John W. Morris
Vietnam
Q:
You were assigned next to the 18th Engineer Brigade in South Vietnam.
A:
Yes. Returning to the military situation. My service in Korea by now was ten years old when I
arrived in Vietnam. The U.S. Army, Vietnam, engineer was General Dave Parker whom I've
mentioned earlier: Tokyo after World War II, Korea in 1960, and now again in Vietnam. His
whom I'd known in Guam and again at West Point,
deputy was Brigadier General Bob
plus other places along the way.
The 18th Engineer Brigade served the northern half of Vietnam. Our brigade headquarters, the
aviation section, and a relatively small number of soldiers, most of them involved with the
headquarters operations, were located at Dong Ba Thin near Cam Ranh. The brigade consisted
of 16 engineer battalions-combat and construction battalions-and numerous separate
companies. They were spread throughout the northern half of South Vietnam, all the way from
the DMZ down to the 20th Brigade on a line generally westward from Phan Rang.
Our main missions were to support the combat troops and perform the heavy regional
construction. The construction battalions were committed primarily to lines of communication
The combat battalions supported by a light equipment company also worked on the LOC
unless support of a divisional mission took priority.
In the scheme of things, we had one combat battalion out of the 18th Engineer Brigade in support
of each numbered division. The 1 st Cavalry Division, the 101 st Airborne Division up at Hue, Phu
Bai, the 4th Division near Pleiku, the America1 Division at Chu Lai, and a brigade of the 5th
Division were located in the 18th Brigade area of operation. In addition, we supported numerous
miscellaneous signal and special forces.
Our battalions were self-contained and, generally speaking, were in remote areas. Consequently,
we had frequent incidents with the Vietcong and, in some cases, North Vietnamese soldiers. We
suffered more casualties than you normally would have expected for engineer units. Our men
were very busy, and as a result, we had fewer disciplinary, morale, or drug problems.
As brigade commander, I set goals and then spent much of my time in the helicopter visiting our
work sites and also our troop units to keep up to speed on their activities and finding out what we
could do to help them.
There were several significant construction projects. One was to build a road out to the A Shau
Valley. A reinforced engineer battalion commanded by Colonel Melvin Johnson was in charge
of this very difficult task. He did a fine job. When it was finished, General [Richard] Stillwell,
who was the commanding general of the XXIV Corps, came out and made a special presentation
to our engineers for that excellent work.
The 326th Engineer Battalion 101 st Airborne Division] commander was Lieutenant Colonel
Henry J. Hatch. General Stillwell's chief of staff was my West Point classmate Bud Bolling. I
became fairly close to General Stillwell, a great commander with wonderful leadership qualities.
His farewell address to his troops when he was replaced by General Mel Zais was truly
inspirational.
The LOC program was the highlight of the construction. I don't recall how many miles we built.
General [Frederick] Clarke, Chief of Engineers, had dedicated his brilliance and thoughts to a
plan to replace the normal military maintenance system for heavy equipment. As a result, the
LOC equipment was the typical yellow U.S. items purchased "off the shelf' and maintained under
special contract with a firm headquartered or at least managed out of St. Louis. We had a 24-hour
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