Read They Marched Into Sunlight for Free Online Page A

code name Q761, a designation taken from its official founding in July 1961. A few months later, on the second of September, the national day in the North, Triet and his comrades were officially designated the First Regiment at a ceremony in the shadows of Nui Ba Den, the Black Virgin Mountain, where they recited ten solemn oaths of faithfulness and solidarity and promised to fight to the end for the liberation of South Vietnam and national reunification. Over the next few years Triet’s regiment would take on other aliases, most notably the Binh Gia Regiment, an honorific bestowed upon it after a decisive battle in late 1964 against the South’s ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) units near Saigon. American intelligence reports later identified it consistently as the 271st Regiment, though this was a name the unit itself never used. Q761, yes; First Regiment, yes; Binh Gia, yes; 271st, no. There never was a 271st, Triet later insisted.
    After the victory at Binh Gia, nearly four years into the fight against what they called the puppet troops of Saigon, Triet and his comrades believed their opponents were near defeat. It was an assessment shared by the Johnson administration in Washington, and soon thereafter, starting with the landing of elements of the U.S. Ninth Marine Expeditionary Force at Da Nang in early March 1965, the forces of the communist-led People’s Army of Vietnam found themselves in a new sort of strategic war, dealing with ever-increasing numbers of American infantrymen on the ground and B-52s overhead.
    The first full division of soldiers from the U.S. Army sent into Eastern Nam Bo in the summer and fall of 1965 belonged to the First Infantry, the old and proud Big Red One. By September 2, when Triet’s First Regiment was incorporated into the newly founded Ninth VC Division, his commanders knew much about these arriving Americans: the order of battle, the names and histories of generals and colonels, all the way down to the height and weight of the average soldier (1.8 meters and eighty kilos, compared to 1.6 meters and fifty kilos on their side). The Big Red One was translated into Vietnamese as “Big Red Brothers.” It was described in PAVN documents as an awesome force that had “a long history of warfare and had performed in an outstanding manner…in our military terminology, a unit that won a hundred battles in a hundred fights.” An exaggeration, perhaps, but close enough for propaganda.
    There was concern that the Americans, with their vast supply of armored vehicles, helicopters, big guns, and bombs, were invincible. One VC Ninth Division colonel even claimed that with inferior firepower and equipment, he gave his men the option of not fighting the Americans if they felt overwhelmed. (He reported later that fifteen of two hundred soldiers took this offer.) “Would the division be able to handle the Americans? How should it fight to beat them? These were extremely pressing questions,” Ninth Division historians reported later. When Triet heard that the Americans were coming, his first thought was that the war would be “terrible and fierce.” As to whether it would be a long war or a short war, he was less certain. From Hanoi radio he had heard reports of the incipient antiwar movement in the United States and pronouncements from Uncle Ho that the disquiet within America might be as important as armed conflict in Vietnam. Shaping public opinion was a strategic aspect of the political struggle, which was always waged in concert with the war itself.
    As for the Big Red Brothers, Triet thought they were strong in fire-power but also had potential weaknesses. What did they know about the people they were fighting and the land on which they fought?

Chapter 3

Lai Khe, South Vietnam
     

    L AI K HE, pronounced lie kay. It was at once a small Vietnamese village, a French rubber plantation, and an American military base camp, three cultures interwoven by history and circumstance if not