manders. Colonel Derning, his Vietnam tour ended, handed the regiment over to his relief, Colonel Robert H. Piehl. Colonel Piehl. a native of Wisconsin, had enlisted in the Marines in 1940 and two years later entered the United States Naval Academy, graduating in 1945. A Korean War veteran, he came to the 7th Marines from the 3d Marine Division on Okinawa, where he had served as Assistant Chief of Staff. G-3. Under Colonel Piehl s direction, the 7th Marines completed Operation Pickens forest and continued and enlarged its campaign in the Que Sons.

AT this point, the 1st Battalion was engaged in patrolling around LZ Baldy while die 3d Battalion kept up counterguerrilla and pacification operations in the Que Son Valley and provided companies in rotation for the continuing search of the mountains. These two battalions retrained these areas of operation until they ceased combat activity in middle and late September,7

Using elements of the 1st and 3d Battalions and reinforcements from the division reserve (1st Battalion, 5th Marines) on 13 August, Colonel Piehl expanded his regiment's company-size effort in the Que Sons into a scries of battalion-size operations, later grouped for reporting purposes under the codename Operation Ripley Center. Besides continuing to disrupt enemy facilities in the central and eastern Que Sons, these operations were aimed at capturing elements of From 4 Headquarters which allied intelligence sources believed were hiding in the mountains. In conjunction with Ripley Center, the South Vietnamese launched Operation Duong Son 4/70 in the eastern Que Sons with two battalions of the 51st Regiment, the 101st RF Battalion, and a troop from the 17th Armored Cavalry Squadron, all under control of the 1st Armored Brigade Headquarters."

Operation Ripley Center began on the 13th when three rifle companies-Companies I and L of the 3d Battalion, 7th Marines, and Company A, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines-deployed from helicopters in two landing zones in the south-central Que Sons. Company A then was serving as the division Pacifier company, and the entire operation began under command of Lieutenant Colonel Cornelius F. ("Doc") Savage, Jr., of" the 1st Battalion. 5th Marines, whose mobile battalion CP had been placed temporarily under the 7th Marines.

Ripley Center continued for the rest of the month. The 5th Marines' elements returned to Da Nang on the 15th, leaving the 7th Marines' Companies I, L. and D to continue the search. As soon as Operation Pickens Forest ended on 24 August, Lieutenant Colonel Albers' 2d Battalion, 7th Marines was airlifted directly from western BA 112 to a landing zone in the Que Sons to take over the operation. Companies from this battalion swept north and east farther into the mountains.

Neither the composite force under Savage nor Albers' battalion found any trace of Front 4 Headquarters, but they uncovered numerous base camps and small supply caches and had brief firefights with enemy groups. In the most significant contact of the operation, on 30 August, Company F of the 2d Battalion ambushed 12 Viet Cong. The Marines killed nine and captured three, one of whom identified the group as a hamlet guerrilla unit on its way to an indoctrination meeting. The operation ended on 31 August, and the 2d Battalion moved at once into Operation Imperial Lake. In Ripley Center, the Marines had killed 25 Communists and captured eight, while losing 27 of their own men wounded, mostly from boobytraps. The caves and base camps had yielded an assortment of weapons, food, and documents.9

Operation Imperial Lake

In September, a month of new offensives and redeployments for the 1st Marine Division, the 7th Marines launched Operation Imperial Lake, the regiment's most ambitious effort of the year in the Que Sons. Planned by the 1st Marine Division and 7th Marines' staffs while Albers' 2d Battalion was still scouring the hills in Operation Ripley Center, Imperial Lake was targeted against the Front 4 Headquarters element which had eluded the earlier American sweeps in the Que Sons. Intelligence sources now believed this unit to be concealed somewhere northeast of Hill 845, one of the highest elevations in the central Que Sons. According to information derived from reconnaissance patrols and from the 7th Marines' spring and summer operations, the same area also might contain headquarters and combat elements of the R20th, V25lh, and D3d Infantry Battalions; the 3d, T89th, and T90th Sapper Battalions; and the 42d Reconnaissance Battalion. Units of the 160th Transport Battalion were also thought to be active in the mountains-Expecting the enemy to try to evade any sweeping force, the Marines planned to begin Imperial Lake with several hours of artillery and air bombardment of the target area. The Marines' intent was to force the Communists to take cover in their caves and bunkers and