Close-Up on War by Mary Cronk Farrell

Author:Mary Cronk Farrell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2022-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

★

BATTLE FOR HILL 881

Saigon

8 March 1967

Chère Maman,

. . . Everything’s calm except in the North . . . The war with the Marines is the only real hell still in Vietnam . . .

Constant skirmishes, shortage of supplies, you can’t evacuate the dead and wounded who are piling up on the tanks day after day . . .

Warm hugs and kisses for both of you . . .

Cath

In the spring of 1967, Catherine made her three-week trip to Malaysia for the freelance work she’d set up. “I went there for a feature on shark fishing. There were neither sharks nor story, but a marvelous feeling of being on vacation.”122

Catherine soon reverted back into battle mode. At the AP office in early May, Horst Faas told her the hottest spot would be with the US Marines at Khe Sanh. She rushed to catch a military plane north to Đông Hà, a combat base and airfield just south of the DMZ.

Her trip stalled when she was forced to wait several hours at Đông Hà before there was space on an outgoing helicopter. It was late afternoon before she reached the marine base near the village of Khe Sanh. The remote outpost, fortified with sandbags, sat on a hill named 861, which was its height in meters above sea level.

She found a marine colonel and a few of his men examining a collection of automatic weapons. They’d taken the guns off the North Vietnamese killed the week prior in the fight to secure Hill 861. Several of the Chinese-made guns had telescopic sights. One of the marines said that explained the heavy losses they’d suffered taking the hill.

“All of them were killed with a single bullet,” he said.

Right then, a zing whizzed by Catherine’s ear. A bullet missed her by inches!

“Good God!” the colonel said. “Take off your headband.”123

She snatched off the white headband she often wore to keep stray hair from her eyes. The bullet appeared not to fluster the marines. One of them, holding binoculars, turned to smile at her, then squatted to continue his lookout to the neighboring hillside.

Little more than a month ago, the low mountains he viewed had been covered by a sixty-foot jungle canopy, the valleys dense with elephant grass and bamboo thickets. Not now. US forces pummeled the hills they named 861 North and 881 South. F-4 Phantom IIs decimated the jungle cover with tons of bombs, and marines blasted the hillsides with artillery shells.

Located about fifteen miles from the DMZ and close to the Laotian border, the region hosted battalions of North Vietnamese troops. The Communists threaded the forest and dense lowland foliage with routes to walk men, weapons, and supplies into the South. North Vietnamese soldiers dug in the dirt and reinforced with logs some 250 bunkers to defend staging areas and supply caches. They holed up and continued working to strengthen their fighting positions.

US Marines manned a combat base on Highway 9, the major east-west road from Laos. The village of Khe

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