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moved by air, and approximately 2,700 refugees were moved to safety. In all this flying, 59 aircraft were hit by enemy fire—three while on the ground—and only four were shot down; of these four, three were recovered.

General Westmoreland stated, "The ability of the Americans to meet and defeat the best troops the enemy could put on the field of battle was once more demonstrated beyond any possible doubt, as was the validity of the Army's airmobile concept."

It has been well documented that by early 1965 the enemy had reinforced his units in Vietnam to the point of being able to move almost at will against major population areas. In fact, it looked as if the North Vietnamese Army were about to cut the country in two, right across the middle. It is also well known that the commitment of U.S. Forces stemmed the tide and turned it in the other direction. The major battles that took place were in the highlands where the 1st Cavalry answered the challenge of a powerful North Vietnamese Army division that was attempting to overrun the Special Forces camp at Pleime. This operation was in essence the watershed line; from that time on, the joint U.S. and Army of the Republic of Vietnam operations throughout the country regained the initiative and began to drive back the major enemy forces in an all-out counteroffensive.

In 1965 there were just not enough airmobility assets to go around. Partly by design and partly by default, most of the airmobile assets ended up in support of U.S. forces, to the detriment of overall Army of the Republic of Vietnam operations. The Army of the Republic of Vietnam units in general reverted to a mission of near-static ground operations close to the populated areas. The U.S. forces choppered into the jungles to fight the main force North Vietnamese Army units. During this phase, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam forces actually had less helicopters available to them than in the period before the buildup.

The first operations of the 1st Cavalry Division brought out many points which confirmed the basic conclusions of those who had worked with the airmobile concept over the years. Airmobility put a new dimension into ground warfare, but it did not change the nature of warfare itself and it certainly did not negate those basic rules of survival so important to the individual soldier.

The airmobile trooper, like the paratrooper before him, must be basically a professional infantryman, artilleryman, and so forth.