9781422279007

The Fatal Commitment

ABOVE: An officer examines the entrance to a NLF bunker complex. The Communist forces were notably adept at constructing and using such complexes in many parts of South Vietnam. OPPOSITE LEFT: General William Westmoreland. OPPOSITE: Four of seven prisoners captured in a Viet Cong tunnel complex in the Thanh Dien Forest during Operation Cedar Falls. During the course of the campaign, U.S. infantrymen discovered and destroyed a massive tunnel complex in the Iron Triangle, used as the headquarters for guerrilla raids and terrorist attacks on Saigon.

Maxwell Taylor was concerned that the deployment would open the conceptual floodgates to an ever- increasing flow of U.S. combat troops to South Vietnam, and a parallel South Vietnamese abandonment of as much combat as possible to the Americans, but nonetheless felt that Westmoreland was right and added his support to the request sent to Washington, which gained further recommendation from Admiral Ulysses S. Grant Sharp, the commander in chief Pacific. President Johnson authorized such a deployment on February 26, and on March 8 Brigadier General Frederick J. Karsh’s 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade landed on the beach at Da

Nang. These were not in fact the first men of the U.S. Marine Corps to see service in South Vietnam, this honor going to Marine advisers who had served with the Vietnamese Marines since 1954, and the Marines’ “Shu- Fly” helicopter task unit which had been operational at Da Nang since 1962. Even so, the advent of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade was a momentous step in the development of the Vietnam War. As the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which was soon redesignated as the III Marine Amphibious Force, began to arrive, Westmoreland perceived the South Vietnamese military situation as critical, as noted above. He believed that the situation

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