For the last year I’ve had a squad of Vietnam War USMC Recon primed and sitting in my queue. Every time a new project would join them and pass them up I could feel their crayon-craving stares boring into my soul. Eventually I could take no more of their non-verbal harassment and promoted them from my queue to my painting desk.
After some brief investigating I decided to paint them in the ERDL lowland camouflage that was commonly worn by USMC Recon during the Vietnam War. While replicating the complex pattern shown below in detail is beyond my skill level and patience I endeavored to replicate the colors well enough to represent the camouflage patter.
The paints I used are Vallejo’s Black (950), USA Uniform (922), German Cam. Medium Brown (826), Golden Olive (857), and Pale Sand (837).
“We are fighting a war with no front lines, since the enemy hides among the people, in the jungles and mountains, and uses covertly border areas of neutral countries. One cannot measure [our] progress by lines on a map.”—General William C. Westmoreland
By Patrick S. Baker
1965 was the year that, as one source puts it, “Vietnam Becomes an American War”. The massive bombing campaign, Operation Rolling Thunder, started. The first American ground combat units arrived “in country”. The Battle of the Ia Drang, the first major set-piece battle of the war (so well detailed in We Were Soldiers Once… and Young by Lieutenant General (Ret.) Hal Moore and Joseph L. Galloway) was fought in November that year.
It was also in 1965 that the bifurcated nature of the Vietnam War became clear. Part of the war was a conventional ground war with regular American military and Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) units fighting conventional battles against the communists’ guerrillas, called the Viet Cong, (VC or Charlie) Main Force units and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) units.
The other part was a counter-insurgency (COIN) campaign with America and her South Vietnamese allies trying to win the “hearts and minds” of the largely rural population with generous foreign aid, civic construction projects, and Special Forces (SF) deployed to train the local defense forces to battle the VC guerrillas.
I hate to reveal my age, but I remember the US withdrawal from South Vietnam in 1975, I remember thinking as they pushed helicopters off the sides of US warships “Won’t they need those?”
Gaming the fall of the South is something that has always interested me; I have played Volko Ruhnke’s Fire in the Lake, Fall of Saigon expansion, but that is a COIN game and I wanted to play just the military aspect of the final act of the Vietnam Conflict. Luckily the designers from Nuts! Publishing has released Saigon 75 a game that covers the topic.
Check out this interview with Jason Petho the designer of the PC game Campaign Series Vietnam. Jason talks about the development and all of the new goodies in the latest title in this iconic series.
Book Review of Courage Under Fire: The 101st Airborne Hidden Battle at Tam Ky by Ed Sherwood, LTC US Army (Retired). 360 pages. Casemate, 2021. $34.95.
By Patrick S. Baker
Recently, publishers have loaded the book shelves with titles touting the “hidden”, or “forgotten”, or “secret”, history of some event. The worst of these so-called “hidden history” books are pseudo-historical bilge, but the best of these books actually tell previously untold stories.
LTC Sherwood’s Courage Under Fire is certainly among the later as it relates the long ignored story of the First Brigade, 101st Airborne Division’s bloody struggle at the Battle of Tam Ky, also known as Operation Lamar Plain, May through August, 1969.
A highly adept researcher and skilled writer, Sherwood has crafted one of the best and most complete narratives of combat in Vietnam ever published. A young lieutenant leading the 3rd Platoon, Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry during the first part of the battle, Sherwood also writes with that precious firsthand knowledge most historians lack.
Yet the narrative rises far above mere personal account, as Sherwood takes care to put the fighting within the context of the tactical, operational and strategic climate of post-Tet Offensive Vietnam. Valuable context is also provided by the multiple maps, nine appendixes and a glossary.
Sherwood portrays the American soldiers, young enlistees or draftees, as well-trained, physically fit and mentally resilient, but who were deficient in combat experience against the North Vietnam Army (NVA). Attrition soon cut the line companies to two platoons, with junior NCOs heading shorthanded squads, yet the troops soldiered on. Sherwood implies that the odds favored the NVA, who had extensive knowledge of the ground, the support of the locals and well-prepared fighting positions. While the Americans depended on the massive firepower provided by artillery and air support, which ultimately made the difference at Tam Ky.
The book concentrates on the lead-up operations and the key battle of Hill 376. The 501st Battalion made the first helicopter combat assault of Lamar Plain on 16 May. Like most such actions in the Vietnam War, Tam Ky involved days and weeks of vicious and intense small-unit actions. Day to day, the casualty numbers seemed small compared to those World War Two, but the numbers gradually and relentlessly grew into the hundreds and then thousands. For each month of combat, Sherwood chronicles what was going on back in the US, or “The World” in soldiers’ slang. Each chapter ends with a table of casualties and medals awarded.
Men of the 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, fire from old Viet Cong trenches
In the decisive action of the operation, the Americans launched a frontal assault on Hill 376. For nine brutal days the Americans made a bloody trudge through the rain and mud and enemy ambushes to the top of the hill. After reaching the hilltop, the men raised an American flag on the peak and then walked away, victorious, but also downcast.
The rationale behind the fact that the sacrifice and valor of the men of the 1st Brigade of the “Screaming Eagles” at Tam Ky was intentionally hidden for decades is simple. As Operation Lamar Plain started, headlines back in “the World” were trumpeting the 3rd Brigade’s “meat-grinder” fight at the Battle of Hamburger Hill some 100 miles northwest of Tam Ky. Hamburger Hill left more than six hundred American soldiers killed or wounded.
The politically beleaguered President Nixon and the new American commander in Vietnam, General Creighton Abrams, could not afford to openly acknowledge that another 525 Americans soldiers had become casualties in the Battle of Tam Ky; Not directly on the heels of the carnage of Hamburger Hill. The Battle of Tam Ky had to remain official “hidden” for political reasons.
Summing up: I recommend Courage Under Fire in the strongest terms possible. This book is a must read for anyone interested in the Vietnam War, or anyone interested in stories of the courage and camaraderie of men in combat.
Patrick S. Baker is a U.S. Army Veteran, and a retired Department of Defense employee. He holds Bachelor degrees in History and Political Science and a Masters in European History. His history articles have appeared in Military History, Strategy and Tactics, Modern War, Medieval Warfare and Ancient Warfare Magazines.
Welcome back Comrades,
PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR BRIEFING
We have gone over the glorious and patriotic formations that we will use to vanquish the imperialist and their lackeys in South Vietnam. As strong as these formations are, they cannot succeed alone. They need support. Today’s briefing will explain what support units are available to our formations as they drive the dogs from the South.
We have gone over the glorious and patriotic formations that we will use to vanquish the imperialist and their lackeys in South Vietnam. As strong as these formations are, they cannot succeed alone. They need support. Today’s briefing will explain what support units are available to our formations as they drive the dogs from the South.
The new ‘NAM book provides a lot of options for the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN). In fact, the North Vietnam Forces could have easily have been divided and printed solely as a Communist Forces in Vietnam book. The Politburo has directed that we brief you on our glorious and loyal forces battling the Capitalist foes in the South. We will do so in to four separate briefings so that you may better understand each.
“We are fighting a war with no front lines, since the enemy hides among the people, in the jungles and mountains, and uses covertly border areas of neutral countries. One cannot measure [our] progress by lines on a map.”—General William C. Westmoreland
By Mitche Reed
