I sounded off, "who is there"? At dawn on 2 February the US counted approximately 50 VC/PAVN dead in the area and captured 3 VC. Click Here. Come back up on the battalion freq. I had never been so happy in my life. 2,400,000 pounds of 8 inch high explosive artillery projectiles. That night, frightened bunker guards in the 199th compound shot into the darkness to their front. sixteen guns stationed next to the western border of Vietnam. We were west of Highway QL1 along a road named 535. At about 6 a.m., Lt. Col. John Tower, the new battalion commander, called with orders. The 2-47s scout platoon had just finished a brutal fight in Widows Village, and at 1600 hours, it was ordered to move to the junction of Highways 1 and 316, and to attack westward through the village of Ho Nai toward Charlie Company, in the hope of pinning the VC between us. 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. the light dome that rose from the explosion. 8. Bien Hoa Air Base was the largest air base in the country, home to over 500 United States Air Force (USAF) and Republic of Vietnam Air Force (RVNAF) aircraft, while Long Binh Post was the US Army's largest logistics base, headquarters of II Field Force, Vietnam, the 199th Light Infantry Brigade (199th LIB) and the 12th Aviation Group and home to over 20,000 US personnel. There was much Benny Toney, the 2nd Platoon sergeant, hooked a tow cable to Stormy. Incredibly, nobody in my company had been killed the day before. Then and I was well seasoned having been through all the scenarios that presented This was no surprise to us, since we could plainly hear the enemy rounds slamming into Long Binh. He manned the .50 and, with a Charlie Company driver, headed down Highway 1. As time passed, I became a mechanized soldier. who was tossed into a sewage ditch by the explosion, remembers 'killing the jeep' with his M-16. In addition to the US bases, the city of Bin Ha was the headquarters of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) III Corps and home to a large prisoner of war camp. I had inherited the job . bore in my M14 barrel had begun to flake off and the wooden stock was on the water tower". Fred Casper, one of the bravest of the brave, was killed during the May offensive at the Y Bridge in Saigon, leading from the front as was his custom. Not only would I not finish my command tour, I was being assigned to a leg division. night on alert at the Birdcage, I was awakened (trying to sleep However, Charlie Company slammed into the VC before they could organize their attack. Realizing we were driving past our objective, I halted the company and called for the 2nd Platoon to find a place to turn around. Destroyed and burned out ammunition pad shows burned out 105mm howitzer shells. Normally, operations orders issued over the radio were encoded and sent by the operations officers radio operator. Website Terms & Conditions | The explosion echoed over an area of 50 miles. The attacks were repulsed with the VC/PAVN suffering heavy losses, having inflicted minimal damage on the bases. The scout platoon had fought . 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. I was not sure what to do about the bunkers we had dug. All rights reserved. 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. We packed up all of our gear, rolled up our concertina wire and waited. forever the big pieces stopped. As my airborne mentality faded, I learned to love the M-113or track, as we called it. Unconfirmed reports reports said the blasts were . Then things started falling out of the sky. As the 2/47th Infantry approached the town a Vietnamese warned that it contained many VC and the VC then launched an ambush on the column knocking out 3 ACAVs with RPGs setting off a 4-hour battle as the US forces engaged the VC position and rescued the survivors in the damaged ACAVs. The ARVN general and III Corps G3 adviser, however, were not happy when we pulled out. Just then a three-man VC RPG team calmly walked across the street right in front of the damaged APC. GV EXPLOSIONS AND FIRES Troops opened their attacks with volleys of grenades, then went in shooting. We could ride, walk or be airlifted to war, travel great distances in a short amount of time, and arrive with many times the ammunition and equipment that could be lifted in by helicopter. All I could think of to say was, Please clear that weapon!During the meeting, a master sergeant adviser to a Vietnamese ranger battalion ran into the compound. As the Hueys rockets smashed the VC strongpoint, the scouts fought their way out of the encirclement and evacuated their dead and wounded. I had been in Vietnam about nine months. The two of them refused evacuation and neither reported his wound. Long Binh, again (Feb. 1967). NEARER AIR V..SMOKE Perpetual Siege region. LV WATER TRUCKS ALONG ROAD, EXPLOSION IN B/G. 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. door at the petroleum dump ruptured and fuel flowed down the ditch in [2]:347, At 01:00, a 6-man LRRP from Company F, 51st Infantry Regiment spotted PAVN/VC moving through rubber trees several hundred meters to the north of Long Binh Post. Satchel charges blew pallets of artillery ammunition, creating a mushroom cloud that made us think the VC had set off a tactical nuclear weapon. We were in a cloud of disarray U.S. air strikes in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. All day civilians had been darting from their homes and running from the fighting. When I arrived at 9th Division in June, I was shocked to learn that I was going to a mechanized battalion. As the 2nd Platoon began to run short, Spc. AIR V..EXPLOSION Rambo claims that the bunker guards were MPs with the call sign of Filmy Milker. According to him, I told their commander that any fool could see that the VC did not have M-113s, and that we had 22 .50-calibers and a 106mm recoilless rifle and they, for sure, did not want us to return fire. Other than temporarily disrupting operations at Bien Hoa AB for half a day and destroying ammunition at the Long Binh ammunition dump, the VC/PAVN inflicted minimal damage to the Bien Hoa-Long Binh complex. The attacks on Bin Ha, Bien Hoa Air Base and Long Binh Post, occurred during the early hours of 31 January 1968 and continued until 2 February 1968. The battle proved significant, as Alphas leadership was seriously depleted immediately prior to Tet. ", "I then went to the CP and tried 6. We found out later from captured VC that many guerrillas had been given only two magazines for their weapons. Love was so startled, he didnt fire. As you know there were no officers When the G3 adviser told me to lend the rangers a track, I told the sergeant that the M-113 was not a tank and to be careful with it. 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. 0.35 Suddenly he came upon a VC RPG team drawing a bead on my command track, which was a prime target given the number of radio antennas jutting from it. 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. [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. 1.13 When Lieutenant Casper jumped up, our legs became entangled and I tripped him, Ax remembers. October continued with construction efforts. Rocket Attack on Dong Tam - July 10, 1969. Come back up on the battalion freq.. The colonel explained that since we were infantry soldiers and did not know the proper method of searching a house, he and his crew had come to teach us. was out of the bldgs. Meanwhile, Huey gunships reported VC running from the village. Get under! AIR V..AMMUNITION DUMPS AND FIRES The recon platoon was ordered to establish a blocking position south of Long Binh on Highway 15. 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. Under fire, Staff Sgt. We opened up with everything we had and kept driving. 102 comments 105 shares. 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. Then a report came in that a body had been found wearing a white shirt under a black pajama tunic. In another sign that the situation was serious, the battalion commander himself gave map coordinates of company objectives in the clear. During the Vietnam War, the U.S. Army used the base as a logistics and command center. I called battalion headquarters and was told to forget about them, which reinforced our sense that combat was imminent. Soon we could hear leaders moving up and down the bunker line yelling for the guards to stop firing. My only previous contact with M-113 armored personnel carriers (APCs) was during a training exercise at the officers basic course. Then, for the last week in January, the 2-47 was sent south of the 9th Divisions base camp to patrol the jungles east of Highway 15, near the Binh Son rubber plantation. Set. The churches were cleared in short order. Few areas of the world have been as hotly contested as the India-Pakistan border. There, Charlie Company soldiers joined ARVN and U.S. MACV soldiers manning the walls. and still no answer. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. Now Sergeant was already tucked under a 5 ton truck parked about 50 feet At that moment, a burst of VC machine gun fire erupted, 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. In mid-September, when Ionoff moved to battalion to become the operations officer (S3), I assumed command of Charlie Company. We usually got mortared at night whenever Dong Tam was getting it from our district. 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.