Sea-Borne Assault
Trooper Gerald McLain
B Company, 2/12 Cavalry, 1967-1968
The weather was hot and dry and drinking water was at a premium as B Company, 2/12th Cavalry made its way along a brush covered ridgeline in the Central Highlands. The ridgeline ran roughly north and south and connected a series of big hills, which jutted up from the sandy and flat seacoast, along the South China Sea. To the west were the Central Highlands and somewhere to the east of our present location was the South China Sea.
We had air assaulted our way east from Kontum, in the Central Highlands, in a sort of hopscotch fashion to our present location somewhere south of Chu Lai. Search and destroy, and then air assault farther east to search and destroy again. Resistance was light, though booby traps were always a constant threat. The Viet Cong seemed to be avoiding making contact with us at this time.
As we moved south along the ridgeline we would from time to time catch a glimpse of the South China Sea sparkling in the sunshine, perhaps 8 to 10 clicks (thousand meters) away. About mid day we came to an old abandoned company size LZ that straddled the ridgeline. The old abandoned foxholes formed a ring around a little knoll on the ridgeline. The fields of fire, which had once been cleared in front of the old foxholes, were nearly overgrown by new brush and small trees.
Moving into an old abandoned LZ or firebase without first checking it out for booby traps was never a good idea. The Viet Cong knew that GI’s would often return to areas that they had used before, and the Americans would often re-use old foxholes, just to keep from having to dig new ones. Caution to the wind, we moved into the area and decided to spread out, find a little shade, and take a break. We were all hot and hungry. This would be a good time to sip a little water from a canteen, and open some C rations.
I saw one of the guys in our company named Henry, drop his pack to the ground near a small tree, and then turn around and plop down next to the tree. As he leaned back against the tree there was a loud explosion next to him. The explosion blew off his arm. The company medics rushed to aid the screaming man. The medics were trying to hold him down and at the same time they were trying to stop the bleeding from the stump that had only seconds before been an arm. Knowing there could be other booby traps, the rest of us froze where we sat. Each of us began searching the area near where we were sitting. Just a foot or so from my right foot I could see a trip wire that had at one time been buried under some dirt but now was only partly hidden by some dry grass. I could also see a second trip wire which was attached to the first with a neatly wrapped splice. Very carefully we picked up our equipment and then retraced our steps back out of the old LZ.
Another LZ was quickly set up for the incoming Medievac helicopter. The morphine had stopped the screams from Henry. He was wrapped in a poncho and quickly loaded into the hovering helicopter to be transported to a field hospital.
A few minutes later our company received word that we would be making an air assault out of our present location and into an area near the South China Sea. Soon we were boarding troop-carrying helicopters, which were being escorted by a pair of gun ships. After a short flight we were off loaded about a half-mile from a deserted beach on the South China Sea. Word was passed around the company that we would be making a sea-borne assault sometime during the night.
At this moment the rest of our battalion was being air assaulted into the hills to the west of a small fishing village on the South China Seacoast about 20 miles south of our current location. Our sister companies, A and D Company would form a horseshoe shaped blocking force on the west side of the village. South Vietnamese Intelligence had reported that Viet Cong and perhaps some NVA units were using the village as a nighttime refuge or as a place to pick up supplies. It was said that at first light the enemy forces would move out of the village and slip away into the hills to the west of the village.
The plan seemed simple enough. In the darkness, before first light A and D Companies would begin moving down the hills toward the village. Our company, B Company, would move into the village from the sea. If the Viet Cong/NVA were in the village, we would have them bottled up in a trap. B Company would be the stopper for the bottle. The Navy would send two landing craft to pick our company up on the beach. The landing craft would arrive sometime around midnight. The ships would transfer our company south along the seacoast, and then just before dawn we would make a sea-borne assault onto the beach. As I listened to our platoon leader relaying this information to us, my mind flashed back to a movie I had watched as a kid growing up. The movie was of the US Marines hitting the beaches during the invasion of Guadalcanal. The Navy told our officers that the beach was going to be very wide since the tide would be out when we made our landing and that there would be only be open sand for a long distance once we disembarked from the landing craft. We would have to keep moving away from the beach until we were able to find some cover. Our platoon leader had been issued a map of the area and he had decided that an old graveyard, located between the beach and the village, would offer us some cover, and provide us a place to meet just incase we got separated during the beach landing. Our platoon leader did not want us to get caught in a firefight on the beach. His orders were very clear. Make it to the graveyard no matter what was being thrown at us from the village. There would be no stopping on the beach no matter what happened.
We moved closer to the beach and set up a company-sized perimeter. Using our entrenching tools we quickly scooped out some shallow foxholes in the sand. As darkness fell it started to rain and the wind began to pick up. If you have ever been around wet sand you know it sticks to everything and gets into everything. I had a clean and well oiled M-60 machine gun with one hundred rounds of linked ammo in my hands. There was no way to sit the gun or the ammo down without it getting full of wet sand. Men with M-16’s, were faced with the same problem. They were holding their weapons and ammo clips up and away from the sand, for fear they would certainly jam when they needed them to fire. Wet sand will stop a weapon from firing quicker than just about anything! We all were tired and hungry. We didn’t dare put any of our equipment down on the beach to enable us to get out a poncho, or to even open some “C” rations. We just stood there in the rain and the wind. Soon our teeth were chattering from the cold. The rain had soaked our jungle fatigues and the water was dripped off my helmet and running down my back. The hours passed very, very slowly standing there in the darkness waiting for the landing craft to arrive. Finally we received a radio message from the U.S. Navy. They were inbound to our location. A flashlight was used to direct the boats to our location on the beach. We waded out into the knee-deep surf as both of the landing craft dropped their front ramps into the water and sand. We climbed aboard the craft. As we made our way into the dark box like ship we found it to be much warmer inside the landing craft, even with the rain still falling. At least we were shielded from the wind and thankfully away from the wet sand. The Navy guys soon had the ramps on the front of the landing craft closed and the engines were working to extract the ships from the sand beach. We were backing away from the beach and moving out into open water. In about thirty minutes we were far enough out to sea that the land looked like just a dark shadow off in the distance. The ships turned south. I was sure the Navy guys must know all about high tide and low tide and all that. I just took for granted that when we hit the beach we would be a long way from any form of cover and our rendezvous point, the old graveyard. I just didn’t give it another thought.
No one said a word during the trip on the landing craft. We had all been on quite a few air assaults, but this sea-borne assault was something entirely new for us. Instead of a Huey we were riding in a flat bottomed landing craft tossing and pitching in the waves. The feelings a trooper feels before making that jump from a hovering helicopter skid to an LZ or in this case before running down a landing craft front ramp to the beach felt about the same. It was never an easy feeling.
It was dark and the only sound came from the steady sound of the engines on the two landing craft. The same thing must have been on everyone’s mind right now. Would it be a hot LZ or in this case a hot beach?
The boats began to make a wide turn to the west. We all knew we were headed toward the beach. The dark shadow of the Vietnam countryside grew larger, as we strained to see over the side of the box like ship. There were no lights on the ships and we could see no lights from the village.
We braced ourselves as the engines were throttled back to idle. Suddenly both landing craft plowed into the sand on the beach and lurched to a stop. The big door of our landing craft fell open splashing into the water. It was totally quiet as we quickly moved down the landing craft door and into the water and then up onto the beach. Even in the darkness we could tell we didn’t have far to run before we got to some palm trees and the old cemetery. The Navy missed the low tide and the wide expanse of open beach prediction totally. We only had about a hundred feet of open beach to cross before we were on solid ground. Quickly and quietly we moved farther inland to the old graveyard as the landing craft quietly moved back out to sea. Our company spread out and took cover behind an old rock wall that surrounded the cemetery. Not a shot had been fired!
The rain stopped just before dawn. The wind was drying our wet clothes as we began our forward assault toward the village. Staying well spread out and roughly on line, we began to enter the village. The eastern sky was just starting to get light and turning shades of pink, in advance of the rising sun. The village was still sleeping as we moved past fishing nets that had been placed on bamboo racks to dry. In a thick grove of palm trees we found old fishing boats which were lying on their sides in the sandy soil. Most of the first hooches we came to in the village were old and seemed to have been deserted for some time. Perhaps they knew we were coming and we were walking into a trap. A few old men and old women came out of some hooches, as we moved deeper into the village. They seemed surprised to see American GI’s coming from the sea. A couple of dogs started barking as we continued to push through the village. As we reached the center of the village we approached a whitewashed concrete structure, which may have been a school or some kind of government building. A small boy came running out of a hooch nearby and yelled, “Hey GI, hey GI, you boom boom moma son.” One of our guys grabbed him and told him to shut up. As we started around the side of the concrete building we saw a hammock, the kind the VC use in the jungle. It was tied between two vertical posts that supported the rice straw and bamboo roof. Just then a man and a woman half fell and half jumped out of the hammock. Both were stark naked at the time. The man dove for an AK-47, which was leaning against the wall of the building. Our point man fired a burst from his M-16 as the enemy soldier reached for his weapon. One of the M-16 rounds hit the man in his groin. Leaving his weapon, pack, and clothes behind the VC ran toward the rear of the village. He continued to run until he finally bled to death a short distance away in a dry rice paddy. We heard other shoots being fired in the hills behind the village. Bullets were cracking over out heads. Our sister companies were waiting as other fleeing VC tried to make it to the cover of the jungle. Some of the VC soldiers were killed and some managed to evade the trap. Perhaps the VC had some hidden tunnels or caves in the hills that we never were able to find. We searched the rest of the village finding no more enemy soldiers hiding there.
Our next move was north to Chu Lai and then into the Que Son Valley.
Webmaster Note: The History of the Second Battalion Twelfth Cavalry for the Year 1967 states:
On 5 September the command post airlifted into LZ English to establish their operations center at that location. Plans were made for "Operation Join Hands" which was to begin the following day and would be a combined Army, Navy, Vietnamese operation in the Cay Giep Mountains. On the morning of 6 September, Companies A and D conducted combat assaults into LZ Cuba (BR925974) and LZ Sue respectfully (BR966969) respectively. Company A moved northwest and Company D moved north, both on search and destroy operations in their sectors. Company B conducted a seaborne assault onto "Red Beach", BR973955, at 0330 hours by U.S. Navy swiftboats. As the unit hit the beach, they moved west on search and destroy operations.