CHAPTER 12
At 0730 on August 19, Kilo and Lima companies, 3/3, moved out in line abreast to attack toward the northeast. Lima, 3/7, was in reserve. Simultaneously, Echo and Golf, 2/4, drove eastward toward the sea to link up with 3/3. The battered Hotel, 2/4, and India Company, 3/3, withdrew to the regimental CP, and India and Mike, 3/7, moved out from the CP to extract the supply column and on the way toward the village of An Thoi 2 to establish a blocking position that would prevent the VC from slipping southward. Mike, 3/3, was ordered to hold its original blocking position further north.
Lima, 3/7, completed the sweep to the beach with little incident. Some light sniper fire, which caused no casualties, was all these troops encountered. As they looked toward the village of Van Tuong 1 they observed several VC and called an air strike. When the strike dispersed the VC, the 3d Platoon took the fleeing enemy under fire and killed an estimated nineteen of them.
THE RESCUE
The exact location of Column 21 was not determined until after sunrise on August 19. One of the 3/3 FACs, Lt Howie Schwend, requested that all aircraft operating in the area look for it, and it was found.
The 3d Battalion, 7th Marines advanced into its zone of action, the scene of August 18’s fiercest fighting. There it discovered that the VC had mostly gone. These Marines moved through An Cuong 2, met no resistance, and joined up with the supply convoy.
When the young man who had pleaded on the radio all day and all night was finally rescued the next morning, he ran out of his tractor screaming and crying about having been abandoned. “They just left me there! They abandoned me!” Ironically, although the Marine was quite bitter, he became a career Marine.
The VC left a booby-trapped C-ration box on the ramp of the vehicle next to Marino’s. It was discovered and disarmed by the engineers.
More than sixty enemy bodies were found in the vicinity of the column. Others undoubtedly had been hauled away.
One tractor was deemed irreparable and blown up by engineers on the spot. The wreckage remains there today, and the Vietnamese have built a war memorial around it. Of the remaining vehicles, only one could move under its own power; the remainder had to be towed by a tank retriever.
Sergeant James Mulloy, who had positioned himself in the rice paddy, thwarted the VC effort to overrun the column for hour upon hour. He inflicted an extraordinary number of casualties on the Viet Cong. When aid arrived that morning he insured that all the wounded men were evacuated before seeking relief for himself. James Mulloy was awarded the Navy Cross Medal for his heroic efforts.
Jack Marino, who received the Silver Star Medal for his actions during the fight, counted five recoilless rifle or RPG hits on his vehicle, more than three hundred fifty bullet holes, and damage from an 82mm mortar round that knocked out the engine.
3/7
Lima, 3/7, was in its blocking position by 1500. In Van Tuong 3 and Van Tuong 4, these troops apprehended eight young males of military age and turned them over to the intelligence officer for questioning.
India and Mike companies, 3/7, patrolled over the ground on which Hotel, 2/4, had fought so hard the day before. They found packs and minor pieces of equipment but nothing of great value.
2/4 AND 3/3
The main bodies of 2/4 and 3/3 encountered scattered pockets of VC on their sweep to the sea. The terrain was difficult; compartmented rice paddies ringed by dikes and hedgerows hindered observation for control purposes and hampered maneuverability. The few VC left in the area were holed up in scattered tunnels and caves. Marines moving through the area often sustained sniper fire from the rear. Blasting the tunnels and caves was slow, hot work.
Echo Company, 2/4, and the battalion command group swept through Van Tuong 1. Gunny Ed Garr thought it was one of the spookiest places he ever saw. He had both pistols out and at the ready, and he made sure he didn’t get near any radio antennas on the way through the village. VC snipers’ favorite targets were the radio operators and those around them, who would be correctly presumed to be members of the command group.
The hedgerows and fences channeled the foot traffic through narrow lanes, perfect for booby traps or ambushes. The Marines discovered several thousand punji stakes in a schoolyard and surmised that children had made them during school breaks. An old man helped destroy them.
Even though it was full daylight, the village had a double canopy of vegetation over it and seemed awfully dark and foreboding. As were most of the villages in the area it was honeycombed with bunkers.
The Marines picked up so many packs and so much communications wire that they were certain this had been the 1st VC Regiment command post. They were right. The commanders thought a more thorough search was in order and called the RLT-7 headquarters to recommend that an ARVN or other unit conduct a detailed search after they passed through. The march to the sea was complete and organized resistance ceased by nightfall.
WRONG WAY
Corporal Robert O’Malley’s men, Buchs and Rimpson, stayed aboard the hospital ship the first night, but they decided that they were not wounded badly enough to prevent them from rejoining the fight. The rumor mill, which always works overtime during and after a big fight, had it that India Company, 3/3, had been wiped out.
The two Marines hitched a ride back to the battalion armory in Chulai, where they drew new weapons and managed to get a ride back to the ship. From there they caught an amtrac headed for the beach and rejoined the battalion. They saw no more action on Starlite as, by this time, India Company had been withdrawn to the beach to serve as command post security. Long after the battle, other troops marveled at the fact that these two had a legitimate reason to stay away from a very dangerous battlefield and had chosen to return. Although truly admired for their decision they took a lot of ribbing from the others. Rimpson, in particular, was singled out for the sobriquet “Wrong Way Rimpson.”
LOOSE ENDS
General Walt continued Starlite for five more days in the hope that his troops would find more of the enemy in caves and tunnels. Fisher’s and Muir’s battalions were withdrawn on August 20, and LtCol James Kelly’s 1/7 entered the area to work with 3/7. Troops of the 2d ARVN Division came into Starlite on the third day of the operation and policed up VC who were still operating on the fringes of the peninsula. They brought up three or four battalions along the coastline from south of Chulai to keep VC from escaping in that direction. Their efforts yielded few results. The 2d ARVN Division commander, BriGen Hoang Xuan Lam, met with Colonel Peatross on several occasions. Peatross trusted Lam completely and thought that there would be no leaks from him. Lam and some of his staff visited Peatross and the 7th Marines during Starlite, and after that they worked very closely together.
The VC who had wanted to leave were gone. They departed the first night, exiting near where Hotel Company, 2/4, was dug in for the night and then on past an ARVN outpost to the south, where the right people were bribed to ignore their passage.
The Bo Doi claim that they broke off the battle at the end of the first day because, “we were tired, and the Americans were tired.” They left one company behind under the command of Phan Tan Huan to help the villagers deal with the casualties and harass the Marines. Clashes between the two sides were generally light, and there were few casualties on the Marine side. The effort cost the VC another sixty or so killed in action. No more Marines were killed by the VC activity.
The Bo Doi said that they considered bringing in their other two battalions from the south when the battle began but rejected that idea out of fear of the effect American fire power would have on the units moving in the open during daylight.
Operation Starlite was over, but it would remain in the collective memory of the Marines for a long, long time.