Operation Wallowa was launched on 4 October 1967 under the control of the
Thăng Bình District, some 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) south of Hội An.[5]
: 226
Aided by mild weather that rarely curtailed flying, their
12th Cavalry, later that afternoon. Neither battalion regained contact with the enemy, prompting Colonel Ross to terminate the mission two days later. US casualties came to 22 killed and 28 wounded. PAVN fire had hit over 20 helicopters, 8 of which were destroyed or severely damaged, PAVN losses were unknown. The Americal Division changed its operational doctrine in the wake of that incident, mandating that ground units spearhead future rescue efforts rather than helicopter rescue teams.[5]
On 11 November, Koster combined Operation Wheeler with Operation Wallowa to simplify command and control arrangements as the mix of American units began to change in the valley. A week later, the 198th Infantry Brigade (Light) moved from Đức Phổ to Chu Lai, relieving the 196th Infantry Brigade, which moved into the southern part of the Wheeler-Wallowa zone. With the arrival of Gelling's brigade, General Matheson flew his 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, down to Phan Rang Air Base for a month-long mission in southern II Corps.[4][5]: 230 [1]: 232
On 22 November a US radio research unit picked up a transmission apparently sent by the headquarters of the PAVN 3rd Regiment. Triangulation of the signal placed its origin at Hill 63, a small granite outcrop 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) east of LZ Ross. If the 3rd Regiment was indeed in the valley, Colonel Gelling's 198th Infantry Brigade had a rare opportunity to engage a major part of the 2nd Division. Gelling passed along the information to the executive officer of the 4th Battalion,
17th Cavalry and a platoon of tanks from Troop A, 1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry. It was too late in the day for Dorland to act on the tip, but he resolved to investigate the following morning. Task Force Dorland approached Hill 63 on the cool and cloudy morning of 23 November. Despite its modest height, the hillock offered a commanding view of the surrounding farmlands. Knowing that the PAVN sometimes used it as an observation point when they were gathering food, Dorland moved to investigate. Task Force Dorland split into two groups and approached the hill from opposite sides. When the American infantrymen began climbing its slopes at around 07:00, a torrent of small arms and machine-gun fire greeted them from concealed positions higher on the hill. Four US soldiers were killed and another eleven wounded during the opening phase of the battle. The volume of fire led Dorland to conclude that at least one battalion from the 3rd Regiment held the hill. As Companies B and D fought their way up the northern and southern slopes, Dorland led a group of M48 tanks and M113 armored personnel carriers around the hill to establish a blocking position on its western side. When the mechanized group reached its destination, a platoon of PAVN soldiers emerged from the tall grass near the base of the hill, fired at the Americans, and then sprinted west to a hedgerow-enclosed hamlet some 200 metres (220 yd) away and Troop F pursued. Moments later, recoilless rifles concealed in the hamlet opened fire on the troopers. PAVN rounds slammed into two armored personnel carriers, including the one carrying Dorland. He was thrown from his vehicle and then badly injured when the carrier ran over his body. Despite his pain, Dorland refused painkillers or medical evacuation so he could return to the fight. While Dorland's armored vehicles fought back with machine guns and cannon, his two infantry companies fought their way up Hill 63. It was slow and costly work, with the companies sustaining some fifty casualties in the first two hours of combat. Seeing he had a major fight on his hands, Dorland asked for help. Gelling sent Company B, 4th Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, which landed near the eastern side of Hill 63 around 09:15. Believing that the PAVN on Hill 63 was more or less trapped, Dorland ordered the 4/21st Infantry to seize the hamlet. Supported by several M48 tanks, Company B closed the intervening distance and entered the maze of hedgerows that enclosed the settlement. The infantrymen silenced several recoilless rifles, which allowed the tanks to begin destroying PAVN bunkers at close range, either with cannon fire or by crushing them underneath the weight of the vehicles. Back on Hill 63, Companies B and D, 4/31st Infantry, finally reached the summit, killing the last defender around noon. That accomplished, Dorland ordered both companies to march west and join the hamlet-clearing operation. Ninety minutes later, helicopters flew in Company C from Dorland's 4/31st Infantry, which also joined the battle. Confident that the four infantry companies and reinforced mechanized troop were taking care of matters, Dorland relinquished his command at around 15:00 and flew out by helicopter to receive some much-needed medical attention, he was later awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.[5]
: 230–2 Members of Company "A", 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, move across rice paddies, 10 December 1967
The next day, Gelling flew in Company D, 3/21st Infantry, and Company B, 2nd Battalion,
7th Cavalry, but a search of the dead produced no additional clues about the intentions of the 2nd Division.[5]
: 232–4
On 23 December signals analysts reported that the 2nd Division had assumed an "alert posture", a strong indication that a major attack was in the offing. Helicopters and reconnaissance teams scoured the valley, but they found no sign of the enemy. US intelligence concluded that the 2nd Division had probably canceled the attack after the Americal Division had captured a copy of their plans on 5 December, but Koster was not so sure. Even though the B1 Front must have known that its plan had been compromised, MACV had released portions of it to the media on 6 December, Koster knew that the PAVN were desperate to regain control of the Quế Sơn Valley to feed their troops. PAVN soldiers had already raided villages along the periphery of the valley, but the amount of rice they had collected was not enough to feed the 2nd Division.
Trusting his instincts, Koster directed the two brigades in the Quế Sơn Valley to assume that the PAVN was still planning a major attack in the near future. Koster's hunch proved correct. Even though the B1 Front commander, Maj. Gen. Chu Huy Mân, wished to call off the attack and give the 2nd Division a rest prior to the upcoming Tet general offensive and uprising, he went ahead with the plan because he had orders from the North Vietnamese Ministry of Defense to cripple the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, and to tie it down prior to the great offensive set to begin in less than a month. Although his staff was already swamped with preparations for Tet, Mân sent cadres from his headquarters to replace the decimated 2nd Division command group. Senior Col. Giap Van Cuong, General Mân's chief of staff and a former commander of the 3rd Division, became the 2nd Division's new commander. Cuong and his staff had no time to change the plan so they went ahead with the existing scheme to attack LZ Ross. Colonel Cuong could only hope that the Americans would drop their guard once the original attack date of 23 December passed without incident. On 26 December, three PAVN soldiers from the 2nd Division surrendered and informed their captors that a multi-regiment attack would take place against LZs Ross and Baldy in the near future. More evidence that an attack was imminent came five days later when the radios of the 2nd Division fell silent. In the past, a sudden break in radio traffic often signaled that a big attack was near. To preempt the long-anticipated blow, General Koster on 2 January directed the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, to scour the area around Ross with helicopter-borne infantry. Early that day, a company from the 2nd Battalion, 12th Cavalry, drew heavy fire when it landed into a rice paddy west of LZ Ross. A second company reinforced the first, and the two units remained in heavy contact with the enemy until dark. The Americans killed 24 PAVN and took two prisoners. The prisoners claimed that they had just come out of the mountains to the northwest with at least a thousand other troops, had seen numerous antiaircraft weapons, and had passed an artillery position containing six 122mm rocket launchers. Also during that day, US engineers found and destroyed a large number of mines on the road between Ross and Leslie, a route that had formerly seen little mining activity. On the basis of those reports and the continued radio silence, the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, went on full alert.[5]: 234–5
Que Son Valley, 3 January 1968
On the night of 2 January 1968, PAVN forces north and south of the Quế Sơn Valley carried out a series of diversionary attacks to support the plan of the 2nd Division. Two VC battalions assaulted a district headquarters in
Combined Action Platoon in Hieu Nhon District, but the more ambitious efforts fizzled. An attempt to seize an ARVN artillery base miscarried, while the attack on Da Nang, for all its violence, inflicted only slight damage on the base. General Mân launched his main attack in the Quế Sơn Valley at 01:45 on 3 January. Although the 196th Infantry Brigade's Landing Zone West (15°34′59″N108°10′59″E / 15.583°N 108.183°E / 15.583; 108.183), 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) south of Ross, and several other bases in the valley came under mortar attack, Ross and the smaller Leslie bore the brunt of the assault, sustaining at least 250 rounds from 82mm and 120mm mortars as well as 50 122mm rockets and heavy fire from 75mm recoilless rifles. As the barrage lifted, two battalions from the 3rd Regiment attacked Ross from the west, while one battalion from the 21st Regiment attacked from the south. Fighting from reinforced bunkers that had kept them safe from the bombardment, the 400 soldiers who defended the outer perimeter of LZ Ross met the attackers with blistering fire. The armored personnel carriers raked the PAVN with their cupola-mounted .50-caliber machine guns; artillerymen fired their 105mm howitzers at the attackers by aiming along the top of their barrels. The assault slowed, lost its cohesion as casualties mounted, and finally came to an end around 05:30. Meanwhile, at Leslie, a reinforced company of sappers from the 2nd Division armed with satchel charges and flamethrowers broke through the perimeter around the same time that the attack against Ross was getting under way. The sappers caused havoc along the bunker line for several minutes, killing over a dozen US soldiers in the swirl of close-range fighting before the infantry company from the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, which was defending the base, drove them off. After making several more unsuccessful efforts to regain their foothold, the sappers withdrew at around 06:00. All told, the PAVN lost 242 killed at Ross and 67 at Leslie. US casualties came to 18 killed (15 of those at Leslie) and 137 wounded. The next morning, the fourth of January, the 196th Infantry Brigade faced a late-developing attack by the 1st Regiment at LZ West. At 04:30, Company D, 4/31st Infantry, was reconnoitering the area to the northwest of the landing zone when it spotted a company of PAVN. Once the shooting began, more PAVN joined the fight. Soon the Americans were facing an entire PAVN battalion. Companies A and C, 4/31st Infantry, converged on the area to prevent the PAVN from reaching the base. The fighting near LZ West continued all that day and into the fifth. On the afternoon of 5 January, Colonel Gelling sent Company A, 3/21st Infantry, and Company C, 2/1st Infantry, to reinforce the three companies from the 4/31st Infantry in contact. As darkness fell, the five companies began preparing night defense positions, separated from one another by around 500 metres (550 yd) to 1,000 metres (1,100 yd), in order to screen a wider area with the night ambush teams each would later send out. Company C, 2/1st Infantry, was still preparing its positions when a PAVN battalion struck. PAVN fire took out the company commander and one of his platoon leaders almost immediately. More Americans fell dead and wounded as the volume of fire intensified. Company C fought a desperate four-hour holding action until rescued by Company A, 4/31st Infantry. The battle cost Company C 16 killed and 56 wounded. Gelling pulled the unit out of the field and replaced it with Company B, 2/1st Infantry and Company D, 3/21st Infantry. While PAVN infantrymen clashed with soldiers from the 196th Infantry Brigade around LZ West, the 12.7mm antiaircraft battalion attached to the 2nd Division continued to hunt Colonel Campbell's helicopters from entrenched positions around Ross and Leslie. Despite heavy air and artillery strikes on their locations, PAVN gun crews still managed to hit at least 26 helicopters and destroy 6. Their most notable success came on 7 January, when PAVN gunners shot down a helicopter carrying the commander of the 2/12th Cavalry, Lt. Col. Robert L. Gregory, killing him and 6 others on board. After a week of hard fighting, however, the 2nd Division was reaching the limit of its endurance. The final clash of the campaign came on 10 January when the 2/12th Cavalry, tangled with a reinforced PAVN battalion near LZ Ross. The firefight resulted in 122 PAVN dead for a cost of 16 American wounded and 4 armored vehicles destroyed. Afterward, the 2nd Division withdrew from the valley. In the end, the PAVN's plan to create a helicopter killing zone around Leslie and Ross had yielded some success, damaging or destroying several dozen aircraft. On the other hand, the 3rd Brigade had never experienced a critical shortage of working helicopters and the US defenders never ran out of food and ammunition. US officers estimated that during its week-long offensive in the Quế Sơn Valley, the 2nd Division had lost 1,100 soldiers killed in action and a similar number wounded badly enough to require extended medical care.[5]
: 236–9
On 12 February 1968, after participating in Task Force Miracle (the defense of Da Nang during the Tet Offensive), the 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment returned south and conducted combat operations under the control of the 3rd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division. On 27 February 1968, the 3rd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division tactical area of operations passed to the 196th Infantry Brigade and the 1/6th Infantry came under their operational control. The 3rd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division moved out of the Americal Division area and deployed in the II Corps further to the south.
Aftermath
Total PAVN/VC losses attributed to Operations Wheeler and Wallowa claimed by MACV were 10,008 killed and 600 weapons captured (up to January 1968) at a cost of 682 American lives.[1]: 232 Until reinforcements arrived from North Vietnam the 2nd Division would be only marginally combat effective.[5]: 239 PAVN reinforcements arrived in 1969 and the area was never fully pacified.[2]
Tiger Force, the long-range reconnaissance patrol unit of the 1st Battalion (Airborne), 327th Infantry, 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division reportedly killed hundreds of unarmed civilians during the operation who were reported as enemy combatants.[8] In a 1989 teach-in, Noam Chomsky called Operation Wheeler/Wallowa "a huge mass murder operation, in which B-52 raids were targeted right on villages".[9]
United States
North Vietnam
