South Viet Nam: The First Team

For weeks, advance troops of the newest U.S. unit to arrive in Viet Nam had been secretly at work on a clearing just north of An Khe on Route 19, deep in the Viet Cong-infested highlands. Using only machetes to clear the copse so as to keep the sod in place, the Americans hacked out a gigantic 3,000-ft. by 4,000-ft. helipad, a 4,000-ft. runway, and bivouac space for no fewer than 20,000 men.

The secrecy vanished when a fortnight ago a sign went up on the toughest part of Route 19; WELCOME FIRST AIR CAV, it said; PASS SECURED COURTESY A CO 2ND BN ABN 502ND. The “First Cav” is the U.S. 1st Cavalry (Airmobile) Division, and it calls itself the “First Team”—the proud boast of a unit lineage that extends back through Korea and the Philippines to General Custer. Last week, by helilift direct from the U.S.S. Boxer and by road convoy from Qui Nhon, the First Team arrived in full force along Route 19.

Four of a Kind. As the world’s most mobile division, nothing like the First Team has ever existed in the history of warfare. Some 3,000 of its men are trained paratroopers, and the rest are expert in heli-assault landings. Its 428 helicopters have doubled the total number of choppers in use in Viet Nam. They range from scores of workaday Hueys to 48 Chinook transport copters with a lift capacity of some 13,000 Ibs., the first to arrive in Viet Nam. Four of the First’s helicopters are the only ones of their breed in the world: giant CH-54

Flying Cranes that look like praying mantises, can haul aloft a command-post pod or a disabled airplane with equal ease—or thrust 94 men at a stroke into battle. The 1st Cavalry’s transport helicopters are protected by rocket-firing choppers—and at 100 m.p.h. the First Team can swoop down with overwhelming force at any point in the contested highlands that the Viet Cong dare mass and attempt an attack.

The First Team had barely arrived last week when it got its chance to do just that. Eleven miles north of An Khe, the U.S. 101st Airborne was clearing an area when it came upon an unusually stubborn—and large—band of guerrillas. Out went a radio call for help. In response, nearly 100 rocket-firing choppers from the First Team raced to the scene in the best cavalry tradition, and six of the division’s 105-mm. howitzers were airlifted into firing range.

In planting the First Team in isolated An Khe, the U.S. has significantly expanded its tactical role in the war Until now, the U.S. has had its hands full simply helping protect the coastal areas and the Mekong Delta where most of the people of South Viet Nam live. Not for nothing is the only adornment on the otherwise bare walls of U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge’s office a population map. It shows plainly that the usual Viet Nam maps showing the areas of Viet Cong control are misleading, for their hegemony is in the least populated part of the country (see maps).

Lethal Pressure. The U.S. buildup of garrisons in coastal enclaves was the essential starting point for shoring up the war in Viet Nam. But from the enclaves the U.S. has been able to do little more than aid the South Vietnamese in holding what they already have. The First Team means more—an extension of the enclaves into Viet Cong territory a lethal pressure point where the enemy lives.

Freed by their choppers from the tyranny of terrain, the First Team can roam at will over blasted bridges roadblocks, swollen rivers and jungle mountains to hit the V.C. from the northern tip of the nation to the delta. To be sure, it will share with other U.S. units already in Viet Nam the primary mission of acting as a fire brigade—able to lay down as many as 10,000 troops within a matter of hours. What is new is the First Team’s unique ability to search and kill on its own, quickly and in overwhelming force. Moreover, the First Team will not be the last of the pressure points punching into the enemy heartland. More are on the way.