The Battle of Thon Tham Khe

26-27 December 1967 on Operation Badger Tooth by the 3^rd Battalion, 1^st Marine Regiment, USMC

Quang Tri Province, Republic of South Vietnam at the Mouth of Cua Viet River

In the last two months of 1967, the area just south of the Demilitarized Zone in South Vietnam saw increasing amounts of activity from the North Vietnamese Army as several battle hardened units continued to move into South Vietnam.  Among these Units was the 116^th North Vietnamese Army Battalion, a part of the 90^th A NV Army.  The Battalion was tasked with disrupting shipping operations between the US Navy Supply Base at Cua Viet and the Marine Corps Combat Base at Dong Ha which provided logistical support for US Marine Corps battle groups in Northern South Vietnam.  As history evolved, these NVA operations conducted in conjunction with their Viet Cong Allies were critical to the planned TET Offensive in January, 1968.  .

US Military Commanders became increasingly alarmed at the heavy enemy disruption of shipping in December, 1967.  Ground intelligence confirmed the presence of over 1,700 NVA regulars and conceived an Operation using combat elements of the 1^st and 3^rd Marine Division to clear the NVA from a wide area along the Cua Viet south of Dong Ha and Camp Carroll.  However, when a late report was received from Army intelligence that there was an unusual concentration of NVA in two coastal villages, one named Tho Trung An and the other Thon Tham Khe.  These areas were considered Viet Cong strongholds but not NVA.  Given this new intel, a decision was made to launch Operation Badger Tooth landing in the vicinity of these two villages to remove the enemy threat.

I was serving in Headquarters Company, 3^rd Battalion, 1^st Marines performing numerous tasks such as Battalion Legal, S-3 support, and, writing letters for the Battalion Commander to send to the wives and parents of Marines who had been killed in action.  One of my vivid memories is attending a Christmas Eve Service with the “snick, snick, snick” of mechanic’s tools as they worked on Helicopters which would soon carry the assault force ashore the next day.  We were singing the hymn “Silent Night” which I always found somewhat ironic.

On Christmas morning, the first elements of the Battalion were helilifted to shore.  These were mostly coordinating personnel with air, artillery, and other logistical support.  Christmas Day aboard the Valley Forge, a helicopter aircraft carrier, was very busy with weapons preparation, inspections, packing supplies for a three day land operation, and shifting ground combat personnel between ships.

At 1100 on 26 December Lima Company landed in amphibious tractors near Thon Tham Khe and started combat operations by sweeping toward the Village.  The remaining Companies, India, Kilo and Mike were landed by helicopter to the west and commenced combat operations.  Lima and Mike Companies swept through Thon Tham Khe with little resistance.  4 Viet Cong were captured and three killed in action without any Marine casualties.  Trung An was swept with no resistance.  All three of the infantry companies linked up and spent their first night ashore without incident.  The collective belief was that there were no NVA troops in the area.  However, the weather was cold, intermittent rain, and the sea had become too rough to land battle tanks which were critical in supporting the ground assault forces.

At the Combat Action Center aboard the Valley Forge, intelligence reports continued to reference a large force of NVA but none of the reports were able to provide positive confirmation of the location of these troops.  The S-2 (Intel) and S-3(Operations) officers were deeply concerned about the lack of intel on the location of the 116^th NVA Battalion.  There were questions raised about how effectively the line companies had searched in the two Villages.  Finally, everyone concluded that the NVA force must have moved up the Cua Viet river to avoid detection; an assumption that later proved to be terribly wrong.

Aboard the Valley Forge, I was up only after a few hours of sleep to catch up on documentation for several legal proceedings.

At 0700, Mike and Lima Companies were ordered to make another sweep of the two villages before the Battalion moved up the Cua Viet.  As the Marines approached Thon Khe, the NVA unleased hell with a devastating blast of machinegun, rifle, mortar, and RPG fire  Lima Company suffered a number of KIA and WIA personnel.  The Company Commander pulled Lima back to regroup.  The Company Commander ordered a frontal assault on the bunker complex but the attack failed with the loss of his own life and that of several Marines.   They soon discovered a veritable fortress of concealed bunkers, interlocking fields of fire, and camouflaged tunnel entrances which were well-prepared defensive positions from which an unbelievable volume of fire was being called down on the Marines.   In the escalating fog of war, the Battalion Commander ordered Mike Company to assault from their position north of Tham Khe but their lead elements were hit by the same volume of defensive fire with more casualties.  Lima ordered air strikes and artillery fire but in an unbelievable confluence of circumstance only two air strikes and one artillery strike were made.  Artillery didn’t fire because they were afraid of hitting our fighters while our fighters did not go in because of artillery.  Topping it all off, the tanks had not been landed which would have been the “go to” weapon for dug in defensive positions.  As this happened, it dawned on the Battalion Command that they had found the 116^th NVA Battalion, right under their noses and the fight was turning more and more ugly.

Kilo was now ordered to hit the south end of the village to take pressure from Lima and Mike who were regrouping.  The Tanks were now on their way from the ships in rough seas.  Kilo prepped the Village with 81mm mortar strikes but that was largely inadequate against bunkers dug into soft sand.  Kilo attacked anyway and met the same fierce resistance resulting in a stalemate.  Finally, the tanks arrived but in yet another disastrous occurrence, the communication capabilities to the tanks had been knocked out during the landing because of the rough seas.  This meant that the infantry companies had to use hand signals to guide the tanks.  The battle continued throughout the late afternoon into the early evening but the Marines were unable to make any significant progress.

The Battalion Commander had requested additional air strikes and more tank forces from Dong Ha. As darkness fell and in anticipation of the NVA withdrawal, he ordered India Company to cover the right flank;  Kilo to cover the beach;  Mike to the north; and, Lima to the west.  With command and coordination resolved, artillery strikes continued on the two villages.  The Marines recovered most of their dead and staged the bodies for transfer to the Valley Forge which contained surgical quarters and a morgue.

On 28 December, with adequate tank support and several air strikes, the Battalion converged on Thon Tham Khe and took the village complex without a shot being fired.  The NVA were gone along with most of their dead and wounded.  A stunned Battalion Commander ordered the tunnels searched.  Not long after, the first elements of the search teams reported finding an incredibly complex series of tunnels that were dug far beyond the blocking Marine positions of the previous evening.  There was evidence that the defensive fortress had been prepared for “all around” defense with tunnels in which you could stand up, defend in any direction, and supported ground level bunkers for machine guns, rpgs, and small arms around the entire perimeter of the Village.  Most of the complex was camouflaged with growing vegetation.  A massive weapons cache was found inside the complex indicating that the NVA had constructed it rather than local Viet Cong.  Villagers questioned afterwards told the Marines that the NVA had spent more than a year building the complex.  As the seach continued, ARVN forces operating northwest of Tham Khe found more than 100 bodies of dead NVA.

The horror on the shore carried into the Ship.  I was ordered to the Hangar Deck on the Valley Forge where a triage area had been set up.  I worked in casualty control.  You heard “MEDEVAC INBOUND” come over the loud speakers, then the helicopters landed, and then the elevator delivered first the most seriously wounded.  Life and death decisions were made by Navy Doctors.  The first 30 or 40 Marines had grievous wounds ranging from gunshot wounds in the upper body to bodies literally torn apart by shrapnel.  I thought how anyone could live through any of it was a miracle.  My initial responsibility was to tend to the dying.  Their wounds were fatal.  We staged them away from the bodies of the dead and in a relatively peaceful area.  The Ship’s Chaplains gave them last rites while I tended to their needs until they passed.  Most died quickly and mercifully;   three passed while I held their hand and prayed for them.

I moved on working with the wounded who were waiting for “their turn on the table”.  The anguish and screams of the wounded still haunt me but years later at Battalion reunions, I had several of those wounded Marines tell me how grateful they were for my attention to them.

Things got much worse.  With the wounded ashore and treated, the choppers started bring the bodies of our dead back to the ship.  John Milton and Dante could not have imagined what a real Hell looks like.  As the bodies were unloaded on pallets, we moved them to stretchers.  Most of the bodies were fairly intact.  However, some were missing arms, legs, feet, parts of their head, or torn up beyond belief.  One stretcher was unloaded with just limbs that we tried to match to a dead comrade.  Blood was everywhere as it mixed with water and oil so we had a reddish hue on the hangar deck with a greasy slick upon which we tried to keep our footing.  We catalogued their effects, ensured that one of their dogtags was in their mouth, and after doctor review loaded them into a rubber body bag.  Because our choppers were not always available to take a load of bodies to DaNang, the Ship’s Galley made ice and we placed bodies in a container to ice them down until a chopper could be freed up.

I learned to hate the announcement “MEDEVAC INBOUND” booming from the Hangar Deck speakers. I saw many friends and acquaintances come across the triage area during the three days that I worked almost non-stop.  One of the worst moments was when a small Hispanic Marine from my old squad was brought aboard KIA.  There wasn’t a mark on him but his helmet was fixed on his head.  When I removed his helmet, the top of his head fell off and bits of his brain matter spilled onto the greasy slick.  I recovered these and tied his helmet back on with a note to Graves Registration to be cautious.  Finally, after 52 straight house of being the devil’s apprentice, I passed out and was allowed to sleep for six hours.

Forty eight Marines died in the Battle for Thon Tham Khe;  the fourth largest loss of US Marine life in a single engagement in the history of the Vietnam Conflict.  More than 200 were wounded.  Of these, many did not survive even after being shipped to Japan and Okinawa for treatment.  I don’t know the final tally but I am guessing that more than 60 died.  I still see men at our reunions 45 years later with bodies that were broken at that Village.  After I passed out, I returned to the Battalion Offices and began writing letter of condolence from the Battalion Commander.  Those letters were among the toughest that I have ever had to write since I could attach a face to many of them.  I am convinced to this day that had I not had a heat stroke several months earlier that I would have been among those killed or wounded since most of my original squad died there and I would have been with them.

There is really never a happy ending for people who have seen combat.  Those who have not experienced it will never know nor really understand no matter how they may think they do.  But, 3^rd Battalion, 1^st Marines launched Operation Badger Catch early in January, 1968 and destroyed the 116^th NVA Battalion and a significant numbers of the 90^th NV Assault Army preventing both Units from reaching Hue City in the Tet Offensive that followed.

I want everyone to remember the US Marines and Navy Corpsmen who died in this Battle in what eventually was a senseless conflict.  I make it a point to memorialize them at our Church every year and on my birthday, December 28^th; I raise a glass to them, to their honor, and in their memory.