Qualla: Operation Lincoln (Vietnam)

Operation Lincoln (Vietnam): Introduction

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The captured soldier got two things out before the shooting started. The Americans had come down in the middle of a way-station on the trail, he said, and there were more than a thousand of his comrades in the trees around them. A volley of fire ended the interrogation and mortally wounded the troop commander, Captain John Sabine. It was the afternoon of 30 March 1966, five kilometres south of the Chu Pong Massif, and twenty-eight men of the 1st Cavalry Division had just landed on top of a regiment.

Operation Lincoln (Vietnam): Beating the Rains

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Operation Lincoln began on 25 March 1966 with a simple premise: find the enemy's base areas in the western highlands before the monsoon arrived and made them impossible to reach. Intelligence pointed at the country around Duc Co, Plei Me and Thach An - the broken, forested ground...

Operation Lincoln (Vietnam): Four Days of Nothing

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

From 26 to 29 March the two infantry battalions swept west to the Cambodian border and south into the northern reaches of the Ia Drang Valley. They found almost nothing: a handful of small, inconclusive contacts, the kind of thing that produces expended ammunition and no informat...

Operation Lincoln (Vietnam): Twenty-Eight Men on the Ground

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On the afternoon of 30 March, scout helicopters of Troop B, 1st of the 9th Cavalry caught three PAVN soldiers in the open five kilometres south of the massif. They fired, and roughly thirty more men broke from the undergrowth. Troop A - twenty-eight soldiers - went in by helicopt...

Operation Lincoln (Vietnam): The Perimeter at LZ Eagle

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Half a kilometre southwest, Company A of the 1st of the 12th Cavalry landed unopposed at Landing Zone Eagle and started northwest. Concealed machine guns opened on them, wounding the company commander and killing the executive officer, and the company fell back to the landing zon...

Operation Lincoln (Vietnam): The Ledger

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 31 March the whole 1st Brigade shifted south of the Chu Pong Massif to work the battlefield and chase stragglers. General Harry Kinnard added the 3rd Brigade under Colonel Hal Moore, who had led the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry at Ia Drang in November, and put the 3rd Brigade of...