TBS 2-67 Cruisebook_Updated_7Jan23

A Year in the Provinces
managers, union contracts and the like to hide whatever was
broken at Ford’s, he failed to demonstrate to anyone
along the DMZ how he could turn a bad idea into a
good one. (Or did anyone ever spend flight/jump/demo
pay on a new Falcon?)
Here, he had missed the salient problem: him. (Pogo
put it this way in a cartoon: We have met the enemy and it
is us.
***
There’s a chain‐linked fence outback. When kids next door
get home from school, 3:30 or so, they head out to play,
and their old yellow dog meanders along, sitting guard at
the fence. A little female Manx cat will saunter over from
this side, her stubby little black tale fluffing to and fro.
When Ole Yellow is suitably excited at the sight of her,
she’ll up the ante by plopping down by the fence and start
licking her naughty bits. The huffing and woofing ratchets
up until a banty‐rooster that lives further down in a
thicket of bamboo joins in and adds his crowing to the
racket. The little kids all dance and squeal in delight; the
cat rolls around in the flowers, grinning.
Pulling a little strip out of the fence could stop all
that nonsense, but I choose not to. The little cat, you see,
is mine, and she dearly enjoys making sport of oldyellow
dogs.
***
In Vietnam Robert S. McNamara had choices, too, but he
also had yellow dog syndrome. He and his crack team of
college­boys chose to add a second fence to the one Buddha
had already put there, the Ben Hai river. There was a lot of
crowing (per the rooster) about the McNamara Line.
Building it had about the same effect that a large, ungainly
couple has in dancing a tango on a small dance floor when
everyone else is attempting to slow dance. With every
twirling flourish somebody new gets elbowed. Northern
Quang Tri Province got crowded and dangerous.
Construction units wore bulls­eyes and infantry units sent to
protect them couldn’t maneuver. As good ideas went, it was
every bit as efficacious as the Maginot Line. Come Tet it
withered away, but until then it steadily killed Marines.
Operation Buffalo
Hanoi had no plans of easing up on Con Tien. Their longrange
artillery dug in hidden, pounded the old fort. Seeing
the NVA were not going to go away, a second operation,
Buffalo, was re­aimed into the DMZ.
It kicked off July 2 with Companies A and B, 1st
Battalion, 9th Marines sweeping north­northeast of Con
Tien. Expecting it, the NVA had dug in and registered
artillery ambushes. Things got ugly early at the Market
Place. NVA used flamethrowers to set fires that forced
Bravo Co out from cover and into a machine gun and
artillery ambush. The entire command group for Company
B was lost to shelling. Among the dead was FO, 2 nd
lieutenant John (Doc) Doherty (of Company C & USNA).
Link­up only came with a hodge­podge rescue force of
platoons thrown together, a couple of tanks, and a heavy
A‐24