OCTOBER 20, 1960
VC units penetrated Saigon itself during the Tet offensive of January and February 1968, even attacking the U.S. Embassy. They doubled the political embarrassment to the American government when they invaded Saigon again in May. General Creighton Abrams, who replaced General Westmoreland as commander of Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV), learned in October 1968 that at least four North Vietnamese divisions were building up strength in Cambodia along the border of III Corps. It appeared another major attack might be imminent against Saigon. Determined to prevent it, General Abrams ordered the 1st Cavalry Division on October 16, 1968, to be shifted from the Central Highlands and points north into III Corps.
The division would act as a screen to meet the NVA if and when they came across the border. Although Abrams did not expect a single American division spread out over such a large area to stop a multidivisional enemy advance, he knew the cavalry’s airmobile infantry and firepower could wreak havoc among the enemy and delay him. He ordered 1st Division CO General George Forsythe to move his cavalry into position along the Cambodian border at once.
“If they come across,” he directed, “ride them with your spurs all the way down, down to the point where, if and when they do get to the populated areas, they will be a relatively ineffective fighting force.”
Movement began ninety minutes after Forsythe received the order. Code-dubbed Operation Liberty Canyon, it was the largest Allied intratheater deployment of the war. The division withdrew its scattered battalions from one end of the country and moved them more than 550 miles by air, land, and sea in order to commit them against the enemy at the other end of the country. Over a frantic period of sixteen days, the Air Force shuttled 11,550 troops and 3,399 tons of cargo from Quang Tri, An Khe, and Phu Bai to Tay Ninh, Quon Loi, and Phuoc Vinh. At the same time, the U.S. Navy sailed another 4,037 troops and 16,593 tons of cargo from Hue to Saigon.
The 1st Cavalry Division formally occupied new headquarters at Phuoc Vinh, a former 1st Infantry Division brigade base, on November 7, but would not completely move in until March 1969. By November 15, the division was in place to commence operations. Operations began with a screen stretched across 4,800 square miles of the northern frontier with Cambodia, a belt of fire support bases similar to the Indian forts once used on the American frontier. It covered the “Sheridan Sabre” area, the Fishhook, and the northern NVA/VC approach route to the flat rice fields and the marshy Plain of Reeds of the western Saigon corridor facing Angel’s Wing and Parrot’s Beak. Nine U.S. cavalry battalions on one side of the international boundary were thus squared off against perhaps four divisions of North Vietnamese on the other side.