Limited War, Violent Peace (1969-1990)

Weary and wary Marines ride atop an Amtrac. The danger of mines, booby traps, and ambushes was always immediate and real. Trac-Security, by Sgt. Henry Casselli, USMC, 1969, acrylic on illustration board.

Collection of the National Museum of the Marine Corps.

Limited War, Violent Peace (1969-1990)

The Marines wound up fighting two wars in Vietnam. One was the virtually unrestricted slugging match against heavily-armed NVA divisions in the north along the DMZ. The other remained principally a counterinsurgency operation against Viet Cong and other NVA forces in the villages and rice paddies of Southern I Corps, an area best described as “the Rocket Belt of Da Nang.”

The DMZ war featured heavy pounding by NVA artillery, rocket, and mortar crews against the 3d Marine Division. Around Da Nang, the 1st Marine Division experienced less shelling, but a much higher dosage of mines, booby traps, and ambushes. Throughout the war, half of all Marine combat casualties south of Da Nang came from these “silent” weapons and tactics.

The Marines hungered for combat action against real, flesh-and-blood enemies. The finely honed battle ax needed something to hew and hack. Pacification, the CAP [Combined Action Platoon] program, “Golden Fleece” rice-harvest protection duties, “County Fair” cordon-andsearch operations – all essential counterinsurgency stuff – lacked the viscerally rewarding, old-fashioned firefight.

For those 1st Marine Division troops hankering for more conventional warfare, there was always Arizona Territory, the rolling wasteland below Charlie Ridge and west of An Hoa. “The Arizona” became a boxing ring for Marine infantry battalions and NVA regiments in the latter years of the war.

The heat, the weight of a heavy flak vest, and the length of a tour in-country all show on the face of this Marine. Tired, by Col. Houston Stiff, USMC (Ret.), 1968, oil on masonite.

Collection of the National Museum of the Marine Corps

In between these pitched battles, Recon Marines kept the pressure on NVA forces in Arizona Territory and the adjacent Que Son Mountains using “Sting Ray” operations. Six-man teams, inserted stealthily, established observation points along suspected NVA approach routes, ready to direct interdiction missions by Marine air, artillery, or heliborne reaction forces.

The 3d Division’s war along the DMZ did not end with the razing of Khe Sanh. Major General Raymond Davis, veteran of Peleliu and Chosin Reservoir, now commanded the division, and he untethered his units from their static combat bases for a series of high-mobility strikes into the western mountains.

Colonel Robert Barrow led his 9th Marines into the Da Krong Valley of western Quang Tri Province on January 22, 1969 to launch [Operation] Dewey Canyon.

Barrow first seized two remote, dominant hilltops with heliborne light security forces and plenty of strongarmed troops with axes and chain saws. In short order, trees felled, brush cleared, the choppers returned with 105mm and 155mm howitzer batteries. Almost overnight, two heavily armed fire support bases (“Razor” and “Cunningham”) bloomed deep in enemy-held territory, extending Marine artillery range fans all the way to the border.

Then came the three infantry battalions of the 9th Marines, and Barrow dispatched them west and south, advancing across sheer cliffs and through triple-canopied jungles, the roughest terrain the Leathernecks had yet endured in Vietnam.

The Leathernecks scaled and captured towering Tiger Mountain, uncovering a massive NVA headquarters and service facility carved out of solid rock. The Marines also captured several Russian-made 122mm artillery pieces, weapons whose fourteen-mile range and powerful punch had hammered the advancing troops all week.

There were other pleasant discoveries. As Gunnery Sergeant Russell Latona walked warily along a mountain trail, he kicked something unnatural: “Sticking out of a bomb crater I saw the footpad of a mortar bipod.” Latona dug it out and found a bonanza, a subterranean NVA armory that yielded a thousand weapons, including recoilless rifles and AA machine guns.

The 9th Marines now moved up to the forbidden border and observed heavy NVA military traffic along Route 922 inside Laos.

Barrow asked permission to extend his combat operations into Laos to cut Route 922. In closing, he added one sentence which seemed to capture the essence of this limited war: “My forces should not be here if ground interdiction of Route 922 not authorized.”

Captain David Winecoff then had the pleasure of leading Hotel Company across the border, establishing a night ambush along Route 922, and blowing away an NVA military convoy with Claymore mines and wellaimed rifle fire. Then they boogied back into Vietnam. A tiny blow, perhaps, in this protracted war of fits and starts, but my God it felt good!

Barrow fought his way into the high border country, then fought his way out. Operation Dewey Canyon, seven weeks long, dealt heavy casualties to both sides: 130 Marines killed, 920 wounded; 1,617 NVA killed. The Marines captured enough weapons and equipment to outfit an entire NVA division.

But just when the Marines were getting good at highmobility operations, the war began to unwind. The 9th Marines would in fact be the first to leave; before the end of 1969 the entire 3d Marine Division was gone.

The buzzword became Vietnamization – letting the ARVN fight its own battles. With peace talks underway in Paris, troop withdrawals occurring steadily, and the American public seemingly willing to forget the whole affair, the spark was gone.

Marines check out farmers near Marble Mountain outside Da Nang, making sure they are not actually Viet Cong. Marble Mountain Patrol, John A. Groth, 1968, watercolor on paper.

Collection of the National Museum of the Marine Corps

In the spring of 1971 the last combat elements of the 1st Marine Division and the 1st Wing departed Vietnam, closing the long chapter. Only 500 Marines remained, advisers to the South Vietnamese Marine Division. Fittingly, some of these men participated in the last good fight.

The North Vietnamese chose Easter of 1972 for their long-expected offensive to overwhelm the south. No guerrilla war here. No U.S. Marine combat unit in front of them. The NVA swarmed across the borders with tanks and heavy artillery, driving a wedge of terrified refugees before them.

But the Vietnamese Marines and their Leatherneck advisers hung tough. At Dong Ha, Captain John Ripley single-handedly throttled the advance of 30,000 NVA troops and 200 tanks by blowing the bridge over the Cua Viet River at extreme personal risk. No Marine’s Navy Cross was ever more dearly won.

Stumped by this unexpected setback, and hammered by U.S. ships and aircraft, the NVA offensive petered out. In Hanoi, the Politburo fired the great General Giap for this fiasco.

But in the end Ripley’s heroism and the steadfastness of the RVN Marines served only to buy time for warweary, polarized South Vietnam. Three years later the NVA came back in even greater force, and this time there were no U.S. Marines left at all – no advisers, gunships, attack planes.

Wounded Marines had never had a better chance at survival as they did in Vietnam with the standard of rapid evacuation and medical care available to them. Forward Field Hospital, An Hoa I, by Col. Peter Michael Gish, USMCR (Ret.), 1967, oil on canvas.

Collection of the National Museum of the Marine Corps

Cambodia fell first, then Vietnam. In both Phnom Penh and Saigon, Marines executed complicated mass evacuations of thousands of Americans and endangered nationals by helicopters from amphibious ships of the Seventh Fleet.

In Saigon, Master Sergeant Juan Valdez, senior NCO in charge of the Embassy Marines, was the last man to board the final helicopter that chaotic morning, April 30, 1975. In a plain brown bag he grimly carried the American flag. The antithesis of Iwo. But it was over.

Vietnam was the longest war in U.S. history. In overall terms, it was also the costliest for the U.S. Marines. A total of 13,067 Marines were killed in action or died of wounds; 88,633 Marines were wounded.

Although the number of dead was less, the combined Leatherneck casualties exceeded those of World War II.

Thirty-eight Marines were captured and eventually released; eight died in captivity. Forty-nine Marines are still missing in action.

The Marines lost 252 helicopters and 173 fixed-wing aircraft in combat.

In 1968, at the peak of the fighting in Vietnam, III MAF counted 85,755 Marines on its rolls, a greater number than those who fought at Iwo Jima or Okinawa. Nearly 800,000 Marines served in the Corps during 1965-1972.

Historian Robert Moskin contributed a fitting epitaph: “Although Marines made up only one-tenth of all U.S. forces that served in Vietnam, one in every four names carved in the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. is that of a United States Marine.”

“We are pulling our heads out of the jungle and getting back into the amphibious business,” announced new Commandant General Robert Cushman in 1972.

Getting away from the “second land army” focus and returning to their naval roots was how the Marines had reinvented themselves following World War I. The Marines set out to reestablish themselves as the world’s premier amphibious and expeditionary force.

First came the need to purify their ranks, to reassert the high standards of discipline and accountability that had distinguished Marines since the days of Archibald Henderson.

Two tough-nosed Commandants would bridge this gap during 1975-1983 – combat veterans Louis Wilson and Robert Barrow. Both men emphasized quality over quantity in recruiting and retention standards.

Developing and acquiring enhanced firepower and mobility for Marine combat units would take a priority effort over the next dozen years.

The advent of the Marine AV-8 Harrier V/STOL jump jet, the high-speed air-cushioned landing craft, the family of light armored vehicles, and a whole array of antitank and antiaircraft missile systems injected mobility, firepower, and confidence into a Corps now committed around the globe.

Problems of strategic lift were nicely solved by investing in a fleet of maritime prepositioning ships, stuffed with essential heavy equipment, afloat near the most remote and threatened regions.

The aftermath of the suicide bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, where 241 died. Tragic Monument-Beirut, Lebanon, 1983, by Maj. John T. Dyer, USMCR, 1984, pen and brown ink with watercolor wash on paper.

Collection of the National Museum of the Marine Corps

The Marines also launched a low-profile retraining program in special operations to enable their expeditionary units to more smartly execute missions involving hostage rescue, embassy evacuations, and forcible seizure of ships or oil wells.

Yet the Cold War began to place onerous and increasingly dangerous political restrictions on the ability of forward-deployed Marines to defend themselves.

The Marines enjoyed one brief success in 1982. Colonel James Mead’s 32d Marine Amphibious Unit (MAU) landed in Beirut, formed a well-armed, no-nonsense cordon, and promptly, peaceably evacuated 6,000 Palestinians and Syrians from an explosive situation. In and out, nicely done.

But then the Lebanese civil war worsened, and President Ronald Reagan ordered the Marines back to Beirut. Fatefully, they would stay ashore 533 days. Static, shackled, increasingly vulnerable, attractive targets.

The Marines in Beirut thus became a lightning rod for U.S. Mideast policy, a small band of amphibians, terribly exposed at an international airport, sniped at by day and shelled at night from the Shouf Mountains.

On October 23, 1983, a suicidal terrorist drove a Mercedes dump-truck directly into the lobby of the four-story building housing the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines – and blew himself up. The truck, loaded with six tons of TNT enhanced by pressurized propane gas and primer cord, had the explosive force of eleven Silkworm antiship missiles, roughly the yield of a small tactical nuclear bomb.

The building quartered about 300 Marines and a few sailors and soldiers. The blast killed 241 of them. In that terrible instant, more Marines died than those who had fallen defending Khe Sanh, or recapturing Hue City, or assaulting Eniwetok.

Four months later, after more Marines had fought and died protecting other peacekeepers and the Embassy, the Reagan administration removed the last of the amphibious troops from Beirut – 533 days …

Two other less-than-satisfying military operations, in Grenada and Panama, involved the Marines before the decade of the 1980s finally closed. Both continued to reflect high politics, skimpy intelligence, hasty planning, and the holy grail of fully joint operations.

In Grenada, two days after the Beirut bombing, Colonel James Faulkner’s 22d MAU joined the joint task force assaulting several hundred Cubans and restoring a democratic government.

The Marines made multiple amphibious landings, fought with commendable professionalism and restraint, and didn’t hang around very long after the shooting stopped. Three Marine helicopter pilots died in the fighting; fifteen other Marines suffered gunshot wounds. American medical students were safely rescued.

In December 1989, the other joint forces intervention occurred in Panama.

Heliborne Marines landed to secure the Bridge of the Americas and the westward approaches. One Marine died; three more were wounded. In relative terms, the nineteenth-century landings had been costlier.

Then a funny thing finally happened to the Marines and the protracted Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. We won! On the day after Christmas, 1991, the Soviet Union officially dissolved. The enormous Soviet war machine came apart at the seams.