Operation PERSHING Begins

The U.S. Army’s 1st Cavalry Division takes the lead in Operation PERSHING, an 11-month pacification campaign in the Binh Dinh Province in II Corps beginning February 12, 1967. The populous and productive farming region has been a Communist stronghold since the French left in 1954. The Viet Cong is entrenched in the hamlets and villages, and the 3rd Division of the North Vietnamese Army, lodged in the highlands just west of the coast, is supporting their efforts. Control of the area is strategically vital to both sides, and contested.

 

All three regiments of the 1st Cavalry Division, cooperating closely with the South Vietnamese Army, the Regional and Popular Forces, and the South Vietnamese police, are committed to pacification efforts and have adopted a variety of tactics to strengthen the South Vietnamese government’s position. They conduct numerous company-level patrols, airmobile raids, and search-and-destroy operations in the highland areas bordering the coastal region to shield the population from North Vietnamese Army incursions. They participate in cordon-and-search operations, blocking escape routes from villages and hamlets while South Vietnamese authorities search house-to-house for Communist forces or cadres. And they provide various social and economic services, including protecting farmers during the rice harvest, and they engage in a broad range of civic action and psychological operations.

 

The primary objective of Operation PERSHING, in keeping with the 1st Cavalry Division’s ethos, is to keep the enemy on his heels as much as possible through offensive operations. The hundreds of small and large battles fought in the Binh Dinh Province in 1967 inflicted heavy casualties on the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. Approximately 8,000 enemy combatants were killed or captured. Operation PERSHING is the 1st Cavalry Division’s longest single operation in Vietnam, ending January 19, 1968.¹