The 13th Valley
by John M. Del Vecchio
The Vietnam War Trilogy—including The 13th Valley—is now specially priced at $3.99.
A classic combat novel and National Book Award finalist, The 13th Valley follows the terrifying Vietnam combat experiences of James Chelini, a telephone-systems installer who finds himself an infantryman in the North Vietnamese Army–infested mountains of the I Corps Tactical Zone. Spiraling deeper and deeper into a world of conflict and darkness, this harrowing account plunges Chelini into jungle warfare and traces his evolution from semi-pacifist to all-out, combat-crazed soldier. The bestselling seminal novel on the Vietnam experience, and the first book in The Vietnam War Trilogy, The 13th Valley is a classic that illuminates the war in Southeast Asia like no other book.
Author’s Note and Prologue excerpted from The 13th Valley . . . .
AUTHOR’S NOTE The operation at Khe Ta Laou, which began 13 August 1970, was part of an overall campaign code-named Texas Star. The first troops of the 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile) were inserted into the mountain jungles surrounding Firebase Barnett at 0840 hours.
13 August 2011: Those lines were the opening salvo to the original 1982 Author’s Note for this book. It is now 41 years since I made that combat assault onto the peak of Hill 848 with Alpha Company, 2d of the 502d, and it has taken 41 years for me to fully understand the meaning and the strategic significance of the battle. This note recaps some of my original thoughts, adds some insights, and it invites you to ride along on a journey back to that time.
Our nation has changed significantly since the day in 1970 when a battalion of young soldiers stood looking down into that 13th Valley below Hill 848. Ideals and optimism, hope and expectations, have been altered; some have been met, others lost, some improved, others distorted. At times I’ve wonder if we’ve lost our way. I don’t have a definitive answer but I do recognize that the seeds of today’s good and evil were sown in the ’60s and ’70s, just as the seeds from the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s came to fruition during America’s Viet Nam era. In 1970 we were still dreaming the impossible dream, still fighting the invisible foe. We still believed we could bear any burden in the pursuit of freedom at home and overseas. We saw ourselves as an exceptional society with attendant obligations to right wrongs around the globe, but the number of skeptics was growing and various elements in our society were bent on undermining our character.
That was then. This anniversary edition of The 13th Valley requires new thoughts, new explanations for contemporary readers. Abridged versions of earlier notes are below, followed by added material on race, on leadership and command, and on the strategic significance of the battle. Hopefully, these reiterations and additions will provide context for those who didn’t live through those turbulent decades; or for those who may be laboring under misunderstandings of what our soldiers and Marines faced in the ranks, on the battlefield and from home.
From the 1982 edition (abridged): The combat assault by Company A to the peak of 848 occurred as described, as did many of the events included, although the story here told is a composite of events from several operations. NVA unit designations, strengths and movements are, as nearly as my research could establish, accurate. The 7th NVA Front headquarters was located in the valley; numerous NVA battalions did use the Khe Ta Laou as a supply depot and rest sanctuary.
During the summer of 1970, the 101st Airborne had on its roster 10 infantry battalions. The 7th Battalion, 402d Infantry (Airmobile) is entirely fictitious. This is a novel. The characters and their backgrounds are imaginary. In no way are they meant to depict, nor are they based upon, any soldiers, past or present, of the 101st.
The approximate results of the operation, which ended 30 August 1970, along with the coordinated 1st Division (ARVN) operation in the Firebase O’Reilly/Jerome area directly south of Khe Ta Laou, were: 5 U.S. KIA, 60 U.S. WIA, 2 KCS WIA, 32 ARVN KIA, 108 ARVN WIA, 737 NVA KIA and 3 NVA POWs.
From the 1998 edition (abridged): I first began The 13th Valley in the fall of 1972, five months after I was discharged from the United States Army. For 100 days I lived in a vacant farmhouse in rural Maine. Each morning I hunted game for the table and each afternoon and evening I wrote — often to the wee hours. There was no phone, no TV, no radio, no newspaper, no neighbors. My sole companion was Sam, my dog. Conditions for recall were ideal.
I began in early September and wrote until 22 December, when, with seven dollars and change left in my pocket, I packed up my 300 handwritten pages, left Maine, and returned to my parents’ home in Connecticut where I promptly stashed the manuscript in a drawer. I did not look at it again for nearly four years.
When the final offensive began I had been living in California for nearly two years, selling real estate, managing an office and training agents. There was little time or motivation to worry about events in Southeast Asia. Then I got a call from Gunny Doug Lavere who asked me to tune back into a seemingly long-ago war. Communist forces were bursting from the jungles of I Corps and the red clays of the Central Highlands, and were descending upon Saigon.
After the fall, refugees from Viet Nam were streaming through Hamilton AFB a mere three miles from my home. The media were aflame with stories about American veterans and their experiences in Viet Nam. Most stories were clichés, opinions and partial truths focusing on drug use, atrocities, fraggings and rampant racism. I became deeply anguished … and highly motivated to counter this nonsense.
In mid-1976 I reopened those old Maine notebooks and made contact with Dr. John Henry Hatcher of The Center For Military History. This was the beginning of my research into what really happened at Khe Ta Laou, the beginning of what is now a four-decade inquiry into the war, its effects on the region and on America.
For the next draft of The 13th Valley I collected personal remembrances, operational reports, maps, and individual and unit citations from various sources including men who had served with 2/502 in the Khe Ta Laou. Ex-boonierats Lee Bartels and Gary Miller provided their notebooks from the time, plus letters and recollections.
Readers should understand that I was not originally writing about American forces in general. I was focused on the 1st and 3d Brigades of the 101st Airborne Division. I believed the 101st was the most elite division-sized unit in the war. During my time in the field I observed some of the sensational incidents of drug abuse and indiscipline that the press was reporting at war’s end, but they were rare and in no way the essence of the experience. There was racial tension and some incidents of interracial violence, yet there was a general pattern of interracial harmony. This is a story the media missed.
From the end of the war until 1982, I believed many of the media stereotypes, but I was certain those stories were about Marines or other U.S. Army units. My mission was to set the record straight about my own outfit, the famed 101st that had a Rendezvous With Destiny. I was intent on telling a realistic story that would counter the falsehoods that were rapidly becoming accepted ‘truths.’ We weren’t like ‘them other guys.’ Our war was cleaner, better. We were the One Oh One — airmobile if no longer airborne.
My education about Viet Nam and about Americans in the ’60s and ’70s took a significant leap forward after The 13th Valley was first published. Over the next three years I received more than 3,000 letters — about half from veterans — that contained lines like this: “That’s the way we operated. Were you with my unit?” “I think you were there later than I was. I thought all you guys did was sit around and smoke dope. Good to know someone learned the lessons we passed on.” And there were encouraging comments about my writing: “Your descriptions are the most accurate I’ve read. I have never been able to tell my wife what it was like. I gave her your book and told her this is who we were. This is what it was like for me.”
Some of those letters were from soldiers of the 101st. That I expected. Most were from guys who fought with other units — even Marine … many, many Marines. That I did not expect. Their story had been distorted beyond recognition. The more I read, the more I researched, and the more veterans I interviewed, the more I realized how nearly universal were the values and positive behaviors Americans exhibited in Southeast Asia. It was becoming crystal clear in hindsight how closely those of us who fought in Viet Nam exemplified the altruistic ideals — bear any burden … defend freedom — that we carried into that war. Those ideals are still valid. Errors, corruption and national stupidity have not tarnished them. The blemishes lie with those who condone or perpetrate immoral or incompetent acts.
At this point, I have also come to realize how horribly Viet Nam veterans — American, allied and South Viet Namese — have been tarred with the broad brush of clichés and stereotypes. These media-generated canards are only a tiny part of the Viet Nam experience but they have come to define the fighting man in the world view. Politicians talk about “lessons of Viet Nam,” without a clue as to what actually transpired during the 10 years America was fighting in that country. With every ensuing conflict we “look back” to the clichés, and pledge not to repeat the same “mistakes.” How ridiculous and insulting! If you don’t know what happened how can you look back to identify mistakes? More importantly, how can you recognize the service and sacrifice of America’s admirable military legacy?
I hope to change America’s image of Viet Nam veterans, and of the nature and meaning of the war itself. In depth study and analysis became the impetus for my other works on the war and its aftermath: For The Sake of All Living Things, a story of the Cambodian holocaust; and Carry Me Home, a story of American veterans from homecoming to 15 years after return.
It has become fashionable in America to say that war is terrible, that it is the most horrid of all human endeavors; that it must be avoided at all cost. We teach this to our children. It is a core tenet in school curricula. It permeates nearly all war literature of the past 30 years, and most films and television programs. War is horrible. Those of us who have fought in one understand that intimately. We also understand that war is a check on tyranny, and that tyranny unchecked has given the world its Hitlers, Stalins, Idi Amins and Pol Pots. In war there remains an element of hope. Under tyranny all hope is destroyed.
On Strategy: The battle at Khe Ta Laou was the last major offensive action conducted by U.S. ground forces in the Viet Nam War. That makes The 13th Valley sort of a bookend story to Hal Moore’s and Joe Galloway’s We Were Soldiers Once … And Young, about the first battle of the Ia Drang. The strategic importance of the battle at Khe Ta Laou along with all the other battles fought in that expansive area of operation beginning in 1962 — Ta Bat, A Shau, Lang Vei, Khe Sanh, Dong Ap Bai (Hamburger Hill), Ripcord, and so many others — lies in blocking and/or cutting the enemy’s logistical lifeline to communist units fighting in South Vietnam. Americans who fought there understand, but politicians of the time had different views. In 1969 Senator Ted Kennedy (D, Mass) criticized battles in this region in a speech before Congress: “I feel it is both senseless and irresponsible to continue to send our young men to their deaths to capture hills and positions that have no relation to ending this conflict (my emphasis).”
Contrary to Kennedy’s assessment, these battles had everything to do with potentially ending the conflict. Disrupting the flow of men and materiel through the Truong Son Corridor from North Viet Nam meant the enemy was harder pressed to threaten security and tranquility within South Viet Nam. With the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the corridor, and the ensuing withdrawal of U.S. economic support for the South Viet Namese Army, the NVA moved unchallenged and unobstructed into the South — extending gasoline and oil pipelines down from Lang Vei, through the A Shau Valley (past Khe Ta Laou and beneath Hamburger Hill), south through Kham Duc and Dak To, all the way to Loc Ninh. This gave them a super highway with no cops and no speed limits along the way.
Mobility along this western corridor [go to Google Earth and you’ll find it labeled The Ho Chi Minh Highway] gave the PAVN the ability to mass forces against comparatively sparsely defended points. In late ’74 and early ’75 the northern army stormed southward down this road, using hundreds of Soviet-supplied tanks and artillery pieces, and 18,000 military trucks transporting arms, ammo and supplies for 400,000 troops. This represented a logistical operation larger than most Axis movements of World War II, and it paved the way for North Viet Nam’s Final Offensive in 1975. Without that corridor a PAVN victory was impossible; with it, conquest was inevitable.
The battle for the Khe Ta Laou river valley in 1970 delayed the PAVN’s control of the corridor for a period, but keeping it closed to NVA traffic was expensive in both materiel and manpower. Soldiers knew the eventual cost of a lack of vigilance in this crucial area. They knew what ceding this area to the enemy would cost. Politicians at home refused to recognize this reality.
Much of the story you are about to read actually occurred. For clarification: the operation at Khe Ta Laou lasted 18, not 13 days; the tree and spider and associated incidents were located in the vicinity of Firebase Maureen, 22 kilometers southeast of Firebase Barnett; and the night conversations on the causes of war took place over a period of many months and various operations. In retrospect, brigade, battalion, company and platoon leaders from the 101st were the best leaders I have ever known. Good leadership is visionary. Many of our military leaders foresaw what could be, and what would be if we withdrew too quickly. Many of our political leaders foresaw only what would keep them in office. Various young officers from the 2/502 went on to lead major units in later conflicts, most particularly Desert Storm.
On Race: In Chapter 14, the character Jax (William Andrew Jackson), a black infantryman from the Old South, while on silent patrol in deep jungle, fantasizes:
… if his child would be a boy or a girl. Girls is so pretty, he told himself, but boys is so much mo fun. William Andrew Jackson, Junior, an announcer said within Jackson’s thoughts, the son of the Viet Nam War hero, the great-great-great grandson of a slave, today was inaugurated as the first black the New United States of America.
In 1970 Jax’ thoughts were admittedly fantasy. To deny that or obfuscate it would be to lie about the racial situation in American society during that time. There were racial tensions in military units in Viet Nam and some modern readers may find the racial tension in this novel overwhelming. Race has been the single biggest social issue in America for the post-WWII generation. It progressed from 1950s sit-ins and forced integration, through the ’60s Civil Rights movement, to the riots and near urban warfare of the late ’60s and early ’70s. And it showed up in military units fighting in Viet Nam.
It was in this historical context that The 13th Valley was written. On rereading the novel in preparation for the release of this anniversary edition, I was taken aback by some of the scenes, some of the dialogue and jargon — accurate for the time, but so removed from the way we think and talk today. We’ve come a long way, Baby, and that’s a good thing. Neither color nor creed was the defining measure of relations between boonierat brothers at the time. Today there’s more to guard against lest we believe the race issue is as remote from our society as is the war in Viet Nam.
My mentor on race issues, General Harry Brooks, noted in 1971 that it was not a problem if black or white soldiers chose to congregate socially with those of similar skin tone, but it was a problem if a black wanted to associate with a white, or a white with a black, and was ostracized by his peers and prevented from doing so. Over the last four decades, in much of our nation, that problem has substantially dissipated. Today interracial marriages compose between five and ten percent of all domestic unions.
We should recognize and celebrate this transformation, and we should condemn anyone, including national political, entertainment or business figure, who accentuates race or promotes racial division for their own political or economic gain. I think this attitude is common today, and I believe its roots are in the American military experience in Viet Nam.
The world today is a very different place than it was 40 years ago, and yet is very much the same. Against a backdrop of amazing social, scientific and technological advances, the problems ripping us apart today are mostly mutations of the problems which were ripping us apart 40 years ago. To this aging curmudgeon, these problems are exasperated by a national media so self-centeredly desperate for survival that it has become not only a shaper of false realities but also a source of disinformation and an instigator of greater societal problems.
The story we tell ourselves of ourselves, individually or culturally, creates our self-image. Behavior, individually and culturally, is consistent with self-image. Story determines behavior. When story is badly recorded and misreported the effects on our national self-image and on our behavior is an aberration of reality. The 13th Valley was, and remains, an attempt to set the record straight.
PROLOGUE
Long before the soldiers arrived the life forms of the valley had established a stable symbiotic balance.
At the most central point of the valley, in a dark and dank cavern created by the gnarled roots of an immense teak tree, a spider reconstructs its damaged labyrinth of silken corridors and chambers. Upon the outermost threads dew glistens from a single ray of sunlight seeping through the valley mist, creeping through the shadowing jungle.
The spider — its body blood-red translucent large — stills, then jerks. The web twitches violently. The creature seems to leap forward on an arc of jointed webbed legs. A pointed claw grabs a mosquito caught in the web. Around the spider vestiges of tunnels and prey traps encapsulate dried crusted exoskeletons. The spider perceives its home through simple clear red eyes and through a sensory bristle of exceedingly fine red hairs. At one time the home was good, food was plentiful. The spider had never needed to extend its world beyond the limits of the cavern.
The teak tree shades the spider and all the life below. From the hillock upon which it is perched, the tree reaches up for over two hundred feet, straight, massive and durable. The teak is wide at its base and gradually becomes slender as its huge branchless torso protrudes skyward, finally bursting in an imposing umbrella of boughs and leaves. For countless monsoon seasons, when the sky has broken angrily and lashed the earth, the tree has shielded plants and animals, and, for a time, the spider from the beating rain. The teak’s root system has preserved the knoll into which it sinks, of which it has become a part, from the ravenous river crashing endlessly against the knoll’s east side. The tree is the oldest life in the valley — older, even, than the flood-plain valley floor which has washed down the river from the mountains and which is alive with mosquitos and leeches.
The knoll, tenacious, solid, reinforced with the unseen strength of the teak, forces the river to swirl and bend back upon itself. It is long and high, with steep embankments circling the crown, and it is strong: strong enough to hold the tree and the spider aloof from the affairs of the valley floor, strong enough to alter the course of the mountain river.
The river carries soil and rock from upland watersheds to the base of the knoll. Where the knoll forces the waters to bow, the river has deposited much of its cargo to form a beach. Sticks, branches, bamboo, whole trees have been brought down the waterway, and, catching, have formed a massive snag at the beach’s north end. Riverwaters roil in the snag, back up then boil over, rushing first then sliding into the deep channel around the knoll, then lazily flowing into the broad plain beyond. Each monsoon season the river has overflowed and flooded the plain; each dry season the waters have dropped below the mud bluffs of the deepest channel.
From the muck plain of the valley floor and from the rolling hummocks of mountain erosion, elephant grass grows to twelve feet and dense bamboo thickets choke the earth to the river’s edge.
The headwaters of the river are in the very rugged terrain to the east where the valley is narrow. There the mountains rise to summits of nine hundred, one thousand, and eleven hundred meters. As the river flows west down the mountains, the valley widens. Four kilometers from its origin is the knoll which causes the river to bend. At that point the valley floor is almost six hundred meters wide. The north ridge is steep, dropping quickly to the valley floor. The south ridge is lower and gentler of slope. From the numerous peaks along the ridges, small ribs extend toward the valley center and form canyons which guide sporadic rivulets to the river.
The Khe Ta Laou river valley is difficult to enter, hard to traverse. For a very long time it had remained isolated. Life in the valley is highly organized and each plant and animal form aids and is dependent upon the entire system. The equilibrium is sharply structured — a state, perhaps, which invited disruption.
John Del Vecchio is the author of four books including The 13th Valley, For the Sake of All Living Things, and Carry Me Home—the three of which can be found in The Vietnam Trilogy and hundreds of articles. He graduated from Lafayette College in 1969, was drafted and sent to Vietnam in 1970 where he served as a Combat Correspondent in the 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile). In 1971 he was awarded a Bronze Star for Heroism in Ground Combat.
