GV EXPLOSIONS, AMERICAN SOLDIERS IN F/G. The idea was to leave nothing the VC might use against us. A burst of VC machine gun fire erupted nearby, causing the colonel, the deputy and their Vietnamese escorts to pile into their vehicles and roar off in the direction from whence they had come. I walked back to my track, thinking this was going to be a nightmare. Back view of jeep with open doors. Featured Collections | The combat around III Corps headquarters was intense. During TET 1969 in front of Bunker Hill 17, VC sappers tried to penetrate our fence line. [3]:210 Instead at approximately 03:30 the VC began firing across the road at the Plantation Compound being met by return fire from the perimeter bunkers. All I could think of to say was, Please clear that weapon!. I told the colonel that this was not a police action, that we werent searching houses, we were in combat. charred. USAF (United States Air Force) F-100 Super Sabre jet fighter aircraft drops Mark 82 (Mk.82) high-drag (HD) bombs. build bunkers, and help pick up the dead enemy across the fence. AIR V..EXPLOSION We use cookies on this website. Even though it was about 6-8 miles away to the NE of Bien Hoa, it was plainly visible . known as Widows Village. Fires were burning late into the afternoon. door at the petroleum dump ruptured and fuel flowed down the ditch in 1.13 Unconfirmed reports reports said the blasts were the work of Vietcong sabotage teams. For additional reading, see: The Battle for Saigon, Tet 1968, by Keith Nolan; and History of the 5th Division, by Ho Son Dai and Nguyen Van Hung. Incredibly, nobody in my company had been killed the day before. Alpha Company, still licking its wounds from the January 23 fight, was left intact. Painting outside. 0.28 All rights reserved. I called III Corps and reported that we had detained all of these people, and was told to wait until the Vietnamese National Police arrived to take charge. . As a result long-range reconnaissance patrols (LRRPs) from Company F, 51st Infantry Regiment were positioned north of Long Binh to detect PAVN/VC approaching the base. He read a memorandum charging that 100 days after the signing of the Vientiane ceasefire accords, the seven men had been planning to take command of groups of saboteurs recently infiltrated into the area., See the article in its original context from. As the C-23 track Stormy, which was in the lead, turned into a side street, an RPG slammed into its front, smashing the radiator and wounding several soldiers. ", "We mustered everyone we could a noise! find all the dead so the countryside smelled like a scene from The This article was written by John E. Gross and originally published in the February 2008 issue of Vietnam Magazine. When I pointed out that the 101st Battalion had more than 500 troops and I had only two line platoons and fewer than 90 troops, he said, Youre mechanized, youre very strong., I told him we could not take the tracks off Highway 1 and into town because the streets and alleys were too narrow. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. 3. Flames illuminated the clouds, forming an eerie glow; flares hung in the sky and helicopter gunships crossed back and forth firing red streams of tracers into the city. Charlie Company was ordered to a large open field across Highway 15 from the Long Thanh airfield. Several soldiers gathered in front of the track to help the wounded, and Love climbed up to man the .50-caliber. Some of the enemy had tunneled under the fence and exploded an 118th during the Tet of 1968, also called the Defense of Bien Chu Lai and LZ Baldy Photos. Just then a three-man VC RPG team calmly walked across the street right in front of the damaged APC. He assigned one to the airborne battalion and the other to Charlie Company. We suffered more wounded during the trip back to III Corps, where I was called to a meeting in the headquarters. Tower sent Major Jones to take command, and once Alpha got moving, it did a magnificent job. At the meeting I was joined by the S3 of a battalion from the 101st Airborne Division. In the week preceding the attack these LRRP patrols engaged 2 PAVN/VC reconnaissance teams north of Long Binh. They both hobbled through the rest of the days fighting. Love was so startled, he didnt fire. carried on into that night with tracers flying everywhere. This article was originally published in the February 2006 issue of Vietnam Magazine. We had run through the rear of the 274th VC Regiment, which was attacking the airfield. What we came up with was a T formation. However the ammunition storage bunkers prevented a chain reaction and the lost munitions were easily replaced with no impact on supply. went off my first thought was that it was a nuclear explosion because of 2023 CriticalPast LLC. The fog of war was especially thick on the morning of January 31, 1968. Jeep parked along road. Activity in the area had picked up in November and An accurate body count could never be compiled since so many VC bodies were dragged away or were burned in the many fires in the towns and villages. [2]:348, As the rockets hit Bien Hoa AB, 2 battalions of the VC 274th Regiment emerged from a rubber plantation 500m east of the eastern perimeter of Bien Hoa AB. 1968 - 1969, To See Lawrence's Service Battery Photos We were in a cloud of disarray [3]:23950, In the late afternoon of 31 January after clearing the Widow's Village 2/47th Infantry advanced into Ho Nai from the south, the town appeared deserted. 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. Realizing I had not eaten for 24 hours, I looked for some breakfast, but all I could find was a bag of pistachio nuts. 26 VC/PAVN were killed in the attack and several captured. But no one would be leaving the country that day. Normally, operations orders issued over the radio were encoded and sent by the S3s radio operator. [4], The 179th Military Intelligence Detachment of the 199th LIB had been gathering intelligence on a pending attack on Long Binh for several weeks before the attacks based on human intelligence and ground radar. As you know there were no officers We fired everything we had into the buildings lining the roadway and took several wounded while getting to the church. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Vietnam Magazine today! [2]:347 Weyand also requested the 1st Australian Task Force (1 ATF) to defend the eastern approaches to Long Binh/Bien Hoa and 1 ATF had commenced Operation Coburg on 24 January. the wrecker operator had to know how to weld. 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. As the scouts escaped, the volume of enemy fire began to slacken, then died altogether. unless they could see someone, I went to our Operations shack As the 2nd Platoon began to run short, Spc. My Lightboxes | The VC attacks on Bien Hoa and the Long Binh complex were abject failures, due in part to the fact that on January 31, 1968, they had run into the Panthers of the 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Infantry. One A-37 and 1 F-100 were destroyed while a further 17 aircraft were damaged. Sergeant John Ax, squad leader of 1st Squad, 2nd Platoon, recalls the fighting near III Corps: An RPG hit Shocker, the C-21 track, in the side; but it must have been a glancing blow, because it did not explode. [3]:2015, At 04:00 a 60-man VC sapper team penetrated the northeastern perimeter of the base killing three MPs and entered the massive ammunition dump (105646N 1065436E / 10.946N 106.91E / 10.946; 106.91) where they planted eighteen Satchel charges before being forced to withdraw by the 720th Military Police Battalion. With a push-to-talk button stuck in the transmit position, no one could use the radio. Now commanded by a brand-new second lieutenant, the men of Alpha Company balked when they were told to move. So, when I was offered a chance to go to II Field Force to help establish a new long-range reconnaissance patrol outfit, I actually turned it down to stay with the company. Aerial view of (USARV) United States Army Republic of Vietnam Headquarters Complex at Long Binh, Vietnam. 0.04 11. As we rolled by, we looked down into the compound and saw soldiers in khakis milling about with boarding passes in hand. The ARVN general and III Corps G3 adviser, however, were not happy when we pulled out. At dawn on 2 February the US counted approximately 50 VC/PAVN dead in the area and captured 3 VC. In a few moments, the huge dump became a fireball, the shock of the explosion echoing over an area of 50 miles. The VC who had fired the RPG slipped away, but Pfc Jim Love, who was tossed into a sewage ditch by the explosion, remembers killing the jeep with his M-16. As we made the turn eastward on Highway 1, the lead platoon was ambushed. In fact, VC effectiveness was so degraded that, after 1968, they were mainly replaced on the battlefield by North Vietnamese regulars, and were never a viable force after that. We never saw them again. Company B, 4th Battalion, 39th Infantry, which was placed under the operational control of the 2-47, made a combat air assault under fire into the middle of the Widows Village battle and fought bravely beside the Panthers all day long. [6]:66. Later, as the sun sank over the Long Binh base, they tossed a football and ate cold C rations. (Vietnam War period). We could use our tracks as a base of fire or in a blocking position as the company maneuvered dismounted. We suffered more wounded during the trip back to III Corps, where I was called to a meeting in the headquarters. The chrome Shoe of soldier on ground. All of these placements were made with the wrongful assumption that the VC would attack from the jungles outside the base. When it I was having a few beers with several other sailors in the outside screened patio area of the Navy EM Club when we heard a noise to our left. He waved me off. His action probably saved the lives of everyone on my track. Many of the enlisted personnel with medical MOSs work two to three days per week at the 93 rd Evacuation Hospital, then came back to the 24 th to work on the various construction projects. On January 23, during a battalion sweep of a heavily jungled area south of Highway 1, Alpha Company walked into a well-camouflaged, well-defended enemy bunker system and was badly mauled, losing four men killed and more than 20 wounded, including almost all of the officers. I had no way of knowing who it was with no light in the My plan was to make captain and go to Vietnam as an experienced company commander. Officers and soldiers examine barbed wire fence where Vietcong broke through to enter Longbinh ammunition dump. The Vietnamese general and the III Corps G3 adviser, however, were not very happy when we pulled out. The combat around III Corps headquarters was intense. He stated that Bien Hoa airbase, the Long Binh facility, the II Field Force headquarters and the 199th Light Infantry Brigade (LIB) base camp were under heavy mortar and rocket attack. During Tet 1968, the 856th Radio . USAF McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II bomber aircraft drop two Mk.84 HD bombs. We suffered more wounded during the trip back to III Corps, where I was called to a meeting in the headquarters. [7], The Tet offensive attacks and previous losses due to mortar and rocket attacks on air bases across South Vietnam led the Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Nitze on 6 March 1968 to approve the construction of 165 "Wonderarch" roofed aircraft shelters at the major air bases. introduction into country when he first came to the 118th. VC informants inside the base had provided detailed information as to the base layout and defenses. August 1966 November 1966 December 1966. We opened up with everything we had and kept driving. Each APC could carry almost as much ammunition as a dismounted rifle company. They all blew up! In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. The bombs descend and explode on structures in grove of trees near rice paddies 23 miles east of Binh Thuy on 19th August. to check-in and see what was going on, and found myself the only 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. 8. rockets at Bien Hoa AB and Long Binh Post. After the roadblock was cleared and communications restored, Charlie Company continued toward its objective. ", "Then we were all in the bunker The 2nd Platoon pulled the damaged track out of the side street and towed it back to the III Corps compound. GV DUMP As the ammo dump burst into flames, secondary explosions erupted in other storage areas, and for the next three days, fires burned out of control. No tactic I had learned at infantry school fit that situation, so we improvised. They bowed and looked confused. I yelled at Lieutenant Casper, and everybody looked around as the VC tore out running the last few yards to safety. Specialist 4 Bill Rambo, assistant driver and .50-gunner on my command track, remembers my response to the firing as being absolutely irate.

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