THE DI AN DIARY--MEMOIRS FROM THE VIETNAM WAR/PART TWO:"I AM DAGGER ZULU"

The Di An Diary--Memoirs From The Vietnam War 

Part Two: "I Am Dagger Zulu"

Author's Preface:  I was part of the reactionary forces inserted as a response to the TET Offensive beginning  January 30, 1968.and officially ending September 23, 1968.  Almost 17,000 American lives were lost in 1968 alone (over 87,000 wounded), the highest count by far of any year in the war.  Of the total  number of Americans killed in the war over almost 20 years, officially documented as 58,479, 28,679 were killed in 1968-1969 during my time there in the TOC and field. Almost half of all lives lost in a 20 year war occurred in that one year span

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Specialist 4th Class Keith Ragan Spring of 1968
upon arrival at Di An forward base camp.

I went by "cattle car" the next morning after receiving my orders to report to the “Big Red One” in Di An. My ride was a personnel deployment vehicle where I sat with about 20 other of my peers being deployed to the general vicinity. As we drove through all the cyclists and pedestrians in Saigon at a very deliberate rate of speed, those of us in the door were told to be alert to anything (meaning grenades) that might be tossed into the opening. That task had my total and complete concentration until we were well out of the city proper.

I was taken to the 90th Replacement Battalion in Long Binh, my primary deployment station about 24 miles or 38 kilometers east and slightly north of Saigon, and promptly loaded into the rear of another truck. Almost immediately an early monsoon broke the thick air with a steady sheet of rain pounding the canvas overhead  more closely reminiscent of a waterfall than anything I had ever experienced as rain drops.  It was a deluge so dense you could barely see five feet beyond the rear of the vehicle.  

I was at the portal of a black hole at a defining existential moment of my life. At 21 years of age I was leaving the world as I knew it and entering an alternate universe. The visage was surreal.  The smells emanating from ancient earth were unfamiliar and somehow haunting. It wasn’t cold, but periodic shivering made me thankful for my field jacket.  I was fearful, expectant, and totally alive all at the same time.

I was unloaded in Di An, about 15 miles northeast of Saigon, a major military forward base camp protecting Saigon from attack from the North and Northeast corridors. I was ultimately assigned, after several interviews by command staff including the Brigade Sergeant Major, to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, Second Brigade, 1st Infantry Division. I was in the "Big Red One" and was an official "Dagger Zulu". It was the specific code name for the immediate staff of the Headquarters Brigade Tactical Operations team. 

As a brigade composite, we were referred to as the Dagger Brigade.  The fluctuating total troop count of Dagger Zulu’s Operations team’s total responsibility-- from engineers to infantry, from armored cavalry to support, and everything in between-- varied but probably averaged around 3000-3500 men in all.  There were three duty officers and three NCO's operating in pairs on alternating shifts along with the Brigade Commander and immediate senior staff to handle all communications, expedite contingencies, and initiate and guide responses and support to engagements.  The duty officers I was paired with during my time there were 1st Lieutenant Griffith, 1st Lieutenant Atwell (a Ranger), and Captain Austin.  

The first few days, and every day after arriving in Di An, made it apparent to me that I wasn’t in Kentucky anymore. Our B-52’s made devastating, loud and jarring bombing runs in the Iron Triangle just a few miles to our northwest every afternoon and delivered a sobering message– the enemy was close. Visually, sand bags, razor and barbed wire surrounded the perimeter and tin-roofed hooches and dominated the landscape. Each hooch had its own bunker and sandbags.

Headquarters Enlisted Hooch, Di An

My hooch was across a dusty road that ran from North to South and was located next to the North Gate entrance and perimeter. In my new duty assignment I would walk across that dusty road each day and meet a guard, a different guard every day, next to the entrance. There I would give the password for the day, return a salute, and enter. Always I reported for duty with weapon and gear. The base camp had survived several major assaults. It was immediately after the initial thrust of the TET offensive by the People's Republic North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong guerrillas, and the enemy build-up of combatants was at its all time high. 

I was to begin as the Day Duty NCO in the Brigade Tactical Operation Command (TOC) as a temporary replacement for an NCO with an emergency extended leave of absence. I could not know the scrutiny that was to be expended in the observation of my duties over the next several weeks by the Colonel, the XO, and the Sergeant Major in what was literally an on the job audition. My interviews with Sergeant Major Demarinus and my service jacket (my accomplishments, security levels, and evaluations) impressed enough to get me the job.  My ability to handle stress, competence, and multi-tasking would be what would would determine my ability to keep it.

The TOC was a well-sandbagged large, underground bunker reinforced with brick and stone mortared walls.. Colonel Carley (soon promoted to General Carley) ran things with his staff of Sergeant Major Demarinus, a couple of majors, captains, and lieutenants, the duty NCOs (including one temporary duty Specialist Fourth Class named Specialist Ragan) and Officers and a couple of clerks. I sat in the left front of a long row of field telephones and radios including the headquarters radio that every field unit had on "speed-dial", with the duty Officer at the right hand side.

Across from Duty Officer LT. Griffith at T.O.C duty desk.

In front and rear of me were tactical operation maps of the whole zone under our area of responsibility, with every U.S. and friendly ambush plotted for the day, major troop recons noted, convoys charted with timeline progressions, and map checkpoints and daily passwords reflecting current status. All changed and were updated by us daily, except for checkpoints.  Checkpoints were relocated or redefined monthly.

Every day thereafter began with me charting the progress of the "dusters", armored vehicles that ran the roads each morning to assure that they were not mined and safe for the convoys. It was staggering, and the pace was fast just keeping up with the convoys and their levels of advancement. Predictably, it was only a short time after my introduction to the operations team, before the command radios and phones were first put to use in getting artillery support and air force assistance for the areas where enemy movement was reported or ambushes and firefights had broken out in our area of operations. And when it happened, it happened in the blink of an eye.

Working the problem.

Almost immediately I was requesting  "dust-offs"  for our wounded. Every single successful evacuation resulted in overwhelming elation on my part, as directing the medi-vacs (Huey dust-off helicopters) safely to the site of our wounded soldiers, through and around other friendly ambushes in the area, and around the worst of the ongoing engagement, was at my guidance, through communication with the RTO in the firefight and with the chopper pilots in route.

The work was exhausting but gratifying and the pace and amount of information that had to be monitored and actioned simultaneously lent a tremendous level of stress, knowing that a mistake I might make in coordinates or course of action would either assist in saving lives or be to their detriment. There was very little time in the middle of things when they got hot, to confer with anyone else or seek help in a course of my decision-making. I was communicating with the C.O., the duty officer, the field unit engaged, the various support deployment communications teams, and the artillery, air force for "Spookies" (AC-47 planes with mini-guns and flares) and jet support, dust-off choppers and Cobra AG-1H assault helicopters all in succession, several usually at once.

Interception of enemy propaganda

There were no computers, no drones, no satellites to bounce transmissions and images back to us, and none of the troops in the field had the technology to be "miked up".  Everything seen today on T.V. shows about combat operations command bear no resemblance to the tools and devices of our trade in Vietnam. And we were not stationed in a remote location.  We were right there--strategically in the middle of it all. 

There was no video, or anything to visualize.  Everything was communicated by field telephone or radio, and it had to be captured when transmitted at once with precision and accuracy and response determined from that data. There was no time or window in which to ask for information to be repeated.  You got one chance at it in real time and you had to capture what you needed or forfeit lives. And that was unacceptable.

I began to think and refer to the Brigade Tactical Command Center as “the hole” or “the pit”. Unlike my time in the hooch or compound, while in the command bunker performing my duties I knew I was safe from any mortar attacks. But the bunker of cement and stone was a place of mortality awareness nonetheless. We were very conscious of the fact, even if we didn't dwell on it, that if the perimeters were overrun by NVA. and Viet Cong, we would be the proverbial fish in a barrel---the first and imperative target for enemy forces to eliminate. "Cut off the head and you kill the body" was the old adage that came to mind.  We were the centralized conduit, the "motherboard" of the entire area of operations.

The Headquarters bunker was at the North Gate of the base camp, only a hundred yards from the razor-wired perimeter.  The door to my left, when seated at my duty station, was my responsibility, should V.C. sneak through or overrun the sentries stationed at the wire.  The door to our immediate front from which we entered and departed the T.O.C., would most likely be the line of mass entry by the enemy on a major assault.  M-16’s were always within our reach.

Not even flight controllers in today's busy airports deal with the level of stress we lived with every minute. Efficiency and precision were paramount. I never left without waking during sleep afterwards---if I was able to sleep at all---without rehashing and plotting coordinates, convoy progressions, enduring a ceaseless repetition of call signs, checkpoints, and plotted ambushes, and of hearing impassioned pleas for help and support. One of the worst dreams that I had recurred over and over. It was of screams for medi-vac for our wounded and being unable to remember how to contact the dust-off team. It has re-visited me, never welcome, on many occasions as the seasons of my life have unfolded.

The other two shifts, the afternoon and night shifts, were manned by experienced combat N.C.O.s of at least E-7 rank. The fact that I had no more background than the N.C.O. Academy and two levels of advanced training made me realize what an honor it was to have been chosen for the duty in the first place. As an E-4, Specialist 4th Class, I stood out in obvious diminished stature among all these distinguished and battle-tested Officers and Sergeants. I could not know that my own early promotion to Sergeant and time as an operator in the field hunting our enemy was to come in the near future. But, somewhere in that service jacket was something that told them I would not disappoint. And I don't think I did..

The official Dagger Zulu insignia for Headquarters Tactical Operation Team,
1st Infantry Division, 2nd Brigade, in Di An during the Vietnam War.

Keith Wayne Ragan

Former Headquarters Tactical Command Sergeant

Headquarters, 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division

Di An Basecamp, Republic of South Vietnam