‘Units of the 3rd Regiment, 2nd North Vietnamese Army (NVA) Division dug in near Hill 63, summarized the flash message into the tactical operations center (TOC) of the 196th Light Infantry Brigade (LIB) Chargers. It was the day before Thanksgiving 1967, and the place was the fertile Que Son Valley, some 40 kilometers southwest of Da Nang. Hill 63 sits in the valley’s center, but its numerical designation was as yet unfamiliar to members of the brigade. Colonel Louis Gelling had deployed the Chargers into the valley from Chu Lai a few days before to replace the 1st Brigade, 101st (Airborne) Division.

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The 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry (4/31), one of the three infantry battalions assigned to the 196th LIB, was operating in a split mode. Company A secured the battalion’s new fire support base (FSB) at the Que Son Valley’s western edge, and Company C secured the brigade headquarters at Hill 35, near National Route 1. The two remaining companies were assigned as a part of an armor-infantry task force commanded by the battalion operations officer, Major Gilbert N. Dorland.

As luck would have it — some might call it destiny — Task Force Dorland was conducting search operations only a few kilometers east of Hill 63 when the intelligence report arrived at the brigade TOC. Dorland’s task force was quickly tagged to check the validity of the report, and he remembers getting the message late that afternoon. Many intelligence reports turned out to be inaccurate or old, he said. However, in this case, brigade noted that they had intercepted a radio transmission from the vicinity of Hill 63, which gave the target more immediacy than normal.

At 29, Gil Dorland had all of the necessary credentials to command a unit in combat. Dorland had graduated from West Point, class of 1959, and attended the Airborne Ranger courses at Fort Benning, Ga., before joining the 20th Infantry in the Panama Canal Zone. Dorland was no stranger to the war in Vietnam, having completed a tour of duty as an adviser to the South Vietnamese Army a year before the first American combat troops arrived in-country. Dorland had joined the 4/31 less than a month before the 196th LIB deployed into the Que Son Valley.

Dorland felt certain of his abilities to do the job; most important, he had total confidence that his men were prepared to meet any challenge. Task Force Dorland was indeed a powerful and well-led force. Companies B and D, 4/31, were commanded by two solid soldiers, Captains James Bierschmidt and Dan Mellon. The two rifle companies formed the core of the task force. Two platoons of armored personnel carriers (APCs) from F Troop, 17th Cavalry, provided Dorland mobility and quick reaction, and four tanks from A Troop, 1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry, supplied the force a mighty punch. Artillery fire support would be provided by Battery B, 3/82, and Battery C, 3/16, located on Fire Support Base Center seven kilometers to the south. As backup, the brigade had alerted Company B, 2/1, and Company B, 3/21, to be prepared for an air assault into 4/31’s area of operation.

While Dorland had confidence in his men, he also knew that the enemy he faced were not garden-variety Viet Cong armed with cast-off French or American rifles of World War II vintage. The 3rd NVA Regiment was a first-rate outfit whose soldiers had a reputation of being tough and resolute. They also knew the valley. The 2nd NVA Division had made the Que Son Valley and surrounding hills its second home when it arrived from North Vietnam in February 1966. The valley’s patchwork of rice paddies and wooded islands had served the division as a primary source of rice and recruits, while the surrounding hills and forests harbored the division’s rest camps, logistical support areas and training sites.

The 2nd NVA Division was also an elusive enemy. Eight days earlier, intelligence analysts had placed all three of the division’s regiments in the rugged hills around the valley. However, the units moved often. Their forte was to infiltrate the valley undetected, establish a textbook defensive position, then wait for an allied unit to find them. Avenues of approach into the site were covered by machine guns and anti-tank weapons and further protected by the unit’s mortars. The enemy’s purpose was not to defend the terrain in the traditional sense. Instead, the position was used as a bunkered ambush site from which they could inflict horrendous casualties on an unsuspecting allied unit in a very short period of time. The enemy’s scheme always included a withdrawal that was executed before reinforcing allied units made the position untenable. The scenario was repeated frequently, but its success was completely dependent on the element of surprise. Unknown to the enemy, an intercepted radio transmission had cost them that most critical component.

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