TBS 2-67 Cruisebook_Updated_7Jan23

Leatherneck Square
dose of Marine Air. A & B companies lost 84 killed, 190
wounded, and 9 missing before helos could haul what was
left back to Con Tien. Only 27 Marines from B 1/9 were fit
for duty. It was the worst one­day loss for Marines in
Vietnam.
By dawn on 3 July more troops arrived: ours and
theirs. An air­force spotter saw a NVA company heading to
reinforce, and Battery E, 3/12, made extras in a zombie
movie out of them. Three days later a SAM­2 fired from the
DMZ found Maj. Brubaker’s A­4 and made a parachutist out
of him. Parachuting into the DMZ at night presents
immediate theological implications, not to mention a slowmoving
watch.
Operation Buffalo ended on July 14. Nearly 1,300
NVA were reported killed; only two were captured. The
Marines lost 159 killed and 345 wounded. “The most savage
aspect was the heavy employment of supporting arms by
both sides. Of the known enemy killed, more than 500 came
from air, artillery, and naval gunfire.” (USMC Hist.)
(Where isn’t an exposed flank is a loosing tactic? –
Harvard? – Princeton? )
seemed to be the entire 812th NVA Regiment – sundown to
sunup. Marine Air provided industrial lighting by
napalming the place all night.
By then it was clear to every l/cpl in the 3 rd Division
that even if you could push NVA regiments back over to
their side of the Ben Hai, if you couldn’t reach across it, then
you could do little to stop their artillery from rearranging
the sandbags at Con Tien every day. Between 19­27
September 3,077 shells fell on a real small hill.
Operation Kingfisher.
Giap kept up the pressure on Con Tien all summer, using his
heavy artillery to keep things at the Hill of Angels as
miserable as possible. In early September 1967, the Marines
again launched into the DMZ, looking to drive out NVA.
Didn’t have to go far to find them. 3/4 ran into an NVA unit
about 1,500 meters from Con Tien. 3/26 fought what
A‐25