• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 822 0

crash, I remember thinking. I had a lot of close calls walking point. A couple of times they should not have missed. I was never very religious, but I left Vietnam with a feeling I was not supposed to die. I feel the Lord had a purpose for my life and I don't know what it was or maybe is. Perhaps it was to have my two daughters. Maybe someday one of them will be president. If asked about Nam, I like to talk about my buddies. It makes me glow to think about or talk about them. At work if you say, “Hey buddy,” the response is, “I have no buddies.”

Dennis K. Walker

Sergeant; D Company, 6th Battalion,

31st Infantry, 3d Brigade (Separate),

9th Infantry Division;

Vietnam and Cambodia, 1969-70

CONTENTS

Preface

PART ONE: CAV COUNTRY

1 A Treasure Chest

2 Running the Trapline

3 Hard-core

4 Humping the Boonies

5 Trouble Waiting to Happen

6 April Fools' Day

7 First Sergeant, F ve Got a Feeling

PART TWO: FINALLY

8 Marching Orders

PART THREE: MAY DAY

9 Jumping the Fence

10 Timetables

11 Blackhorse in Contact

12 Wet Rice in Bowls

PART FOUR: TAKING THE BARB OFF THE FISHHOOK

13 Inland

14 Thunder Run

15 Night Attack

16 Snoul

17 Dreadnaughts and Panthers

18 Crossing Paths

PART FIVE: IF IT COULD GO WRONG, IT WOULD GO WRONG

19 Hot LZs

PART SIX: ACROSS THE RACH CAI BAC

20 Reshuffling

21 The Electric Strawberry

22 Charlie Mech

PART SEVEN: WE'RE THE UNWILLING LED BY THE UNQUALIFIED DOING THE UNNECESSARY FOR THE UNGRATEFUL

23 Polar Bears in the Parrot's Beak

24 Soldiering

25 Second Platoon

26 Chantrea

27 A Handful of Real Soldiers

28 Don't Mean Nothin'

PART EIGHT: GOING AFTER COSVN

29 The Three-Quarter Horse

30 Body Counting

31 Looking Inside the Bag

32 Running on Empty

33 Ambush Alley

PART NINE: COLONELS AND GRUNTS

34 Rock Island East

35 You Win Some, You Lose Some

36 The Grind

37 No Name Hill

38 Salty's Cache

39 Slow and Careful

PART TEN: ABOUT FACE

40 And I'm Changing It Back

41 Withdrawal Pains

42 Burning Your Bridges Behind You

43 The Verdict

Glossary

Selected Bibliography

PREFACE

The focus of this manuscript is the Indochina War in the year 1970, most specifically the springtime campaigns of the U.S. Army in South Vietnam along the border with neutral (but communist-dominated) Cambodia, and the dramatic summertime offensive into Cambodia authorized by President Nixon. These were, of course, political times during which the policies of Vietnamization and Withdrawal had taken the headlines away from the battlefield. This manuscript is offered in honor of those soldiers whom history has generally bypassed. Whereas the news accounts of 1970 and the subsequent history books were dominated by the negotiations in Paris and the military withdrawals, Americans were still dying in the dust at places like Fort Defiance and Firebase Illingworth. Whereas the Cambodian Incursion is remembered for the furor over Nixon's speech and the four dead at Kent State, in Cambodian jungles more forgotten men were dying at Rock Island East, Ph Tnaot, Landing Zone Phillips, Salty's Cache, and along the banks of the Rach Cai Bac.

This manuscript will, hopefully, fill an historical and an emotional gap for those previously unrecognized men who lost comrades and parts of themselves on fields of fire. That I hope will serve the individual, but the subtheme of this manuscript should address the larger concern of the overall experience of the U.S. Army in Vietnam. A study of the blistering and costly campaigns along the border immediately prior to the offensive into Cambodia should acquaint one with the general tempo of the stagnated war of attrition that dominated the ground war in South Vietnam. Likewise, a study of the sweep into Cambodia reflects the larger, conventional style of operations that were periodically mounted during the war, as well as the political strings usually attached. The commentary on the decline in action and morale after Cambodia foreshadows the state of crisis that the U.S. Army was in when the cease-fire was signed.

This is my fourth book chronicling the campaigns