to the R-20 VC Battalion, south of Da Nang, the 1st VC and 3d NVA Regiments" both part of the 2d NVA Division started to deploy toward Go Noi Island. Elements of the 368B NVA Rocket Artillery Regiment were in firing positions to the west and northwest of the 7th Marines. Other units included the 402dSapper Battalion, the V-2'5th VC Battalion, and other VC local forces. A warning order and plan prepared by the Communist Da Nang City Committee called for a preliminary attack on the city by sappers and VC troops. The attack force would consist of two groups, one to move by land and the other by water to knock out the bridge separating the city from Tiensha Peninsula and to capture the I Corps headquarters. This would be followed by a rocket barrage and an assault by the main force units on allied military units and installations. Within the city itself, VC cadre were to force the "inhabitants into the street for demonstrations . . . and prepare the people for continuing political struggle against the government as well as kill GVN and ARVN cadre."12
Before the Communist forces launched their attack, the commanders prepared to read to their troops a directive supposedly prepared two weeks earlier by the Presidium of the Central Committee of the National Liberation Front. The Front announced that the 1968 Tet greeting of "Chairman Ho [Chi Minh] is actually a combat order for our entire Army and population." The soldiers and cadre of the "South Vietnam Liberation Army" were to move forward in the attack:
The call for assault to achieve independence and liberty has sounded;
The Truong Son and the Mekong River are moving.
You comrades should act as heroes of Vietnam and with the spirit and pride of combatants of the Liberation Army.
The Victory will be with us.13 The Attack
By evening on the 29th, the 1st Marine Division at Da Nang was on a 100-percent alert. During the day, the division had positioned 11 reconnaissance "Stingray" patrols along likely enemy avenues of approach. At 1600, one of the Stingray units, using the codename "Saddle Bag," situated in the mountains just south of a bend in the Thu Bon River below An Hoa, about 20 miles southwest of the Da Nang base, reported observing about 75 enemy soldiers wearing helmets and some carrying mortars. The 11th Marines fired an artillery mission with unknown results. About 50 minutes later, another recon team, "Air Hose," about 2,000 meters to the northeast of "Saddle Bag," saw more than 50 enemy troops moving eastward. The artillery fired another salvo, which caused a large secondary explosion. At 1920, in the same general area, still another Stingray patrol, "Sailfish," radioed that about 200 Communist troops, some carrying 40mm rocket launchers, passed its positions. Again the artillery responded with "excellent effect on target." Because of an air observer on station, the Marine gunners checked their fire. At that point, three fixed-wing aircraft and four helicopter gunships then bombed and strafed the enemy column. Darkness prevented "Sail-fish" from observing the number of casualties that the artillery and air inflicted upon the enemy.14**
At Da Nang, the Marines remained tense. One experienced Marine noncommissioned officer, serving in his third war, First Sergeant Jack W. Jaunal of the Headquarters and Service (nicknamed "Heat and Steam") Company, 3d Amphibian Tractor Battalion, located below Marble Mountain, recorded his impressions. He remembered that before midnight "the alert sounded, and it was all hands to the wire [manning defensive positions]." Although Jaunal's sector remained relatively quiet, he recalled that "we could see flashes of other areas being hit" and heard mortars and rockets: "The Marine helicopter strip [Marble Mountain] two miles to our north got hit... Also Da Nang Airfield got it."15
Major General Raymond L. Murray, the III MAF deputy commander, remembered that he heard a "hell of a lot of racket" and "woke up ... [to] the airfield at Da Nang . . . being rocketed." At first, the general and
* There is some confusion, probably deliberate on the part of the North Vietnamese, on the designation of the regiments, especially the 3d of the 2d NVA Division. According to Marine records the 3d NVA was also known as the 31st NVA Regiment. There was also an independent 31st NVA Regiment that also infiltrated into the western Da Nang TAOR. Although an attempt has been made to use 3d NVA when referring to the regiment that was part of the 2d NVA Division, the records do not always differentiate between the two. FMFPac, MarOpsV, Feb-May68.
** Colonel Broman C. Stinemetz, who as a lieutenant colonel, commanded the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, related that "in preparation for the Tet stand-down the 1st Recon Battalion deployed the largest number patrols ever at one time. These covered the mountainous remote zone west of the Americal Division extending along a line northward up to and including that high ground west of Task Force X-Ray. The collective impact of these patrols, operating in either the Sting Ray-or intelligence gathering-mode, significantly lessened the enemy effectiveness in the 1st Marine Division TAOR during the Tet offensive." Col Broman C. Stinemerz, Comments on draft, dtd 2Nov94 (Vietnam Comment File).
