The lead element of the 173rd Airborne Brigade (“Sky Soldiers”), stationed in Okinawa, departs for South Vietnam. It was the first U.S. Army ground combat unit committed to the war. Combat elements of the 173rd Airborne Brigade included the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Battalions, 503rd Infantry; the 3rd Battalion, 319th Airborne Artillery; Company D, 16th Armor; Troop E, 17th Cavalry; and the 335th Aviation company.
Headquartered at Bien Hoa Air Base near Saigon, the Brigade conducted operations to keep communist forces away from the Saigon-Bien Hoa complex. In February 1967, the Brigade conducted a combat parachute jump into a major communist base area to the north of Saigon near the Cambodian border. In November 1967, the Brigade was ordered to the Central Highlands, where they fought a major battle at Dak To against an entrenched North Vietnamese Army regiment on Hill 875. In some of the most brutal fighting of the war, the paratroopers captured the hill on Thanksgiving Day, winning the Presidential Unit Citation for bravery in action.
After more than six years on the battlefield, the Brigade was withdrawn from Vietnam in August 1971. During combat service, they suffered 1,606 killed in action and 8,435 wounded in action. Twelve paratroopers of the 173rd were awarded the Medal of Honor for conspicuous bravery in battle.
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That was my Uncle’s unit- LRRP
Wow, was also my uncles unit, no photo though. I remember when he came home. I was 5. My parents gave him my room. Everything was taken out except for a bare mattress on the floor where he sat with a blanket wrapped around him for days, weeks maybe. He went from there to the north woods of oregon. He’d come down from the hills to garbage pick appliances he’d fix and sell. Last heard from him in 1994. Broken man.
So, I was not quite 3 yrs. old when the us government started their first ‘market cornering’ of the Heroin trade. And future home of low wage tennis shoe manufacturing.
I participated in that nefarious mess thinly veiled as pacification under the cover of the Phoenix program. Forget the sterilized versions sold online that sanitize and even glamourize it.
Nobody ever made the connection between our takeover of the golden triangle from the Frogs and the heroin scourge that broke out in urban and suburban America.
We left there in the early 70’s and set up shop in the coke trade. Suddenly H was now so yesterday and coke and crack were the “in” thing and still nobody blinked.
“You have a row of dominoes set up; you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will go over very quickly.” —President Dwight D. Eisenhower speaking at a press conference on April 7, 1954.
“My solution to the problem would be to tell them frankly that they’ve got to draw in their horns and stop their aggression or we’re going to bomb them back into the Stone Ages.” —General Curtis E. LeMay, in his book Mission With LeMay, 1965.
General Molech…
And their grandsons and daughters are alive and well at Ft. Bragg…………
Hat tip to those who served in this conflict with honor. The horrors of war are no laughing matter for the soldier regardless of the cause, be it right or be it wrong.
That was worth a listen.
LBJ lied, and millions died… A sorry period in our history.