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Six It was just a matter of time. There’s going to be somebody hurt. Captain McMenamy’s laconic comment about the inevitability of casualties among the Delta Raiders Vietnam’s national flower, wrote a grunt serving in I Corps, “should be an immense thorn.” Another gi had a similar thought. After humping the boonies for dreary hours, he suddenly stopped and called to his lieutenant. With a hand encrusted in scabs, scratches, and sores, the soldier pointed to a delicate flower with soft red petals, saying, “That is the first plant I have seen today which didn’t have thorns.”1 So beautiful from afar, so thorny up close and at war. That was Vietnam. Superficially, I Corps was a sightseer’s delight. Bluish tints marked its eastern edge, where the South China Sea caressed a thin waist of white sand covered with scraggly vegetation. The hues ebbed and flowed together in a dramatic display—not just blue, but sapphire, turquoise, indigo, cerulean, azure. West of the beach was a coastal strip, perhaps ten miles wide and dominated by rice agriculture, the paddies attired in emerald during the growing season and delicate yellows as the harvest neared. Floating like enchanted islands in a sea of rice were dark green havens, each representing a hamlet, with individual homes tucked amidst hedgerows, bamboo, bananas, and palm trees. Then came an undulating piedmont region with hills up to 350 feet high and sparsely wooded. Stretching from the hills into Laos were mountains, verdant, multihued, dazzling, almost hypnotic in their brilliance when sunlight struck them at the right angle. Some peaks were 7,000 to 8,000 feet high with slopes so steep they seemed vertical, a bewildering land of razorback ridges, hidden ravines, gushing streams, and double or triple canopy jungle. From a soldier’s perspective the external beauty was deceptive, marred by the climate, the alien nature of the primeval rain forests, and the fact that someone was trying to kill him. Technically, South Vietnam had a dry season and a rainy season, depending on the southwest and northeast monsoons. However, regional variations were so pronounced a uso information pamphlet warned that both a rainy and dry season occurred “somewhere in the country at all times.”2 In general terms, the dry season in I and II Corps lasted from March to October, broiling people and things with relentless heat, the temperatures climbing to 100 degrees (or more) day-after-day, sparking an unquenchable thirst. A typical grunt carried up to half a dozen one-quart canteens, and gulped down all the water by midmorning. So he also carried iodine tablets to purify puddle water, and Kool-Aid to smother the vile taste.3 From October through February the northeast monsoon brought chilly temperatures (into the 40s at night) and entombed the region in low clouds, dense fog, and drizzle, or what the French collectively called “crachin.” To the south in III and IV Corps, the weather pattern was almost exactly the reverse. There the dry season was from November through May while the southwest monsoon delivered drenching downpours from June through October. The Delta Raiders arrived in I Corps toward the end of the crachin season , which had a certain irony to it. They left Fort Campbell’s cold and dampness for Cu Chi’s heat. After they were acclimatized there, “they put us on a plane and sent us to I Corps where it was cold and rainy just like Fort Campbell.” As Captain Mac laughed, “This is about right for the army!”4 Four points about the weather. First, the climate played a decisive role in operations. Because the monsoons were despotic, dominating everything and everybody, the only reasonably good campaigning weather was from February through May when a dry season prevailed nationwide. Not surprisingly , the enemy’s three major offensives—in 1968, 1972, and 1975— occurred during those crucial months. Second, I Corps was the country’s wettest region: annual precipitation was seventy-two inches in Hanoi, eighty in Saigon, but 128 in Hue. Third, the weather pattern was a mystery to grunts. “I could never figure out whether we were in the dry season or rainy season,” one wrote. “The mixture of alternating rain and sun made me wonder if the distinction was a figment of someone’s imagination.” Another complained that “Even in the dry season nothing ever dried in the bush, it only became CHAPTER 6 161 less wet.”5 Finally, no matter...

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