Hawaii GIs get no break

Every Sunday, “Back in the Day” looks at an article that ran on this date in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The items are verbatim, so don’t blame us today for yesteryear’s bad grammar.

PLEIKU, Vietnam >> The 3rd Brigade of the Hawaii-trained 25th Infantry Division closed out Operation Garfield and moved right into Operation Lincoln in the central Vietnamese highlands without taking a break.

The infantry’s job is as a blocking force for the 1st U.S. Air Cavalry Division, which stirred up a North Vietnamese regiment near the Cambodian border.

"It’s been more than 36 days since we’ve had a break," said Colonel Everette A. Soutmer, of Keota, Iowa, commanding the unit which netted 300 Vietcong and North Vietnamese in Operation Garfield; captured 63 weapons, a full field surgical hospital and more than 60 tons of rice.

The brigade left headquarters at Pleiku with three battalions. The Garfield exercise was regarded as something "for the next few days." It stretched out into weeks and when Lincoln got cracking, Garfield was linked in with the Air Cavalry.

The 14th Infantry (The Golden Dragons) went into the Iadrang Valley and made its first contact right on the landing zone as the helicopters came down. The enemy raced to the Cambodian border only 600 yards away.

And at 1:30 a.m. the Communists threw heavy mortar fire into the 14th Infantry and 9th Artillery positions, causing some casualties. … Most landed in the artillery zone. … First sergeant, Donald W. Butcher of Weston, West Virginia, commented:

"All the rounds came from across Cambodia."

One of the Americans wounded was 2nd Lieutenant Erick K. Shinseki, Lihue, Kauai, a 1966 graduate of the West Point Military Academy, who said:

"I sure don’t want to go through another barrage of mortars like this. They just poured it right on top of our heads."

As the lieutenant was whisked away for treatment in a field hospital, he cracked, "I’ll be back soon."

Lieutenant Colonel Gilbert Proctor, Jr. of Nogales, Arizona, commanding the Golden Dragon battalion, said he was ready to tackle the Vietcong positions straddling the Cambodian frontier and had a company of Patton tanks to back up his infantry in the attempt.

Proctor, a 1933 graduate of Leilehua High School in Hawaii, said the enemy had dug in positions straddling the border.