By Christopher Miskimon
Two months after the hard fighting in the Ia Drang Valley, newly promoted Colonel Harold G. Moore led a new operation against the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). Beginning on January 24, 1966, Operation Masher/White Wing targeted the NVA’s Sao Vang Division, which operated in the Bong Son area in Binh Dinh Province in the South Vietnam’s Central Highlands. For six weeks, the U.S. Army’s 1st Cavalry Division fought the Sao Vang division’s three subordinate regiments. Heavy fighting took place, costing 250 American lives and an estimated 3,000 NVA soldiers. Nonetheless, it proved an apparent success for the 1st Cavalry, showing it could use its combination of mobility, firepower and aggressive leadership to achieve victory. However, the NVA showed its determination by returning to the area in strength within a few months. Masher/White Wing was only the beginning of a years-long struggle in the region.
The author served as an infantryman in the 1st Cavalry Division’s Long range reconnaissance patrol unit as part of a six-man team in the Bong Son area. They located NVA camps, monitored their movements and called in artillery and air strikes, giving the author in-depth, personal knowledge of the area and activities covered in this well-written book. He effectively demonstrates how the tactical successes of the troops on the ground were in vain without a strategic vision to stop the continued flow of troops and supplies into South Vietnam.
The Battle of Bong Son: Operation Masher/ White Wing, 1966 (Kenneth P. White, Casemate Publishers, Havertown PA, 2024, 192 pp., maps, photographs, appendices, bibliography, index, $34.95, HC)
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