When the simmering conflict in Vietnam heated up, US Marine Corps units had operated there since 1962. In accordance with long-standing contingency plans, elements of the 3d Marine Division, supported by squadrons of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, deployed from Okinawa bases to a highly-strategic enclave, centred on Da Nang and the existing air base complex, in the north of the Republic of Vietnam. This area had not been chosen by chance: it had a port, independent of Saigon and others to the south; it had beaches; it also commanded defiles in the coastwise road and rail net. Its main and enduring disadvantage was that it was adjacent to some of the most hard-core Viet Cong regions in-country, both south and inland to the west.
On the heels of the 3d Marine Division followed the 1st Marine Division and Marine Aircraft Group-36 from California bases. By the end of the year, almost two-thirds of the combat units of the Marine Corps were thus committed to the Vietnamese war.
Yet even as successes in combat and pacification mounted for the US forces and their allies, the war was being lost. The native Vietnamese government proved unsuited to gaining and sustaining the loyalty and obedience of its population. In the United States, another people grew weary and impatient of the war, amplified on a daily basis on television and in the printed media to the extent that the president chose against re-election and Congress began to apply halters to the war effort.
Michael Green’s detailed summary of the Marine Corps campaign in the Vietnam War demonstrates the ebb and flow of the counter-insurgency and limited conventional wars that took place simultaneously in Indochina. This strange war fought under strange circumstances placed great demands upon the US Defense Establishment and no less upon the Marine Corps. Michael has succeeded well in explaining the conduct of the war and how the Corps responded to the changing challenges it posed. The well-chosen illustrations provide succinct insights to the character of the war and of the Marine and Navy personnel who served year after year in its prosecution.
Kenneth W. Estes
Lieutenant Colonel US Marines
Author of Marines Under Armor (2000)