CHAPTER 5

THE BATTLE

THE ENEMY THREATENS

It is axiomatic of military planning that one must take into account an enemy’s capabilities rather than his intentions. For several months allied intelligence estimated that the enemy was capable of bringing as many as two full regiments down from the nearby Annamite Cordillera, the ragged and overgrown mountain chain that runs most of the length of Vietnam’s interior. These mountains run southward out of China and their peaks average over 5,000 feet. A heavily jungled spur comes to within ten kilometers of the Chulai plain. Hidden by the foliage were numerous trails that could allow the enemy fairly easy access to the Chulai area and provide escape routes as well. To mass two regiments of men in one area would, on the one hand, present grave risks to an enemy commander. If discovered by the ARVN and Americans, such a force might be severely mauled by superior allied firepower. On the other hand, the VC capability presented a serious threat to the Marine air base.

For weeks the after the battle of Ba Gia, the 2d ARVN Division looked for the enemy with no success. It was thought they had gone back toward the dense hills. As we have seen, they moved in a bit closer to Chulai and were resting from the Ba Gia campaign.

The heads-up analysis of the 3d Marine Division intelligence section headed up by Maj Charles Williamson and his assistant Capt Mike Dominguez picked this up. Their order-of-battle information began to show patterns of movement eastward by the 1st Viet Cong Regiment.

Colonel Leo J. Dulacki, General Walt’s intelligence officer (G2) explained the efforts of the Williamson-Dominguez team like this, “Early in August we began receiving countless low-level reports from numerous intelligence collection organizations concerning the movement of the 1st VC Regiment. The sources for most of these reports were of doubtful reliability and, indeed, many were contradictory, nevertheless, it was decided to plot all of the hundreds of reported movements, regardless of credibility, on a map, and an interesting picture developed. When the many aberrations were discounted, it appeared that the 1st VC Regiment was, in fact, moving towards Chulai although most of the intelligence experts, including the ARVN and the U.S. Army’s I Corps Advisory Group, discounted such a possibility. I briefed Col Edwin Simmons, III MAF G-3, on what appeared to be developing and suggested the consideration, if further indicators developed, of an offensive operation in the area south of Chulai.”¹

Acting on this intelligence, the 4th Marines conducted a one-battalion operation alongside the 51st ARVN Regiment to search for the enemy south of the Tra Bong River. Codenamed Thunderbolt, the operation lasted for two days, August 6 and 7, and extended 7,000 meters south of the river and west of Route 1. The ARVN and Marines found little sign of a major VC force and encountered only scattered enemy activity. The Marines suffered more from the 110-degree heat than from a human enemy. Nevertheless, Col James McClanahan, the CO of the 4th Marines, felt that the operation was a useful exercise in command and control². A week later the pace quickened.

Captain Cal Morris, commander of Mike Company, 3/3, was running combat patrols south of the river on August 15 and 16 when his Marines encountered and killed some of the enemy. The dead soldiers wore khaki uniforms, not the black-pajamas typical of the VC village militia the Marines had previously seen. And they were better armed. One had a rocket propelled grenade (RPG) launcher, an armor- and bunker-busting weapon, which was rarely seen at this point in the war. The others were armed with what appeared to be automatic shoulder weapons of Chinese Communist manufacture. These were strange to the Marines, and they could not be identified at the company level. Captain Morris afterward thought that they might have been AK47s, which were to become ubiquitous later in the war. The enemy corpses and weapons were quickly evacuated to the rear for evaluation.

Also on August 15 the 1st Marine Radio Battalion located what appeared to be the 1st VC Regiment headquarters near the village of Van Tuong. The Marines intercepted radio message traffic of a unit they believed to be the 1st VC Regiment and located it with direction finding equipment. This information was quickly confirmed by further intercepts and was passed to Major Williamson’s intelligence team, which immediately processed it and notified General Walt’s III MAF staff.

THE DEFECTOR

The same day, MajGen Nguyen Chanh Thi, the ARVN commander of the I Corps Military Region, had urgent news for General Walt. A captured VC, Thi told the Marine commanding general, revealed that the notorious 1st VC Regiment was massing south of the Tra Bong River, near the village of Van Tuong, on the Van Tuong peninsula, in preparation for an assault on the Marine base at Chulai. Numbering about two thousand troops, this force was to attack and destroy the main air station facilities and aircraft while local guerrilla forces pinned the defenders in place with relatively minor but noisy and potentially dangerous actions. The defector was a seventeen-year-old named Vo Thao, who had been abducted by the VC during Tet, the Lunar New Year festival, in 1965. After a few weeks training Thao had been assigned to the 40th Battalion of the 1st Regiment. Typifying many Vietnamese, he had relatives on both sides of the fight. His paternal uncle was a member of the VC, three other uncles worked for the ARVN or the Americans, and his stepfather was an ARVN sergeant. When his Viet Cong commander refused permission for Thao to visit his family, he had filled out false leave papers and deserted.³

General Thi told Walt that he thought this was the best, the most reliable, information he had received about the enemy in the entire Vietnam War. Walt considered his reaction and, apprehensive about leaks to the enemy, asked General Thi to not share this information with other Vietnamese commanders. Walt then set out for Chulai to discuss the situation with his commanders on the ground there.⁴

General Nguyen Chanh Thi’s information was only partially correct. Part of the regiment, the 40th and 60th battalions, and elements of the 45th Weapons Battalion, were at Van Tuong. The remaining units were about fifteen kilometers further south. And the VC force was not preparing for a regimental-size attack on Chulai. The enemy commanders had already decided to limit attacks on the Marine base to small, highly mobile, and suicidal sapper attacks. At this time, the enemy commanders were away at their meeting in the mountains west of Chulai to discuss how they might draw the Americans out from their bases and reduce the effectiveness of American supporting arms and mobility.

THE OPTIONS

On August 16 Walt held a conference at Chulai with the assistant division commander, BriGen Frederick Karch; Col James McClanahan, commander of the 4th Marines; Col Oscar “Peat” Peatross, commanding officer of Regimental Landing Team 7 (RLT-7); and a few staff members. He outlined the situation and emphasized that the data he had was very sensitive and that the information should not go below battalion level. After sharing the intelligence, the general reviewed his options. Walt was faced with the decision of trying to preempt a possible attack on the air base with an attack on the Viet Cong, or defending. The former course of action would strip most of the forces from Chulai, rendering it vulnerable to attack. The latter would allow the enemy time to build up his logistics base, thereby strengthening himself for the attack at a later date. General Walt knew he was going to have to fight the VC sooner or later and he decided to do so on his own terms by carrying the fight to the enemy.⁵

After counting the forces and responsibilities within his area he did not believe he could spare any troops from Danang. The most he could count on for an operation were two Marine battalions, and he thought that they should be 3/3 and 2/4. Having decided that, he would have to scrape up other resources to increase his chances of success on the battlefield. In the doctrine of the 1960s it was felt that the attacker needed a “combat power” ratio of 3:1 over a defender to conduct a successful operation. Two Marine battalions attacking a two-thousand-man enemy force would make the fighting troops on the ground nearly even in manpower. Walt would have to get his “combat power” from his supporting arms. The general looked at Colonel Peatross and said, “Peat, you are the only one available [to run the operation]. I know all your gear is out on the beach because you just landed yesterday.”⁶

Peatross recalled later that Walt gave him the option of going or not going, and told him (Peatross) that if he didn’t go the operation would have to be called off. There is no evidence that two aggressive Marines like Peatross and Walt, both former Marine Raiders, ever thought that not going was a viable option. Nevertheless, Peatross did say that he wanted to talk to the battalion commanders who would be involved. Walt gave Peatross another option, that of using the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines (1/7), one of Peatross’s own battalions, for the operation, but he recommended that Peatross allow them to continue to relieve 3/3 in the defensive perimeter at Chulai, because that is what they were doing anyway, and then use 3/3 for the operation. Peatross was fond of quoting General of the Army Omar Bradley, who once said that 90 percent of success in battle was knowing one’s subordinates. Peatross was very familiar with the commanders of 3/3 and 2/4. He had known Lieutenant Colonel Muir since the latter came through the Basic School at Quantico as a lieutenant and again at Camp Pendleton, when Peatross first took over the 7th Marines. He and Lieutenant Colonel Fisher had been on Iwo Jima together. In fact, Peatross had been acquainted with both of these officers longer than he had known his own battalion commanders.⁷ After speaking with Muir and Fisher, and flying with them over the objective area, Peatross confirmed that he was ready to go. He asked that Walt try to get Battalion Landing Team 3/7, from Admiral Sharp, the commander-in-chief, Pacific (CinCPac), as regimental reserve. This battalion had been designated the Special Landing Force (SLF) and was the theater reserve for the entire Pacific region. Walt agreed, and Admiral Sharp immediately approved the request from his headquarters in Hawaii. The problem was that the unit was in the Philippines.⁸

Peatross’s equipment was indeed on the beach, but his regiment was landing in Vietnam administratively. He had been told at Camp Pendleton, California, to be prepared to land tactically, then, once he got to Vietnam, the 3d Marine Division told him to land administratively. So all of his equipment was stacked up on the beach. Landing administratively meant that priority was given to making maximum use of hold space on the ships when loading and on getting the supplies and equipment off the ship in the most expeditious manner regardless of the order in which it came off. Landing tactically meant that the ships were combat loaded with combat equipment more readily available at the top of the holds, so it could be off-loaded in the presumed order a unit engaged with the enemy would need. Because RLT-7 landed administratively, all of its equipment was arrayed on the beach in a very jumbled manner.⁹

COLONEL PEATROSS

Peat Peatross and his regiment were new to Vietnam, but the colonel himself was a seasoned combat veteran of two previous wars. A trim, bespectacled southerner, with accompanying accent, Peatross looked more like the textile engineer he had trained to be at the University of North Carolina than the war hero he was. Oscar Peatross had been a member of LtCol Evans F. Carlson’s famed Marine Raiders during World War II. Carlson’s men, whose ranks included James Roosevelt, FDR’s son, made a daring raid on the Japanese-held island of Makin in the Gilbert Island chain early in the war. Makin was well within the confines of that area of the Pacific the Japanese had rapidly overrun in the early days of the war. The numerically superior enemy force was caught completely off guard when Colonel Carlson and his small Raider unit landed at night by rubber boat from submarines. Peatross’s party, tossed up on a beach well away from the main body, found itself right in the middle of a much larger Japanese unit and fought its way to join up with the other Raiders. His advance was hotly contested but successful for the Marines, who killed dozens of the enemy. For his leadership in the battle Peatross was awarded the Navy Cross Medal, the nation’s second highest combat award.¹⁰ Peatross participated in other Pacific campaigns and later had commanded a battalion under then-Col Lew Walt in Korea.

RLT-7

RLT-7 arrived in Okinawa from California in June 1965. Beginning in May 1965, it was alerted for movement to Vietnam and had begun getting intelligence briefings on a daily basis. This continued all the way across the Pacific and throughout the stay Okinawa. During July, the colonel and his staff visited all the Marine areas in Vietnam to gain familiarity with the enemy and the problems of fighting in Vietnam.¹¹ On August 8, the unit embarked aboard Amphibious Squadron 7 (PhibRon-7) for the leg of its voyage to Vietnam. The force consisted of the RLT headquarters, BLT 1/7 and BLT 3/9.¹²

The Marines of RLT-7 were well trained according to the doctrine of the day. And they were well prepared for coordination with their air and naval counterparts, both Navy and Marine. Training on Marine tactical doctrine on the use of helicopters was particularly important, because it was still being developed. Marines had used helicopters in combat as far back as Korea, and in Vietnam they had three and a half years of experience with the Shufly advisory operation. But they had yet to fly large numbers of Marines into combat in accordance with the practices they had developed over the previous dozen years. Starlite would be the first big test.¹³

En route to Vietnam the composition of the landing team changed again when 3/9 was diverted to Danang and detached from the RLT. Thus RLT-7 arrived in Chulai on August 14 with only its headquarters and Battalion Landing Team 1/7.¹⁴

For Starlite, the units were once more juggled. In the end RLT-7 consisted of 3/3, 2/4, and the RLT staff. These units were alerted on the afternoon of August 16. The newly landed 1/7, under LtCol James B. Kelly, had been designated to take over the defensive positions of Chulai from 3/3 and was already moving into place.¹⁵

THE PLAN

The decision made and the units chosen, planning began in earnest. The first task was to figure out a method of attack. A helicopter landing by all the forces involved was out of the question because there were not enough aircraft to lift both battalions into the objective area. Even if there had been ample choppers, Peatross’s force would still need amphibious shipping to bring ashore tanks and other heavy equipment, as well as to provide the logistic support to keep the assault rolling.

A ground attack was considered but rejected. There were not enough trucks available to move sufficient numbers of Marines rapidly down Highway 1. Moving them overland on foot would eliminate the important element of surprise. The Van Tuong peninsula lay about 12,000 meters from Highway 1, which was the only real land supply artery. The Marines would have to march overland to the objective area on minor roads and trails, and there would have been no way to protect the communications routes on Route 1, and from there to the objective area. Attacking from the air and from the sea at the same time would remove these difficulties and preserve the surprise factor.

Besides his experience with Joe Muir and Bull Fisher, Peatross’s long acquaintance with General Walt expedited the planning and coordination between the division staff and the RLT-7 headquarters. Of similar advantage to Peatross and his staff was that they worked together previously with the amphibious commander, Captain McKinney, his staff, and the same ships on Operation Silver Lance in California only five months earlier. This relationship undoubtedly contributed to McKinney’s willingness to proceed with the operation on oral instructions.¹⁶

Later on August 16, just prior to dusk, the two battalion commanders; Colonel Peatross; Capt Dave Ramsey, the 3/3 S-3 (operations officer); and Maj Andy Comer made a hurried helicopter reconnaissance right over the objective area in General Walt’s personal UH-1E Huey helicopter. They looked at landing beaches, and Lieutenant Colonel Fisher searched for possible helicopter landing zones (LZs). As they flew over the objective area a few unidentified Vietnamese peeked up at them from some of the remote wooded areas. The flight was hurried so as to be less obvious as to its intent. The Marines observed that the proposed battleground was rolling country, about 75 percent of it cultivated, and elsewhere there was thick scrub from three to six feet high. Hedgerows, many of bamboo that ranged in height from six to nearly a hundred feet, compartmentalized the area. The hedgerows marked field and village boundaries and were often too thick to move through easily. The beaches were sandy and narrow, but in a few cases the dunes advance inland as far as 2,000 meters.¹⁷

THE ENEMY IS WARNED

The brevity and apparent casualness of the reconnaissance flight did not fool the Viet Cong. Based on the activity their scouts observed at Chulai they figured the Americans were going to attack the Van Tuong peninsula. The French writer Bernard Fall made an important statement about the enormous intelligence advantage Giap’s forces had. He wrote about the war with the French, but his warning was also applicable in the war with the Americans. “It must be understood that practically all troop movements in Indochina took place in a fishbowl. Since practically no troop movements took place at night for fear of costly ambushes, even the smallest movement of troops, tanks or aircraft was immediately noted by the population and brought to the attention of communist agents. Thus, the only effect of tactical surprise, which could be achieved, was that of speed in executing a movement, rather than in the concealment of the movement itself. The communists, therefore, nearly always had a fairly accurate idea of French forces in any given sector and knew how many of these troops could be made available for mobile operations. Since the number of troops required to protect a given number of miles of communications lines also was a known constant, it was almost mathmatically possible to calculate the maximum depth of the French penetration and its duration.”¹⁸

In the case of Operation Starlite, the VC determined the objective but seriously underestimated the speed with which the American Marines could mount the attack. They also misjudged the manner of attack.

They had an additional problem in that their regimental commander, Le Huu Tru, and his assistant, Lu Van Duc, were not present. These men were at their conference in the dense hills due west of Chulai.

The purpose of this conference, convened after the VC victory at Ba Gia, was to determine how to deal with the Marines at Chulai. Other than the assertions of Vo Thao, the seventeen-year-old defector, there is no evidence that the 1st VC Regiment ever seriously contemplated a full-scale attack on the Chulai base. The Viet Cong had never fought the Marines in this type of assault before.

Inasmuch as the commanders were absent, it fell to Political Officer Nguyen Dinh Trong and his assistant, Hu Tuong, to meet the Americans. Among the things under consideration was the question of whether or not to bring up the 45th and 90th battalions from their positions fifteen kilometers south Van Tuong. Trong and Tuong delayed this decision until the battle was already joined, and at that point it was too late. In the meantime the 40th and 60th battalions were fully alerted and going through drills to meet various contingencies.

The VC officers disagreed as to the direction from which the attack would come. They considered three possibilities: The Americans would attack south over the Tra Bong River; overland from Route 1; or by helicopter. At this point in the war they were not fully appreciative of the ability of Marines to project power ashore through amphibious operations, so they fatally discounted the idea of a landing from the sea. After much discussion they finally agreed that the enemy did not have enough helicopters to mount an effective assault from the air. So their immediate preparation concentrated on overland attacks from the north or west. They felt confident that they could meet the Marines on VC terms. That is, they could ambush and inflict casualties on the Americans and then fade away as they had in the past.

RLT PLANNING CONTINUES

A tent was erected on the beach at Chulai on the morning of August 17 for another briefing of the staff of Amphibious Squadron 7 and Regimental Landing Team 7. The beaches in the landing area had been surveyed by a Navy underwater demolition team both before and after the Marines landed at Chulai the previous May. Two of them appeared suitable for landing the amphibious force. The two are about 4,000 meters apart, and both have sandy bottoms. Other than that, they differ.

After flying over the area the commanders discussed the characteristics of each beach: gradient, width, shelter afforded, tides, terrain inland, etc. Finally, Peatross and McKinney agreed upon the southern beach, near the small fishing village of An Cuong 1. From there the VC could be driven toward Chulai and into an area in which a blocking position could readily be established by a unit that would march overland from the base. The selected area was named Green Beach. The rejected beach was farther north, at the village of Phuoc Thuan 3, and situated midway between two headlands about a mile apart. Although low tide on the August 18 was to be just before H-hour, the rise and fall of the tide, surf conditions, and beach gradient at An Cuong 1 were thought to be satisfactory for an amphibious landing at any time of the day.

Then there were the helicopter landing zones. In war-fighting theory, it is desirable to land helicopters in the rear of the enemy front line, but in Vietnam there were no such lines. The Viet Cong either did not defend at all, or they defended the entire perimeter of whatever they occupied, and there were usually trees and houses within the defended area. The landing zones would have to be large enough to accommodate the helicopters and far enough inland to isolate the targeted VC units from others outside the objective area. They would also have to be far enough inland to permit the use of supporting arms by the water-borne force during its advance from the beach. Moreover, they could not be in heavily populated areas, because it would be necessary to use naval gunfire and other supporting arms to prepare them. For the same reasons they could not be located too close to one another. The three landing zones selected ran roughly north to south and were about 2,000 meters apart.

While Muir and Comer discussed the beach areas, Bull Fisher pointed decisively at the map and asserted, “I’ll land here, here, and here,” as he designated the helicopter landing zones for his assault companies. He named the LZs, from north to south, Red, White, and Blue.¹⁹

The plan, having been agreed upon by the commanders, was coordinated and put to paper by Peatross’s operations officer, Maj Elmer Snyder, who worked his staff all night.

Lieutenant Colonel Lloyd Childers, whose helicopter squadron was responsible for much for the support, was not invited to the meeting because of the extreme security concerns. Instead, he got a brief and operationally useless fragmentary order. As a result, his HMM-361 was deprived of information that would have made it more effective. For one thing, he did not know that the 7th Marines command group would be running the operation. He thought, logically, it would be the 4th Marines, which had occupied the Chulai enclave for three months. Thus, no one thought to obtain the 7th Marines radio frequencies for the operation. Until this was sorted out, the aviators and ground forces would have to relay their traffic through the 4th Marines CP. This would considerably slow operations at critical times.

3/3 HUSTLES TO GET READY

While the two battalion commanders continued to meet with Colonel Peatross and his staff, Maj Andy Comer hustled back to 3/3 command post to get the battalion moving. D-day was set for the next morning, August 18, and H-hour was coordinated with sunrise, 0630. There was not a moment to lose. Things went somewhat easier for the battalion as it had already had completed contingency planning for an operation in this area. Even with this advantage, it was a stretch to get the troops ready and loaded aboard the transports on the afternoon of the August 17. Captain Bruce Webb’s India Company, 3/3, was recalled from a company operation in the field and dispatched directly to the amphibious ships. It would be in the first wave of the assault. The other first-wave company was Capt Jay Doub’s Kilo, 3/3.

APPLICATION OF DOCTRINE

Peatross’s plan was to isolate, then destroy, the enemy. To insure this isolation, all elements of RLT-7—those landing in the helicopter landing zones and those coming across the beach—would have to link up during the early afternoon of D-day. They wanted the VC to think there was only one escape route—to the north. That route was to be blocked by a rifle company infiltrated into place the night before the operation began.

Commodore William McKinney directed his ships to be anchored 2,000 meters offshore at first light. Muir’s battalion had been chosen to be the amphibious assault group simply because it was located closest to the beach and was therefore easiest to embark.

The operational plans were based on established amphibious doctrine, developed in the 1930s and honed to near perfection in World War II. The big difference was the helicopter element. The Marines and Navy had practiced combined helicopter and amphibious landings time after time but never before against an armed enemy. The Navy called the guiding document NWP 22 (a) Doctrine for Amphibious Operations, and the Marine Corps referred to the same publication as LFM-01. Plans were completed quickly because the units were so well trained in this doctrine and had practiced it religiously.

Most of the Marines in both battalions had done this together for more than two years, albeit in non-hostile settings. The officers and men of 3/3, for example, had been aboard more than twenty amphibious ships long enough to have a meal. They had internalized the five-paragraph combat order that leaders issue to their troops, and gave them without having to think about them very much. To most of them this was just the way they made their living; there was no sense that this operation would be different from what they practiced many, many times.

The landing force was fortunate to have three ships in the area that could provide naval gunfire. They were the cruiser USS Galveston (CLG 3) with six 5-inch and six 6-inch guns; and two destroyers, the USS Orleck (DD 886) and USS Prichett (DD 561), each with four 5-inch guns.²⁰

Their captains, as is normal, did not take part in the planning conferences, but they were professionals who had been indoctrinated in the art of naval gunfire support.

Equipment and supplies were sorted and staged on the beach and at helicopter staging points on August 17. By 1400 that day men, supplies, and equipment were being embarked in the ships of PhibRon-7. Colonel Peatross and the headquarters of RLT-7 went aboard the USS Bayfield (APA 33), Commodore McKinney’s flagship. The BLT 3/3 headquarters, plus India and Kilo companies, went aboard the USS Cabildo (LSD 16), and Lima Company was embarked in the USS Vernon County (LST 1161).

The commanders and staff got little sleep as planning and coordination continued well into the night. The task force weighed anchor and sailed due east at 2200. All an observer on shore could tell was that the American ships moved east over the horizon. Well out of enemy sight and under the cover of darkness, the ships turned in order to reach the objective area just in time for the assault to begin. A makeshift armored force of both flame and gun tanks from both the 1st and 3d Tank battalions and Ontos from the 1st Anti-tank Battalion boarded several landing craft, utility (LCUs), which sailed independently towards the amphibious objective area, timing their arrival to coincide with that of the troop transports.²¹

As they loaded aboard ship that afternoon the troops, who were completely uninformed, were pretty much unconcerned; they played grab-ass aboard the ship and didn’t think the operation was going to be much different from all their previous “long walks in the sun.”

Lieutenant Burt Hinson was on the beach loading his platoon, when Staff Sergeant Bradley from the battalion supply section asked if he had plenty of rounds for his .45-caliber automatic pistol. Hinson wasn’t even sure how much ammunition he had, because his skipper, Jay Doub, didn’t think that officers needed weapons anyway. They should be too busy directing their troops to fire weapons. In any event, Bradley talked Hinson into taking several extra loaded magazines of .45-caliber ammo.

There were no sleeping quarters on the ships for most of the Marines, so they rested as best they could among their gear and the amphibian tractors (amtracs) and the landing craft. Many reflected on the sun as it sank over Vietnam and wondered what they would see in its early morning rays when they hit the beach the next day. The religious among them prayed, others wrote letters home, and some just smoked and talked with their comrades.

That night they lined up for a hot supper of chili and rice. Chili and rice does not sound like much of a meal, but the Marines were grateful. It was a welcome relief from the canned fare on which they subsisted for the three previous months.

They were assigned to amtracs just like the diagrams they used in schools would indicate and as they were trained. The Marines of 3/3 had been doing this, together, for a long time. They knew the drill.

The ships weighed anchor at 0200, set a course of 70 degrees, east-northeast, and sailed from the pick-up point. At a little after 0400, after the Marines had eaten a breakfast of eggs and pancakes, all hands were called to general quarters and the ships reversed course. They arrived off the objective area shortly after 0500, dropped anchor in seven fathoms of water a mile-and-a-half offshore, and prepared to launch their assault boats.²²

ALARM!

Although the VC did not expect the Marines from the sea, here they were! As soon as the ships were spotted, messages rang over phone lines and messengers hot-footed around the 1st Viet Cong Regiment area to inform the VC that the Americans were not only coming in from the sea but they were coming in now, much sooner than expected. The ships were off a beach that was less than four kilometers from the 1st VC regimental command post.

The Viet Cong immediately reacted. Duong Hong Minh was sent down to the beach as quickly as he could get there to set up and prepare to set off a command-detonated mine against the American force. Phan Tan Huan, a staff officer, organized a small force that moved into a blocking position between the beach and the command post. His mission was to fight a delaying action, if necessary, to slow the enemy down and permit the 1st Viet Cong Regiment command post to relocate to a more secure position.

THE ANVIL MOVES INTO PLACE

Captain Cal Morris had moved his Mike Company, 3/3, into place the night before. Morris was not a physically imposing figure, but he was tough and well-liked by his men and his peers. Mike Company was to be the blocking force, the anvil, in this operation, and it would set in along a ridgeline to the north of the objective area. The amphibious landing force, that is the other companies in 3/3, and the helicopter landing force, Bull Fisher’s 2/4, were the hammers that were expected to drive the enemy toward Morris’s Marines, so they could complete the job.

The Mike Company Marines bedded down about dusk on the August 17. They awakened at 2230, saddled up, and trekked down to the Tra Bong River. From that point they marched down the beach about two kilometers and then loaded aboard amtracs to cross the river to the peninsula. Then they marched inland until they reached their blocking position. It was a very dark night, and the only way they could keep in contact was to march one behind the other with the man behind holding on to the pack of the man in front. They would have been easy targets for an alert enemy. Luckily, they were not spotted.

Mike Company reached its objective at around 0230 without incident and turned to digging in. A battery of six 107mm howtars from 3/12 were heli-lifted into Mike Company’s position at dawn to provide close artillery support.

Among the Marines that set up the blocking force that night was Lt Bill Krulak, one of Lieutenant General Krulak’s sons, who was a platoon commander in Mike Company.

By daylight, as the amphibious assault force was about to cross the beach, Mike Company was ready.

THE MAGNIFICENT BASTARDS

The 2/4 commander, Joseph R. “Bull” Fisher, was one of the most colorful battalion commanders in the Corps. He was a large Marine, 6’3” or so, and about 220 pounds. He had enlisted in the Marines in 1942 and two-and-a-half years later had landed on Iwo Jima as a platoon sergeant. Twice hit by machine-gun bullets he refused evacuation from the battlefield. Fisher left that terrible island with a Silver Star Medal and a recommendation for a commission. As a first lieutenant, Fisher had commanded a rifle company in the legendary Chosin Reservoir campaign during the Korean War and had won the Navy Cross Medal there. By the time of Starlite, he was balding and aging but still tough. He was a rough and profane man who suffered no fools. He took care of his men and they loved him. They proudly called themselves “The Magnificent Bastards.”

HOTEL SIX

On the evening before Starlite, the officers and NCOs gathered at the Hotel Company, 2/4, command post. 1st Lieutenant Homer K. “Mike” Jenkins, the company commander, was brief. Using the standard five-paragraph format, he told his men that a large enemy force was thought to be south of the Tra Bong River, and he generally outlined his plan of attack and assigned objectives on a map. The 1st Platoon, under Lt Chris Cooney, was to travel with the command group and act as a reserve. Lieutenant Jack Sullivan’s 2d Platoon was to secure Hill 43, which the Vietnamese call Pho Thinh Mountain, southwest of the helicopter landing zones. And Lt Bob Morrison was to use his 3d Platoon to attack and secure the village of Nam Yen 3, northeast of the LZ. Hotel Company and the remainder of 2/4 would either drive the enemy toward the sea and 3/3, which was landing over the beach, or they would have the enemy driven toward them. In no case did their experience with the VC indicate that the Viet Cong would stand and fight.

There were a couple of things about this operation that worried Mike Jenkins. One was that 1/7 came in to man the lines so Hotel Company could get plenty of rest. The other was that they there would be naval gunfire on call during the operation. Neither one of these had precedent in their experience in Vietnam.

Jenkins told his men to be saddled up and ready for the pickup at first light. He closed the briefing with instructions to draw plenty of ammunition and fill up all their canteens.

Jenkins was one of the few junior officers in the battalion with combat experience. Months before his Hawaii-based unit went to Vietnam, Jenkins had volunteered for an advisory program that was rotating young officers into Vietnam for sixty to ninety days. But Jenkins was a Marine Corps Reserve officer and Bull Fisher was determined that only Regular officers be sent from his battalion to get combat experience. Jenkins was not a Marine who gave up easily; he kept after his boss to send him to Vietnam. After five or six trips to the colonel’s office to repeat his request over a period of some months, Fisher finally shook his head and said, “Pack your bags, you’re leaving tomorrow.”

In the early days before the commitment of American ground troops in Vietnam, transportation to that country was dicey. Traveling with another officer on the same orders, it took Jenkins a couple of weeks of bouncing around the Far East on space-available flights before he finally made it to Saigon. At the initial briefing the dozen or so visiting officers were told by the colonel in charge of Marine advisors, “Statistically speaking, one of you is going to go home in a box, two of you will be critically wounded, two of you will be walking wounded, and the rest of you will not receive a scratch during your short stay here.” The colonel’s prophecy was close. Five of the new officers in the briefing went together on an operation with Vietnamese Marines. Two of those went home in boxes and two were critically wounded, but Jenkins emerged from his tour unscathed and with combat experience. His adventure was to be invaluable on the Starlite battlefield toward which he was headed.

Jenkins expected Hotel Company to make contact with the enemy. The day before the operation he and a couple of other officers were taken on an aerial reconnaissance of the battle area. Jenkins was sitting in the door of a helicopter comparing the terrain with his map, when someone fired a .45-caliber weapon at the aircraft. The fire appeared to come from Landing Zone Blue, Hotel’s landing zone for the following day. Jenkins knew it was a .45 when one of the rounds spent its fury on the skin of the chopper and rolled across the deck toward him. He picked it up and put it in his pocket for a souvenir.

Corporal Victor Nunez came away from Jenkins’s pre-operation briefing with the understanding that the enemy force would number about two hundred. Not too formidable, Nunez thought, but it was worrisome enough to keep him from getting a sound night’s sleep. As Nunez was filling canteens, he chatted a moment with LCpl Joe “J. C.” Paul, a fire team leader. Paul finished with, “Vic, take care of yourself tomorrow.” “You, too, buddy,” was the reply. It was the last time they would meet.

Lance Corporal Ernie Wallace got the word passed along to him second-hand. He knew, though, that he could expect to see some action.

Many of the young Marines were more relaxed about the operation. After all, they had a lot of “long walks in the sun” behind them and knew that usually nothing much happened. Up to this point in the war, encounters between American and VC forces rarely involved more than a platoon of the enemy. The enemy sent his larger forces against the ARVN, not against American firepower and technology. Anticipating a typical operation, few 2/4 Marines carried a whole lot of extra gear or supplies. Most stuffed a couple of C-ration cans into their pockets, reasoning that the Chulai airstrip was only a twenty-minute helicopter ride away and resupply would be routine. Nor did the Marines wear the flak jackets that would later become ubiquitous in the war.

2/4. 0600

Bull Fisher decided to go into LZ White with Echo Company. This would put him physically in the center of his three companies in the field, between Golf Company to the north and Hotel Company to the south. Foxtrot Company was left at Chulai as part of the airfield security.

The Bull had had a new major report for duty. At the time 2/4 had neither an executive officer (XO) nor an operations officer (S-3), which were both assignments for majors. The new man would normally have expected to fill one of these positions in the field. Fisher decided to leave the inexperienced officer in the rear as his liaison and to take GySgt Ed Garr with him to serve as his all-around guy. Garr was a seasoned veteran with combat experience in Korea, a man that the colonel knew well, liked, and trusted.

As Garr thought about his role on the operation, he got little sleep that night, but probably more than if he was still a company gunnery sergeant. Gunnery Sergeant is both a rank and a title in the Marine Corps. Shortened to “gunny,” the title was that of a rifle company operations chief. The gunny was the man the company commanders counted on to get things done. If Gunny Garr had still been in Hotel Company, his previous assignment, he undoubtedly would have been up all night, getting the troops and supplies ready to go.

Early in the Vietnam War there were a lot of personal and unauthorized weapons floating around. When someone came up with a Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) the old workhorse from World War II and Korea,²³ Lieutenant Colonel Fisher decided to arm Garr with it, because Fisher liked the weapon and the gunny was one of the few Marines in 2/4 who knew how to operate and clean it. The BAR was no fun to carry, however. With bipod, it weighed about twenty pounds, and a full allotment of magazines could double the load.

After hauling it around for a few weeks Garr managed to trade it, with the colonel’s approval, for a Thompson submachine-gun, which he painted green and dubbed the “Green Hornet.” The Thompson or “tommygun” spit out a lot of heavy .45-caliber slugs, but it was not particularly accurate. Garr finally managed to trade that, the day before Starlite, for a Smith and Wesson .38 Special revolver. He was glad to be unburdened of both the BAR and the tommygun. He was also armed with his standard-issue .45-automatic pistol.

Allowing for temperatures of 110 degrees and a load allowance of 240 pounds per man because of ammunition, weapons, and gear, the helicopters could only carry seven Marines per lift. Flight times and turn-around distances were closely calculated in order to compute fuel loads. A choice had to be made between carrying a light fuel load and more men and equipment, and thus having to refuel more often, or more fuel and fewer men and less equipment.

Landing Hour for the helicopters was set for fifteen minutes later than H-hour on the beach. This would permit concentration of maximum effort in securing the beach and then at the landing zones and thus prevent having to split support resources between the two. Further, it was important that the stronger force, the one landed over the beach with tanks and other heavy equipment, be established first. The helicopters did not have sufficient load capacity for the tanks and other such machinery. Some of the tracked vehicles that were to come ashore with 3/3 were designated to link up with Hotel, 2/4, by mid-morning.

FIRE SUPPORT. 0615

At 0615, fifteen minutes before H-hour on the beach, Kilo Battery, 4/12, which had displaced to firing positions on the northern bank of the Tra Bong in the Chulai tactical area of responsibility on the night of August 17, began 155mm artillery prep fires against the helicopter landing zones. At H-hour, 0630, the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing units Marine Attack squadrons (VMA) 225 and 214, flying A4 Skyhawks; and Marine Fighter/Attack (VMFA) squadrons 311, 513, and 542, flying F4 Phantoms; and Marine Observation Squadron (VMO) 2, with UH-1 Huey gunships, also began to prep the helicopter landing zones with eighteen tons of bombs and napalm. Two U.S. Army aviation platoons and part of a third, which were operating with the ARVN in this area and had become very familiar with it, supported the operation as well.

The 3d Platoon, 1st 8-inch Howitzer Battery (SP) chimed in with its heavy-hitting big guns. At the time of its landing at Chulai the battery’s six M-53 weapons were the longest shooters in Vietnam, with a maximum range of nearly twelve miles. Their reach permitted them to support the operation without leaving the Chulai base.