Vietnam War: Operation Dewey Canyon

By Marc Bernstein | Vietnam  | 4 comments  |  Print This Post  |  Email This Post

Early on February 11, 3/9 crossed Phase Line Red and forded the Da Krong River. The 1st and 2nd battalions crossed the river the next day. Each battalion had its zone of operations about five kilometers wide and an objective eight kilometers beyond Phase Line Red. In the eastern sector, 3/9 was to move along ridgelines 2,000 meters apart, sending one company to take Tiger Mountain and two more to take Tam Boi. This would put 3/9 on the edge of the A Shau Valley. In the center, 1/9 would advance along two parallel ridges toward an objective on the Laotian border. Farther west, 2/9 was to move through a valley and the ridges just east of it, also with an objective on the Laotian border. Colonel Barrow’s plan was for each battalion to proceed with two companies in the van and two companies in trace.

After crossing the Da Krong, the Marines encountered strong enemy forces. On the eastern flank, Company M was mortared and attacked by a North Vietnamese Army platoon, suffering two dead while killing 18 enemy. The 1st Battalion ran into a large enemy force positioning to attack Erskine. Well-supported by artillery, 1/9 forced the North Vietnamese to withdraw, killing 25 and capturing numerous weapons. Company C engaged a reinforced North Vietnamese platoon on a hilltop, taking the hill while killing 12 of the enemy. An NVA effort to regain the position at night was successfully fought off by the Marines, using mortars and artillery. Overall, the enemy proved a tough adversary south of the Da Krong, sniping at the Marines from trees and attacking their positions at night in an attempt to delay the advance toward vital Route 922 in Laos.

The North Vietnamese efforts proved futile, however, as the Marines made good use of artillery and air strikes in pushing south. On February 17, 2/9’s Company G engaged in an all-day running firefight with a company of NVA, resulting in five Marine and 39 enemy dead. Also on February 17, before daybreak, the NVA launched a major attack on FSB Cunningham, with sappers breaching the wire and throwing grenades and satchel charges at the Marines in a wild dash toward the center of the base. The 3rd Battalion’s Company L and 2nd Battalion, 12th Marines fought hard to repel the intruders but sustained major damage in the first few minutes, losing centralized fire direction. Regaining control of the situation by sunrise, the Marines counted 37 North Vietnamese dead in and around the firebase. Four Marines were killed and 46 wounded in the fighting. The enemy sappers in this attack had been fortified by narcotics, which, a Marine lieutenant stated, “made them a lot harder to kill. Not one of the gooks we had inside the perimeter had less than three or four holes in him. Usually it took a grenade or something to stop him completely.”

February 18-22 saw the heaviest fighting in the southward advance. Five kilometers southeast of Erskine, 1/9 ran up against an NVA platoon dug into reinforced bunkers along a ridgeline. The enemy fought tenaciously but Company A overran the position, killing 30 defenders. This was followed by Company C’s assault against enemy hilltop positions the next day, which resulted in 30 more NVA dead. Continuing its attack on the same bunker complex on February 20, Company C encountered a large enemy force. After calling in air strikes, they took the bunkers, killing 71 North Vietnamese and capturing two 122mm artillery pieces and a tracked prime mover, at a cost of five Marines killed and 28 wounded.

With Marines approaching the Laotian border, the enemy kept up heavy shelling even while attempting to withdraw his artillery beyond the potential reach of the Marine advance. The ongoing enemy artillery attacks and concern over the vulnerability of the Marines’ western flank prompted a request from General Davis to Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, to redirect its Studies and Observations Group (SOG) reconnaissance efforts from the Laotian panhandle toward Base Area 611. MACV approved the request. But an earlier request from Davis, seeking approval to conduct offensive ground operations inside Laos, had been tabled by MACV. Nevertheless, the then-current rules of engagement did permit commanders to take “necessary counteractions against Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army forces in the exercise of self-defense and to defend their units against armed attacks with all means at their disposal.” That language proved enough to justify the Marines crossing the border into—as deemed by the 1962 Geneva Accords—a neutral Laos.

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Tags: Historical Conflicts, Vietnam War

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