A week later we were back in the Oval Office urging President Johnson to green light Gen. Westmoreland’s request to strike into Laos and Cambodia, arguing that we no longer had reason to fear Chinese intervention. At the time I thought that the “Peking Papers” were a weak foundation on which to make such a risky decision and I made my feelings known to the Secretary beforehand. He thanked me for my views, but his mind was made up, such was the frustration with the course of the war and suddenly you didn’t hear so much about West Berlin or South Korea. There was still considerable opposition in other quarters of the NSC and as a result, what was eventually agreed to was something of a compromise. We would send one infantry division, backed up by a Marine battalion, into Laos in an operation centered on Highway 9, with the objective of cutting the Ho Chi Minh trail and ending the free flow of supplies from the North to the South. It was not to be referred to publicly as an invasion, but as an “incursion,” making it sound like something a lot less than what it was. I had the job of going to Saigon and explaining to Gen. Westmoreland just what the parameters of the operation were.
To his credit, the General saluted and followed orders, the “incursion” was not what he had requested, but the plan was to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail and it would be accomplished with whatever men and material allowed. Our troops deployed into Laos, starting just before New Year’s 1967 in order for us to take advantage of as much of the dry season as possible. For two weeks things went well and a number of key points on the Trail were seized, but then the North Vietnamese came out of the jungle and hit us with everything they had. It turned into the worst bloodbath of the war and all of it played out on the evening news. Over 40,000 men had been committed on the ground to this operation and in less than three months they had suffered over 5,000 casualties. If it was the Communist’s counter-strategy to tie our units down in the jungles of Laos, then they were well on their way achieving success. “I don’t want to hear another Goddamn word about ‘Dienbienphu,’ not another Goddamn word.” Secretary Nixon exploded in the middle of one tense meeting in the Pentagon.
Travis Smith: In late March, Sgt. O'Mara broke his leg diving into a ditch for cover during a mortar attack and was evacuated, got himself a Purple Heart and a ticket home, but along with the already departed Sgt. Stone, we were left without the two NCO’s who had kept us alive through every fight right from the first day we arrived in country. The instant the helicopter with O'Mara on board left, Captain Elston bumped me up to Sergeant on the spot; it was what they called a battlefield promotion. He soon had me running Bravo Company. Sad to say that a lot of guys whom I had come over with were gone by then, either KIA or wounded, but there was no end of fresh faced recruits to take their place and suddenly it was my responsibility to keep them alive. I counted at least ten of them under the age of 18 in my platoon alone; all of them lied about their age to get in. First thing I had to do was tell them that most of the shit they learned in Basic was worthless out there. The old adage is true: anything worth knowing can’t be taught. I made Spivik a Corporal; the Captain went along with anything I recommended. The kid deserved it, he’d been a big screw up like all of us were when we’d first got to Nam, but he’d worked his ass off and always came through when things got tough.
As Sergeant, it was my job to keep the unit functioning under the most adverse conditions; basically to do the impossible every day. The weather was just as bad an enemy as the NVA, along with the extremes in temperature, the Monsoon season started shortly after we arrived in Laos and we were wet all the time. Those rains that came out of nowhere every day were the worst, there was no way to keep dry and everybody was scared of jungle rot. The air would get so humid and close that we’d have difficulty breathing at times. Then there were the rats the size of small dogs and the insects with the magnitude of foot stools that were our constant companions. Bathing, shaving, or brushing your teeth on a regular basis became a thing of the past; we must have smelt as bad as we looked. When all we could see was jungle and distant mountains in every direction, there is no way that I can overstate the terrible sense of isolation we felt all the time. On top of all that, there were thousands of NVA regulars out in the undergrowth trying their best to kill every one of us, every single day.
They never gave up, no matter times they were bombed, strafed or napalmed, and were constantly changing their tactics. For days the North Vietnamese would come in and hit us just before dawn, inflict as many causalities as they could and then quickly fade away before the sun was up and just when we learned to anticipate them at daybreak, the bastards would switch to attacking in the middle of the night. If they weren’t hitting us on a regular basis then we were being sniped at or mortared any time of the day. No matter what, you always had that fear, not just of violent death, but of horrible injury in your mind. There was this constant debate in the back of your brain over what would be worst; to be instantly blown away or to sustain some horrific wound like having a limb blown off or being paralyzed for life. Every time you saw something happen to one of your buddies, you’d mentally put yourself in his place. It was always in the back of your head and if you let it, that fear would destroy your will to fight and Charlie knew it.
That’s where I had my work cut out, trying to keep those kids alive and ready to return fire without hesitation on a moment’s notice. The most important thing they learned from me was to keep their M-14s clean and ready at all times and for this we learned to improvise. I can still see the looks of horror on the faces of two new replacements, less than a week in country and just off a Huey, when I handed them a couple of condoms to use as a muzzle seal in order for the barrel to stay clear. Turned out both of them had gone straight to Basic from some Catholic school in Wisconsin, couple of altar boys, and they thought their immortal souls were going to burn in hell just for touching those things. Their tough luck, usually we used duct tape, but we’d run out. Some of us had a good laugh at their expense, ridiculing the fresh meat was our chief source of amusement, but we all became good friends when it was learned that those Wisconsin boys had shaken hands with Vince Lombardi and had met Paul Horning and Bart Starr. A lot of boring hours were spent reliving the recent glories of the NFL.
Gen. Earl Halton: Even worst news came for us in March, when intelligence reports revealed that men and material were still seeping through to the South despite all our efforts. At least 30 % of the flow was still reaching NVA units in the Central Highlands and the Saigon area. Anybody who is proficient in logistics knows that regular forces can remain effectively in the field on greatly reduced supplies, not to mention a guerrilla force that enjoys some support among the native population and can live off the land. This was borne out when a Ranger Company was ambushed and nearly wiped out near An Loc, only a few miles from Saigon, in the first week of April. Still, as early as Feb. 20, President Johnson had proclaimed the Ho Chi Minh Trail effectively closed and now everything he said was being undermined by events beyond his direction.
In fact our entire Vietnam policy was being undermined in the early spring of ‘67 and not just by the usual group of malcontents and agitators. The Administration was feeling the heat from many former allies in the media and in Congress, who in their wisdom had concluded that despite all of our efforts in South Vietnam; it was time to make a deal with the North Vietnamese. Within a two week period that spring, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and Life all ran editorials strongly questioning our conduct of the war and calling for negotiations with the Communists. All of this only encouraged the anti-war movement that seemed to have infected most of America’s institutes of higher learning. Scores of colleges from one end of the country to the other suffered through major disruptions as the lunatics took over the asylum.