That night, frightened bunker guards in the 199th compound shot into the darkness to their front. To get to the church, we had to run a gantlet of fire, through the VC 238th Regiment and into the flank of the 275th, which was fighting the 2-47s scout platoon in Widows Village. I had been in command for five months and had been assured that I would be in command for one year, which suited me fine. 12. At dawn on 2 February the US counted approximately 50 VC/PAVN dead in the area and captured 3 VC. The S3 also told Charlie Companys noncombatants to report to battalion headquarters. The 2nd Platoon took the one north of the road, the 1st Platoon attacked the other. Simultaneously, platoon leaders reported finding discarded AK-47s. Bringing that volatile convoy through the city, which had not been totally cleared and was still burning in many places, was a tremendously heroic act. agreement was that the stockade prisoners would pitch our sandbags, help [6]:12, Several dozen of the PAVN rockets exploded near the II Field Force and 199th LIB headquarters in the Plantation Compound (105728N 1065241E / 10.9577N 106.878E / 10.9577; 106.878) causing minimal damage. I Tower had called and told me that Charlie Company was under the operational control of III Corps and I was to take my orders from them. wire on the top of LBJ (Long Binh Jail). The Long Binh ammo dump had exploded. At dusk, airstrikes had to be called in to blast the VC from the hill. convoy about two days before and were repairing anything that had failed In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. We suffered more wounded during the trip back to III Corps, where I was called to a meeting in the headquarters. Company E engaged the PAVN/VC supported by artillery fire killing 47 PAVN/VC. Ive just been told you work for me again. We had returned from a Anyone can read what you share. I went through the quarters making sure everyone Privacy Policy2023 CriticalPast LLC. 4 "Late in the war" 1 comment. Officers and soldiers examine barbed wire fence where Vietcong broke through to enter Longbinh ammunition dump. The Vietnamese brigadier general, who was the ranking man at III Corps, drew circles around two equal-sized areas of downtown Bien Hoa. It then dawned on us that the VC were throwing down their weapons, changing clothes and slipping away. In addition we detained more than 20 probable VC fighters dressed in civilian clothes. Smoke rises from surrounding area. About 30 minutes later, the track was back with only the driver, who reported the ranger sergeant had been killed and that it had been impossible to get the wounded. -- color photo Near Moc Hoa. When it went off my first thought was that it was a nuclear explosion because of the light dome that rose from the explosion. As dawn broke on February 1, it was deathly quiet. I told him about the order to clear an area of operations equal in size to that assigned the airborne battalion.He said: Forget that. We found out later from captured VC that many guerrillas had been given only two magazines for their weapons. During December we made little enemy contact, probably because the Communists were lying low, preparing for Tet. Contact Us | Most of we RAD 152 crew members arrived in-country on July 22, 1968. 939939. Get under! At the beginning of the Tet Offensive, one rifle company was ordered to to clear the village of Ho Nai, a Bien Hoa suburb. We rolled through Long Binh and out the main gate, then turned onto Highway 316. Several M 113 armored personnel carriers (APCs) are seen accompanying the troops. The offensive continued until the end of the month in the North part of 0.13 Several of his tracks were hit by RPGs and surrounded by the enemy. resulting in the explosion of the ammo dump at Bin Ha Air Base. On that fateful night, explosions began at the bomb dump, I immediately responded to CSC as the SP's . As 1st Lt. Brice Barnes led his scouts into Ho Nai, he ran full speed into a hornets nest. This article was originally published in the February 2006 issue of Vietnam Magazine. The acting commander of the 199th LIB, Col. Frederic E. Davison, ordered three of his infantry companies operating north of Long Binh to attack the rocket launch site, while LG Weyand ordered the 9th Infantry Division to send the 1st Brigade from Bearcat Base. We began detaining the well-dressed young men among the refugees. Now commanded by a brand-new second lieutenant, the men of Alpha Company balked when they were told to move. We had run through the rear of the 274th VC Regiment, which was attacking the airfield. USAF McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II bomber aircraft drop two Mk.84 HD bombs. Just then a three-man VC RPG team calmly walked across the street right in front of the damaged APC. We use cookies on this website. I assigned areas of operation to my two rifle platoons, and positioned the weapons platoon inside the compound as a reserve and security force. Hide. By some veterans' accounts, it had the unofficial name "Long Binh Junction." In 1968, the base fell under attack during the Tet Offensive, and the Viet Cong assault force was repelled by American troops. II Field Force commander LG Frederick C. Weyand had also ordered the 9th Infantry Division to be prepared to send its 1st Brigade from Bearcat Base 16km south of Long Binh to Bien Hoa-Long Binh in the event of an attack. all personnel to the flight line. on the water tower". This site requires JavaScript. Widows Village made a perfect attack position for the VC, since it lay directly across Highway 316 from II Field Force headquarters in the Long Binh complex. Realizing we were driving past our objective, I halted the company and called for the 2nd Platoon to find a place to turn around. It knocked a dimple in the side of the track as I fired up the gunner., Later in the fighting, Casper and several 2nd Platoon troops were pinned down next to a building. 5. As best I could, I explained that they were to take charge and that General Giap might be among the civilians. 0.48 As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. However, Charlie Company slammed into the VC before they could organize their attack. remembered the 1SGT told him the first thing he was to get into I called battalion headquarters and was told to forget about them, which reinforced our sense that combat was imminent. But no one would be leaving the country that day. Dressed as travelers returning to ancestral homes for the Tet holiday, the guerrillas had quietly drifted into their urban assembly areas and put together their weapons. I was to be a platoon leader again, in Charlie Company, commanded by Captain John Ionoff. Most of these photos were taken in an area a few miles north of Chu Lai and south of Hoi An. A few minutes later, a jeep drove up carrying two extremely frightened white-shirted policemen. remember being giddy and my brain was asking What is wrong with me?. As we cleared the ambush, the column suddenly came to a halt because of some kind of block in the road; simultaneously, someone keyed the company net. around Bien Hoa Airbase and headed toward our post of Long Binh, then Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter with top stories from master historians. HANOI, North Vietnam, June 1 (Agence FrancePresse)An American major was captured last month in a Communistcon trolled area of northern Laos by Pathet Lao forces, a Laotian representative said here today. The progress was slow and ammunition was becoming a scarce, particularly grenades, which city fighting consumes at an enormous rate. We threw grenades over the wall behind them, but hit nothing.. By July 1969 we were finally off the boats and in Dong Tam processing to head home. As the scouts escaped, the volume of enemy fire began to slacken, then died altogether. I HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. Not only would I not finish my command tour, but I was also being assigned to a leg division. I remember telling him that if the shooting persisted, or if they hit one of my troops, I wouldnt be responsible if my troops shot back. [2]:352[3]:2067, At approximately 05:30, the 2nd Battalion, 47th Infantry Regiment, mounted on M113 Armored Cavalry Assault Vehicles (ACAVs) coming from Bearcat approached the Plantation from the southwest and formed a skirmish line to engage the VC, while helicopter gunships from the 3rd Squadron, 17th Cavalry Regiment swept in to rocket and machine gun the VC positions. That night, frightened bunker guards in the 199th compound shot into the darkness to their front. Under fire, Staff Sgt. But no one would be leaving the country that day. Company B, 2nd Battalion, 39th Infantry Regiment had arrived by helicopter from Bearcat and joined up with 2/47th Infantry to sweep the Widows Village. I had inherited the job I had learned no tactic at infantry school that fit the situation we were faced with, so we improvised. There, Charlie Company soldiers joined ARVN and U.S. MACV soldiers manning the walls. Attacking Long Casper rose from the prone position and yelled for his troops to follow him. The North Vietnamese Army had circled Advanced Search | I have . The first explosion was In command for five months, I had been assured that I would be leading the company for one year, which suited me fine. As usual, each company had sent two ambush patrols into the jungle to our front. I dismounted the platoons and placed them on line on each side of the road: the second on the left, or north, and the first on the right, or south. I explained to the colonel that this was not a police action, and that we werent searching houses, we were in combat. He retired from the U.S. Army as a lieutenant colonel. (Long Binh) ammunition dump. The bus ride to 90th Replacement was relatively short and everyone seemed exhausted from the long flight. I called III Corps to report that we had detained all of these people, and was told to wait for the Vietnamese National Police to take charge. "What are you firing at? " The VC/PAVN attacked the position that night in a 6 hour long assault which was met initially by US mortar and artillery fire, then helicopter gunships and then napalm strikes. This article was written by John E. Gross and originally published in the February 2008 issue of Vietnam Magazine. F-100 Super Sabre and F-4 Phantom II drop Mark 82 bombs in Vietnam during U.S. air strikes. 14. The chrome A soldier, who has been hit, lying prone between two other soldiers, tries to get up. 5 Explosion at Long Binh ammunition storage facility. charred. SP4 Lawrence Korteum The 2nd Platoon led the way under Lieutenant Fred Casper, followed by my track, then Lieutenant Howard Jones 1st Platoon and, finally, the weapons platoon under Lieutenant Don Muir. 118th during the Tet of 1968, also called the Defense of Bien and no one was injured. remember that my right shoulder and chest were black and blue from the About a month earlier I had been loaned out to weld the razor United States officers and soldiers examine barbed wire fence where Vietcong broke through to enter Long Binh. ", "We mustered everyone we could The churches were cleared in short order. To ensure you can use all the features please enable it. The Long Binh ammo dump had exploded. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. At 08:00 the VC south of the Plantation withdrew into the Widows Village. For more great articles, subscribe to Vietnam magazine today! Privacy Policy | Links Chu Lai and LZ Baldy Photos. A spokesman for the South Vietnamese command said that, according to unconfirmed re ports, satchel charges, of the type used by Vietcong sabotage squads were found near the dump. we were a bit more trigger happy than usual. We all knew that these moves were more than just precautionary. I was disappointed when I received orders to join the 9th Infantry Division. The action occurs January 31st, 1968 (on "Tet", the Vietnamese Lunar New Year holiday). bunker. Later, captured VC said many guerrillas only had two magazines for their weapons in expectation that the population would rise up against the Americans and have plenty of captured weapons to fight with. Destroyed and burned out ammunition pad shows burned out 105mm howitzer shells. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. We were in a cloud of disarray During this time, the battalion made only sporadic contact and suffered few casualties. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. 9. and completely out of sync. This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the United States Army Center of Military History. to contact the Commanding Officer(MAJ Guidroz). After a eventful Charlie Company was ordered to a large open field across Highway 15 from the Long Thanh airfield. They had been told that the population would rise up against the Americans and that there would be plenty of captured U.S. weapons to fight with. GV DUMP The view is from the compound of the 20th. They bowed and looked confused. The 2nd Platoon pulled the damaged track out of the side street and towed it back to the III Corps compound. Early on January 30, we were told the Tet cease-fire was canceled, and our unit was deployed into a defensive line along the road that ran around the east side of the Long Binh base. The gun-jeeps were progressively replaced by M113s and XM-706 Commando armored cars. (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015. They both hobbled through the rest of the days fighting. We could use our tracks as a base of fire or in a blocking position as the company maneuvered on foot. known as Widows Village. Toward dusk on January 30, Charlie Company soldiers stripped to the waist to dig bunkers next to their APCs. Some of the enemy had tunneled under the fence and exploded an flight line and I was checking the bunker for anyone, I heard As we rolled back through Bien Hoa, we were astounded to find the battalion S4, Captain Leroy Brown, in the middle of town with a 5,000-gallon fuel tanker and several ammunition trucks. As I walked around the front of a track, the .50-caliber gunner accidentally hit the trigger and pumped five rounds into the ground about three feet in front of me. [2]:347, The ARVN 53rd Regional Force Battalion was responsible for security in the countryside around Bin Ha. We packed up our gear, rolled up our wire and waited. View of surrounding areas. The Vietnamese general and the III Corps G3 adviser, however, were not very happy when we pulled out. With a push-to-talk button stuck in the transmit position, no one could use the radio. Bringing that volatile convoy through the city, which had not been totally cleared and was still burning in many places, was a tremendously heroic act. He wanted to borrow one of our tracks. VC/PAVN losses were 527 dead. Somehow the foam trucks from After we finished clearing the area around the compound and as our wounded were being dusted off, I received an absolutely incredible order from III Corps. At about 0600, Lt. Col. John Tower, the new battalion commander, called with orders. He waved me off. Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter with top stories from master historians. a noise! The VC concentrated their attack on Bunker 10 an old French concrete bunker on the eastern perimeter, hitting it with Rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and mortar fire, however the Security Police in Bunker 10 and adjacent bunkers fought back keeping the VC from penetrating far into the base. On January 23, during a battalion sweep through heavy jungle south of Highway 1, Alpha Company walked into a camouflaged, well-defended enemy bunker system and was badly mauled.
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