Operation Starlite

The following passages are excerpted from the chapter.

". . .Operation Starlite was the first major U.S. military operation in Vietnam. It was a classic Marine Corps exercise, where a coordinated land, sea, and air attack was executed against the Viet Cong. It was August 1965. The Marine Corps enclave in Chu Lai had been established for a few months and was growing. Outside that enclave, there was an increasing presence of units from as many as three regiments of Viet Cong. In early July, the 1st Viet Cong Regiment had overrun a South Vietnamese outpost at a hamlet called Ba Gia just 20 miles south of Chu Lai. Intelligence reports through the month indicated that the regiment was on the move toward Chu Lai, but its exact location and intentions were unknown.

Then in mid-August, interrogation of a VC deserter revealed that the headquarters for the 1st Viet Cong Regiment had been established a mere 12 miles south of Chu Lai. According to the informant, a force of about 1,500 VC troops were massed there, poised to attack the Chu Lai airfield and the surrounding marine positions. In a matter of days, a preemptive attack against the Viet Cong was prepared and approved. It involved two infantry battalions from Chu Lai and one battalion -- the 3d Battalion, 7th Marines -- from the special landing force then located at Subic Bay. More significant than all that, though, was that this would be the first time that anyone had ever tried to kill me. Such a sudden dose of reality changes your perspective on a whole lot of things.

I recall waiting in a passageway at the bottom of a ladder to the flight deck. We were about to move on deck to board a helicopter bound for the Vietnamese coast. It was dark outside, probably just before dawn. The butterflies in my stomach were fighting to burst from my throat. I had my FO team with me -- radio operators, wiremen. They were invincible warriors only a few days before when we had a lot of drinks together in the bars along the main street of Olongapo. Now they were kids again, looking to me, their lieutenant, their leader, for assurance. We could see each other dimly in the battle lighting in the passageway. Helmets in place and buckled. All our web gear squared away. Plenty of ammunition and water. Spare batteries for our radios.

We had crayons of green and brown grease paint, and we thought that if we applied it just right to ourselves, no enemy could see us. I looked at my men, and large innocent eyes looked back; they had pimples masked by camouflage paint. I was 23. Shit, I had pimples."

". . .The enemy had been engaged since early that morning. It was late afternoon by the time that the 3d Battalion, 7th Marines was committed to battle. The marine infantry that had initially found and trapped the 1st Viet Cong Regiment had borne the weight of the early fighting and had nearly broken the enemy's back. The Viet Cong had fought hard that day, killing and wounding many marines, but the enemy units had been broken up and were now dispersed about the area of battle. We were deployed to help complete the kill, to sweep the area in search of the remaining VC, to cut off any avenues of escape, to hunt down any stragglers, and to destroy any weapons and supplies that had been left behind.

We moved out briskly in a company-size patrol from the LZ. The intensity of the day's conflict was evident all around, and everything was still fairly fresh. Here and there as we moved quickly to join in the battle, we could see the signs of the turmoil, the destruction and the carnage of combat. The trees and brush and high grasses were torn and twisted. Thatch buildings were demolished by explosives; some were destroyed by fire and the remaining char outlined their original location. Mortar walls along the edge of villages were scarred by weapons fire and broken by artillery shells.

The enemy was not concentrated anywhere, but there were small pockets of VC all over the place, hiding in hedgerows, concealed in tunnels. We would pass through an area, declare it clear, then discover we were taking sniper fire from our rear, from hiding holes we had somehow missed."

". . .Too often the memory returns of marching along a narrow dirt road and noting a hand in the middle of it. Lying there like a dropped glove. It was an artifact of war, a simple, insignificant object, left behind and out of place. For some reason, it didn't occur to me at the time that it had been a treasured part of what was not long ago a whole, living human being. Probably a teenager or a young man. (They went to war very young in Vietnam.) A person who was probably tired, weary of war. Someone who was probably thinking at night of loved ones, wondering if they were thinking of him. I thought then that the remainder of the body was probably in the grass to the side of the trail. It was a brief thought, gone quickly and forgotten. There wasn't time to dwell on these things and what would be the point?

We returned several days later by the same road. The hand was still there, now grotesquely bloated and purple, decayed and partially consumed by vermin. It was just another noxious thing. But today it served more as the solitary visual marker for the center of the scene of some earlier horror, a horror now sharply, poignantly described by the thick stench that seemed to brew nearby, all around, and to linger in the humid and stagnant air."