Air Cavalrymen Swarm Ashore At Qui Nhon While
Mob
Lines Beach
By CHARLES BLACK
Enquirer Military Writer
QUI NHON, Viet Nam -
Saturday afternoon on the beach went like some kind of ceremonial
clockwork
when the 1st Cavalry Division men began coming off the ships.
There had been an influx of
generals and colonels and a C-130 full of correspondents from Saigon
during the
preceding night and morning. Maj. L. L.
Ballard, commander of the 92nd Aviation Company, which came over here
from the
11th Air Assault Division almost a year ago, was rubbing his hands in
anticipation of the show in which his planes were involved.
I ran into Maj. Chuck Siler,
Sp4 Joe Treaster and PFC Marve Wolfe of the 1st Cavalry Division Public
Information Office and made a deal to meet them at the beach about 1:30
p.m.
when the first three boats would come in.
A sizable mob of people showed up and lined the narrow strip of
beach. Trailers and trucks poised and
the boats suddenly appeared, coming from the USS Boxer.
It was one of those
frustrating moments for a reporter. A
crowd of men in helmets, carrying M-16s and luggage, swarmed from the
three big
landing barrages which nuzzled into the beach and hurried aboard the
trailers. I saw Sgt. David Johnson, M-Sgt.
Juan Romero
and PFC David Strickland representing the 227th and 228th Assault
Helicopter
Battalions. They waved and hollered
something at me and I waved back, but getting to anybody on that
50-foot walk
from boat to truck was impossible. I
saw the boats back off for another load and the trucks heading for the
Caribous, and hooked a ride in a jeep driven by a dusty sergeant
accompanied by
a big, dusty lieutenant.
It was a lucky break. I
was riding with Lt. Jonathan T. Graham,
Jr., the communications officer of a company of men formed into an
organization
known as “The Monsoon Express.” They
were officially known as the 394th Transportation Battalion, commanded
by Col.
Thomas J. Emery, and had been in Qui Nhon since Aug. 10 to provide
wheels and
muscle to haul the 1st Cavalry Division’s cargo up to An Khe over Route
19. Lt. Graham was in company with his
communications sergeant, S-Sgt. Willard N. Harris.
This battalion headquarters
was the main push for everything which moved on wheels or boat bottom
from ship
to shore, over the shore and up the road.
It was in charge of mail, rations, quarters, communications and
setting
up and arranging the convoys rolling up the road, parades of dozens of
big
trucks each day bearing beans, blankets and bullets to the operating
base of
the men from Fort Benning.
They dropped me off at a
jeep driven by PFC Malcolm Lyons of the 92nd Aviation Company, who
whipped me
over to the place where the trucks were stopping. The
1st Cavalry soldiers simply filed from the trailers and were
met by members of the 92nd Aviation Co., who counted them off and
headed them
toward the rear ramp doors of the 12 Caribous waiting with idling
engines on a
parking space. Capt. Cecil Ramsey
pointed to a plane where I could recognize Capt. Jerry Ledford and
Capt. Fred
Kirbo in the cockpit. Even as I ran to
the rear door the crew chief was on the intercom, and the plane taxied
out.
The trip from Qui Nhon to An
Khe can be described as swift and noisy when Caribou people are in a
hurry. The plane roars off the metal
(rapidly being asphalt-topped) runway and heads over the bay, giving
you a
square but tilted view of 14 ships in the blue water of the harbor and
a fleet
of white-sailed, bird-like native fishing sampans in a beautiful line
along one
side of the bay. The plane turns and
clears the high circle of hills and goes up a flat valley through which
Route
19 and the Song Bhe River trace their twin courses to the mountains
which
separate the coastal flatlands from the high plateau where An Khe is
located.
I found myself in a group
composed of Lt. John D. Jenkins, the postal officer; Sp4 Tracey E.
Grady, who
gave karate classes back in Columbus; PFC Phil Floyd, SFC Robert Floyd,
both of
the post office detail from Fort Benning; Sp4 Stacy Grady, of the 229th
Assault
Helicopter Company; Sp-5 Ronald L. Tucker and a bunch of guys down the
plane
from me whose names I have but whose ranks didn’t get into the notebook
passed
up to them from hand to hand: This list
includes:
Philip Condon; James Farless
(a photographer buddy of mine whose rank I know is S-Sgt.); Nicholas
Palladino;
Maurice Williford; Paul J. Remine; Charles O. Schaurhorst; Andrew
Swarthoat;
Dennis Cox and Joseph A. Dema.
Just a I got the notebook
back, the plane hit the metal runway at An Khe. It
was sunny and I could see that French Fort Hill had been
deserted except for men handling cargo from the planes.
The division advance party had moved over to
the big clearing hacked out and called the Gold Course.
There, the world’s largest helicopter pad
was already covered with choppers and a quadrangle of unit areas which
are
already being called Camp Radcliffe in honor of Maj. Donald Radcliffe,
the
executive officer of the First Battalion Ninth Cavalry, first casualty
of the
division.
It seemed appropriate that
the 1st Cavalry Division had unanimously adopted the name for its main
base in
An Khe. It also seemed appropriate that
as the plane edged down for its landing I could see an American flag
and a
Vietnamese flag and Capt. Kirbo look and a tall royal palm tree in the
area of
division headquarters. I saw Capt.
Ledford point to the flag and Capt. Kirbo look and his face light up
even as
they were landing.
The men left the plane and
their bags were thrown out in a continuous stream.
The engines never shut off.
The Caribou suddenly lurched off, simply using the last half of
the runway
for a takeoff, and was back to the air and aimed at Qui Nhon and
another
load. In exactly 42 minutes, the
Caribou had landed again, had another load and was taking off. It was a fast round trip.
It took 90 minutes to haul 475 men and their
gear by the 12 planes.
The process became
monotonous and overpoweringly impressive in the days ahead as the
Chinook
helicopters joined in the procession.
The Caribous went back to the other missions on Monday. The Chinooks roared back and forth, carrying
their load of American troops. More
than 4,000 were transported in a day, another brigade in a couple of
more days
and, within a week, a division was setting up tents, digging holes,
filling
sandbags, hunting for Conex boxes and lost luggage and making a
primitive home.
It was a movement of men
which showed this country what a major U.S. commitment can mean and
which had
to be a psychological blow at Communist hopes in this country. They had no chance to harass or strike as
the helicopters flew troops over their heads to the inland base.
The troops of Task Force
Hansen and 101st Airborne Division prowled Highway 19, the mountain
pass, the
valleys around the Golf Course and Camp Radcliffe in a network of
aggressive
patrols.
Vietnamese companies trained
by Special Forces and a Vietnamese ranger battalion from the camp near
Qui
Nhon, along with the Marine battalion there, kept the Viet Cong off
balance and
running while trucks roared up the highway carrying fuel and other
cargo to An
Khe. A French newspaperman I met at Qui
Nhon told me:
“One knows that the United
States is a major power. One knows that
it can apply fantastic force when it chooses.
But it is always like seeing some kind of a miracle when one
sees it
happen. This is a division which only
your country could equip and supply.
The roads, the trucks, the helicopters, the weapons, all of that
is more
than has ever been seen in Viet Nam.
Only Americans could do this, simply build a base, build a
supply line
to it, build what amounts to an Army in a few weeks, and commence an
operation
such as this. It is like this all along
the coast, and now it will be like this 50 miles inland at An Khe. You won’t have any easy victory, but this
kind of power will overwhelm the problems you cannot solve any other
way.”
It was something I had seen
very often since February of 1963, but nevertheless which made me feel
very
proud. I hope the people at Columbus
and Fort Benning can grasp this feeling of pride. They
have sent something to this war which hasn’t been here
before, and it shows in the comments of every American adviser and
aviator I
have talked to. The Vietnamese people
show it. They lined the streets of Qui
Nhon waving and shouting and watching the helicopter in their seemingly
endless
flights from the airstrip to the mountains.
It was shown in a sign I saw
at An Khe after I came back up again in a jeep with Lt. Graham and Sgt.
Harris
early the next morning in order to get a look at the method of keeping
the
cargo convoys secure from ambush. (It
was a simple method. Helicopters,
aircraft, men, jeeps and weapons simply flooded the area and the trucks
rolled
through with only a few sniper incidents marring the hundreds of
convoys which
have come into An Khe by now.)
The sign said:
“The people of An Khe thank
the people of America for making it possible for them to live in safety
and to
have a way of life of their own choosing.”
It didn’t mean that the
mountains and thorny brush of the country are cleared.
It didn’t mean there wouldn’t be fighting
and days of primitive living ahead, but the force which can do that had
made
its appearance and it was an electrifying event.
There was just one single
dampening note to the first day.
As Lt. Graham and I talked
about the movement, I saw a white figure proceeding up a sandy road
toward a
Chinook. It was Maggie, the white mule
mascot of the First Battalion Ninth Cavalry.
I had helped 1st Sgt. Don Fare of the 92nd plant a big welcome
sign to
Lt. Col. John Stockton, his dog and the cavalry mule.
I stopped to speak to old Maggie, absolutely the only specimen
of
her kind in this country.
She bore a memento of the
trip. Sometime in the dark of night
aboard the USS Boxer somebody had stamped a light brand on her left hip
saying
“USN.”
Other than that, she made it in great style, as did all the men I talked to. They lived well, ate well, kept in physical shape, had classes and movies, had shipboard papers and mail, and looked rested and ready. They had an arduous job ahead of them simply making a place to live, but they seemed eager to get on with it.