“The Bastard Cav” An Old Trooper’s Vietnam Reminiscences BG (R) Raymond E. Bell Jr., PhD
The yellow paged newsletter sat on my kitchen bar. Its heading, the Black Knight’s “The Bastard Cav.” It was there for sev- eral days. Reminiscences of years past – service in the 3rd Squadron, 5th Cavalry (3/5 Cav). In Vietnam. As squadron execu- tive officer. Of events on my watch. Of those gallant troopers I served with. Of the Bastard squadron’s record while I was there.
The 3/5 Cav was not the only “bastard” armor/cavalry unit in which I served. There was the tour in Korea. With the 1st Cavalry Division’s 2/15 Armor, a tank battalion with a 15th Cavalry Regiment heritage. I was the “A” Company’s com- mander. My armored fighting vehicles were 90 millimeter gun M48A3 tanks. We had, however, no affiliation with “cavalry” which was to be found only in the battal- ion’s lineage and history.
But in Vietnam we bastards were indeed cavalry, armored cavalry (although the other battalions of the 5th Cavalry Regi- ment were airmobile infantry). And that’s what this newsletter was reminding me. There was to be a big reunion in 2009. A kind of circa 1965-66 to 1972 get together put on by old troopers, long on comrade- ship and strong on memories.
How long the newsletter remained on the bar I forget. I was not even sure what I would do with it. But what I did know is that it started me thinking. It began me thinking of my “heritage regiment,” the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment then in Iraq, and the “cav” I was in in Vietnam. And I began thinking about what the “bastard cav” did while I was in the “Nam” and what “my” regiment had done in Iraq. And what about Afghanistan? People have said there was no comparison. The more I read, the more I wondered.
It was late August 1968 when I joined the 3rd Squadron, 5th Cavalry as a major. I was lucky, very lucky. The squadron was the 9th Infantry Division’s armored cavalry squadron. In fact it was the divis-
Fall 2024 CAVALRY & ARMOR JOURNAL
ion’s only armored unit and it had its only tanks. In the summer of 1968, armor branch majors at division headquarters were lined up – they must have been at least six deep – to become the squadron’s next executive officer. When I arrived at the headquarters at Dong Tam, I was as- sured that there were at least five highly qualified majors ahead of me ready to take the then vacant job. I was “Johnny Come Lately.” But, then I wasn’t. Later that day I was headed north to Wunder Beach, just below the DMZ. I was going north because during the 1968 Vietnam- ese holidays of Tet a need for an army armored unit arose in the III Marine Am- phibious Force area of operations. The job went to the 3/5 Cavalry (without its tanks), the squadron becoming attached to the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile).
My Vietnam adventure began on my arrival at the Phu Bai air base just south of the city of Hue. I was en route to a logistics base called Wunder Beach in the 1st Cavalry Division’s area of oper- ations (AO). I and a number of replace- ment soldiers climbed into the bed of a heavily sand-bagged 2 ½ ton truck. We set out for the air cavalry division replace- ment center in pitch black darkness, only “cats’ eyes” lights showing. The precau- tions were just taking common sense measures to protect young men – and me - who had not yet heard a shot fired in anger. The today’s phrase for the actions was, I believe, exercising ”situational awareness.”
When I arrived at Wunder Beach it was like coming to a beach resort. A logistic installation on a fabulously clean beach, it was surrounded land-wise by a berme which had only a few entry points leading through it. Vietnamese were not allowed on the base’s premises. Soldiers were billeted in closely packed tent compounds. Every soldier had a cot. Most tents had fans, even refrigerators. Was this war?
No, not really, the 3/5 Cav at the time was just beginning to conduct a stability and support operation. The squadron had just
a few weeks prior to my arrival wiped out the good part of a North Vietnamese in- fantry regiment in an action where the enemy was pinned against the South China Sea and destroyed. The battle and prior aggressive cavalry actions had so crippled the communist effort on the old “Street Without Joy” that from August 1968 to February 1969, when my watch ended, there was only one ambush of any Americans in our AO. It did not mean, however, that we stayed crouched down behind the high sand berme waiting for things to happen.
Just as in Afghanistan where our troops went after the means to supply the Taliban with such items as food, weapons, and ammunition we did the same. The armored cavalry spent most of its time looking for caches, patrolling roads, protecting work sites, and setting up night ambushes. Sound familiar? And the operational con- ditions were often the same in Vietnam as in Afghanistan and Iraq, although there were some significant differences.
The principal difference was that intel- ligence available to the squadron was very poor. Our S-2’s (squadron intelli- gence officers) were generally inexperi- enced lieutenants who got the job largely by default. Our contacts with indigenous sources were limited. Higher headquar- ters rarely passed information down to us – mostly just providing vague threat warnings. What compensated for this dearth of information was that the Republic of Vietnamese Army – the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) – was very proficient operationally in the AO. The ARVN 1st Infantry Division was the Re- publics best combat division and it kept the foe on the run.
At the same time the 3/5 Cav posed a significant threat to any enemy trying to operate through out our area of concern. The ground armored cavalry troops, of which there were three, were constant- ly in motion. Their movement was timely irregular and followed no specific pattern. Only when the troopers let their guard
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