On April 10, 1970, Hill 927 was occupied by troopers of the Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division. By July, the activities of the artillery and infantry of Ripcord had caught the attention of the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) and a long and deadly siege ensued. Ripcord was the Screaming Eagles’ last chance to do significant damage to the NVA in the A Shau Valley before the division was withdrawn from Vietnam and returned to the United States. At Ripcord, the enemy counterattacked with ferocity, using mortar and antiaircraft fire to inflict heavy causalities on the units operating there. The battle lasted four and a half months and exemplified the ultimate frustration of the Vietnam War: the inability of the American military to bring to bear its enormous resources to win on the battlefield. In the end, the 101st evacuated Ripcord, leaving the NVA in control of the battlefield. Contrary to the mantra “We won every battle but lost the war,” the United States was defeated at Ripcord. Now, at last, the full story of this terrible battle can be told.
Using firsthand accounts from Vietnam soldiers, this book “tells it like it is, warts and all . . . [an] honest account of a cavalry squadron’s experience” (Military Review). The 1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment, of the 1st Armored Division deployed to Vietnam from Fort Hood, Texas, in August 1967. Search and Destroy covers the 1/1’s harrowing first year and a half of combat in the war’s toughest area of operations: I Corps. The book takes readers into the savage action at infamous places like Tam Ky, the Que Son Valley, the Pineapple Forest, Hill 34, and Cigar Island, chronicling General Westmoreland’s search-and-destroy war of attrition against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army. Exploring the gray areas of guerrilla war, military historian Keith Nolan details moments of great compassion toward the Vietnamese, but also eruptions of My Lai-like violence, the grimmer aspects of the 1/1’s successes. Search and Destroy is a rare account of an exemplary fighting force in action, a dramatic close-up look at the Vietnam War. “Nolan’s research, his comprehension of the political as well as the military actions, his careful concern for those who were there, and, most of all, his writing, are superb.” —Stephen Ambrose
Republic of Vietnam, May 1968: The battles of the Tet Offensive were over, and the Paris Peace Talks were about to begin. Yet, the battlefield situation remained tense. Shocked by the intensity and massive scale of the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong’s Tet Offensive, allied commanders kept waiting for the other shoe to drop in the aftermath of the lunar New Year’s nationwide attacks against South Vietnam’s urban centers. Just days before the opening of the peace talks, that other shoe finally dropped. While they had no chance of securing victory on the battlefield with their second wave of urban attacks, the communists expected to wreak substantial psychological damage, making apparent to the American public, if not to the U.S. military high command, the folly of fighting a foe that was seemingly immune to combat losses. The second wave of attacks became known as the Mini-Tet Offensive. The name was a misnomer as far as the intensity of the combat was concerned. Although the communists concentrated on fewer targets than they had during Tet, Mini-Tet was the costliest two-week period of the Vietnam War in terms of American casualties. Saigon was the Mini-Tet’s primary target. In addition to penetrating the Cholon section of the capital, the enemy attacked the capital city’s southern suburbs of District 8. In response, four battalions from the 9th Infantry Division were dispatched from their Mekong Delta battlefields to clear out the invaders. What resulted was a brutal house-to-house street fight. Tenacious Viet Cong guerrillas dug in like termites, building bunkers inside and between houses, and knocking holes in adjoining walls so snipers could steal unseen from one building to another. There was no provision for retreat; the Viet Cong were on a suicide mission. On the other side were equally tenacious American infantrymen who had to adapt themselves to city fighting after previously operating in the rice paddies of the Delta. The battle for southern Saigon lasted a week; the U.S. Army’s only prolonged urban combat of the entire Vietnam War. The battle ended in a Pyrrhic victory for the soldiers of 9th Infantry Division. They had fought with raw courage, earning numerous decorations, including four Distinguished Service Crosses, in the course of pushing the Viet Cong out of District 8. However, in fighting that eerily foreshadows American combat in Iraqi cities, the engaged battalions destroyed the neighborhoods they liberated. This destruction, and the attendant civilian casualties, resulted in an official investigation of the 9th Infantry Division for its sledgehammer application of artillery and air strikes within the capital of South Vietnam.
Using firsthand accounts from Vietnam soldiers, this book “tells it like it is, warts and all . . . [an] honest account of a cavalry squadron’s experience” (Military Review). The 1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment, of the 1st Armored Division deployed to Vietnam from Fort Hood, Texas, in August 1967. Search and Destroy covers the 1/1’s harrowing first year and a half of combat in the war’s toughest area of operations: I Corps. The book takes readers into the savage action at infamous places like Tam Ky, the Que Son Valley, the Pineapple Forest, Hill 34, and Cigar Island, chronicling General Westmoreland’s search-and-destroy war of attrition against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army. Exploring the gray areas of guerrilla war, military historian Keith Nolan details moments of great compassion toward the Vietnamese, but also eruptions of My Lai-like violence, the grimmer aspects of the 1/1’s successes. Search and Destroy is a rare account of an exemplary fighting force in action, a dramatic close-up look at the Vietnam War. “Nolan’s research, his comprehension of the political as well as the military actions, his careful concern for those who were there, and, most of all, his writing, are superb.” —Stephen Ambrose
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