Excerpted from the Book

William Morrow and Company

New York, 1967 pp. 259-268

ON 10 MAY, as Colonel Emerson buckled to his task around Bn Gia Map, another expedition, built out of scratch forces, was loosed on a sweep toward the Cambodian border.

Though there was less fighting by Task Force Walker in Operation Paul Revere than by the First Cavalry Division or the First Brigade of the 10 1st Division in those weeks of early summer, in the TF’s prolonged maneuvering lay the key to General Westmoreland’s strategy. Unless its role and purpose are understood, the big picture of operations in the Central Highlands as the 1966 southwest monsoon began remains incomplete.

In the 1965 summer monsoon the main NVA threat had come from that quarter; Pleiku and Kontum had been saved, though the fight to stave off disaster had been a cliff hanger all the way.

Westmoreland now had enough U.S. Army combat Strength at hand to be fully confident that nothing of that sort would happen again. But it was still insufficient to piece out a deployment in strength to maintain continuous screening of the Laos-Cambodian border.

The next best thing - the essential in his over-all planning—was a relatively light, mobile screen that by frequent shifting of its hitting forces would keep the enemy off balance. Intelligence continued to report the presence of a great part of six to seven NVA regiments stacked up across the border in Cambodia, though Prince Sihanouk continued bitterly to protest that the enemy had no sanctuary in his domain. Provided these forces could be held in check, or their movement east reduced to a trickle, the NVA and VC units east of the Kontum-Pleiku line would be dealt a rough summer.

In his estimate of the enemy Westmoreland neither underrated his elements of strength nor overlooked his main point of weakness. His appreciation of how the North Vietnamese Army operated went something like this after one year of being at grips with the problem:

1. At the tactical level this opponent is a capable planner who organizes offensive operations in four successive steps.

2. The plan itself will always accent deception or the staging of an entrapment.

3. His intelligence stems primarily from comprehensive reconnaissance of the chosen battleground and forces adjacent to it.

4. He will usually prepare the battlefield, moving up and caching ammunition and other supply; while that goes on, the hitting forces rehearse the attack, using sand tables, mockups and similar ground in the training exercise.

5. If while that preparation goes on, as a result of counter intelligence, his over-all maneuver can be divined, parried and blocked, he will have to start all over again.

6. Because of his set-piece approach to operations, he is hurt far more by spoiling attacks than is an average, conventional opponent in war.

By this line of reasoning Westmoreland had arrived at a concept of how to fight the war that was the direct opposite of the proposal that U.S. forces should adopt an essentially defensive posture within coastal enclaves. The deployment of a relatively small task force to engage in continuous sparring along the Cambodian border logically derived from the concept.

Operation Paul Revere was under an uncommonly able commander, Brig. Gen. Glenn Walker, born in Rapides Parish, La., a 1939 graduate of Mississippi College. Alone among the commanders who appear in this chronicle, Walker could be described as a traditional infantry type. He is tall, spare, quiet of speech and seemingly proof against any kind of jar from the outside. No man ever wasted fewer words or expressed himself with greater clarity and conciseness.

Brigadier General Glenn Walker, Commander TF Walker

Walker and his troops took unto themselves the safeguarding of a zone eighty kilometers wide by half that in depth to the west of Pleiku. The zone ran southwest to the Chu Pong Mountains and northwest as far as the outpost of Duc Go, and the eastern border was on a line with Plei Me. They were to keep watch especially on the Ia Drang River Valley, an invasion route that had figured prominently in the first full-length campaign of the First Cavalry Division in November, 1965.

To begin, the force was composed of three infantry battalions from the 25th Division (Walker’s own organization), one company of medium armor, one armored cavalry troop, one air cavalry troop, one battalion of 105 mm artillery, one battery of 175s, one battery of 155s and one battery of 8-inch-ers. Here was far more gun power than was given any other operation in the Central Highlands.

Where to base was the first question. PIei Me, otherwise suitable, was knocked out by Walker because the roads round about are fifth-rate and its air strip is inadequate. Duc Go, though served by a satisfactory air field, was rejected because of its location in the extreme northwest, eleven kilometers from the Cambodian border.

Walker picked an abandoned base twenty-five kilometers west of Pleiku which the Americans had named Oasis. The First Cavalry Division had put in an air strip there in late 1965; it had fallen into disrepair, the neighboring Montagnards having stripped the membrane from its surface for use in weatherproofing their huts. But to Walker’s eye it looked good. Oasis was on high ground, well sloped for quick drainage. Water was plentiful. Roads were serviceable. There was more than enough room on the high ground to afford storage for all requirements, and Walker planned to keep at least 600 tons of ammunition ever on hand.

His first step was to secure the area to the eastward. One infantry battalion was lifted to a point ten kilometers to the northwest of Plei Me, another to the southwest of it the same distance. They beat out the bush as they swept straight westward to a line even with Oasis, thus clearing Walker’s rear of Viet Cong. As they continued on, a central column moved directly west from Oasis, within it being one troop of armored cavalry, one platoon of medium tanks and one company of infantry. The riflemen went cross-country in the armored personnel carrier M-113, which was ideally suited to the terrain that had to be crossed. The three columns, advancing west on parallel lines, would continue to move abreast. The central column, having much more mobility than the others, would be able to assist either flank, in case of need. The troop of air cavalry was sent to work over the twenty kilometers of Cambodian border that lay to the south of their operating zone and beyond their reach.

The operating method was conventional—at least it was not more unconventional than the U.S. Army way of going elsewhere in the Central Highlands. However, the tactical pattern to which Walker adhered and his reasoning in support of it were markedly at variance with the operations of the cavalry division and Pearson’s brigade. It is the difference between the several approaches that makes Operation Nathan Hale of interest chiefly to tacticians.

In screening, Walker believes in saturating every area with patrols. The patrols stay out all night, every night, working from a battalion base, which always keeps to itself one rifle company, one artillery battery and the battalion headquarters, with part of the time a reconnaissance platoon.

Ahead of the battalion base there are set up two rifle company bases; one would be armed with 4.2 mortars, within reach of the second base. Both perimeters would be within range of the 105 mm battery, which stricture would still enable the guns to fire over a twenty-kilometer circle.

Thus maximum attention is given to so situating both battalion and company positions that they can be supported by the heaviest weapons while mutually supporting one another. There is certainly nothing unusual about such an aim. Nothing could be better, provided that the terrain is accommodating. Where Walker’s tactical pattern was in marked contrast to the others was that his smallest deployments were more daring while his larger ones were more conservative.

His surveillance parties, operating in detachment from main bodies, were fire-team size - five men. Through the use of such small packets one of his rifle battalions could coordinate screening across a twenty-kilometer front. That stretched the battalion’s radio reach to the limit, without exceeding it.

His theory of larger deployments is best put in his own words.

"I figure one U. S. rifle company, when backed up by the artillery we have, can stand off a VC or NVA battalion any time," he said. "If we move the rifle company too late, or put it so far away that it cannot be supported by the guns, then the supply problem can whip us. Such a risk can only be offset by getting in a lot of claymore mines, with defensive wire, and getting everybody to dig deep.

"As for a platoon, you cannot shore it up by itself, even with the use of artillery. The position is too small, the front too narrow. If hit by a larger force—or hit with surprise by another platoon on flank or rear—it practically has to move. Then getting in artillery to help it becomes a large problem.

"Finally, I figure that we can operate in rugged terrain better than the VC or NVA. This, I know. As individuals, we are bigger, stronger, healthier, and less inclined to do stupid things."

In the southwest sector of the zone that Walker’s forces worked over during the first two weeks, the country is lower and flatter than elsewhere in the Central Highlands, being under 800 feet above sea level. The average rainfall in May is eleven inches. The May, 1966, monsoon blew in twenty two inches, the most generous sprinkle of record. The land became a bog. No road stayed traffickable. Flats became lakes and creeks turned into rivers. Helicopters could not take the air until 1100, so consistently were the LZs socked-in morning after morning When the medium armor backed away before it became ditched wholly, the central column was withdrawn to Oasis.

That left the two infantry battalions in line the 1/35^th screening in the south and the 1/14th screening in the north. Walker had held back 2/35th at Oasis as his reserve reaction force. During daylight hours the battalion screened to the north and northeast to further base security. As a rule, Task Force Walker leaves a stay-behind unit on each LZ when moving a column in either direction. It is the habit of the Viet Cong to throng back to an LZ when a seeming evacuation has taken place; they make the same mistakes over and again. Both the VC and the NVA in the Oasis region are given to the use of Montagnards as slave laborers. Some of the mountain men are guerrilla-oriented and go along willingly enough. The greater numbers are simply press-ganged.

The surveillance line run by the 1/14th in the north reached the Cambodian border on 15 May. It had not proved highly profitable. A few small packs of Viet Cong had been rubbed out. But most of the time the walk was a waste of materiel, energy and patience. Then when the weather turned sour, Walker pulled the column back to Oasis.

Alone, the column of 1/35th (2/35th - ED) continued to plug westward. By the evening of 28 May its most forward element, Bravo Company, was ten kilometers to the west of Duc Co. The rest of the battalion was in perimeter near the outpost’s air base.

Just before sunset Battalion got a call for help from Bravo Company but couldn’t answer. The battalion had come under attack all around the perimeter just before the call came through.

Walker got Alpha, 2/35th (1/35th - ED) , loaded on Hueys at Oasis to respond to the fire alarm. Maj. Wallace S. Tyson, the battalion executive officer (2/35th - ED) , went along to take command during the emergency.

Though the emergency, while it lasted, was real enough, at the cost of much blood and sweat to Bravo Company, and to Alpha that served as the fire brigade, it generated the only ludicrous exchange in General Walker’s running bout with the monsoon weather, all along billed as the natural ally of the elusive enemy.

Particularly because of the weather, Walker’s tactics had been methodically prudent. And at last, because of this weather, his only remaining spearhead was about to win the daily double for him by being almost extravagantly careless. In truth, Bravo Company had been punching in air too long to continue keeping its guard covering its button.

So without prior reconnaissance it took a Huey hop westward to what had once been a U. S. air strip and was still designated as LZ Ten Alpha. The clouds grew bigger and the Tam beat down harder as Bravo’s choppers splashed to earth. The strip was under six inches of water. In the gun pits around the field the flood was more than a foot deep. And the guns were there, five of them, five 12.7’s, set to clean the skies of just such birds as these.

Bravo had flown into the perfect deadfall—perfect, except for the absence of people. The NVA crews had quit their guns to get out of the wet. Bravo’s people hopped to the guns and went into perimeter around the air strip.

That night the company (Two Companies - B 2/35 and A 1/35 - ED)  was hit hard by a battalion of North Vietnamese, the same battalion that had been caught flat-footed by the arrival of Bravo in impossible weather and was now making a desperate bid to recover its guns. The fight raged through the night of 29 May and with the aid of the other battalion of 35th flown from Oasis ended as a smash victory for TF Walker. It was not easy; the influx of 35th casualties taxed the capacity of the base hospital at Qui Nhon. (emphasis added - ED)

A GI checks hand grenades captured during the battle for LZ Ten Alpha near the Cambodian border.  He holds an AK-47 assault rifle in his hand.  The barrel in front is from a Chinese made .50 caliber machine gun.  (OK, guys - can you identify this man? - E-mail Me if so - ED)

The fight paid off in more than enough ways to offset its costs. Here was a prime example of stupidity and military slackness in an enemy whose military character is too frequently overrated. It made less painful the brooding within the American camp over our own blunders. Let it never again be said by historians that only the Chinese of yore had an army of such soluble stuff that it would quit the field rather than stand against a sod-soaker.