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Operation Texas
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The primary target of Operation Texas was the 1st Viet Cong Regiment. Texas was a combined operation, with three Marine battalions - the 3d Battalion, 7th Marines, the 2d Battalion, 4th Marines, and the 3d Battalion, 1st Marines - joining forces with the ARVN 5th Airborne Battalion and the ARVN 4th Regiment. Four artillery batteries fired in support of the joint forces: 105mm howitzer fire was provided by India and Hotel batteries from the 3d Battalion, 11th Marines; 155mm howitzer came from Mike and Kilo batteries from the 4th Battalion, 11th Marines. Air support came from the A-4 jets of MAG-12 and the UH-34 helicopters of MAG-36. The operation began on March 20, 1966, and was completed on March 25. Captured documents indicated that the enemy on Operation Texas consisted of elements of the 1st Viet Cong Regiment and the 21st Regiment of the North Vietnamese Army. Enemy dead were listed as 283 troops; 99 Marines were killed and 212 wounded.
There is a certain amount of personal irony in Operation Texas. Throughout my time in Vietnam, I had taken photos of nearly everything, from simple times washing utilities in base camp, to burning villages in the midst of attack and trench lines filled with enemy dead. By the time that Operation Texas occurred, I thought there was nothing much else to see, and I left my camera at our base camp. As it turned out, Operation Texas was the most awful, the most exciting, the most dangerous time I spent in-country. And all I had to remember it by were the mental images of a time and of events that turned out to be the most revealing and difficult of my life.
This illustration is from US Marines in Vietnam, an Expanding War, 1965, Jack Shulimson, History and Museums Division, Headquarters, US Marine Corps, Washington, DC, 1982.
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