Operation PERSHING was officially terminated on 21 January 1968, after almost a full year of fighting in, over and around Binh Dinh Province. To Most of us PERSHING had come to mean an area of operation rather than a single campaign. During this time the 1st Cavalry Division had been continually fighting at least two different battles, often more.

The primary battle was the tedious task of routing out the Viet Cong infrastructure—that very real shadow government that had been strong in this area even during the French occupation. Working with the National Police Field Force, the 1st Cavalry participated in over 970 combined operations which had resulted in the identification and removal of over 1,600 members of the Viet Cong political and administrative structure. About 200 Viet Cong were identified as key leaders. Under the Cavalry umbrella, the National Police Field Force searched more than 340,000 individuals and 4,300 dwellings. At the close of PERSHING we felt that 50 percent of the Viet Cong cadre had been rendered ineffective. The pessimist would have to conclude that this left half of the infrastructure intact, but the fact remained that the Government of Vietnam had held an election in this troubled province, wherein 96.9 percent of the people eligible to vote, voted. This compared with a nation-wide average of 80.9 percent.

The second continuous battle in Binh Dinh was the regular North Vietnamese Army 3rd Division units. The enemy lost 5,715 soldiers killed in action and 2,323 enemy were captured. Somehow this latter figure seemed to get lost in the statistics, but I always thought it was very important and was a key indicator of the type of operations being fought in this area.

I was often asked if I thought the 1st Cavalry was "wasted or stagnating" in Binh Dinh. In answer, I'd merely show the questioning visitor a map depicting the air assaults of the last month and it immediately became evident that only an airmobile unit could

have covered the area. A typical month, October 1967, showed two battalion-size assaults, 110 company and 165 platoon-size assaults. As a matter of fact, the Division was just about as "busy," from an airmobile viewpoint, as it would ever be.

Statistics on relative vulnerability show that out of 1,147 sorties one aircraft would be hit by enemy fire, one aircraft was shot down per 13,461 sorties, and only one aircraft was shot down and lost per 21,194 sorties. Used properly the helicopter was not the fragile target some doom-forecasters had predicted.

While the two major battles of Operation PERSHING were continuing, the 1st Cavalry Division was the source of "fire brigades" for many other operations in the western and northern provinces of Vietnam. Some of these have been mentioned earlier. On 4 May 1967, the division boundary had actually been moved further north to include a portion of the Nui Sang Mountain and the Nuoc Dinh Valley in I Corps Tactical Zone. Elements of the division had conducted operations in that general area, particularly the An Lao Valley, throughout the remainder of Operation PERSHING.

The words of my third Chief of Staff, Colonel Conrad L. Stansberry, in summing up the after action report of Operation PERSHING bear repeating:

Most of the 1st Cavalry would soon leave Binh Dinh Province to counter an enemy threat to the far north. Operation PERSHING had not by any means wiped out the Viet Cong infrastructure but its success can be summed up in words of an enemy prisoner of war. This man, the Chief of Staff of a sapper battalion, stated: "I do not know whether you have known or not but I can say that during the period from September 1967 to January 1968 the liberating forces were driven near to the abyss, especially in the areas of Khanh Hoa, Phu Yen and Binh Dinh, where ARVN and allied forces enlarged their areas of activities to an extent that the VC had never thought of."

The time was 0315, 31 January. The tower operator at Tan Son Nhut heliport, Mr. Richard O. Stark, had just received a call from an aircraft requesting to know if the field was secure. He replied

in the affirmative. At 0325 the aircraft called again saying he had reports of enemy contacts in the area. Mr. Stark recalls, "I noticed sporadic tracer fire northwest of the helicopter tower, but I was not duly alarmed. Minutes later, when a C-47 departed from Tan Son Nhut and drew heavy ground fire, I realized that this was not nervous guards, but actual enemy contact." Tan Son Nhut Air Base was under attack!

This attack was one of many similar attacks which were launched against military installations and population centers throughout the Republic of Vietnam. These attacks marked an all-out Communist offensive that continued throughout the Tet holidays.

Within three minutes after the alert at Tan Son Nhut, two "Razorback" fire teams consisting of four armed helicopters from the 120th Assault Helicopter Company were airborne and attacking the enemy. Major Ronald K. Kollhoff, commander of the 4th Gunship Platoon from this company, said, "The extent of the enemy buildup was surprising. When it first started we expected a small token diversionary force—a suicide squad—to divert attention from an expected mortar attack. But after a while it became evident that the VC wanted to actually take Tan Son Nhut very badly."

Major General Robert R. Williams, Commanding General, 1st Aviation Brigade, and his house guest, Colonel E. Pearce Fleming, Jr., were sleeping in the Long Binh BOQ when the alert sounded there. Within minutes they were in a command Huey checking into the 12th Combat Aviation Group control net. There were ground attacks taking place in several areas of the Long Binh-Bien Hoa perimeter and a number of gunships were already airborne and were being directed to targets. Colonel Fleming reported, "I was impressed with the professionalism of all hands that I observed and heard during this period of the Tet offensive. The calmness and the voices of the men on the radio made you think they were merely calling for landing instructions at a peaceful U.S. airfield, and yet they were continuously in action for hours on end. When the sun finally came up on the morning of 31 January, I was surprised to find that the VC were continuing to stay and fight."¹

1. General Williams, the Army's first master Aviator, had taken command of the 1st Aviation Brigade from General Seneff on 16 September 1967. Colonel Fleming was on temporary duty in Vietnam from his position as Deputy Director of Army Aviation.

Time magazine, on 9 February 1968, recapitulated the events this way:

There is no doubt that the quick reaction of the armed helicopters saved Tan Son Nhut and Bien Hoa from serious danger of being overrun. In the first few hours they were the only airborne firepower since the Air Force aircraft could not get clearance to even take off. An Air Force sergeant describing the action on a tape recorder at Tan Son Nhut kept repeating over and over, "Oh, those beautiful Huey gunships!" One of the men in those gunships, Captain Chad C. Payne, a fire team leader, said, "I received fire everywhere I turned. My ships received seven hits, but this was nothing considering the amount of ground fire directed toward us. There were hundreds of VC bodies everywhere in the vicinity of the Tan Son Nhut perimeter. I've never seen anything like it."

Another tribute to the effectiveness of the gunships came from a member of Advisory Team 100 at Tan Son Nhut. When he received word that Tan Son Nhut was under attack, he assembled

a patrol of 30 men. "And we ran head-on into one of the attack forces. There were approximately 350 men against my 30. We were certainly outnumbered," he said. "Then those beautiful gunships came in and started circling the area. I threw up a pocket flare to mark the position, and the gunship radioed that we were too close to the enemy force and to pull back some, if possible. We pulled back and then he went in. He was right on target, placing rockets right in the middle of Charlie's position. We killed over 200 enemy, and I'd estimate that 80-85 percent was attributable to the helicopters. The morning of the 31st, if I had met that pilot, I'd have kissed him."

Another area of heavy activity was at the U. S. Embassy in downtown Saigon. Chief Warrant Officer Richard Inskeep of the 191st Assault Helicopter Company was the first to land a chopper on the embassy during the heavy fight, bringing ammunition and evacuating one wounded man. "We were receiving fire from all sides," said Mr. Inskeep, "but we couldn't see anybody around so we lifted off. My gunner then spotted someone in a hole of the roof, so we made a tight turn and came back onto the pad. The fire was so intense that the gunner and crew chief had to pull the ammunition out of the ship and crawl across the roof as they pushed it in front of them. They pushed the ammunition down the hole and helped bring the wounded man back across the roof to the ship."

Watching from below was Mr. George Jacobson, Mission Coordinator of the U. S. Embassy. Commenting on the helicopter's approach, Mr. Jacobson said, "He came in low and I thought for a minute he was going to hit the building, but at the last minute he pulled up and made a beautiful landing on the roof. Afterwards I realized that he did it on purpose to avoid the enemy fire. It was a tremendous piece of airmanship." Mr. Jacobson, a retired Army colonel, was to finish off the last guerrilla inside the embassy. As troopers of the 101st were landed on the Embassy's helipad, the enemy guerrilla tried to escape the troopers, spotted Mr. Jacobson, and fired three shots. He missed and Jacobson shot him with a .45 that had quickly been tossed up to his second floor window by troops below. This was the finale to the six and one-half hour battle within the embassy.

As daylight came over the Bien Hoa Air Base, fighting was still raging around the airfield. Small bands of Viet Cong had managed to penetrate the southeast and southwest areas of the air base, and reaction forces were sent out to stop them. The Air Force's 3d Security Squadron found an estimated 100 Viet Cong to be in the

southwest area just beyond the taxiway. The Viet Cong were well duo, in, and the security force could not flush them out. On finding themselves pinned down, they called on the Cobras of the 334th Armed Helicopter Company to suppress the guerrillas. Air Force Second Lieutenant John A. Novak, who was in command of the security force, said, "As the Cobras came to our support they swept down about two feet over our heads and fired into the enemy position, knocking out the enemy who were pinning us down. I personally witnessed time after time the Cobras sweep into the VC area and pin down the enemy in the face of heavy fire being directed at them. The Cobras were the turning point in the enemy's destruction."

General Williams and Colonel Fleming had made a complete circuit of the III Corps Tactical Zone to determine first hand information on the situation at the various airfields. Colonel Fleming relates:

The Communists had hit in a hundred places from near the Demilitarized Zone in the north all the way to the tiny island of Phu Quoc off the Delta coast some 500 miles to the south. No target was too big or too impossible. In peasant pajamas or openly insigniaed North Vietnamese Army uniforms, the raiders struck at nearly 40 major cities and towns. They attacked 28 of South Vietnam's 44 provincial capitals.

At 0420 on 31 January, the 812th North Vietnamese Army Regiment and supporting elements launched a concerted attack on the provincial capital of Quang Tri, a key communications hub in the I Corps Tactical Zone. The enemy's timing had been late for a

platoon of the 10th Sapper Battalion went into action inside of the city at 0200 hours in the morning and their premature action alerted the city's defense to the impending attack. The blunt of the attack fell upon the defending Army of the Republic of Vietnam forces in and around the city, the 1st Army of the Republic of Vietnam Regiment with two battalions oriented north and northwest of the city. The 9th Army of the Republic of Vietnam Airborne Battalion was located in the suburb of Tri Buu to the east. This battalion became the first troop decisively engaged. Pressure was very heavy on the defending Army of the Republic of Vietnam force and they were gradually forced to fall back into the city, contesting every foot of the ground as they withdrew. By noon on the 31st, the outcome of the battle remained very much in doubt.

Shortly after noon on the 31st, the provincial advisor, Mr. Robert Brewer, held a conference with Colonel Rattan, commander of the 1st Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, and the U. S. advisor to the 1st Army of the Republic of Vietnam Regiment. Mr. Brewer stated that the situation in the city was desperate and that the enemy had infiltrated at least a battalion inside the thin Army of the Republic of Vietnam lines. It appeared the enemy was reinforcing from the east and had established fire support positions on the eastern and southern fringes of the city. Recognizing the need for immediate action, Colonel Rattan, after a hasty call to division headquarters for authority, agreed to reorient his brigade and attack to the east of the city.

I had agreed with Colonel Rattan's assessment of the situation at Quang Tri and I trusted his judgment implicitly. His brigade had arrived in the Quang Tri area on 25 January having moved up from Hue-Phu Bai after initially deploying from Bong Son on 17 January. This move was part of the plan to orient the entire 1st Cavalry Division in the I Corps area. Our initial orientation toward the I Corps area had started with the YORK series of plans which gave us a good head start on base areas at Red Beach and Hue-Phu Bai. The 3d Brigade had been in the I Corps Tactical Zone for some time under the operational control of the Americal Division taking part in Operation WALLAWA between Chu Lai and Da Nang. The 2d Brigade of the 1st Cavalry had remained in the PERSHING area of operations and we were given the newly arrived 2d Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, under Colonel John H. Cushman.

Our move was far from being complete at the outset of the Tet offensive, particularly our support echelon. Throughout the month of February, we would be moving and fighting and at the same time establishing our maintenance and supply bases.

I had already worked out most of the details of moving the Division with Colonel Putnam, my very capable Chief of Staff, in case the order to move was received during my absence. Colonel Stansberry was then head of the Support Command. Between the two of them, they cut through the red tape of inter-service bureaucracy and solved the hour-by-hour problems that arose in moving the division north.

Colonel Putnam had been practicing moving the division command post long before we got the actual alert order to move. Back in Binh Dinh Province, he had held an actual practice move in which the division command post at landing zone TWO BITS was moved to An Khe, operated out of An Khe for twenty-four hours, and then transferred back to TWO BITS. At that time the heart of the forward command post was contained in two pods carried by the CH-54 Crane. One pod had a G-2, G-3 Operations Center and the other pod contained the Fire Support Coordination Center and other control elements. The forward command post had a complete communications system to pick up operational control of the division as soon as it was in place. Incidentally, these pods which looked very efficient on the surface were really a headache to emplace in Vietnam and terribly immobile once emplaced. After we moved north, we discontinued their use as impractical.

The move north was not without problems. Some of the Marine staff officers were very reluctant to accept Colonel Putnam's estimate on the space required for the division headquarters. Through an old War College friendship with Brigadier General Earl E. Anderson, the Chief of Staff of III Marine Amphibious Force, he was able to get in to see Lieutenant General Robert E. Cushman, Jr., Commanding General, III Marine Amphibious Force, and secure Landing Zone TOMBSTONE, which later became Camp Eagle. Colonel Putnam reported that there was only one bright spot in his entire battle with the staff. The Navy captain who commanded the Seabees came up and said, "Tell me WHAT you want done and in what ORDER you want it done." This was just the first example of the magnificent support we received from the Seabees.

When Colonel Rattan called me his brigade was actually oriented South and west of Quang Tri, with one fire base as far away as 20 kilometers to the west of the city. At that time, lie did not have the mission of protecting the city itself. The decision to

change the orientation 180 degrees and attack late in the afternoon was a bold one, but was to prove indisputably sound.

Colonel Rattan had consulted with Mr. Brewer on the most probable location of enemy infiltration routes and then selected landing zones adjacent to them. These assault areas were selected for the purpose of reducing the enemy's reinforcement capability by blocking his avenues of approach and to eliminate his fire support capability by landing on his support areas. At approximately 1345 hours, the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry and the 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry were directed to launch their air assaults as soon as possible with priority of lift assigned to the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry. Additional aircraft were requested from division resources, and the 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry and aerial rocket artillery were alerted.

By 1555, B Company of the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry had assaulted into a landing zone east of Quang Tri and a few minutes later was followed by C Company. Even while they were landing, C Company received intense fire from an estimated enemy company. This contact lasted until 1900 at which time the enemy broke contact leaving 29 bodies. The 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry air assaults had straddled the heavy weapons support of one of the enemy battalions. As a consequence, this battalion found itself heavily engaged on the eastern edge of Quang Tri by the Army, of the Republic of Vietnam and in its rear among its support elements by the Air Cavalry troops. Caught between the two forces, it was quickly rendered ineffective. Shortly after the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry had launched its attack, the 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry assaulted southeast of Quang Tri with two companies. They also landed directly on enemy positions and immediately came in heavy contact with the K-6 Battalion of the 812th North Vietnamese Army Regiment. Like its sister battalion, the K-6 found itself wedged between Army of the Republic of Vietnam forces and the 1st Cavalry and it sustained a terrific pounding from aerial rocket artillery and the air assaults.

As darkness fell, it became evident that the battered enemy was attempting to break contact and withdraw. Its forces rapidly broke down into small groups with some individual soldiers even attempting to get away among the crowds of fleeing refugees. Contacts were made throughout the night with many small enemy groups trying to get out of the city. The enemy had suffered a terrible

mauling from the Army of the Republic of Vietnam defenses within Quang Tri and had been thoroughly demoralized by the air assaults, gunships, and aerial rocket artillery of the 1st Cavalry Division. Although well equipped, the North Vietnamese Army troops appeared to be inexperienced and were obviously completely unfamiliar with the airmobile tactics of the 1st Cavalry. The aerial rocket artillery and the helicopter gunships experienced unusual success against the enemy troops. Many of them attempted to play dead as the helicopters approached, seldom attempting to return fire.

By noon on 1 February, Quang Tri City had been cleared of the enemy and the 1st Brigade immediately initiated pursuit. A Company of the 1st Battalion, 502d Airborne made a heavy contact just south of Quang Tri killing 76 of the enemy with the help of aerial rocket artillery. Other units of the 1st Brigade made numerous smaller contacts throughout the day as the brigade elements moved out in ever-increasing concentric circles around the city.

In this abortive attack, the enemy lost 914 soldiers killed in action and 86 captured. The city of Quang Tri was without a doubt one of the major objectives of the Tet offensive. Its successful defense was one of the highlights of this period. The enemy's offensive time table in the I Corps Tactical Zone had been completely disrupted and a major communications hub remained in allied hands. The successful defense of Quang Tri resulted from the tenacious defense of the city itself by Army of the Republic of Vietnam forces; the accurate assessment of the tactical situation by Colonel Rattan and Mr. Brewer, the senior province advisor; and the ability of the 1st Cavalry Division to immediately react to this assessment by a complete change of orientation of its units and launching a series of air assaults on top of the enemy's supporting positions that very afternoon.

Volumes have been written about the battle for Hue and the house-to-house fighting that went on until almost the end of February. My Cavalry squadron, the 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry, had been very actively engaged in the outskirts of Hue and the division was given the mission to interdict the routes of egress and destroy the enemy units west of the city. The 2d Battalion, 12th Cavalry began to seal off the city from the west and the north with its right flank on the Perfume River on 2 February. The weather was miserable

at this time with ceilings being at most 150 to 200 feet. Nevertheless, helicopters kept flying and placed the troops close to the assault positions even if they could not make an actual air assault. I think it was at this time that General Creighton IV. Abrams said that any previous doubts that he had had about the ability of the helicopter to fly in marginal weather were removed.

The 1st Cavalry was spread particularly thin at this time. The 1st Brigade with four battalions was completely occupied at Quang Tri. The base at Camp Evans with approximately 200 helicopters had to be secured and the main land supply line from Dong Ha down to Camp Evans needed to be reinforced.

The logisticians had more than their share of problems during the Battle of Hue. The road from Hue-Phu Bai to DA Nang was cut and we actually backtracked some supplies from the north at Cua Viet. The Air Force did a tremendous job in flying parachute resupply missions to Camp Evans. At times they were dropping supplies with the ceiling around 300 feet using our pathfinders and Ground Control Approach radar. It was eerie to see the parachutes come floating out of the clouds minutes after the C-130's had passed. During this same period, our flying cranes and Chinooks flew out to sea and landed on the AKA's, picked up supplies, and flew them back to Camp Evans. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first example of ship-to-shore resupply in combat.

Two Cavalry battalions were initially committed to the mission at Hue and eventually four battalions were involved in some of the most furious combat that had taken place in Vietnam since the beginning of the war. Air strikes were very difficult to call in because of the bad weather and low ceilings. Most of our helicopter operations were at an altitude of about 25 feet. The Cavalry had cut off one of the enemy's main supply lines and had taken a heavily fortified tactical headquarters at La Chu on the outskirts of the city of Hue. Our Naval gunfire support during the battle of Hue could only be described as superb. For example, one cruiser set a record for the number of shells fired in one day in support of ground operations.

I had sent one of my assistant division commanders, Brigadier General Oscar E. Davis, into the city of Hue to be my personal representative at the headquarters of Brigadier General Ngo Quang Truong, Commanding General of the 1st Army of the Republic of Vietnam Division. General Truong had forecast that "when the Cav reaches the walls of Hue, the battle would be over." He was right. Later, interrogation of prisoners indicated that three enemy regiments had begun moving from around Khe Sanh into the area

of Hue between 11 and 20 February to reinforce the weakening local forces. The aggressive actions by the 3d Brigade of the 1st Cavalry, commanded by Colonel Campbell, around La Chu had seriously disrupted the enemy plans for reinforcement.

The Tet offensive had hurt the enemy severely. The North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong had lost some 32,000 men killed and 5,800 detained from the period between 29 January and 11 February 1968. They had lost over 7,000 individual weapons and almost 1,300 crew-served weapons.

The communists had paid another kind of price. By choosing Tet for their attack, they had alienated a major portion of the population who considered that a sacred time of the year. They had also brought the battle into the very midst of the heavily populated areas causing many civilian casualties who were caught in the cross fire. Most importantly, they had totally misjudged the mood of the South Vietnamese. Believing in their own propaganda, the Viet Cong had called for and expected a popular uprising to welcome the Communists as liberators. Nothing approaching that myth occurred anywhere in Vietnam. The Government of Vietnam did not collapse under the Tet offensive. On the contrary, it rallied in the face of the threat with a unity and purpose greater than that which had ever been displayed up to that time.