In 1965 the large, loud, and highly visible tanks of 3rd Platoon, B
Company, 3rd Tank Battalion landed across a beach near Da Nang, drawing
unwelcome attention to America's first, almost covert, commitment of
ground troops in South Vietnam. As the Marine Corps presence grew
inexorably, the 1st and 3rd Tank Battalions, as well as elements of the
reactivated 5th Tank Battalion, were committed to the conflict.
For the United States Marine Corps, the protracted and bloody struggle
was marked by controversy, but for Marine Corps tankers, it was marked
by bitter frustration as they saw their own high levels of command turn
their backs on some of the hardest-won lessons of tank-infantry
cooperation learned in the Pacific War and in Korea.
Nevertheless, like good Marines, the officers and enlisted men of the
tank battalions sought out the enemy in the sand dunes, jungles,
mountains, paddy fields, tiny villages, and ancient cities of Vietnam.
Young Marine tankers fresh out of training, and cynical veterans of the
Pacific War and Korea, battled two enemies. The battle-hardened Viet
Cong were masters of the art of striking hard, then slipping away to
fight another day. The highly motivated troops of the North Vietnamese
Army, equipped with long-range artillery and able to flee across nearby
borders into sanctuaries where the Marines were forbidden to follow,
engaged the Marines in brutal conventional combat. Both foes were
equipped with modern anti-tank weapons, and sought out the tanks as
valuable symbolic targets.
It was a brutal and schizophrenic war, with no front and no rear,
absolutely no respite from constant danger, against a merciless foe
hidden among a helpless civilian population. Some of the duties the
tankers were called upon to perform were long familiar, as they provided
firepower and mobility for the suffering infantry in a never-ending
succession of search and destroy operations, conducted amphibious
landings, and added their heavy guns to the artillery in fire support
missions. Under constant threat of ambushes and huge command-detonated
mines that could obliterate tank and crew in an instant, the tankers
escorted vital supply convoys, and guarded the engineers who built and
maintained the roads. In their "spare time" the tankers guarded lonely
bridges and isolated outposts for weeks on end, patrolled on foot to
seek out the Viet Cong, operated roadblocks and ambushes, shot up boats
to interdict the enemy's supply lines, and worked in the villages and
hamlets to better the lives of the brutalized civilians.
To the bitter end--despite the harsh conditions of climate and terrain,
confusion, endless savage and debilitating combat, and ultimate
frustration as their own nation turned against the war--the Marine
tankers routinely demonstrated the versatility, dedication to duty, and
matchless courage that Americans have come to expect of their Marines.
OSCAR E. GILBERT, Ph.D., is a former marine artilleryman and currently a
geoscientist living in Texas. His previous published works include the
widely acclaimed "Marine Tank Battles in the Pacific" (2001) and "Marine
Corps Tank Battles in Korea" (2003).
