TBS 2-67 Cruisebook_Updated_7Jan23

A Year in the Provinces
***
Tet caught Marines repositioning north. West of Phu Bai,
on the other side of the Perfume river, the 11 th Marines
positioned themselves to defend that base as the Army
unpacked at Camp Eagle. Resupplying them sent roughriders
north out of Phu Bai toward Hue, then west at the
Graveyard, and finally back south until you crossed Lt. Erle
Pluncket’s pontoon bridge over the Perfume.
Tet turned that route into a shooting gallery, absent
prizes. En route, artillery officers stood atop Ontos to spot
their rifles. Lt. Bill Hayter managed to get himself dinged
hauling rounds down that road to his own battery. Supply
officers wrangled convoys. To ride shotgun, H&S 2/5
fielded a sixty man detachment of clerks, mechanics,
communicators, supplymen, cooks, etc. Somebody even
found bandsmen. Sure, Marine battalions (U.S.& VN) were
grinding their way toward the Citadel, but for everyone
else there was no watching in reserved seating.
This left various Marines with a lot of ideas on how
to help. Some were better than others. At the bottom of
the list? – had to be wanting somebody to check out the
bridge stanchions on the far bank of the Perfume river.
How to get there? Oh hell, swim! (To escape attention,
only send two Marines.) Who might be persuaded to ignore
the actuarial downside to such a trip? A sergeant and the
ever incautious Lt. Fred Vogel.
Eight inch guns are the devil to push around, but
they are hell for accurate. Once US and VN Marines had
pushed their way into the city south of the Perfume, they
were fighting in a built‐up area, where civilians hid by the
hundreds. Prying the NVA out from among them with arty
took a nimble hand on the lanyard. Eight inch guns were
soon in high demand.
“It took us a few days to bring the guns up,” Tom
Gay, a former midshipman under Bob Thompson explained
to the old colonel who had commanded one of the Marine
battalions, “But once in place we damn near melted their
barrels.”
“Oh hell,” says the ever obstreperous Colonel
Thompson, “We never got any of that!”
“Oh,” says Tom with a poker player’s face, “Oh,
then we must have sent them all to Ernie Cheatham…”
***
Marines pushed up; ARVN pushed down. It took nearly a
month to squeeze the NVA out of Hue. They left, finally,
leaving behind dozens of hidden mass graves, some not
found for years. South Vietnam named 4,062 men, women,
and children shot in the head, executed. Maybe 8­10% if the
city. To their great shame, news media looked away from
the horror of it all.
Quang Tri
There is always a reversion to the mean where luck is
concerned. Where every bit of luck and surprise fell Hanoi’s
way in Hue, it all tumbled the other way in Quang Tri city,
another walled city, built in 1824, likewise in the style of
Vauban. There was every reason for the NVA to suppose
that once in, they’d be tough to get out. But they had to get
A‐42
Back to Index