South Viet Nam: The Prospect of Action

(2 of 3)

It took just 65 minutes to put 1,400 marines ashore with rifles, machine guns, rocket and grenade launchers. At Danang, the brigade's other battalion came in the easy way—by air from Okinawa. Both battalions came prepared for heavy combat: they had 105-mm. howitzers, M48 medium tanks, 106-mm. recoilless rifles.

Getting Some Action. Swiftly the two battalions deployed to security positions at and around Danang. Some dug in near the Marine helicopter flight line. Others pitched their two-man pup tents at the ends of Danang's 10,000-ft. runway to reinforce the inner perimeter defense. Three companies set out for the grassy hills overlooking the base, preceded by Marine engineers with a bulldozer to flatten one of the hilltops for the marines' Hawk missiles. So steep were the ridges on one of the hills that some men had to be positioned there by helicopter.

Spirits were high. "We've been ready to do this job for some time," said Karch, an Annapolis-trained veteran who had fought on Saipan, Tinian and Iwo Jima. "There's a sense of relief at the prospect of getting some action."

With some marines dug in on hills well beyond the outer defense perimeter that stretches some 20 miles around Danang, there was every prospect of action. "Obviously," said Karch, "the Viet Cong are going to probe us. We expect them, and we are ready."

No Signs of Bodies. The Viet Cong quickly learned just how ready they were. Three times during one night, a band of a dozen or so guerrillas stealthily reconnoitered the base of Hill 327, a 1,073-ft. hump nicknamed "the hungry i" for the San Francisco nightclub and for the "I" Company marines who first occupied it. Each time, the marines detected the guerrillas with new, man-spotting radar devices that are emplaced all over the hill. Modeled after the dish-shaped radar used on airport control towers, the devices are around 5 ft. tall and are highly sensitive to movements by troops.

As soon as they picked up "pips" on their radar screens, the marines: called on a nearby howitzer battery for flare shells to illuminate the area, then swept the slope with a barrage of machine-gun and mortar fire. Though there were no signs of bodies the next morning, the marines were delighted with the radar's performance in its first combat tests. Chuckled one machine gunner: "I'll bet they wondered how we knew they were out there."

However, in one of their first joint patrols with Vietnamese rangers, the marines were slightly unnerved. "The Vietnamese seemed to know their business all right," said Lieut. Donald H. Hering, "but we were a little shook up when they started lighting cigarettes and listening to jazz on their transistors while we were patrolling."