TBS 2-67 Cruisebook_Updated_7Jan23

Company C
COMPANY “C”
Year’s Beginning
Year’s End
THE YEAR BEGINS:
The year 1967 began in Vietnam without the lieutenants of
Company C, TBS. Those men remained for a few months
more, lodged in their starting chocks, awaiting the starter’s
pistol. There may have been some men of their age who
had not yet figured out that foreign travel to tropical jungles
awaited, but they were not in Company C. Their future was
far from guaranteed, but their destination was (even
accounting for a layover at Cecil Field). Understandably,
not one of them would need field jackets of the sort they did
as they trained for their three day Winter War. (But then
neither does one need malaria tablets for a winter war.)
Hanoi’s war plans in South Vietnam’s I­Corps
unfolded steadily, albeit in different ways in different
places. They’d arrive absent clarity, but were delivered with
fury. Things got noisy quickly in ‘67 – and stayed that
way. There are many good ways to frame the year, a
traditional one is by recounting the battles. But as the men
of Company C were to learn, in Vietnam the absence of big
battles was not the absence of vicious fighting. Though ways
and means differ, for big battles and small gunfights, the
consequences were proportionally deadly and the funerals
identical. Another way to view the year is by looking at
order­of­battle over the months.
– 1 st ARVN Div. (rein) Rangers +2 Abn bns
(+) prov/dist forces – (total:56 separate battalions)
– ROK Marine Brigade no change
– 1st MarDiv (rein) 27 th Marines
– 3rd MarDiv (rein) 26 th Marine
– 1st MAW (rein)
– USA Americal Div – USA Americal Div.
– Ist AirCav Div.
– 2 nd Bde, 101st Abn Div.
("Metrical" )
Into that cauldron poured Company C, with no more than a
hand salute at Staging Bn or a longer roll­out starting in
Pensacola. Introduction to grand, noisy events came
quickly, as both Marine divisions were starved of
lieutenants. Company C’s got shoved hard into the gaps.
Odd, isn’t it, that distant headquarters always purports to
“forecast” replacement requirements, when they could do no
such thing absent Nguyen Van Gaip info’ing them as to his
intentions. He didn’t. There were, however, subtle
suggestions of planning miscalculation
early on. As Company C formed up, were there not five or
six Midshipmen standing alongside the lieutenants? The
Corps hadn’t been mixing and matching them since 1812. If
anyone missed the logical significance of that, don’t you bet
that Keven Phalen, a Law PLC, was surprised to find himself
in Dong Ha standing in front of a rifle platoon rather than
A‐6