Excerpt from They Marched Into Sunlight by David Maraniss, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The next morning, in the bright dawn of July 29, this latest batch of American infantrymen clambered down Jacob's ladders into old World War II-style landing boats and came ashore.



The water was smooth and easy, barely disturbed by the crafts plying back and forth from the big ship. The sand of Back Beach, white and clean, invited these young Americans in, with the verdant rise of Nui Nho, the little mountain, framing the vista at the southern end of the peninsula, its three rusted, thirty-three-ton French naval guns offering only an intimation from on high of the war-torn history of this slender land.

For most U.S. enlisted men in Vietnam, history tended to begin anew the day they stepped foot "in country" and to end the day they left. Evocative war stories were passed down from one group to the next, but few historical facts. Back Beach might have meant nothing to the men of C Packet, just an insignificant point of entry, a brief stop on the way to somewhere else. But in the legend of the First Infantry Division's service in Vietnam, the white sands of Vung Tau represented the first station of the cross. It was here, less than two years earlier, during the early days of October 1965, that the main force of the First Division reached Vietnamese soil -- 9,600 troops and their equipment brought over on twenty ships as part of Operation Big Red. Army cameramen were at the beach October 7 and recorded that day's arrival on 35-millimeter film. Their grainy footage of the seminal scene, as viewed later, flickered eerily between color and black-and-white, as though caught forever between present and past.

Soldiers line the deck of the U.S.S. General Daniel I. Sultan, green duffel bags slung over their shoulders, waiting their turn to board landing craft, many of their faces pubescent, unmarked. On their shoulder sleeves, the proud Big Red One insignia, an olive drab shield two and a half inches wide, three and three-quarters inches high, with a red Arabic numeral one in the middle. Placid waters, blinding sand, a welcoming party of big brass on the beach, including the architect of the American buildup, General William C. Westmoreland, commander of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, neatly attired in starched fatigues with a MACV patch on his left sleeve, his blue-gray eyes gleaming under a baseball cap. Behind him, an ethereal array of Vietnamese girls holding lotus flowers, each dressed in an ao dai of pure white. White, black, Latino -- the soldiers disembark and march up the beach, their figures dissolving into brightness.

The four-star general and the ao dai wisps were nowhere to be seen as the replacement troops from the USNS Pope came ashore twenty-two months later. A Vietnamese teenager chased after Doug Tallent as he reached the beach and tried to take his watch. Another group of local boys stood nearby yelling, "Fuck you, GI!"

Greg Landon, with his deadpan sarcasm, said all he needed was a corncob pipe to feel like General MacArthur staging his dramatic return to the Philippines. The beach swarmed with six hundred men, some in formation, others roaming the sand, uncertain where they should go. There were now nearly a half million American forces in Vietnam and more arriving daily by air and sea. Battalions were growing from three rifle companies to four, which was what the packets were all about -- a means of quickly providing fresh troops for the additional companies. C Packet was being divided into two units that would be assigned to different battalions within the Big Red One.

First Lieutenant Clark Welch and First Sergeant Bud Barrow came upon this hectic shoreline scene looking like a modern-day Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, the officer stooping slightly next to his shorter sidekick, who carried a makeshift flag that they had fashioned the day before -- blue cloth attached to a bamboo pole with crossed rifles braced by the words D Company above and the numbers 2/28 below.

Copyright © 2003 by David Maraniss