Cold War\uDBFF\uDC00Crusades (1953-1967)

Cold War Crusades (1953-1967)

Sooner or later the U.S. Marines seemed destined to fight a protracted land war on the Indochinese Peninsula.

The first U.S. Marines arrived in Vietnam less than six months after the fall of Dien Bien Phu. Lieutenant Colonel Victor Croizat’s main responsibility was to train and inspire the nucleus of a Vietnamese Marine regiment, which would grow in proficiency and lethality into a very good infantry division.

Now the principal focus for the Marines became Southeast Asia – especially Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, each threatened by Soviet-supported insurgencies.

Counterinsurgency became in vogue as a political-military art form. Marines studied the recent counterguerrilla campaigns in Malaya and the Philippines, read Bernard Fall’s Street Without Joy, conducted war games involving the landing of expeditionary forces at a place halfway down the Indochinese coast called Tourane (later: Da Nang), and vied for the coveted thirty-day “OJT” (On the Job Training) assignments as observers to the hard-pressed ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam).

Marines in Vietnam would fight with highest valor and innovation, but the nation’s longest and most political war would yield few tangible benefits in exchange for the sacrifices of its troops. Never was the abiding philosophy of Semper Fidelis more severely tested.

Marines first deployed to Vietnam as organized units in 1962. A special radio detachment went to Pleiku, and Colonel Archie Clapp’s medium helicopter squadron began “Shu-fly” operations in support of ARVN forces at Soc Trang. Here immediately was the face of the war-tobe: massive use of electronic intelligence combined with tactical mobility provided by transport helicopters.

The Shu-fly outfit soon moved north from Soc Trang to Da Nang. When things became hairier up there, the Marines flew an infantry platoon down from Okinawa to stiffen the ARVN defenders of the strategic airfield. And as conditions continued to degenerate, the Marines deployed a Hawk Missile battalion from Okinawa to 2,000-foot Monkey Mountain, overlooking the airfield and port. Escalation had arrived. Soon it became time to put up or shut up.

By now Congress, with its contrived “Gulf of Tonkin Resolution,” had given President [Lyndon B.] Johnson a virtual carte blanche to have his way in opposing the Communist campaign to overrun South Vietnam.

On March 8, 1965, Brigadier General Frederick Karch led ashore two battalions of his 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade at Da Nang, one by air, one by sea.

Marines deploy from a “Huey” in Vietnam in Howard A. Terpning’s Touchdown, 1968, acrylic on illustration board.

Collection of the National Museum of the Marine Corps

The Marines had landed – at last! – and true to form, they were the first ground combat forces to deploy to South Vietnam. The infantry battalions immediately deployed among the high ridges surrounding the Da Nang airfield, from which two squadrons of Marine helicopters were already operating around the clock.

The Leathernecks exchanged scattered gunfire with the Viet Cong. The first Marine casualties made headlines.

No one – no one – could have predicted that these few casualties were only the vanguard of over 100,000 Marines to be killed or wounded in action in the filthy war that ensued.

The Marine buildup went into high gear. The first Marine fixed-wing squadron, VMFA-531, flew its F4B Phantom II jets into Da Nang in April 1965.

Later that month the 3d Battalion, 4th Marines, debarked into landing craft and proceeded eleven miles up the Perfume River to the ancient capital of Hue, loaded for bear – but relieved and delighted to find the riverbanks lined with cheering natives.

On May 6, 1965, Brigadier General Marion Carl, one of the Cactus Air Force aces from Guadalcanal days, led his 6,000-man 3d Amphibious Brigade ashore to establish a Leatherneck enclave fifty-seven miles below Da Nang. The place was called Chu Lai, but no one could find it on their maps. Turns out Lieutenant General Victor “Brute” Krulak, now commanding the Fleet Marine Force Pacific, had picked the spot by his own reconnaissance, then named it using the Mandarin Chinese characters for his name.

Chu Lai was initially just a wide stretch in the sandy scrub, dangerously surrounded by high ground. Twenty-five days later the Marines had completed an 8,000-foot expeditionary airfield at Chu Lai, complete with carrier-like catapults and arresting cables, and graceful Marine A-4 Skyhawks were roaring aloft to provide close air support to Marine ground operations.

With 16,500 Marines now ashore in Vietnam, General William Westmoreland assigned them the primary responsibility for what he called I Corps Tactical Zone (quickly shortened to “Eye Corps”), the country’s five northernmost provinces, stretching from the increasingly contested demilitarized zone (“DMZ”) along the 17th Parallel down the narrow waist some 265 miles. The Laotian border marked the west, the South China Sea the east.

Eye Corps was home to 2.6 million Vietnamese, many clustered in the major cities of Quang Tri, Hue, and Da Nang. The government controlled the major population centers, the Viet Cong the countryside, especially at night.

Within weeks Marines were engaging in hot firefights with shadowy men in black pajamas who fired their AK- 47 assault rifles and RPG-7 rocket launchers with authority. The Leathernecks invariably prevailed, but always at a cost. At the ninety-day mark after the first landings, the Marines had sustained 209 casualties, including 29 dead.

Then came Operation Starlite, and the war turned another corner.

Starlite began when Marine combat intelligence identified the presence of the 1st VC Regiment assembled in the Van Tuong Peninsula preparing to attack Chu Lai, nine miles north. Colonel Oscar Peatross led his reinforced 7th Marines in a surprise, multipronged assault on August 18.

This time the Viet Cong stayed and fought. The Van Tuong Peninsula constituted their regimental command post, their “home.” Caves and spider holes laced the countryside. Many of the small villages were heavily fortified.

Peatross endeavored to land west of the enemy positions and drive the enemy into the sea. This worked well in one sector, when a hundred VC poured out of the tree line onto the beach and attempted to escape by sampans. The destroyer Orleck opened up her five-inch guns with relish.

In other sectors the fighting broke down into localized brawls between small units, the VC maximizing their dug-in positions, the Marines grimly scratching them out by fire and maneuver as at Iwo Jima or Okinawa. Viet Cong recoilless rifles knocked out several Marine tanks and riddled the LVTs, but most damage came from mortars and machine guns.

The Marines fought back, calling in artillery, naval gunfire, and close air support in very tight quarters. Marine Phantoms and Skyhawks from Chu Lai flew direct assault missions so close to the end of their takeoff pattern the battle resembled Peleliu.

The battle raged six days. General Walt gave Peatross all the support and reinforcements he could handle. In the end the Marines counted 641 dead VC, a huge bag, at the cost of 203 wounded and 45 killed of their own. Two Marines received the Medal of Honor during Operation Starlite: Corporal Robert O’Malley, a squad leader, and Lance Corporal Joe Paul (posthumously), a fire-team leader.

At the time Starlite seemed a significant tactical victory. The Marines had surprised and soundly whipped a main force Viet Cong regiment, inflicting disproportionate fatalities at the rate of fourteen-toone. The media loved it. The United States, it seemed, could prevail over these Communist guerrillas where the Japanese and French had so badly failed. Dream on.

Never again would a Viet Cong force offer pitched battle against Marine regiments.

The VC would revert to their shadow war, stinging the Marines in a thousand small attacks and ambushes, leaving the bigger engagements for their better-armed brethren, the People’s Army of North Vietnam (dubbed by the Americans the “NVA”).

By now the entire 1st Marine Division had transplaced from Camp Pendleton to Vietnam, the Old Breed beginning their third Asian War in twenty years.

On their heels arose the 5th Marine Division, reactivated for the first time since V-J Day, and Marines everywhere were stretched thin.

The dirty war was getting a lot dirtier. The Marines had already learned that running the VC to ground would require a massive effort – plus it was all doomed in advance unless they could first gain the trust, and provide for the security, of the people.

Marine pilots flew hair-raising attack missions over North Vietnam from carriers operating in “Yankee Station” in the South China Sea. Marine artillerists fired millions of rounds of heavy ordnance, sometimes at on-call targets, others merely “harassing and interdiction fire” at night against enemy assembly areas and access routes. Marines patrolled everywhere, day and night, by foot, helo, LVT, or jeeps.

By the end of 1965, the Marines had suffered 454 killed and 2,093 wounded. A year later, with 67,000 Leathernecks deployed in South Vietnam, the casualty totals had quadrupled.

Gradually the focus of combat swung north, toward the DMZ. Increasingly, the enemy was the North Vietnamese Army, crossing the 17th Parallel in division strength, well trained, well armed, and easily supplied via the Ho Chi Minh Trail and its many tributaries.

Fighting along “the Z” took on the scale and nature of combat in the Korean War. Operation Hastings mushroomed from a modest probe into a full-scale slugfest involving eleven battalions and direct support from Guam-based B-52 bombers.

Hastings gave way to a series of subsequent battles called Prairie, each with a higher Roman numeral and a higher body count on both sides.

Farther west along the DMZ there was heavy fighting around the godforsaken outpost at Khe Sanh. Nearby Hills 561 and 881 were bitterly contested, finally seized – then lightly outposted as the war shifted elsewhere. No one would deny the NVA were good fighters. By the end of 1967 Marine casualties totaled 5,479 dead and 37,784 wounded. A hell of a war. Only World War II had been costlier – and this one still had plenty of nasty surprises to come.