Operation Sheridan Sabre — 1st Cav's First III Corps Operation (Nov 1968 – Apr 1969)
Operation Sheridan Sabre — the 1st Cav arrives in III Corps
Research page — built from primary sources. Brigade dispositions, firebase coordinates, and the day-by-day significant actions below are drawn from the 1st Cavalry Division and 1st Cavalry Division Artillery Operational Reports–Lessons Learned for the period ending 31 January 1969 (DTIC AD502597 and AD502415, both public domain).
In late October 1968 the 1st Cavalry Division was ordered out of I Corps, where it had spent the year near the DMZ and the coastal plain, and sent 570 miles south to III Corps — the provinces northwest of Saigon along the Cambodian border. The move, Operation Liberty Canyon, was later described in the division's own report as "the fastest and largest move of the Vietnam War." Division headquarters opened at Phuoc Vinh, and on 7 November 1968 the division launched Operation Sheridan Sabre, its first major III Corps operation, under II Field Force's Operation Toan Thang II. The mission was interdiction: block the NVA infiltration routes running south out of the Cambodian sanctuaries through War Zone C, the Fishhook, and the Song Be corridor into the populated areas around Saigon.
How the division was laid out
- 1st Brigade based at Tay Ninh West and worked northeastern Tay Ninh Province. Its direct-support artillery was the 2nd Battalion, 19th Artillery (105mm) — C/2/19 on LZ Mustang (XT 371820), B/1/21 (OPCON) on LZ Beverly, and the aerial rocket artillery of A/2/20 at Tay Ninh. Brigade firebases included Mustang, Beverly, Ann, Michele, Ina, White, and Grant.
- 2nd Brigade based at LZ Rita (XT 502795) and LZ Billy (XT 437845) and worked the Fishhook and the Saigon River routes. Its direct-support artillery was the 1st Battalion, 77th Artillery (-), with A/2/19 on LZ Rita. Its maneuver battalions were 2/7 Cav, 2/8 Cav, and (from 14 November) 5/7 Cav, plus the 36th ARVN Ranger Battalion. D Company, 2/8 Cav, was here.
- 3rd Brigade ("Garryowen") based at Quan Loi, interdicting Serges and Adams Road and the Song Be corridor, with 1/21 Artillery in support and B/2/19 on LZ Buttons.
The opening weeks: a string of firebase fights
- 13–14 November — LZ Dot. A regiment-size NVA force, assessed as the 95C Regiment, 1st NVA Division, tried to overrun LZ Dot (held by 3/5 ARVN Rangers and D/1/5 Artillery). Massed tube and aerial rocket artillery and tactical air broke the assault — over 3,000 artillery rounds and 1,500 rockets fired — leaving 287 NVA dead.
- 18 November — PFC Michael Cromie (D Co, 2/8 Cav) killed in an engagement. In the operation's first ten days, PFC Michael J. Cromie, a rifleman of D Company, 2/8 Cav, was killed in direct contact with the enemy — hit by RPG fragments, per CPT Henry Colavita's memoir (Colavita commanded D Co at the time) — the earliest of the archive's D Company losses of Sheridan Sabre. (His casualty record lists Tay Ninh Province; 2/8 Cav was in the 2nd Brigade's Fishhook/Binh Long AO, so the province entry is likely the same DCAS error seen on the December 4 men.)
- 25 November — LZ Ann. A coordinated NVA attack hit southwest of LZ Ann, where elements of 1/7 Cavalry were in their night position, followed by a mortar attack on the firebase. Counter-mortar fire and combined artillery repulsed it: 130 NVA killed, 30 credited to ARA.
- 27 November onward — north of Loc Ninh. Three days of bunker fighting by 1st Cav, 11th ACR, and 2/2 Mechanized Infantry elements left 205 NVA dead.
Into December — and the loss of three D Company men
On 3 December, B Company, 2/7 Cav — a sister battalion in the 2nd Brigade — was hit hard near grid XU 9302 by mortars, RPGs, .50-caliber fire, and command-detonated mines; 24 Americans were killed and Sergeant John Noble Holcomb was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.
The next morning, 4 December 1968, C and D Companies, 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry fought a sharp battle vicinity grid XT 4687, killing 39 of the enemy and capturing one prisoner and 19 AK-47s. That action took the three D Company men the archive documents on its companion page — SP4 Willie Jones, SP4 Donald Stoltz, and SSG William Williams — whose names sit on consecutive lines of Panel 37W. (The division ORLL's "C and D Companies" is a correction to the earlier record, which named only D Company.) See D Company Losses — Operation Sheridan Sabre, December 4, 1968.
A heavy first month
The opening month of Operation Sheridan Sabre was a costly one. Across November 1968 — the 1st Cavalry Division's first weeks in III Corps — eleven men of 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry and the artillery supporting it were killed, most of them in a sustained run of contact through the second half of the month along the Cambodian-border infiltration routes. This archive profiles the men with a direct D Company connection, including SP4 Ahern, an attached artillery FO's RTO (see below); as a D Company archive, it does not maintain individual profiles for the battalion's other companies.
November 26 — SP4 Raymond Ahern, killed on LZ Rita
SP4 Raymond Ahern served most of his tour with D Company, 2/8 Cav as the RTO for the artillery Forward Observer supporting the company. His administrative parent unit, C Battery, 2nd Battalion, 19th Artillery, was in direct support of the 1st Brigade at LZ Mustang, Tay Ninh Province — the source of the "Tay Ninh Province" entry on his official casualty record, and the reason this archive spent some time treating his D Company service as unconfirmed (see the superseded note that used to sit here). Two firsthand accounts have since resolved it: CPT Henry Colavita's memoir and a Virtual Wall tribute from fellow D Co soldier Larry Hackett both independently confirm his place in the company — Colavita, his own company commander, counted Ahern among D Company's own men and losses, and this archive follows that lead. He was reassigned to his post on LZ Rita one day before he was killed there on the night of 26 November 1968, when his bunker took a direct rocket hit. See SP4 Raymond Ahern, Jr. and the November 26, 1968 event page for the full account.
Help us complete the record
If you served with the 1st Cavalry Division during Operation Sheridan Sabre — in 2/8 Cavalry, in 2/19 Artillery, or on any of the firebases named above in the winter of 1968–69 — please reach us through the contribute form.
If you served with the 1st Cavalry Division during Operation Sheridan Sabre — in 2/8 Cav, in 2/19 Artillery, or at LZ Mustang, Rita, Billy, Ann, or Dot in the winter of 1968–69 — we'd like to hear from you, especially anyone who remembers the firebase actions of late November 1968.
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