of ordnance.112 During May and June, the period of its Que Son Mountains operation, the 3d Battalion requested and received 25 fixed-wing close air support missions. Helicopters of MAG-16 airlifted each member of the battalion an average of three times, carried out 95 medical evacuations, and delivered over 250, 000 pounds of cargo.113

Throughout the first half of 1970, the 7th Marines regularly accounted for about half of the division's monthly totals of contacts with the enemy and of claimed VC and NVA killed. At the end of June, after six months of operations in the lowlands around Baldy, in the Que Son Valley, and in the enemy's mountain sanctuaries, the 7th Marines reported a total of over 1, 100 engagements with VC or NVA units. In these actions, the regiment had killed an estimated 1, 160 enemy, taken 44 prisoners, and captured 291 weapons. These accomplishments had cost the 7th Marines over 950 combat casualties, including 120 Marines killed in action or dead of wounds.114

Results

Measurement of the results of six months of small-unit action in relation to the overall progress of the war was not an easy task. The war as the Marines were fighting it had become a slow contest in attrition, seemingly to be won or lost by accumulated tiny increments. By the mid-point of 1970, the 1st Marine Division could point to many indications that it was hurting the enemy worse than it was being hurt. Casualty statistics offered an indication: a claimed 3, 955 VC and NVA killed within the Marines' TAOR as against 225 Marines killed in action, 58 more dead of wounds, and 2, 557 wounded, to which, however, had to be added ARVN and Korean casualties. The Marines could also point to captured enemy materiel: 826 individual and 76 crew-served weapons, tons of rice and foodstuffs, countless rounds of assorted ammunition, rockets, medical supplies, and communications equipment.115 They could add the count of base camps, hospitals, and other installations destroyed, installations the enemy would have to replace instead of building more to increase his capabilities. Captured documents, taken a few at a time from the bodies of enemy dead and prisoners or seized in larger quantities in camps and caves, would often add to the mosaic allied intelligence was trying to build of enemy strength and intentions, and also would expand the list of hidden VC terrorists and operatives in the hamlets.

An operations summary prepared late in June by the 1st Marine Division's G-3 suggested another and perhaps more reliable indication of progress:

. . . Unlike other wars, and even other areas in South Vietnam, the success of combat action in Quang-Nam Province cannot be measured in terms of numbers of enemy killed. Rather, effectiveness of 1st Marine Division operations must be considered in light of the relative safety of Da Nang City and the security of the surrounding populace. Some indication of this security is evidenced by the fact that for the past two years the enemy has made no serious attempt 10 inflict major damage on the Da Nang Vital Area. Even the occasional enemy massacre of [the inhabitants of] a village, as horrible and regrettable as it may he, must be viewed in perspective of the relatively secure position of the total civilian populace in the lowlands of the Division TAOR . . . .116