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Taken from the 101st Airborne Divisions magazine " Rendezvous With Destiny" spring 1969 issue.
288 days of Nevada Eagle
by Spec. 5 Alan Magary
A long steady period of fighting and tracking the enemy reached its end February 28 1969. Screaming Eagles hurt the enemy bad, kept him from a repetition of the 1968 Tet Offensive, kept him away from the populated coastal plains and also invaded the enemy’s own areas. Posting invisible signs everywhere in Thua Thien Province:
This is Eagle Country
The country down below is spread out like a giant map. There is the pure blue of the South China Sea, then a ribbon of white sand beaches interrupted in places by the jet black rock that jumps the beaches and plunges directly into the boiling water. As you continue to fly with the sun westward, there are grand expanses of green checkerboard – here and there lines of brown, here a dike, there a trail. Small houses, gardens and palm trees. Tiny figures moving. Quiet and peaceful, a village. Nearby, another. Then – the first outcrop on the plain, a hill with a row of houses nestled beneath it. Then – streaking north and south, a black line: Highway 1. Off to the right, a large walled city, a child’s building blocks scattered around according to some plan: Hue, the Imperial City.
But now, below, the rice paddies blend into scrub land and small hills. Now there are clouds, low clouds hung from the sky, overlapping the hills. A mountain jumps out of the earth, its summit hidden in silent, mysterious mist. Another and another and still more mountains. There is no sign of life now. Then – the jungle, the triple canopy jungle, dark and green, forbidden. On the ground, you would be living in a continual ghostly half-light, – the sunlight filtering down with an occasional clearing. Now – rows and rows of giant peaks – cloud covered. The Valley – the A Shau. A darkened plain covered with elephant grass , tangled vegetation and mountains. You don’t want to go down there. Finally, somewhere below, an invisible line: Laos, a sanctuary.
This is the I Corps Tactical Zone, Thua Thien Province: Hue and environs, the coastal plains, the jungles, the mountains.
This is Eagle Country but it was not always so. I Corps has been the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of the Vietnam War. Once you were not safe in many places on that giant map – you were not even that safe in the sky. For hidden in the jungles and mountains, hidden in the villages and towns that dot the coastal plain was – the enemy. The enemy was everywhere. Hue was held for 22 days in February 1968 by the enemy, and was recaptured only after bloody house to house fighting by American Army and Marine units and Vietnamese troops.
Now the situation has changed. Thua Thien Province does not belong to the enemy any longer – it belongs to the people, and the ground troops are steadily taking a tighter hold on the property deed.
to be continued..........
288 days of Nevada Eagle
by Spec. 5 Alan Magary
A long steady period of fighting and tracking the enemy reached its end February 28 1969. Screaming Eagles hurt the enemy bad, kept him from a repetition of the 1968 Tet Offensive, kept him away from the populated coastal plains and also invaded the enemy’s own areas. Posting invisible signs everywhere in Thua Thien Province:
This is Eagle Country
The country down below is spread out like a giant map. There is the pure blue of the South China Sea, then a ribbon of white sand beaches interrupted in places by the jet black rock that jumps the beaches and plunges directly into the boiling water. As you continue to fly with the sun westward, there are grand expanses of green checkerboard – here and there lines of brown, here a dike, there a trail. Small houses, gardens and palm trees. Tiny figures moving. Quiet and peaceful, a village. Nearby, another. Then – the first outcrop on the plain, a hill with a row of houses nestled beneath it. Then – streaking north and south, a black line: Highway 1. Off to the right, a large walled city, a child’s building blocks scattered around according to some plan: Hue, the Imperial City.
But now, below, the rice paddies blend into scrub land and small hills. Now there are clouds, low clouds hung from the sky, overlapping the hills. A mountain jumps out of the earth, its summit hidden in silent, mysterious mist. Another and another and still more mountains. There is no sign of life now. Then – the jungle, the triple canopy jungle, dark and green, forbidden. On the ground, you would be living in a continual ghostly half-light, – the sunlight filtering down with an occasional clearing. Now – rows and rows of giant peaks – cloud covered. The Valley – the A Shau. A darkened plain covered with elephant grass , tangled vegetation and mountains. You don’t want to go down there. Finally, somewhere below, an invisible line: Laos, a sanctuary.
This is the I Corps Tactical Zone, Thua Thien Province: Hue and environs, the coastal plains, the jungles, the mountains.
This is Eagle Country but it was not always so. I Corps has been the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of the Vietnam War. Once you were not safe in many places on that giant map – you were not even that safe in the sky. For hidden in the jungles and mountains, hidden in the villages and towns that dot the coastal plain was – the enemy. The enemy was everywhere. Hue was held for 22 days in February 1968 by the enemy, and was recaptured only after bloody house to house fighting by American Army and Marine units and Vietnamese troops.
Now the situation has changed. Thua Thien Province does not belong to the enemy any longer – it belongs to the people, and the ground troops are steadily taking a tighter hold on the property deed.
to be continued..........
