Somebody, I think it was Dempsey, labelled as an oxymoron the quote on Beowulf that went something like "he was a leg but a damn good troop."

I've got a story about airborne troopers and "legs."

On 1 Sep 67 I took command of the 2d Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, at Fort Campbell just after the division (minus its 1st Brigade which went to Vietnam in the summer of 1965) was alerted to deploy by air to Vietnam by mid-December. Our battalions were the 1/501 Infantry (Airborne), the 2/501 Infantry (Airborne), and the 1/502 Infantry (Airborne).

Our first task was to ship out non-deployables (RVN returnees, sole surviving sons, soldiers under 18 years of age, etc.), take on replacements, and create in each battalion a fourth rifle company. We had to requisition the increased equipment and vehicles authorized under the changes from the TOE for three rifle companies to that for four rifle companies, and then rerequisiton and turn in materiel according to TOE changes after that.

But although our replacement soldiers' MOSs were 90% non-infantry -- drivers, cooks, mechanics, commo men, bandsmen, you name it -- every one was airborne qualified, the enlisted men largely from the 82d Airborne Division, the officers from all over.

We devoted September to organizing, individual training (including physical training with a run every morning), weapons qualification for every soldier, and an inspection every Saturday. We could not complete our personnel fill until early October, only ten weeks before we were to deploy. Of that the last four weeks would require two weeks leave for each man, half the brigade at a time while the other half was packing for overseas deployment. That left only six weeks for unit training, squad to brigade. This, despite the fact that more than half of my company commanders, several of whom were special forces and armor officers, were brand new to command.

I decided to use three of the six weeks for squad training, two for platoon training, and one for a three or four day field exercise in which we would concurrently conduct company, battalion, and brigade training. Each battalion commander would prepare one week of squad training lesson plans (one had "Squad in Attack," another had "Squad in Defense," and the third had "Squad on Patrol"), complete with range, ammunition, and other requirements, and the three battalions would rotate their execution. .

For platoon training, each battalion commander would prepare three days of training for either platoon in attack, or in defense, or on patrol and similarly rotate these; Friday of the second platoon week would be devoted to recovery and preparation for the final week of exercises. We had live fire exercises at both squad and platoon. Battalion reconnaissance platoons were trained separately, and training of the battalion 4.2-inch mortar platoons and company 81-mm mortar sections was centralized in each battalion.

In their final two weeks before departure each soldier rezeroed his rifle (new M-16s having been issued all around) and had another crack at field target firing. That was all we could get before arrival in country, where an additional month of unit training and acclimatization was visualized before combat. (That never happened; within days after arrival we were "training" around Cu Chi where you could get into a firefight upon exiting the main gate.)

Late on the afternoon of December 13th, aircraft carrying the 2d Brigade began flying out of Campbell Army Airfield. Twenty years later it was satisfying to read in Sergeant Charles Gadd's book, Line Doggie...

It was snowing lightly... when our C-141 Starlifter ascended from the runway at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. We were a well-trained group--A Company, 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry--an element of Uncle Sam's proud 101st Airborne Division... Most of us were replacements... from every aspect of training that the Army had to offer--military police, armor, artillery, mechanics, clerks, cooks... but three months of intense infantry training had honed us to the sharpness of expensive cutlery.

While making due allowance for pride-based hyperbole on the part of Sergeant Gadd (himself a former driver, I think), he had it right. Our limited time to get ready reflected General Westmoreland's urgent need for reinforcements and so we were not fully-trained. But we were good and we felt good about ourselves. Above all, we were disciplined. And we were airborne.

By now, with the 1/321st Field Artillery (Airborne), a brigade task force, we went first to Cu Chi in an enemy infested area near Saigon where a patrol could be fired on within minutes after leaving the base camp's gates. Before long the task force received orders to move far north, by air to the Hue-Phubai airfield where we would report to the 1st Air Cavalry Division; General Westmoreland suspected that something was up. The afternoon of January 30 we occupied fire bases (like the 1st Cav, we called them LZs) north of Hue. That night the North Vietnamese launched their Tet Offensive.

The next weeks saw the heaviest fighting, largely against North Vietnamese Army (NVA) battalions, of the Vietnam War. In Hue, in the paddies northward into Quang Tri province, and in nearby hills and forests, 2d Brigade battalions fought alongside local forces and the Vietnamese Army's 1st Infantry Division to drive out the enemy and bring security to the area.

Three principles governed the operations of the 2d Brigade Task Force:

1. Work closely with the Vietnamese.
2. Maintain unrelenting pressure on the enemy.
3. At every opportunity surround the enemy and destroy him.

The brigade's trademark was the cordon operation: When an enemy force is located, surround it before nightfall. When the enemy is surrounded, seal off all avenues of escape. When the enemy is penned in, turn night into day with constant illumination from flare ships and artillery.

More than a dozen cordon operations in March-June 1968 broke the back of the NVA in Thua Thien. A message on a courier killed in an ambush read like this: "If you make contact with the airborne, get away. They will surround and destroy you." A prisoner being interrogated looked up at the Screaming Eagle patch on a nearby trooper and said in Vietnamese, "That little bird is real mean;" his words soon decorated the brigade command post.

The most spectacular cordon took place in April at Phuoc Yen in a bend of the Song Bo River. The 1st Division's Black Panther company made the first contact; by nightfall it had been joined by one company from each of the brigade's battalions, three local force platoons, and a platoon of hamlet militia and a full cordon was in place around an NVA battalion. For five days the battalion was pounded; for five nights it tried to escape. In the end some 400 enemy were dead, 107 had surrendered, and a great quantity of equipment, including the battalion's radios and code books, was taken.

One day in early June 1968 I was in the office of Major General Ngo Quang Truong, 1st Division commander. He invited me to the Vietnamese Armed Forces Day ceremonies at his headquarters two weeks hence, saying "Bring your colors." He had arranged for the President of the Republic of Vietnam to present his country's Cross of Gallantry with Palm to the 2d Brigade Task Force.

Why this long story? Because immediately upon arrival, taking casualties and losing men, our infantry battalions began to receive "leg" replacements. By May probably 50% of our infantry soldiers were non-airborne. But they were fully equal in spirit and skill to those who had formed the brigade and left for Vietnam in December 1967. And when in July the 101st Airborne Division converted to an "airmobile" TOE, months of "leg" individual replacements had made it hardly different from the 1st Cavalry Division, which had never been "airborne."

So although I realize that Dempsey had his tongue slightly in his cheek, "a leg and a damn good troop" is no oxymoron. Today the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) is filled with "legs" who are "damn good troops."

In 1996 I went to Vietnam with a videocameraman and visited the battlefields north of Hue where the 2d Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, carved out so fine a reputation. I then made a 57-minute videotape on the brigade, which I would be happy to send to anyone who would like it, provided he/she will send it back. Just send me your address, off-line.