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Appropriately, the world's most mobile division (TIME, Sept. 24), the 1st Cavalry (Airmobile)—or "the First Team," as its men proudly style themselves—was among the first off the mark. Within two weeks after Johnson's announcement, the first of four supply ships carrying the bulk of the division's 428 helicopters was on its way, and on their heels came the first of the division's 16,000 men, commanded by Major General Harry William Osborn Kinnard. At the same time, an advance party of 1,000 men, 254 tons of equipment and nine "huey" helicopters was quietly whisked to Viet Nam from the division's Fort Benning base in a secret, seven-day airlift.
By late August the advance party was on the job: preparing near An Khe deep in the Viet Cong-infested Central Highlands a giant helipad for the First Team's covey of copters. The division's assistant commander, Brigadier General John M. Wright, took machete in hand to show his men how to do it, chopping away the scrub without disturbing the grass, so as to avoid dust storms as the choppers rotated in and out. Today the First Team's garrison at An Khe is the largest concentration of fighting men and machinery in Southeast Asia since the French left Indo-China in 1954—and predictably its well-turfed 12,000-sq.-ft. helipad is known far and wide as "the golf course."
Building to Stay. If "the golf course" is a triumph of sweat and ingenuity, Cam Ranh Bay, abuilding 190 miles north of Saigon, is the manifesto of American engineering. Fifteen miles long, five miles wide, deep enough for any ocean vessel, rimmed by smooth, sun-blanched beaches, Cam Ranh Bay was probably the world's most underdeveloped great natural harbor. Until, that is, four months ago—when the 4,000 men of the 35th Engineer Group went to work.
With bulldozers and dynamite, they have moved mountains of sand, built some 40 miles of road, helped construct a 10,000-ft. runway from which the first jets will blast off against the enemy next month (see map). Ammo depots, a ten-tank fuel dump with a capacity of 230,000 gal., and a T-pier are all under construction; next month a floating 350-ft. De Long pier will be towed in from Charleston, S.C.
When finished early next year at a cost that may run as high as $100 million, Cam Ranh will be a port the size of Charleston, easing the pressure on Saigon's chockablock facilities. It will need all the dock space the engineers can clear: one measure of the U.S. commitment in Viet Nam is that last January only 65,000 tons of military equipment were fed into the nation by sea; during November more than 750,000 tons will arrive—a tenfold increase. Eventually, Cam Ranh's facilities will be able to store 45 days' supply for all the U.S. forces in Central Viet Nam. As much as any single installation in Viet Nam, Cam Ranh is concrete and steel testimony that the U.S. is in Southeast Asia to stay.