IA DRANG

IA DRANG

     I enlisted in the Marine Corps September 4, 1962, before most of us knew the war had already started for US forces. LBJ sent the first regular USMC units to Danang early in 1965. I’d served a 13 month tour in the Far East with 3^rd Marine Division, and wasn’t supposed to go overseas again until I had a year Stateside, after which I’d be too “short” to go again. My enlistment would be up in September ’66.

     Legally, I’d already served in Viet Nam. Aboard 2 different troop ships (USS CAVALIER and USS PICKAWAY) in the South China Sea and the Gulf of Tonkin, I had been with one of the Marine units aboard ship as part of the flotilla that was present in waters just off the Vietnamese coast when Johnson bamboozled the US Congress into passing the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, and starting our 10-year war. The vote was 533-2, or close to that.

     In those days it seemed the war would never touch me, much as I wanted it to at the time.

TODAY, SEP 25, 2013, I WAS SHARPLY REMINDED OF OTHER EVENTS IN MY LIFE DURING THOSE DAYS. THE REMINDER CAME IN THE FORM OF A STORY PUBLISHED ON THE WEB ABOUT THE DEEDS IN NOVEMBER 1965 OF CAPTAIN ED “TOO TALL” FREEMAN, A HUEY PILOT WITH THE FIRST CAVALRY DIVISION (AIRMOBILE) IN VIET NAM’S IA DRANG VALLEY.

IA DRANG!! I AWOKE FROM MY HISTORICAL STUPOR.

     My part in those events was, in the scheme of things, tiny. But it was intense at the time, though it was infinitely more intense for the soldiers and pilots of the 1^st Cav, on the side of the US; and the elite North Vietnamese division, on the other side.

     It was the first battle of the war between major units of the armies of the United States and the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam.

     I had arrived in Viet Nam in late September or early October, 1965. Then quite suddenly in early November, a few of us were suddenly shifted to Camp Holloway, a small US Army chopper base just outside Pleiku, in the Vietnamese highlands. I was a radio operator. Though we were part of the 1^st Marine Air Wing, I had spent most of my hitch in artillery and Naval Gunfire units, and wasn’t yet the skilled aircraft controller I would soon become.

     I know more now than I did then. Part of our equipment was the TPQ-10, a sophisticated (yep! In the Marine Corps, no less) radar set which could connect electronically with equipment in the cockpit of an A4 or F4 fighter-bomber of one of our Marine squadrons and, once the pilot had maneuvered his bird to a certain position, speed, heading, and altitude, our radar could “lock on” to the aircraft’s controls and, for the brief time required to get over the target, control the bird’s flight and drop its bombs.

     Now, I think that was the main reason we were at Pleiku. Captain Ed “Too Tall” Freeman, LtCol Hal Moore (Battalion Commander of 1^st Cav troops on the ground), and the rest of our boys fighting for their lives not far away in the Ia Drang Valley, apparently needed all the air support help they could get, including ours.

     As I say, all this was more than I knew at the time. It did seem odd that we weren’t allowed off base unless we were dressed in civvies, and that we ate in the mess hall at Holloway, served meals that were a far cry from usual Marine Corps “chow” we’d become used to at Danang and Chu Lai. Fresh-baked rolls with every meal? Wow! With hindsight, I can see that our sudden transfer to Holloway, and our seemingly special treatment there, weren’t because we were special guys (hah! In the Marine Corps?! are you kidding?) Our special treatment was because we had suddenly, though temporarily, fallen into the same category as people who were, under normal circumstances, much more important than we were. But the Marine Corps giveth; the Marine Corps taketh away.

     Well before Christmas, we were back in our tents at Chu Lai, making, buying, and stealing booze to prepare for Christmas in a war zone.

Here, I need to eat some humble pie. I am accustomed to carrying myself with a certain attitude which is often seen by members of the other services as an undeserved air of superiority among Marines.

     But I went through the Battle of Ia Drang – albeit on its fringes – and have since read authoritative accounts, most notably We Were Soldiers Once, and Young, by LtCol Hal Moore (later LtGen), and Joe Galloway, who was a UPI journalist on the ground with Moore during the Ia Drang battle. The performance of those 1^st Cav troopers, and the superior leadership exhibited by their officers and NCOs, were second to none, at least that I know of. I salute them. That is one of the best books about Viet Nam combat, by two men who truly know.

     I personally did nothing more heroic there than fight off the rats in our machine gun bunker, and scare the shit out of a second lieutenant who was trying to sneak up from behind and catch us asleep on sentry duty.