This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Understanding the United States Marines’ strategy and approach to the conventional war in South Vietnam’s Northern provinces, March 1965 – December 1967 Nevgloski, Edward Thomas Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. 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Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 23. Sep. 2021 UNDERSTANDING THE UNITED STATES MARINES’ STRATEGY AND APPROACH TO THE CONVENTIONAL WAR IN SOUTH VIETNAM’S NORTHERN PROVINCES, MARCH 1965 – DECEMBER 1967 By Student # 1260366 A Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy King’s College London, War Studies Group Defence Studies Department June 2019 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement UNDERSTANDING THE UNITED STATES MARINES’ STRATEGY AND APPROACH TO THE CONVENTIONAL WAR IN SOUTH VIETNAM’S NORTHERN PROVINCES, MARCH 1965 – DECEMBER 1967 Edward T. Nevgloski Thesis Advisor: Robert Foley, PhD Abstract This thesis analyses the U.S. Marines’ operational approach to military strategy at the height of the Vietnam War. Although empirical evidence points to a Service-wide focus on the unconventional practice of pacification, this thesis suggests that conventional military operations and attrition were not only part of the Marines’ approach to fighting the war in South Vietnam’s five northern provinces, but that both played a much greater role in their overall strategy from March 1965 to December 1967 than the war’s vast historiography portrays. Unlike the incessant coverage of the Marines’ occupation of the populated coastal areas, their acts of kindness toward the South Vietnamese people, and their dismantling of the National Liberation Front (NLF) insurgency’s elusive village-level political infrastructure and armed organization, renewed interest by contemporary scholars skeptical of what they deem to be flawed interpretations of the Marines’ strategy and approach shaped not only by incomplete and outdated research, but by some of its opportunistic senior leadership is changing the way we look at how the Marines dealt with the NLF’s conventionally organized, trained, and equipped main forces as well as the larger and more lethal units of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). This thesis explores conventional military operations as an integral part of the Marines’ concept on fighting the war in the northern provinces. It challenges the assertions made by the 2 war’s historiography and the Marine Corps’ own Lieutenant General Victor H. Krulak that pacification was the sole focus of their military strategy and that attrition of the main forces and NVA was incompatible with their operational approach to its implementation. Additionally, it rebuts Lieutenant General Krulak’s assertion that when the Marines did engage the main forces and NVA, they did so as a part of a compromise with senior U.S. civilian and military officials to produce more immediate and tangible results. The study of unexamined or overlooked primary source documents, such as the personal papers of Marine Corps Commandant General Wallace M. Greene, Jr., underscores the recent hesitancy to accept these many conclusions that to this day hinder ex-post analysis of certain critical aspects of the conflict. Historians have yet to consider the war in the northern provinces from any perspective other than the Marines’ bias for pacification and their limiting operations to the coast. To fill the gap in the existing literature on the Vietnam War, this thesis examines the Marines’ conventional military operations against the main forces and NVA in South Vietnam’s populated coastal lowlands, rural countryside, and remote highlands, and explores how the Marine Corps in general viewed pacification and attrition as co-equal lines of operation. It neither argues the potential for a different outcome of the war nor attempts to dismiss the role pacification of within the Marines’ strategy and approach. Instead, this thesis stresses that pacification was a mechanism to hold areas cleared of the conventional and unconventional enemy forces threatening South Vietnam and enabled the creation of an environment secure enough for pacification to succeed. 3 Dedication On 19 August 1968, U.S. Marines from the 3d Battalion, 3d Marines began the second week of an operation aimed at interdicting NVA units infiltrating across the demilitarised zone into South Vietnam’s northern-most Quang Tri Province. The battalion’s specific task during was to protect the numerous resupply convoys transiting between the Dong Ha and Khe Sanh combat bases along Route 9, the provinces only east-west road. The Marines were making slow, but steady progress. During the previous week, the battalion discovered nearly 300 unoccupied enemy fighting positions and several bunker complexes—an ominous indicator of the NVA’s growing presence south of the demilitarized zone, though their exact location was unclear. On the morning of 20 August, the battalion’s Company L occupied a clearing near the large rocky hill mass just north of Route 9 called the “Rockpile”. The company’s energetic commanding officer, Captain William B. Gray, immediately dispatched multiple security and ambush patrols north of the company’s new position. As patrols saturated the area, they ran into several small NVA ambushes. On the morning of the twenty-fourth, Company L discovered several more vacant bunkers surrounded by 55 smaller individual fighting positions or “spider holes” along with 200 pounds of uncooked rice. Accurate enemy mortar fire peppered Gray’s position and patrols, further convincing him that a large enemy was force was indeed close. On the afternoon of 26 August, a Marine patrol fired on a group of NVA soldiers entering a previously searched bunker complex. Observing the enemy fleeing north to a large ridgeline known to the Marines as “Mutter’s Ridge”, Gray moved his entire company to the base of the terrain feature. Just before nightfall, while his Marines were franticly digging in, NVA artillery and mortar fire impacted Gray’s meager defences, wounding several of his men in the process. Two hours later, the company came under attack from a force of approximately 50 NVA soldiers 4 covered by their own artillery, mortar, and automatic weapons fire. “We were hit on all three sides”, Gray recalled of the six chaotic hours. The company’s forward listening post took the brunt of the enemy ground attack. Positioned at the point of the main enemy thrust was 19-year old Lance Corporal Edward S. Day of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During the initial seconds of the attack, Day placed himself between the enemy and his fellow Marines, laying down a base of fire to buy time for them to withdraw to the relative safety of Company L’s position. As they made their way to the company position, an enemy machinegun team concentrated its fire on Day. Returning deadly accurate rifle fire, Day killed both members of the machinegun team before enemy fire cut him down as he moved to assist a wounded Marine. Despite being gravely wounded, witnessed reported that Day continued firing into the attacking enemy, stalling their advance. Throughout the night, Gray and other Marines could hear single rifle shots coming suspiciously from Day’s last known location. Convinced it was Day attempting to identify his position and warn the company of a second enemy attack, the rifle fire ended abruptly, signaling to Gray that the enemy had located and killed Day. The enemy withdrew before sunrise, leaving eight dead Marines, including Day, in its wake. According to Gray, Day’s actions provided “us with enough time to set up a hasty defence and thereby saved the lives of a lot of fellow Marines”. Gray recommended Day for the Navy Cross, second only to the Medal of Honor. His mother, Mrs. Alma M. Day, a Second World War Marine herself and widow of an Iwo Jima Marine, accepted the medal from the Secretary of the Navy and Commandant of the Marine Corps on her son’s behalf during a somber afternoon ceremony in Philadelphia in 1969. I dedicate this thesis in his honour. 5 Acknowledgements Two vastly different accounts of the Marines’ involvement in the Vietnam War are the impetus for this thesis. Francis J. West’s 1972 novel, The Village, and Richard D. Camp’s 1989 memoir, Lima-6, highlight the complexity of the war and the Marines strategy and approach to containing and defeating Communism in this part of the country.1 In The Village, West captures the role 15 Marines had in helping the inhabitants of Binh Nghia village defend their home against the NLF insurgency in 1966.