A Shau Valor

by Thomas R. Yarborough

  That war most certainly escalated on April 1 in I Corps Tactical Zone when two Marine battalions and all three brigades of Major General John J. Tolson’s 1st Cavalry Division jumped off to lift the siege of Khe Sanh, just 25 miles north of the A Shau. Under Operation Pegasus, the Second Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment and 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, initiated a ground assault from Ca Lu, 16 kilometers east of Khe Sanh, westward along both sides of Route 9, while three brigades of the 1st Cavalry Division air-assaulted into key terrain features along Route 9 to establish fire support bases to cover the advance into Khe Sanh. The 11th Marine Engineers followed right on their heels, repairing the road and refurbishing the bridges to open the land route.

  As with earlier MACV plans involving the Marines, Operation Pegasus also generated some friction, if not open inter-service bickering. Incongruously, General Westmoreland’s planned relief effort ruffled the feathers of Marines who had not wanted to hold Khe Sanh in the first place. The Marines had persistently hitched their argument to a technicality, claiming Khe Sanh had never been under siege since it had never truly been isolated from resupply or reinforcement. General Robert E. Cushman, Jr., III MAF’s new commander, was appalled by the “implication of a rescue or breaking of the siege by outside forces.”28

  General Cushman’s indignation may well have stemmed from an earlier difference of opinion over MACV policy. It was no secret that General Westmoreland had long considered I Corps to be the most critical and dangerous area of Vietnam, so in late January 1968 he transferred the 1st Cavalry Division and the 101st Airborne Division into I CTZ—“the heart of Marine land.” On March 10 he even established a full-blown subordinate headquarters, Provisional Corps, Vietnam (PCV), under the command of Army Lieutenant General William B. Rosson at Phu Bai—much to the annoyance of the Marines.

  In a strange interpretation of the prevailing III MAF view, General Westmoreland denied any friction and instead blamed the misunderstanding on press reports to the effect that the Marine Corps resented Army presence. He was particularly irked by what he labeled a “blatantly speculative account” in the Los Angeles Times written by noted Vietnam correspondent Bill Tuohy and went on to say, “That and the other accusations were patently false, a marked disservice to everybody involved.”29 While Westy may have chosen to spin it that way, his take was not shared by the Marines, many of whom believed that Tuohy had been correct in his assessment. For example, one Marine staff officer recalled, “Those of us at III MAF regarded it [establishment of PCV] as a transparent effort to diminish the importance of III MAF. We … saw it as a power grab.”30 Ironically, Bill Tuohy’s articles on the Vietnam War received the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.

  In spite of the acrimony bubbling just beneath the surface, the combined forces worked well together at the operational level, pushing on to Khe Sanh ahead of schedule. While there were countless small, sharp firefights, enemy resistance proved to be lighter than expected, in part because NVA units had been decimated by the air campaign Operation Niagara and because the air mobility of the 1st Cav kept them off-balance—both victories for Westmoreland in his war of words with the Marine Corps. On April 4, the 26th Marines at Khe Sanh added to the pressure by launching their own offensive attack to the southeast against a well-defended enemy stronghold, Hill 471, where members of the 1st Battalion, 9th Marines secured the position by late afternoon. Early the following morning, in one of the highlights of Operation Pegasus, elements of the NVA’s 66th Regiment launched a rare counterattack against Hill 471; the fight proved to be utterly one-sided. Assisted by artillery and close air support, the Marines on Hill 471 cut down large numbers of the attackers while suffering few casualties themselves. Then, on the morning of April 8, the 1st Cav’s 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, marched into Khe Sanh Combat Base and linked up with the 26th Marines.31

  Because of events unfolding in the United States there was scant attention paid to the relief of Khe Sanh. Domestically, the nation reeled over the assassination on April 4 of its preeminent civil rights leader, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis. In 110 cities across the country a wave of racially fueled riots broke out, sparking violent confrontations with police. Labeled by some the “Holy Week Uprisings,” the rioting climaxed in Washington, DC, where out-of-control protesters torched 1,200 buildings, including over 900 stores. Elsewhere, Doctor King’s assassination not only led to unruly disturbances and civil disobedience, but also triggered blatant unrest in communities that were already discontented over race, inequality, and the war in Vietnam. One of the largest and most public demonstrations up until that time occurred on April 23, when Columbia University students seized the campus for a week while protesting university collaboration with the U.S. military through the Institute for Defense Analyses, a think tank involved with weapons research that contributed to the war in Vietnam. In the wake of the Columbia student protests, campuses across the country exploded.

  Against the emotional backdrop of Doctor King’s tragic assassination, on April 14 Operation Pegasus terminated and the siege of Khe Sanh was over. In many respects the operation amounted to a Dien Bien Phu in reverse—this time the besieged garrison held out and won. After flying into Khe Sanh by helicopter, General Westmoreland told the assembled press, “We took 220 killed at Khe Sanh and about 800 wounded and evacuated. The enemy by my count suffered at least 15,000 dead in the area.”32 Buoyed by those statistics, Westmoreland practically gushed with self-congratulation since he clearly viewed the stand at Khe Sanh as a major vindication of his signature strategy regarding big unit battles engaged in a war of attrition. The Marines had a different opinion—as did others. An up-and-coming staff officer in Vietnam and a future Chief of Staff of the Army, Colonel Edward C. Meyer, observed, “We just didn’t think we could do the job the way we were doing it.” A fellow colonel who had pleaded with Westmoreland to end the big unit war advised, “We’re just not going to win it doing this.” Even a key White House staffer reporting from Vietnam insisted that “chasing after victory through attrition is a will-o’-the-wisp that costs us too much in dollars, draft calls and casualties, makes it too hard to stay the course.”33

  Shortly after that press conference Westy returned to the States to become Army Chief of Staff, replaced by his deputy, General Creighton W. Abrams. And with that command change the war was supposed to change. Apparently General Abrams intended to bring a markedly different outlook to the conflict and how it ought to be conducted. Under Westmoreland, the emphasis had been almost exclusively on large-scale, big unit combat operations intended to inflict crippling casualties on the NVA, based on the premise that heavy losses would eventually cause Hanoi to cease aggression against the south—bleed the enemy to death over the long haul. In contrast, according to military historian Lewis Sorley, Creighton Abrams—known to most as ‘Abe’—viewed Vietnam as ‘One War’ in which combat operations, improvement of South Vietnamese forces, and pacification were all of equal importance.34 Realistically, however, there was more continuity than change in Vietnam after Abe succeeded Westy. In all future A Shau operations, only American combat campaigns took center stage, and the Westmoreland strategy of attrition and body count remained alive and well whether General Abrams intended it that way or not. Furthermore, the Abrams strategy of “clear and hold” somehow went astray in the A Shau Valley. While American units attempted repeated clearing operations in the Valley of Death, they captured the ground for short periods—then abruptly left.

  Unfortunately, the lifting of the siege at Khe Sanh did not signal a happy ending to an otherwise dramatic story. During the two and a half months following Operation Pegasus, 413 more Marines died in fighting around the rescued combat base, and at that point the story took on a decidedly controversial twist. In June, shortly after the siege had been lifted, the new MACV commander, General Abrams, sided with the Marines and decided to dismantle the remote base rather than risk a similar siege. Therefore, on July 5, the last of th
e Marines left Khe Sanh and it was officially closed. By contrast, the NVA’s 304th Division official history noted that “on 9 July 1968, the liberation flag was waving from the flag pole at Khe Sanh airfield.”35 Predictably, the new ending did not sit well with the American public, whether hawk or dove.

  As Operation Pegasus wound down, General Tolson and the 1st Cavalry Division received surprise new orders on April 10. Two of the division’s three brigades were to pull out of their east-west thrust toward Khe Sanh to conduct one of the most audacious air mobile operations in the history of the Vietnam War: an air assault into the infamous A Shau Valley, the most intimidating NVA sanctuary in South Vietnam. Code name for the attack was Operation Delaware.

  The timing for Operation Delaware hinged on several key yet seemingly unrelated circumstances, all intersecting by chance or fate. First, by March 1968, over 50 percent of all American maneuver battalions in Vietnam were crowded into I Corps’ provinces: the 1st and 3rd Marine Divisions, the 1st Cavalry Division, the Americal Division, and elements of the 101st Airborne Division. Convinced that enemy infiltration through the A Shau into Thua Thien Province still presented a deadly menace and the possibility of a North Vietnamese capture of the northern half of I Corps, General Westmoreland finally had the manpower at hand to do something about it, by striking deep and eliminating the huge NVA staging area. He also took advantage of the unique air mobility capabilities of the redoubtable 1st Cav. Because of terrain and remoteness, the A Shau could only realistically be invaded by employing vertical envelopment, and with 450 helicopters assigned internally, the horse soldiers of the 1st Cav constituted the ideal force. Led by Major General John Tolson, a rugged paratrooper who had made numerous combat jumps during World War II, the 1st Cavalry Division was a first-rate outfit noted for its panache and fighting ability against crack NVA units.

  Ultimately, the urgency in attacking the A Shau was due to calculations about the weather. According to old French records, there existed a brief interval between monsoons when the unpredictable weather in the A Shau might be workable. Therefore, MACV planners settled on mid-April to mid-May as the logical window for Operation Delaware.36

  For the raid into the A Shau, General Rosson, commander of Provisional Corps, Vietnam, dispatched the 1st and 3rd Brigades of the 1st Cav, along with the 1st Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division and an airborne task force from the ARVN 1st Division. Operation Delaware was to be a coordinated airmobile and ground attack on two axes using elements of the designated three divisions: the 101st Airborne and the ARVN task force were to attack along and astride Routes 547 and 547A from the east wall, while the main attack was the helicopter assault by the 1st Cav on the valley floor into the northern A Shau and into A Luoi.37

  The kickoff of Operation Delaware began on April 16 with extensive aerial reconnaissance by light observation helicopters from the 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry. Facing marginal weather and low cloud ceilings, the crews nevertheless swept along the length of both valley walls at low level, attempting to pinpoint dug-in enemy artillery batteries and antiaircraft positions. Indeed, the reconnaissance helicopters found what they were searching for: dozens of powerful crew-served 37mm antiaircraft guns, some of them radar controlled. They also encountered the rapid-firing ZU 23-2, a twin-barreled 23mm antiaircraft weapon capable of firing in excess of 200 rounds per minute, along with scores of .51 caliber machine guns. In that deadly environment the squadron choppers performed magnificently, but they paid a hefty prince: a total of 50 aircraft hit by ground fire, 5 shot down, and 18 others damaged beyond repair. Using the information gathered by the intrepid 1st Squadron crews, 209 preliminary tactical airstrikes and 21 B-52 Ark Light strikes attempted to soften up the enemy positions.38

  General Tolson’s original plan called for the 1st Brigade to air assault into the central part of the valley around the old airfield at A Loui, but the antiaircraft fire coming up from that area proved to be so heavy that it was decided to work it over with more suppressive airstrikes. Instead, on April 19 a swarm of 1st Cav helicopters lifted the 3rd Brigade through the marginal weather and intimidating flak into the northern section of the valley where Route 548 crossed into Laos. As the helicopter formations descended into LZ Tiger, also known as Tiger Mountain, a veritable torrent of red and green antiaircraft tracers tore through the vulnerable choppers, damaging 23 and sending 10 crashing into the ground. A company commander from the 5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry, captured the mood on that first air assault into the A Shau Valley when he observed:

  The feeling the majority of the men had upon first coming into the valley was a sort of fear, distinctly different from that felt at Hue or Khe Sanh. We had heard so many stories about A Shau, like the possibilities of running into large concentrations [of flak]. We had a fear of the unknown. We thought that just around any corner we would run into a battalion of North Vietnamese.39

  The helicopter crews transporting the 1st Cav soldiers into the Valley of Death experienced much the same feelings of foreboding. In the past, the crews had often dealt with streams of menacing tracers from small arms and automatic weapons fire, but for most of them it was their first time to face the “big stuff”; the chopper crews were naturally somewhat unnerved dodging the frightening white and gray flak airbursts from 23 and 37mm guns. In addition to the deadly antiaircraft fire, the most intense the aviators from the 1st Cav had ever encountered, the weather during Operation Delaware was unbelievably poor. Thick cloud layers, fog, thunderstorms, and low ceilings hampered the operation from the beginning. Not only were the conditions bad over the valley, but even the weather around Camp Evans forced the helicopters to climb up through an overcast on instruments to heights of 10,000 feet, reassemble the formation on top of the clouds, fly to the target area, and then search for some sort of hole in the clouds to make a hazardous descent. What normally amounted to a 20-minute flight often took over an hour—according to some of the pilots, “60 minutes of sheer terror.” The nerve-wracking twin challenges of weather and flak prompted one helicopter crewmember to confess during an interview:

  From the moment the assault on the A Shau Valley began, the radio was full of talk about aircraft taking hits and getting shot down. All that day, we went into LZ after LZ knowing in our minds that it was probably our last sortie before we got killed. I had never been so afraid in all my life, but we all kept going.40

  The morning assault on the 19th, through a barrage of antiaircraft fire, lifted the 1st and 5th Battalions of the 7th Cavalry into LZs Vicki and Tiger respectively, and while neither battalion was initially opposed once on the ground, they found themselves socked in by the rapidly deteriorating weather. The 5th did manage to receive its direct support artillery battery before the weather closed in, but not without opposition. A CH-47 helicopter was downed by small arms fire as it attempted to land on LZ Tiger. Then a second CH-47 sustained hits from 37mm and .51 cal machine guns. With the bird burning and out of control, the flight engineer and the crew chief jumped from an altitude of 50–100 feet above the jungle canopy. Their bodies were never found, but the other crewmembers survived the crash. Minutes later ground fire downed a CH-54 Sky Crane attempting to lift a bulldozer into LZ Tiger. All told, five crewmen survived and nine were listed as MIA.41

  On LZ Vicki, the 1st of the 7th immediately ran into trouble. Fog and zero visibility shut down all flights, leaving the battalion marooned with no support and no way to be evacuated. Fortunately, no enemy probes or attacks materialized. The only appreciable action took place that first night when the 5th of the 7th spotted a convoy of nearly 100 enemy trucks and opened fire with their small artillery battery. Results were negligible.

  Farther to the east, the 1st Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division initiated operations out of Fire Support Base Bastogne, roughly halfway between Hue and the A Shau, with the 2nd Battalion of the 327th Infantry attacking overland to the southwest. Later in the morning of the 19th, the 1st Battalion of the 327th air assaulted into LZ Veghel near the strategic road
junction of Routes 547 and 547-A. Each battalion encountered light to moderate contact with the enemy throughout the day.42

  Radio communication in the valley would be a vital element during Operation Delaware, so General Tolson’s staff planned ahead for the contingency. Since both walls of the A Shau featured 5,000-foot peaks, effectively blocking line-of-sight radio transmissions between deployed units on the valley floor and Camp Evans near the coast, the planners selected a 4,878-foot peak on the eastern wall known as Dong Re Lao Mountain. They dubbed the radio relay site “Signal Hill.”

  The job of securing Signal Hill fell to the long-range reconnaissance platoon (LRRP) of Company E, 52nd Infantry. Since the mission required specially trained and equipped soldiers who could rappel from helicopters into an unsecure area, clear an LZ with explosives and hold the ground until a security force arrived, Lieutenant Joseph Dilger’s LRRP platoon was the obvious choice. On April 19 the platoon headed into the A Shau loaded aboard Hueys from the 227th Assault Helicopter Battalion. Approaching the target area, the choppers went into a hover approximately 100 feet above the top of Dong Re Lao Mountain as the LRRP members jumped off the skids to begin the long repel, via rope, into the dense jungle below. But in the thin air above the mountaintop, one of the Hueys experienced a loss of engine power brought on by the high-pressure altitude, and plummeted out of control with two platoon members still dangling 50 feet above the ground. One team member was seriously injured when the Huey crashed and pinned him under the skid. All of the Huey crew were badly shaken up.43

  Deep in enemy territory, the LRRP platoon dived into the grueling task of clearing an LZ using chain saws and explosive charges. As Dilger and his men went to work, NVA soldiers converged on the mountaintop by noon. Concealed by dense jungle foliage and with their approach masked by the reverberating sound of buzzing chain saws, enemy snipers positioned themselves around the perimeter and began shooting at members of Dilger’s platoon. Unable to see the snipers, yet compelled to finish the radio relay site LZ, the LRRP troopers responded by rolling grenades down the steep slope and by cutting loose with random volleys of M-16 fire at fleeting shadows or at any suspected targets. As this bizarre little battle with an unseen enemy dragged into the late afternoon, the LRRP team members risked all by crawling through mud, twisted, tangled jungle debris, and deadly sniper fire to rescue their wounded and dying comrades and carry them to the top of Signal Hill and the protective shelter of a bomb crater. Outmanned and outgunned, they managed to hang on, but just barely. During the five hours of sporadic battle, enemy snipers killed Sergeant William G. Lambert, Specialist 4 Richard J. Turbitt, Jr., Private First Class James F. MacManus, and Private First Class Robert J. Noto. Corporal Roy Beer was severely wounded through both legs and an arm, while their stalwart leader, Lt Joe Dilger, took an SKS round through the chest and was near death; the entry wound may have been tiny, but the exit wound was enormous. Early the following morning, April 20, a medevac Huey already carrying a badly burned helicopter pilot, set down on Signal Hill to evacuate Joe Dilger and the other LRRP wounded. As the overloaded UH-1 lifted off, the remaining LRRP men on the ground could hear the burned pilot pleading over and over again, “Shoot me! Somebody, for God’s sake, please shoot me!”44