The murmur of voices and the scrape of weapons against the sides of the steel ship penetrated the damp night as the men of the 3d Battalion, 60th Infantry, climbed from a barracks ship, the USS Colleton, and into waiting landing craft alongside. It was 0300, 15 September 1967. Within minutes after boarding the boats, most men slept. Late the previous day they had come back from a three-day operation during which, in one sharp, daylong battle, nine of their comrades had fallen, along with sixty of the enemy. There had been time during the night to clean weapons, shower, eat a hot meal, and receive the new operations order, but not much time to sleep off the now familiar weariness that engulfed these infantrymen after days of fighting both the Viet Cong and the mud of the Mekong Delta.

Three days before Col. Bert A. David's Mobile Riverine Brigade, the 2d Brigade of the 9th Infantry Division, and its Navy counterpart, Task Force 117, had set out to search for and destroy the 514th Local Force and 263d Main Force Viet Cong Battalions. When the enemy was finally found, the ensuing battle had only weakened, not destroyed, the Viet Cong battalions, which broke off the fight and slipped away.

Thus, when intelligence reports that reached the Riverine Brigade's headquarters on the afternoon of 14 September placed the Viet Cong in the Cam Son Secret Zone along the Rach Ba Rai River, Colonel David resolved to attack. (See Map 1 ) Quickly he pulled his units back from the field and into their bases to prepare for a jump-off the next morning. For the 3d Battalion, 60th Infantry, that meant a return to the USS Colleton, anchored in the wide Mekong River near the Mobile Riverine Force's base camp at Dong Tam.

Colonel David planned to trap the Viet Cong in their reported

MAP 8