Page:Airmobility 1961-1971.pdf/87

I remember to this day the stupefaction with which I received Colonel Lynch's message. Like the remainder of the division, my squadron had been loaded administratively. Our 90 helicopters were on board three freighters and a Navy aircraft carrier. Similarly, our 120 wheel vehicles, both combat and administrative, were spread among another half dozen Liberty ships which were God knows where in the Pacific. All I had on board the troop ship with me was the bulk of my officers and men, together with their individual weapons—perhaps a total of 600 people, or three quarters of the actual strength of the squadron. The rest were parceled out on the other ships with our equipment, guarding it and preparing to offload it on arrival in Vietnam.

When in July I had been informed that we would be shipped to the combat theater of operations in the most convenient manner instead of the most tactically sound manner, I screamed loudly and vociferously, along with every other commander in the division, to anyone in authority whose ear I could catch. General Kinnard was as concerned about this as the rest of us, but we were all defeated by the machinery of inertia at those reaches of the Defense Department concerned with the military shipment of people and things.

Regardless of the fact that we had no tools with which to fight as cavalrymen, my orders from Colonel Lynch were explicit. Together with my valiant troop commanders, I worked out a scheme for making an assault landing in the Qui Nhon area with the assets we had on hand.

This done, I made a call on the ship's master, informing him of the instructions I had received and requesting that he break out the disembarkation nets we would have to use to get over the side so that we could practice with them. Here I was stupefied for the second time within a matter of less than 24 hours. Not only were there no assault landing nets on board, but the master had not even been informed of his sailing destination! He honestly thought that we might be going to Korea or possibly to the Philippines. In either event, he was sure that he would be tied up to a dock for unloading in the usual fashion. I finally persuaded this splendid seaman that we were in fact headed for battle-torn Vietnam. Neither he nor any of his officers had sailed in those waters for a dozen years. They were astounded at the prospect and assumed that their destination would be some location where adequate dock facilities existed for discharging their cargo. I was altogether unable to convince the master that we were in fact headed for Qui Nhon harbor where no unloading facilities of any kind were available.

Fortunately, as it turned out, our disembarkation was conducted peacefully and without interference by the simple procedure of using shallow draft vessels to lighter us ashore from our anchorage. Had it been otherwise, though—had there been trouble when we arrived—the 1st Cavalry Division could easily have been decimated before even a solider of its main fighting component set foot on dry land. Even from the vantage point of more than two years of hindsight, I still shudder at the recollection.