the approaches to Hue. For example, on 28 March, an aerial photo reconnaissance mission over the valley revealed the existence of what Marine intelligence officers dubbed the "Yellow Brick Road," a newly constructed corduroy road extending from the A Shau through Laos and Base Area 607 into Quang Nam Province. Beginning on 19 April, after two days of B-52 preparatory strikes in the valley, the 3d Brigade of the 1st Air Cavalry and the 1st Brigade of the 101st reinforced by an ARVN airborne task force began Operation Delaware in the A Shau.83

For about a month, units of the two Army divisions conducted a series of "leap-frog" helicopter assault operations throughout the length and breadth of the A Shau. While initially encountering heavy antiaircraft fire, U.S. supporting air and artillery eventually silenced the enemy guns.* The Army troops met mostly local enemy rear echelon troops and engineers, but occasionally fought engagements with regular infantry. At the end of the operation, the Americans reported killing 735 of the Communist soldiers, while suffering 142 dead and 731 wounded. The ARVN task force lost 26 killed and 132 wounded. As General Cushman observed, the A Shau was "not a ... a fortress of combat troops . . ., but ... a highway, you might say, for logistics supply and for the movement of reinforcements and replacements." The allies captured huge caches of enemy weapons, equipment, ammunition, foodstuffs and other military supplies including more than 70 trucks, two bulldozers, and a destroyed PT-76 tank from the 3d Battalion, 203d Tank Regiment before the operation concluded.84

To fill in the gap in the forces in the north during the Delaware A Shau operation. General Cushman, with the concurrence of MACV, transferred the Americal Division's 196th Light Infantry Brigade to the operational control of General Rosson in Prov Corps. In turn, the Prov Corps commander assigned the new brigade to Camp Evans as the corps reserve under the operational control of the 1st Air Cavalry Division. About the same time, on 18 April, after the close of Operation Pegasus, the 26th Marines moved from Khe Sanh to the Quang Tri base and took over the area of operations there. Further north at Dong Ha, the 3d Marine Division had established a small division reserve built around an armored task force, called Task Force Robbie, after the nickname of its commander, Colonel Clifford J. Robichaud, the former division inspector.85"

For the larger part of April, the three 3d Marine Division operations along the DMZ, Lancaster II, Kentucky, and Napoleon/Saline, continued with most of the same forces as they had the previous month. As a sub-operation of Lancaster II, from 12-16 April, BLT 3/1 carried out Operation Charl-ton in the Ba Long Valley. The battalion captured one crew-served weapon and held 56 detainees, but sustained 11 wounded. While in April, the 3d Marine Division reported higher enemy activity in the form of artillery, mortar, and rocket attacks on Marine positions on the DMZ front, the number of American and Communist casualties in Operation Kentucky were actually lower than the previous month. In Operation Lancaster II, however, at the end of April, the North Vietnamese increased their artillery bombardment of Camp Carroll to about 40-50 rounds a day.86

In the Cua Viet sector at the end of the month, the enemy posed the greatest threat. On 27 April, the Navy's Task Force Clearwater warned III MAF that the enemy was apparently preparing to interdict the waterway. North Vietnamese artillery and rocket attacks on the port facilities at the mouth of the Cua Viet and the offloading ramps at Dong Ha also increased. On 29 April, the ARVN 2d Regiment engaged an NVA unit from the 320th NVA Division. During the night of 29-30 April, enemy machine gunners opened up on Navy patrol craft in the Cua

* Lieutenant General Richard E. Carey, who served in Vietnam in 1968 as a lieutenant colonel and as a squadron leader, observed thar during Delaware, the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing "provided massive fixed wing and helo support for an entire day." He recalled that the Army lost several helicopters in several minutes and required the Marine air since the Army units were out of range of Army heavy artillery. LtGen Richard E. Carey, Comments on draft, dtd 12Dec94 (Vietnam Comment File).

** According to Lieutenant Colonel Karl J. Fontenor, Major General Tompkins established Task Force Robbie in mid-February, Fontenot while still commanding the 3d Tank Battalion also served as the executive officer of the task force. He recalled that General Tompkins "briefed us personally on his expectations which essentially was to form a very flexible organization ready for employment in any direction at any time." The task force made its headquarters at Cam Lo since it was a centralized position. While the task force organization was flexible, it usually consisted of a tank company; two Army M42 tracked vehicles mounting twin 40mm antiaircraft guns; two Army truck companies with trucks equipped with quad .50-caliber machine guns (M55); other assorted motor transport; an engineer detachment;

and usually one rifle company. Fontenot wrote "TF Robbie made itself pretty visible in the division area with rapid moves over the roads to Camp Carroll, Dong Ha, etc." LtCol Karl J. Fontenot, Comments on draft, n.d. [Dec94] (Vietnam Comment File).