Combat· Vietnam War
Op DESOTO
Operation Desoto was a Marine search-and-destroy operation in the Duc Pho district of Quang Ngai Province, at the southern end of the Marine area of responsibility, where Marines relieved Vietnamese forces from outpost duty so they could shift to pacification work.
The operation put a Marine battalion into a long-contested coastal district that the Viet Cong had dominated and fortified for years, a region of villages, paddies, and hills laced with mines, booby traps, and prepared positions. The Marines swept the area against an entrenched and elusive enemy, fighting to extend control into ground the Communists had organized to their advantage, and the difficult terrain forced the entire effort to be supplied by helicopter and from a supply ship offshore. Desoto was one of the operations by which the Marines pressed into the neglected southern districts of their sector, contesting a stronghold area at a steady cost in the grinding lowland war.
Record no. 719