly operational summaries documented activity in the A Shau, consisting primarily of recruiting and training new strike force members, construction, and defoliation. The danger, however, was ever-present. Typical of the action was a combat patrol on August 21 conducted by Detachment A-421 when a VC sniper killed Sergeant First Class William R. Patience, Jr. Then, on September 14–15, Typhoon Violet slammed into the coast of Vietnam and damaged or destroyed most of the buildings at Camp A Shau, forcing a curtailment of all operations.

  Following the typhoon, and indeed for the remainder of 1964, operations in the A Shau remained below the official radar screen, and that suited Washington fine. With 1964 being an election year, Washington had obviously decided, according to General Westmoreland, “to play the war in a low key.” While there was genuine concern about the shaky political stability of the coup-prone South Vietnam regime, LBJ nevertheless pursued a policy of extreme caution regarding any hint of escalating the war, fearful that his Republican opponent, Senator Barry M. Goldwater, might capitalize on the situation. In the process, the Johnson administration even withheld the fact that North Vietnamese regular troops were infiltrating into the South through the A Shau. As the MACV commander confided, he viewed Washington’s cautious approach as a means to insure “minimum rocking of the political boat.”23 Yet the political climate in Washington suggested much deeper issues, prompting President Johnson to begin questioning the long-term prospects of the struggle in Vietnam. In a private 1964 conversation, LBJ confided to his national security advisor, Mac Bundy, “It looks like to me we’re getting into another Korea. I don’t see what we can ever hope to get out of there … once we’re committed. I don’t think it’s worth fighting for and I don’t think we can get out.”24

  Perhaps because of the charged political atmosphere, there was practically no mention made about a sharp action against a VC platoon in the A Shau where on December 23 Sergeant Emmett H. Horn of Detachment A-113 lost his life, or when on December 31 Sergeant First Class Edward R. Dodge of the 5th SFGA and his pilot went missing during an O-1 Bird Dog reconnaissance flight over the Valley of Death. The aircraft failed to return to Da Nang, never to be found.25 And like the missing O-1 crew, the A Shau remained out of sight—and out of mind.

  chapter

  2

  THE RISE AND FALL OF CAMP A SHAU

  The bravest are surely those who have the

  clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger

  alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it.

  —THUCYDIDES

  For the Special Forces teams stationed in and around the A Shau, 1965 proved to be yet another year in the shadows where the counterinsurgency and unconventional warfare environment remained not only low key, but also low priority. Nevertheless, in May, Special Forces Detachment A-102 opened a new forward operating base at A Luoi at the northern end of the A Shau and a new camp at Ta Bat near the center. From the new locations, Civilian Irregular Defense Group units deployed over a wide area of the surrounding valley, running patrols in search of North Vietnamese, yet being hunted themselves. And although heavy NVA infiltration into I Corps through the A Shau continued unabated, both Washington and MACV remained preoccupied with the politically weightier issues of reprisal airstrikes against North Vietnam and the introduction of U.S. combat troops into South Vietnam. The escalation began on February 7 when members of the VC 409th Sapper Battalion initiated a deadly mortar attack in the Central Highlands on an American helicopter unit at Camp Holloway near Pleiku. The strike killed 8 American soldiers, wounded 126, and destroyed 10 aircraft, although Hanoi claimed 100 “U.S. imperialists” killed and 20 aircraft destroyed. Three days later the VC struck an American compound at Qui Nhon, killing ano
ther 23 U.S. military personnel.1 In response, the U.S. launched “tit-for-tat” retaliatory airstrikes against North Vietnam, but bowing to pressure from the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), President Johnson finally approved a sustained bombing program against the North, code named “Rolling Thunder.” The first mission launched on March 2, 1965; the bombing campaign continued until November 1968, dropping a total of 643,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnam. During the 44 months of Rolling Thunder, the U.S. Air Force lost 506 aircraft in the deadly skies over the North, the U.S. Navy 397, and the Marine Corps lost 19.2

  A SHAU VALLEY

  Out of concern for the steady buildup of enemy troops in I Corps, General Westmoreland requested and ultimately received permission to deploy U.S. Marine units as close-in security for the big air base at Da Nang. On March 8 the entire complexion of the war changed when Marines from the 3rd Battalion, 9th Regiment executed an amphibious landing at Da Nang Bay just a few miles northwest of the city. Instead of facing a fanatical enemy as they had on Tarawa, Saipan, or Iwo Jima, the Marines on Red Beach 2 were greeted by pretty Vietnamese school girls who presented them with flower leis made of gladioli and dahlias. The mayor of Da Nang recorded the event with his new Polaroid camera, snapping pictures of the unsmiling and obviously embarrassed Brigadier General Frederick J. Karch, commander of the expeditionary landing force. Later that same afternoon, members of the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines arrived at Da Nang Air Base from Okinawa aboard Air Force C-130 transports. Although snipers fired at the aircraft on their approach, none was damaged.3

  Apparently General Westmoreland was appalled by the spectacle on Red Beach 2; he had expected the Marines would maintain a low profile. He later learned that the public landings were LBJ’s personal idea. Ambassador Maxwell Taylor in Saigon was also upset by the introduction of U.S. Marines. Taylor had warned that a landing by the Marines would be perceived as a public escalation of the war and would further give the impression that the Americans had inherited the old French role of colonizer and conqueror. The ambassador also doubted whether ‘white-faced Americans’ could do any better in the jungles of Southeast Asia than French troops had.4