Operation Golf Course, An Khe

Photo by Marvin Wolf, PIO photographer, 1CAV

Operation Golf Course was the mission of the advance party, to clear the triple canopy jungle while minimizing damage to the grass below it. This involved backbreaking labor by the senior noncoms and field grades that made up most of the advance party (the rifle company that came along was not involved in clearing jungle because they were screening our expanding perimeter). We did not have a bulldozer or other earth moving equipment, so we used axes, a few small chainsaws (they were all o/a by the end of one week, machetes, Bowie knives, shovels, and two jeep winches. Once we were attacked in force and our position and mission no longer secret, we recruited thousands of local laborers (the mothers, children and grandparents of the local VC) to clear the area. That's what the shot shows. So it's not an operation at the Golf Course, it's Operation Golf Course, the mission of creating space for hundreds of helicopters that were then at sea. This photo was taken the first week of September 1965.