Word: 173rd
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...into the foliage, their black-stocked M-16 automatic rifles at the ready, they faded swiftly into the perennial twilight of 80-ft. trees, impenetrable bamboo thickets, and tangles of thorn and "wait a minute" vines. This was "Lurp Team Two," a long-range reconnaissance patrol (LRRP) of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, sent to seek out two Viet Cong regiments that their outfit was itching to locate, engage and destroy. Within moments, Team Two was itself in imminent danger of destruction...
...Viet Nam-based destroyer U.S.S. Ingraham, who is now one of Saigon's key contacts for Thai, Nationalist Chinese and other Allied cooperation with U.S. forces. They include a brace of other, unrelated Johnsons: Major Clifton R. Johnson, 31, of Baltimore, a chemical-warfare expert with the 173rd Airborne, who laid the smokescreen that kicked off an assault on the Viet Cong regiments that Glide Brown's patrol helped to locate; and Captain Wallace Johnson, 27, a former Oklahoma University fullback who now wears the Green Beret of the Special Forces and bosses a pacification program in Viet...
Meloy's ordeal triggered the massive infusion of men into the battle. Operation Attleboro had begun as a routine operation a month ago, with elements of the U.S. 25th Division and 196th Light Infantry. Now more 1st Division units and the 173rd Airborne Brigade were brought up. Major General William E. DePuy, commander of the 1st Division, took charge of Attleboro and set up an operational headquarters at Dau Tieng. The once-sleepy village bordering a large rubber plantation soon resembled a World War II beachhead as lumbering C-1235 transports and darting helicopters brought in hundreds of tons...
...army's "Big Red One" division punched in atop armored personnel carriers escorted by M48 tanks, while the 173rd Airborne and the Roy al Australian Battalion swept in aboard 200 helicopters. Except for snipers in spider holes and an occasional machine-gun nest, there was nobody home. But home was something else again-an astonishing network of tunnels equipped with all the conveniences, from freshwater wells to a hospital, a post office and a briefing room complete with blackboard and chairs...
Meanwhile nearly every other major U.S. field combat unit in Viet Nam was out hunting in battalion-or larger-sized operations-and so, too, showing the flag of allied support, were the South Vietnamese, the Koreans, Australians and New Zealanders. The other G.I.s had little luck compared with the 173rd's: whether out of tactic or sheer prudence, the Viet Cong lay low. That, in a measure, deprived the U.S. of the firm point Johnson wanted to make: that to underestimate his resolve could be disastrous. So the U.S. made it in other ways. The bombers usually busy over...