Operation Saratoga

    Underway nearly two months before the Tet Offensive, Operation Saratoga increased pressure on the enemy and then foiled his plan to isolate and interdict Saigon. One of the widest ranging operations yet undertaken, Saratoga saw Tropic Lightning soldiers engaged from the Cambodian border to Saigon itself.

    In Tay Ninh and Binh Duang provinces stood the 1st Brigade. Their Participation lasted from 25 February to 24 March. In spite of alert and aggressive combat sweeps, the brigade made little contact. Charlie's battle plans had drawn him to the south where Saigon loomed like a glittering prize. By 24 March, the body count for the 1st Brigade was 58. Three enemy soldiers had been captured.

    Posted in the Hoc Mon area to dispute Viet Cong passage and to keep the way open for civilians and Free Worlds Forces, the 3rd Brigade found far more enemy to deal with than had the 1st Brigade.

    Action flared up early during the afternoon of 9 February 1968, the 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry Wolfhounds were attacked by and estimated battalion of Viet Cong. The firefight claimed 102 enemy lives.

    At about the same time the next day a task force composed of two companies of the 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Wolfhounds and a company from the 3rd Squadron 4th Cavalry came under fire form a Viet Cong force of undermined size. The force was large enough, however, to leave 105 bodies in front of the task force's guns. It complemented their effort of the previous morning when the task force killed 176 Viet Cong.

    After 3rd brigade dominance of the area had been proved again, action tapered off too harassing fire and skirmishing. Nonetheless, the 3rd Brigade killed 768 before the enemy fled altogether.

    Even before Tet began, the 2nd Brigade seemed to be the eye of the storm for Operation Saratoga. The first significant contact of the operations was also the first contact against North Vietnamese soldiers in Hau Nghai Province. The 101st NVA regiment launched a night attack on the 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Wolfhounds. In this encounter 39 North Vietnamese were killed and the remainder of their force withdrew into the HoBo Woods.

    The Second Wolfhounds next ran the NVA force aground on 21 December when one of their base camps was discovered. In a daylong action the Wolfhounds killed 43 but found the NVA somewhat tougher customers than their Viet Cong counterparts.

    Tougher or not, the First and Second Wolfhounds found more NVA members of the 2nd Go Mon battalion, in base camps on the western bank of the Saigon River near Trung An and killed 89.

    On 10 January 1968 the 7th Cu Chi Battalion, then nearly half NVA, launched a human wave assault on the night position of the First Wolfhounds. It cost them 108 dead.

    In the middle of January, the 4th Battalion, 23rd Infantry Tomahawks came upon an unknown number of entrenched Viet Cong in the lower Ho Bo Woods. In a two day operation 49 Viet Cong were killed.

    Then came Tet. In the first major action of the Tet Offensive for the 25th Division troops, 3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry, sent its columns steaming down Highway 1 toward the heavily besieged Tan Son Nhut Air Base. In brutal fighting the cavalrymen, aided by air strikes and artillery, pried the enemy away from the vital base. More than 300 enemy bodies were counted.  

    Meanwhile, the 2nd Brigade was drawn into the cauldron of fire near Hoc Mon as the enemy approached Saigon. There the 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry White Warriors killed 22 Viet Cong in a short, sharp fight. The same day the 3rd Battalion, 22nd Infantry killed 30 enemies near Ap Cho. The Third Regulars also figured in a 10-day battle to prevent Charlie from cutting Highway 1. The Regulars won and Charlie lost, among other things, 219 of his best fighters.

    Contact continued almost daily with well armed and disciplined Viet Cong and NVA soldiers. But when the operation ended, Tropic Lightning soldiers had claimed more than 3,000 enemy soldiers.

    In the course of Operation Saratoga, Tropic Lightning also captured a quarter of a million rounds of small arms ammunition, identified huge enemy tunnel complexes and generally destroyed much of the enemy's combat effectiveness.

    A new enemy, the NVA, had appeared on the scene, but the courage and the professional skills of the Tropic Lightning soldiers had again won the day.