Ebook: On Our Terms: U.S. Marines in Operation Dewey Canyon, 22 January to 18 March 1969

At Vandegrift Combat Base, the home of 9th Marines, Brigadier General Frank E. Garretson assembled his staff on 14 January 1969. As commanding general of Task Force Hotel, he was responsible for 3d Marine Division’s area of operations in the northwestern reaches of the I Corps Tactical Zone, the northernmost of four political and military regions in the Republic of Vietnam.1 The next day, the Task Force Hotel commander sent a message to 9th Marines and 2d Battalion, 12th Marines, both of which were southwest of Vandegrift Combat Base searching for any sizable enemy concentration near Khe Sanh.2 He ordered his infantry and artillery commanders to plan immediately for a regiment-size search and clear operation to their southeast, where Laos jaggedly protrudes into the Republic of Vietnam’s Quang Tri Province, in the rugged and lush Da Krong Valley.3 The orders originated from 3d Marine Division headquarters at Dong Ha, 25 kilometers northeast of Vandegrift Combat Base, where Major General Raymond G. Davis and his staff monitored increased People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) activity along the Laotian border.4 The first indication was a communication wire running along a trail system.5 Enemy engineer units that were inactive for several months now reopened Routes 922 and 548, branches of the Ho Chi Minh Trail that serviced a logistics depot in Laos and the Republic of Vietnam named Base Area 611. Helicopters and reconnaissance aircraft even took fire from 12.7mm, 25mm, and 37mm antiaircraft weapons where they never had before, leading to the downing of a U.S. Navy Grumman A-6 Intruder allweather attack aircraft.6 By early January, 1,000 trucks rolled down the Ho Chi Minh Trail every day. American aircraft attempted to close the important infiltration routes that supplied staging areas in the Republic of Vietnam, but enemy engineers repaired the damage and trucks continued delivering supplies. Both supply routes were vital to operations that Hanoi aimed at destabilizing the government in Saigon, as the east-west Route 922 gave PAVN troops the ability to move from Laos into the Republic of Vietnam and the strategically important A Shau Valley via Route 548.