Vietnam War: Operation Dewey Canyon
By Marc Bernstein

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As 1969 began, the military situation in the northern I Corps tactical zone of South Vietnam—the closest to the Demilitarized Zone—appeared relatively quiet. The previous year had been the bloodiest of the war, and the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong had both suffered losses that would be difficult to replace. Still, appearances were deceiving. Each year, the Communists had launched a spring offensive in I Corps, and the pronounced lack of combat activity at the very start of the year suggested to the U.S. command in Saigon that 1969 would be no different.

Evidence of enemy intentions began to accumulate. Reconnaissance uncovered road work being done on Route 548 in the A Shau Valley and its extension, Route 922 in Laos. As January progressed, as many as 1,000 trucks a day were observed on these roads, moving supplies south and east toward vital objectives inside South Vietnam. Activity at North Vietnamese Army Base Area 611 in Laos suggested that major elements of the NVA’s 6th and 9th Regiments were moving east through the A Shau Valley. In response, American and South Vietnamese forces probed farther into the mountains of western Quang Tri Province and near the DMZ, seeking to upset the enemy’s plans.

The U.S. 3rd Marine Division was responsible for defending Quang Tri Province. An element of the division, Task Force Hotel, operated out of Vandegrift Combat Base in western Quang Tri. Major Gen. Raymond G. Davis, a veteran of World War II and Korea, and a Medal of Honor recipient for his actions at Chosin Reservoir in 1950, commanded the division. He had taken charge in May 1968, and immediately set out to improve the unit’s combat effectiveness. “We had something like two dozen battalions up there all tied down (with little exception) to these fixed positions, and the situation didn’t demand it,” he later stated. “The way to get it done was to get out of these fixed positions and get mobility, to go and destroy the enemy on our terms—not sit there and absorb the shot and shell and frequent penetrations that he was able to mount.”

The 9th Marines, commanded by Colonel Robert H. Barrow, was the division’s swing regiment, the one most easily redeployed to meet any contingency. Barrow noted that the enemy’s first requirement was to “move all the things of war; all of their logistics forward from the sanctuaries of North Vietnam, just across the DMZ, or from Laos….We must do everything we can to find that stuff, wherever it exists, and obviously destroy it. And if we miss any of it, we must attempt by vigorous patrolling, radio intercept, signal intelligence, recon team inserts, and whatever else, to find out when any troops were moving in.”

The Communist technique was to pre-position supplies, then move in quickly with troops at the appointed time to marry up with the supplies and launch an attack. Clearly, as the Marines observed the increase in pre-positioning of supplies in forward areas, the need to preempt a Communist attack was becoming paramount. As the Marines’ official history notes, “A victory, even against one or more limited objectives of minor or temporary tactical value, could have significant impact upon the civilian population, and a more far-reaching effect upon bargaining positions at the ongoing Paris Peace Talks. The enemy’s jungle logistics system therefore would have to be destroyed before it could be used.”

At the time, General Davis was more direct about the situation: “It makes me sick to sit on this hill and watch those 1,000 trucks go down those roads in Laos, hauling ammunition down south to kill Americans with.”

Air interdiction of the supply routes had yielded only limited success, and the growing volume of anti-aircraft fire along the routes further indicated that the NVA was protecting something important. On January 14, General Davis ordered Brig. Gen. Frank E. Garretson, commander of Task Force Hotel at Vandegrift, to plan for a regiment-size search and clear operation into the Song Da Krong Valley, just northwest of the A Shau Valley, and north of NVA Base Area 611 in Laos. This would become Operation Dewey Canyon, whose primary purpose was not only to kill the enemy and deny him supplies, but also to block his access to the densely populated areas of the coastal lowlands.

Tags: Historical Conflicts, Vietnam War

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