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Falling

By E.C. Streeter

The monsoons were nothing like the frightening moments, of course, but they frequently seemed to rival them in their almost mind-numbing effects. I arrived in Vietnam in June 1970, and for about four months beginning in October, the rains seemed almost endless. Humping through the jungle under our ponchos, we would find ourselves wondering if our sweat was making us wetter than if we'd not even bothered with raingear. At night we would have to dry our socks over the heat from the sterno pellets we normally used for warming our C-rations. Sometimes, it would be so rainy and foggy that the resupply helicopters couldn't find us, and we'd run out of food. What was most disheartening, though, was simply not knowing when it would end. Everyone was keenly aware of exactly how many days we had left in-country, but none of us knew how many more days of near-constant rainfall we would have to endure.

Finally, in February, the rains began to taper off. One morning, we were patrolling the jungle floor somewhere west of Hue, our usual territory, when helicopters picked up our platoon and took us to a high ridge. It was an especially sunny day, and up there, I almost felt as though we'd been whisked off to some magical monsoon-free land where we might be able to forget all our recent soggy memories instantly. However, these kinds of pleasant thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the almost deafening roar of a jet. By the time I turned to look in the direction of the sound, it was gone, but a second one soon arrived, and I could see through the trees that it was flying by us at practically eye level. I saw about a half dozen canisters drop from it, each falling haphazardly. They were silver-colored, and they almost glinted in the sunlight. The plane and its jewel-like payload had come into view and then vanished so quickly that it all seemed nearly dreamlike; then the guy walking in front of me turned and said, "Napalm, the bombs are intended to tumble like that so that the chemicals can mix before they hit the ground."

I later learned that we were in the area of the A Shau Valley, and "dreamlike" would hardly have been an appropriate description. We were near the narrowest part of the country, about thirty miles southwest of the city of Hue, and the proximity to the border with Laos made it a desirable entry point for troops and equipment coming from North Vietnam by way of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. That afternoon, needless to say, was far from the first time the region had been bombed.

The control of the valley had been a concern ever since North Vietnamese troops routed a Special Forces outpost there in 1966. The first effort to retake it came in the spring of 1968 as part of an attempt to regain some of the footing lost in the wake of the Tet Offensive debacle in February and March of that year. Beginning on April 19th, the initiative lasted for a month, and with the help of multiple air strikes, the soldiers of the First Cavalry Division managed to reoccupy the spot abandoned by the Green Berets two years earlier. Success was immediately proclaimed, but the US and South Vietnamese forces soon withdrew, and the North Vietnamese lost no time in reoccupying the region.

The 9th Marine Regiment was sent to reclaim the ground in February of the next year. The initiative was called Dewey Canyon; it lasted two months and included a clandestine incursion for a week and a half into Laos to conduct ambushes of the Route 922 section of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. For political reasons, the eight American soldiers who were killed there were listed as having died in Quảng Trị Province, the region just to the North.

Two months later, it was the 101st Airborne Division's turn. Based at Camp Eagle North of Hue, the A Shau Valley was almost literally in their backyard. Operation Apache Snow, as it was called, began on May 10th, 1969. Just three days in, there was a grueling attack by soldiers of the 187th Infantry Regiment on a hill that involved eleven assaults over ten days. There were so many casualties that the location—its geographic name was Hill 937, the number referring to its elevation—acquired the nickname of Hamburger Hill. "Have you ever been inside a hamburger machine? We just got cut to pieces by extremely accurate machine gun fire" was how one of the soldiers later put it. As was often the case, the site had no strategic significance and was abandoned a few weeks after the end of the initiative.

A bit more success was achieved later in the month by troops from the 506th Infantry Regiment, which I was eventually attached to. Despite heavy casualties as well, they managed to capture a good amount of weapons, ammunition, and rice before the operation was stopped on June 7th.

The napalm attack that I witnessed was part of an initiative called Operation Dewey Canyon II that began on January 22nd, 1971. The goal was the same as before: to keep North Vietnamese soldiers from entering South Vietnam. Toward that end, South Vietnamese troops were secretly sent into Laos to capture Tchepone, a town just west of the border that was viewed as a key part of the North Vietnamese supply line. The stealth strategy, however, failed, and the South Vietnamese were forced to retreat. The American arm of the operation was an attempt to get the North Vietnamese to divert some of their soldiers from defending Tchepone. The initiative was terminated on March 18th.

Operation Dewey Canyon II is now probably best known as the ironic inspiration for the choice of the name Operation Dewey Canyon III for the landmark anti-war demonstration conducted by VVAW just a few weeks later in Washington. The four-day protest culminated on April 23rd, with over a thousand vets dramatically throwing the combat medals they'd been awarded onto the steps of the Capitol. Two weeks later, my time in Vietnam came to an end, and I was discharged a couple of days after getting back to "the world." I joined VVAW the following fall when I began college.

The sun was blazing that afternoon when helicopters picked us up and took us back down to the jungle floor, presumably a good distance from the A Shau Valley. Yet another patrol on which we accomplished nothing. Yet another day that could have served as an apt metaphor for that ill-begotten war.

E.C. Streeter is a retired high school English teacher. He served as an army medic from June, 1969 to May, 1971.