13th Valley
Authors: John M Del Vecchio
The 13th Valley
John M. Del Vecchio
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 10: 13 AUGUST 1970 STAGING
CHAPTER 28: 21-23 AUGUST 1970 CAMPOBASSO
FOR KATE
and
Heather Ann, Bruce II, Nya, Chandra, Joey, Erin, Nathan,
Adam and Cara
and for the children of Vietnam.
Acknowledgments
Grateful acknowledgment is made to: A soldier on Firebase Rendezvous at the edge of the A Shau Valley during Lam Son 719, Spring 1971.
He said to me, “You can do it, Man. You write about this place. You been here a long time. People gotta know what it was really like.” And thus this book began.
To Dr. John Henry Hatcher, Archivist, The Center for Military History, to First Lieutenant Kevin R. Hart, Division Historian, 101
st
Airborne Division (Airmobile), and to Miss Gilbert, Librarian, The Army Library, for documents, assistance and information; To Dr. Byron J. Good and Dr. Mary Jo Good, University of California, Davis, for help with the theoretical constructs of war causation; To Lee Bartels, a soldier with the 101
st
Airborne at Khe Ta Laou, for assistance with the story; To Jane Vandenburgh, Susan Harper, F.X. Flinn, Alan Rinzler and Kathleen Moloney, for editorial assistance; To my parents, relatives and friends for moral support; And to the Ratcliffes, without them I would have quit after Chapter 23.
For the Warriors Publishing Group Edition:
When one's career spans multiple decades one hopefully has gained deeper perspectives; one certainly has developed a vast multitude of additional individuals deserving thanksâfar too many to name.
As I gaze back upon my long-ago time as a soldier, I am overcome with great awe at the incredible good fortune I had to serve with such valiant men lead by such strong and professional commanders. From brigade to battalion to company and platoon, their leadership and dedication to the cause of freedom in Viet Namâoften misunderstood at the time by a skeptical Spec 4âwas second to none. I wish I could thank you each in person.
This anniversary edition owes much, as always, to the support of family and friendsâFrank A. Del Vecchio, Elena and Joe Rusnak, Mary-Jo and Byron Good, Bruce Ratcliffe, Doug Esposito, Gerry Kissell and Tom Waltz.
A very special thanks goes to Julia Dye of Warriors Publishing Group for her inspiration and tireless resolve.
Without all the above, not just this book but the entire career would have withered after its first flash and gasp of life.
Note on the Maps:
Although a novel, The 13th Valley is a real place where American soldiers fought and died in August 1970. During the writing of the book, copies of the U.S. Army 1::50,000 topographic maps of the area were consulted. For this 30th Anniversary edition, all new mapsâtopographic in style and more accurate than the relief maps in earlier editionsâwere created by Nate Del Vecchio.
A
UTHOR
'
S
N
OTE
The operation at Khe Ta Laou, which began 13 August 1970, was part of an overall campaign code-named Texas Star. The first troops of the 101
st
Airborne Division (Airmobile) were inserted into the mountain jungles surrounding Firebase Barnett at 0840 hours.
13 August 2011:
Those lines were the opening salvo to the original 1982 Author's Note for this book. It is now 41 years since I made that combat assault onto the peak of Hill 848 with Alpha Company, 2d of the 502d, and it has taken 41 years for me to fully understand the meaning and the strategic significance of the battle. This note recaps some of my original thoughts, adds some insights, and it invites you to ride along on a journey back to that time.
Our nation has changed significantly since the day in 1970 when a battalion of young soldiers stood looking down into that 13
th
Valley below Hill 848. Ideals and optimism, hope and expectations, have been altered; some have been met, others lost, some improved, others distorted. At times I've wonder if we've lost our way. I don't have a definitive answer but I do recognize that the seeds of today's good and evil were sown in the '60s and '70s, just as the seeds from the '30s, '40s and '50s came to fruition during America's Viet Nam era.
In 1970 we were still dreaming the impossible dream, still fighting the invisible foe. We still believed we could bear any burden in the pursuit of freedom at home and overseas. We saw ourselves as an exceptional society with attendant obligations to right wrongs around the globe, but the number of skeptics was growing and various elements in our society were bent on undermining our character.
That was then. This anniversary edition of The 13
th
Valley requires new thoughts, new explanations for contemporary readers. Abridged versions of earlier notes are below, followed by added material on race, on leadership and command, and on the strategic significance of the battle. Hopefully, these reiterations and additions will provide context for those who didn't live through those turbulent decades; or for those who may be laboring under misunderstandings of what our soldiers and Marines faced in the ranks, on the battlefield and from home.
From the 1982 edition (abridged):
The combat assault by Company A to the peak of 848 occurred as described, as did many of the events included, although the story here told is a composite of events from several operations. NVA unit designations, strengths and movements are, as nearly as my research could establish, accurate. The 7
th
NVA Front headquarters was located in the valley; numerous NVA battalions did use the Khe Ta Laou as a supply depot and rest sanctuary.
During the summer of 1970, the 101
st
Airborne had on its roster 10 infantry battalions. The 7
th
Battalion, 402d Infantry (Airmobile) is entirely fictitious. This is a novel. The characters and their backgrounds are imaginary. In no way are they meant to depict, nor are they based upon, any soldiers, past or present, of the 101
st
.
The approximate results of the operation, which ended 30 August 1970, along with the coordinated 1
st
Division (ARVN) operation in the Firebase O'Reilly/Jerome area directly south of Khe Ta Laou, were: 5 U.S. KIA, 60 U.S. WIA, 2 KCS WIA, 32 ARVN KIA, 108 ARVN WIA, 737 NVA KIA and 3 NVA POWs.
From the 1998 edition (abridged):
I first began
The 13
th
Valley
in the fall of 1972, five months after I was discharged from the United States Army. For 100 days I lived in a vacant farmhouse in rural Maine. Each morning I hunted game for the table and each afternoon and evening I wroteâoften to the wee hours. There was no phone, no TV, no radio, no newspaper, no neighbors. My sole companion was Sam, my dog. Conditions for recall were ideal.
I began in early September and wrote until 22 December, when, with seven dollars and change left in my pocket, I packed up my 300 handwritten pages, left Maine, and returned to my parents' home in Connecticut where I promptly stashed the manuscript in a drawer. I did not look at it again for nearly four years.
When the final offensive began I had been living in California for nearly two years, selling real estate, managing an office and training agents. There was little time or motivation to worry about events in Southeast Asia. Then I got a call from Gunny Doug Lavere who asked me to tune back into a seemingly long-ago war. Communist forces were bursting from the jungles of I Corps and the red clays of the Central Highlands, and were descending upon Saigon.
After the fall, refugees from Viet Nam were streaming through Hamilton AFB a mere three miles from my home. The media were aflame with stories about American veterans and their experiences in Viet Nam. Most stories were clichés, opinions and partial truths focusing on drug use, atrocities, fraggings and rampant racism. I became deeply anguished ⦠and highly motivated to counter this nonsense.
In mid-1976 I reopened those old Maine notebooks and made contact with Dr. John Henry Hatcher of The Center For Military History. This was the beginning of my research into what really happened at Khe Ta Laou, the beginning of what is now a four-decade inquiry into the war, its effects on the region and on America.
For the next draft of
The 13
th
Valley
I collected personal remembrances, operational reports, maps, and individual and unit citations from various sources including men who had served with 2/502 in the Khe Ta Laou. Ex-boonierats Lee Bartels and Gary Miller provided their notebooks from the time, plus letters and recollections.
Readers should understand that I was not originally writing about American forces in general. I was focused on the 1st and 3d Brigades of the 101
st
Airborne Division. I believed the 101
st
was the most elite division-sized unit in the war. During my time in the field I observed some of the sensational incidents of drug abuse and indiscipline that the press was reporting at war's end, but they were rare and in no way the essence of the experience. There was racial tension and some incidents of interracial violence, yet there was a general pattern of interracial harmony. This is a story the media missed.