Death Valley
Authors: Keith Nolan
This edition printed 1999
Copyright © 1987 by Keith William Nolan
Published by Presidio Press
505 B San Marin Drive, Suite 300
Novato, CA 94945-1340
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. Inquiries should be addressed to Presidio Press, 505 B San Marin Drive, Suite 300, Novato, CA 94945-1340.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nolan, Keith William, 1964–
Death Valley.
Bibliography:
this page
.
1. Vietnamese Conflict, 1961–1975—Campaigns—Vietnam—Hiep Duc Valley. 2. Vietnamese Conflict, 1961–1975—Regimental histories—United States. 3. United States. Marine Corps. Marines, 7th—History. 4. United States. Army. Infantry Brigade. 196th—History. 5. Hiep Duc Valley (Vietnam)—History. I. Title.
DS557.8.H54N65 1987 959.704’342 86-30478
eISBN: 978-0-307-80205-7
v3.1
To Kelly
Sometime after August of 69, a grunt walked through the American Division Headquarters compound in Chu Lai. He wore no helmet now that he was in from the bush, and his hair was dirty and uncombed. He had unauthorized sideburns and a handlebar mustache. He held his M16 rifle over his shoulder like a tramp stick, and his faded, grimy fatigue shirt hung open. A green sweat towel was draped around his neck, and his trouser cuffs were rolled up, exposing muddy and cracked jungle boots. A starched major approached and questioned his unmilitary appearance. He smiled, “The war’s over. We’ve got to start acting like garrison soldiers now.” The young grunt pulled a grubby envelope from his pocket. He shook it at the major. “What do you mean the war’s over? Three months ago, seven of us were at LZ Baldy and now five are dead!” But the major was still smiling, “Well, let’s say it’s slowed down quite a bit
.”
Preface
THE GRUNTST
hough one of my first books, and that does not imply great things,
Death Valley
, originally published in 1987, was, nevertheless, the best of my early campaign histories. I think the British magazine
Military Illustrated
got it right when it observed in its review of
Death Valley
that the author “is no English stylist,” but that “the relentless accumulation of small-scale detail has a numbingly powerful effect.”
This is a book about war at the grunt level, and another reviewer was good enough to remark that the story is “told straight.”
In telling it straight, I had to acknowledge some depressing realities. There were many good soldiers in the 7th Marines and the 196th Infantry Brigade of the Americal Division, the units described in
Death Valley
. During the 1969 Summer Offensive, the campaign recounted here, they fought the good fight against the tough, aggressive regulars of the North Vietnamese Army. However, individual heroism was not enough. Morale as a whole was poor, even in some of the Marine units, and to quote the Brits again, the Americal Division troops in particular were mostly “unwilling conscripts, badly trained, badly led, badly motivated … and therefore, consistently outfought by an enemy who lacked anything approaching the Americans’ firepower but had ten times their determination.”
The summer of ’69 was a terrible time to be a grunt in the shimmering-hot rice paddies of the Arizona Territory, or the Hiep Duc and Song Chang Valleys of Quang Tin Province, the three locales where the combat action of
Death Valley
took place. James Webb, who immortalized the era and the first of these places in his novel
Fields of Fire
, tells us that four and a half years after the first U.S. infantry units landed in Vietnam, a year and a half after the shattering of the national will during the Tet Offensive, “there was no great effort for anything anymore, only thousands, no, millions, of isolated, individual wars.”
The goal for the grunts was survival, not victory. It could hardly have been otherwise. Only two months before the beginning of the 1969 Summer Offensive, President Richard Nixon had formally unveiled his Vietnamization policy in which U.S. combat units would be gradually phased out and replaced by South Vietnamese units. “As a result,” noted yet another reviewer of
Death Valley
, “disillusionment had set in among the riflemen, none of whom wanted to be the last man killed in a war they weren’t going to win.”
The whole army had short-timer’s fever. Units with good leaders continued to perform competently, sometimes even with the aggressive elan of the early years—a classic frontal assault by the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines on an entrenched NVA position is described here—but the first recorded combat refusal of the war also took place during the fighting recounted in
Death Valley
. Frontal assaults were going out of style, while incidents of individual and group refusals would become almost commonplace as the war ground uselessly on.