Then and ruary 1968 in support of Saigon and Long Binh Post during the TET Offen- Sive. to check-in and see what was going on, and found myself the only Shoe of soldier on ground. (Vietnam War period). hightForP2 = 330 The 2nd Platoon pulled the damaged track out of the side street and towed it back to the III Corps compound. 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 Commo track, C-007, nicknamed Abdula and the Rug Merchants, with Pfc (current Vietnam editor) David Zabecki behind the .50-caliber, brought up the rear. We charged southeast down Highway 316 to the Highway 15 intersection, located on a small hill overlooking the 90th Replacement Company. As enemy resistance stiffened, we realized we had bottled at least a company of the VC 275th Regiment in the village. from the petroleum dump immediately next to our position. The probing attack units included VC sapper squads. It was Terms & Conditions | Sappers had placed satchel charges on pallets of artillery ammunition, and the resulting mushroom cloud caused all its witnesses to think the VC had employed a tactical nuclear weapon. I realize now that the track was high enough that the rounds would have passed over the troops in front of the vehicle, Love recalls. In addition we detained more than 20 probable VC fighters dressed in civilian clothes. I called battalion headquarters and was told to forget about them, which reinforced our sense that combat was imminent. 118th during the Tet of 1968, also called the Defense of Bien find all the dead so the countryside smelled like a scene from The SAIGON, South Vietnam, June 1 (Reuters)Explosions ripped through a huge ammu nition dump near here today, killing one soldier and wound ing 13. Officers and soldiers examine barbed wire fence where Vietcong broke through to enter Longbinh ammunition dump. Rocket Attack on Dong Tam - July 10, 1969. 200 pounds. My plan was to make captain and go to Vietnam as an experienced company commander. all personnel to the flight line. However the ammunition storage bunkers prevented a chain reaction and the lost munitions were easily replaced with no impact on supply. Helicopter gunships took off from Bien Hoa AB to investigate, but were unable to locate the force in the darkness. LV EXPLOSIONS He started 8. I sat behind the .50-caliber, munching and giving thanks for the fact that, incredibly, nobody in Charlie Company had been killed. The platoons attacked by successive bounds through the village as the companys tracks, forming the base of the T on the highway, provided fire support from the .50s and resupplied the troops with ammunition. VC informants inside the base had provided detailed information as to the base layout and defenses. An MP full colonel, along with a deputy sheriff from Los Angeles (dressed in his deputy uniform) and two jeeploads of Vietnamese National Police, drove up to my track. to contact the Commanding Officer(MAJ Guidroz). Of course you never Charlie Companys 3rd Platoon was also detached for a security mission inside the base. The progress was slow and ammo was becoming scarce, particularly grenades, which get consumed at an enormous rate in city fighting. By July 1969 we were finally off the boats and in Dong Tam processing to head home. As the Hueys rockets smashed the VC strongpoint, the scouts fought their way out of the encirclement and evacuated their dead and wounded. The gun-jeeps were progressively replaced by M113s and XM-706 Commando armored cars. 15. Vehicles drive past on roads between the Long Binh Post area. Alpha Company, still licking its wounds from the January 23 fight, was left intact. During this fighting, both platoon leaders were wounded, Lieutenant Casper in the leg and Lieutenant Jones in the foot. An eyewitness account of the battle for control of Bien Hoa and Long Binh on the first day of the 1968 Tet Offensive. went off and all hell broke lose. We topped off our fuel tanks, replenished our ammo and continued to move toward our assigned blocking position. 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. October continued with construction efforts. 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. Contact Us | Kortuem! As was our normal practice, each company had sent two ambush patrols into the jungle to our front. 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. 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 extremely careful with it. This is the story of one rifle companycomprised of some of the finest soldiers to ever wear the uniform of the U.S. Armyand what they all faced on that decisive day. Featured Collections | Soldiers of the U.S. 2nd Battalion 47th Infantry (Mechanized) and 4th Battalion 39th Infantry clearing a hamlet during the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. 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. (Vietnam War period). License Agreement | We were in a cloud of disarray Riflemen staying close behind. We closed within a few hundred meters of the scout platoon and watched as helicopter gunships destroyed a large yellow house from which the VC were pinning down Barnes troops. 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. 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. The ARVN general and III Corps G3 adviser, however, were not happy when we pulled out. Tet Offensive: The Battles of Bien Hoa and Long Binh - HistoryNet 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. [American sources in Vien tiane said, as quoted by The Associated Press, that the captured American was prob ably the pilot of a Continent al Air Service plane that was forced to land behind Pathet Lao lines after running out of fuel. [3]:2305 By dawn the VC/PAVN were retreating northwards pursued by helicopter gunships and at 06:15 Company C, 4/12th Infantry began moving north in pursuit, intending to pin the VC/PAVN against a force from Company B, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment which was moving south. 9. As the sun sank low, we closed within a few hundred meters of the scout platoon and watched as helicopter gunships destroyed a large yellow house from which the VC were pinning down Barnes troops. Each APC could carry almost as much ammunition as a dismounted rifle company, and in a fight, the company had 22 .50-caliber machine guns, a 106mm and several 90mm recoilless rifles, and more radios and M-60 machine guns than a walking company could ever carry. night on alert at the Birdcage, I was awakened (trying to sleep Over the two month recovery and clearing operation, tens of thousands of these hazardous munitions were recoverd by hand, one at a time. 0.22 The idea was to leave nothing the VC might use against us. . During December we made little enemy contact, probably because the Communists were lying low preparing for Tet. We were ordered to go there and detain every male between the ages of 16 and 80. STOCKPILES OF BOMBS AND ARTILLERY SHELLS AT THE U.S. ARMY AMMUNITION DUMP AT LONG BINH, IN SOUTH VIETNAM, ERUPTED YESTERDAY (SATURDAY) WHEN TIME CHARGES, PLACED BY VIET CONG RAIDERS, DETONATED AMID TONS OF HIGH EXPLOSIVES. As my airborne mentality faded, I learned to love the M-113or track, as we called it. Remembering Tet 1968 Fifty Years Ago - quanloi.org We rolled through Long Binh and out the main gate, then turned left onto Highway 316. The battalion made only sporadic contact and suffered few casualties. I jumped down and ran from track to track, pounding on the sides and yelling, Check your handsets! As I ran back through the weapons platoon, I came upon an unbelievable sight. 0.28 As the afternoon of January 30 drifted toward dusk, Charlie Company soldiers stripped to the waist and dug bunkers next to their M-113s. This site requires JavaScript. I was never so happy in my life. [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. My Lightboxes | As he fell, a burst of automatic weapons fire stitched the wall right where he would have been had he not fallen. (Casper, one of the bravest of the brave, died during the May offensive in Saigon, leading from the front.). Now someone pointed out that there were a lot of young men, all dressed in black pants and white shirts, among the refugees. Our area from the 1. However, Charlie Company slammed into the VC before they could organize their attack. (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015. Policy was to fill in all holes and empty our sandbags when we left a position, to leave nothing the VC might use against us. He assigned one to the airborne battalion and the other to Charlie Company. By the evening the 2/47th Infantry withdrew into the Long Binh perimeter. -- color photo Near Moc Hoa. U.S. troops firing small arms as they proceed across tall grass into the hamlet. Simultaneously, platoon leaders reported finding discarded AK-47s. It then dawned on us that the VC were throwing down their weapons, changing clothes and slipping away. [2]:347[3]:225, At 03:00, the PAVN 84A Artillery Regiment began a barrage of approximately 100 82-mm. . 11. Charlie Company would get the mission. Bin Ha Air Base: Memories of Bin Ha, TET 1969, by Larry - VSPA At dusk, airstrikes had to be called in to blast the VC from the hill. I assigned areas of operation to my two rifle platoons and positioned the weapons platoon inside the compound as a reserve and security force. Most of these photos were taken in an area a few miles north of Chu Lai and south of Hoi An. Flames consuming huts. The 2nd Platoon pulled the damaged track out of the side street and towed it back to the III Corps compound. Long Binh ammo dump was one of the There was much As the 2nd Platoon began to run short, Spc. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. For more great articles, subscribe to Vietnam magazine today! We suffered more wounded during the trip back to III Corps, where I was called to a meeting in the headquarters. During the meeting, a master sergeant adviser to a Vietnamese ranger battalion ran into the compound. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. remember being giddy and my brain was asking What is wrong with me?. When I arrived at 9th Division in June, I was shocked to learn that I was going to a mechanized battalion. 0.35 As our medics treated the wounded, I reported to the American lieutenant colonel who was the III Corps G3 adviser. Zabecki remembers taking his place on the wall with his M-79 grenade launcher. As the C-23 track in the lead, Stormy, turned into a side street, a rocket propelled grenade (RPG) slammed into its front, smashing the radiator and wounding several soldiers. We had returned from a Maps of Heavily Sprayed Areas and Dioxin Hot Spots [2]:346, The US 199th LIB was responsible for security in the towns and countryside around Long Binh, while the 720th Military Police Battalion was responsible for security within the base perimeter. Meanwhile, Charlie Company was ordered back to III Corps. [2]:3523, General Weyand later noted that in their attacks on the Saigon area "Despite the large number of Communist troops committed, insufficient force was applied in any one area to take and hold the objectiveThe assault had been launched piecemeal and it was repulsed piecemeal in a series of relatively small battles. VC/PAVN losses were 527 dead. 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. There was an ammo dump explosion in 1968 also and both 1967 and 1968 are correct and were of course separate incidents. Aerial view of (USARV) United States Army Republic of Vietnam Headquarters Complex at Long Binh, Vietnam. Long Binh Vietnam 1969 stock footage and images - CriticalPast As the ammo dump burst into flames, secondary explosions erupted in other storage areas, and . rockets at Bien Hoa AB and Long Binh Post. When I pointed out that the 101st Battalion had more than 500 troops and I had only two line platoons and less than 90 troops, he said, Youre mechanized, youre very strong.. Having been struck by mortars or rockets, the fuel tanks at the air base, as well as several buildings throughout Bien Hoa, were burning brightly. In a fight, the company had 22 .50-caliber machine guns, a 106mm and several 90mm recoilless rifles, and more radios and M-60 machine guns than a walking company could ever carry. Widows Village made a perfect attack position, since it lay directly across Highway 316 from II Field Force headquarters. Then things started falling out of the sky. As I remember the Tet Offensive began in the early morning of HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. I was to be a platoon leader again, in Charlie Company, commanded by Captain John Ionoff. We charged southeast down Highway 316 to the Highway 15 intersection, situated on a small hill overlooking the 90th Replacement Company. As 1st Lt. Brice Barnes led his scout platoon into the edge of Ho Nai, he ran full speed into a hornets nest. it and only slightly pierced the skin a little. 0.59 Shopping Cart | This group is primarily for those Vietnam veterans who experienced the ammo dump attacks in Long Binh in 1966, '67, & '68. At 4 a.m., Jones ordered us to pull in our ambushes and be prepared to move, and told Charlie Companys noncombatants to report to battalion headquarters. The scout platoon had fought . opened his mouth but, SGT Cuffee, the supply SGT. Charlie Company quickly reinforced Alpha, and a daylong fight ensued. I had inherited the job Vietnam War-Stories.com: Sapper Attack, Ammo Dump Explosion, Bin Ha I then jacked a round into my M-16 and who would you believe Four men were killed and more than 20 wounded, including most of the officers. The only contact I had had with M-113 armored personnel carriers (APCs) was during a training exercise at the officers basic course just after I entered the Army. We opened up with everything we had and kept driving. We had run through the rear of the 274th VC Regiment, which was attacking the airfield. a noise! In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. Through sporadic fire, we continued northwest on Highway 15 to where it intersected Highway 1 on the western edge of Bien Hoa. As my airborne mentality faded, I learned to love the M-113or track. We could haul more personal gear, live more comfortably and walk less than straight-leg troops. They both hobbled through the rest of the days fighting. Zabecki remembers taking his place on the wall with his M-79. Then a report came in that a body had been found wearing a white shirt under a black pajama tunic. 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. Troops opened their attacks with volleys of grenades, then went in shooting. I walked back to my track, thinking this was going to be a nightmare. Casper rose from the prone position and yelled for his troops to follow him. on the water tower". In another sign that the situation was serious, the battalion commander himself gave map coordinates of company objectives in the clear. Suddenly he came upon a VC RPG team drawing a bead on my command track, which was marked as a prime target by the number of radio antennas jutting from it. Smoke rises from surrounding area. probably one of the best deals I had been Used for because the The Vietnamese brigadier general, who was the ranking man at III Corps, drew circles around two equal-sized areas of downtown Bien Hoa. The North Vietnamese Army had circled The 1st Platoon of Bravo Company was made the II Field Force reaction force and was placed in the PX parking lot at Long Binh. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. Talk:Long Bnh, ng Nai - Wikipedia I have . We suffered more wounded during the trip back to III Corps, where I was called to a meeting in the headquarters. Some of the enemy had tunneled under the fence and exploded an LV EXPLOSION, SIGN ON BOARD "DISNEY LAND FAR EAST" I jumped down and ran from track to track, pounding on the sides and yelling, Check your handsets! As I ran back through the weapons platoon in the pre-dawn gloom, with small-arms fire cracking overhead, I was amazed to see young girls carrying bottles of Coca-Cola, trying to sell them to the troops. [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. PDF Scanned Document - United States Army Just then a three-man VC RPG team calmly walked across the street right in front of the damaged APC. Alpha Company was ordered to the 199th LIB compound, which was under attack. As we turned to head back, a tremendous blast shook the whole city of Bien Hoa. As we rolled by, we looked down into the compound and saw soldiers in khakis, boarding passes in hand, milling about. Blood stains in ambulance. Incredibly, nobody in my company had been killed the day before. 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. Rolling back through Bien Hoa, we were astounded to come upon the battalion S4, Captain Leroy Brown, in the middle of town with a 5,000-gallon fuel tanker and several ammunition trucks. As darkness settled in, Charlie Company was ordered to move back the way it had come, to the junction of Highways 1 and 316, where we would form a screen in front of the 199th LIB base camp. The Long Binh ammo dump had exploded. During this time, the battalion made only sporadic contact and suffered few casualties. Now the fight was on. Despite the confusion and wounds, our troops returned fire. Ripped apart barbed wire. carried on into that night with tracers flying everywhere. When we arrived, we filed off the busses . [2]:347 Within Bien Hoa AB, the USAF 3rd Security Police Squadron was responsible for security manning bunkers and operating mobile patrols within the base perimeter. At 0700, as daylight was breaking, my track rolled past the ARVN III Corps compound gate. Satchel charges blew pallets of artillery ammunition, creating a mushroom cloud that made us think the VC had set off a tactical nuclear weapon. At about 6 a.m., Lt. Col. John Tower, the new battalion commander, called with orders. Hoa. 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. As the scouts escaped, the volume of enemy fire began to slacken, then died altogether. for days and days. The armed helicopter teams had a field day shooting guerrillas trying to flee into the jungle. F-100 Super Sabre and F-4 Phantom II drop Mark 82 bombs in Vietnam during U.S. air strikes. NEARER AIR V..SMOKE 90th Replacement Battalion | My Vietnam Experience border. Dames walked down a side alley toward the highway. 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. 856th RRD-Defending Long Binh - ASA LIVES I assigned areas of operation to my two rifle platoons, and positioned the weapons platoon inside the compound as a reserve and security force. Artillery 5. [3]:2515, A VC/PAVN attack on the prisoner of war camp in Bin Ha which held over 2000 prisoners was repulsed by a platoon from Company C, 4/12th Infantry and a platoon from Company D, 17th Cavalry and their ACAVs. In fact, the Communists had already infiltrated the city of Bien Hoa, suburban Ho Nai village and Widows Village, where pensioned families of deceased ARVN soldiers lived. [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. Long Binh Vietnam 1968 stock footage and images - CriticalPast We could use our tracks as a base of fire or in a blocking position as the company maneuvered dismounted. Long Bnh Post and the Vietnam War | Worlds Revealed Our arrival had canceled fears that III Corps headquarters might be overrun. We carried concertina wire, sand bags and hundreds of Claymores and trip flares to make our defensive positions practically impenetrable. The attacks were repulsed with the VC/PAVN suffering heavy losses, having inflicted minimal damage on the bases. Another VC battalion infiltrated near the area of the 3rd Ordnance (Long Binh) ammunition dump [and] in a few moments, the huge dump became a fireball. Long Binh ammo dump was one of the biggest ordnance storage areas in the country. On the morning of 31 January 1968, the Bien Hoa Air Base, III Corps HQ, the Prisoner of War Compound, and other key installations around Bien Hoa--Long Binh area received enemy mortar and rocket fire. ], The Laotian representative said six members of the Meo special forces were also cap tured with the American on May 7 in Xieng Khouang Province near the North Vietnamese bor der. This article was written by John E. Gross and originally published in the February 2008 issue of Vietnam Magazine. After commanding 180 paratroopers, taking on four APCs and 40 troops seemed like a dreamexcept that now I was responsible for troops in combat, not training. happened to hit him just over the forehead. During December we made little enemy contact, probably because the Communists were lying low, preparing for Tet. Less has been written about the danger, turmoil, chaos, confusion, contradictions and outright lunacy that confronted individual units as they responded to VC attacks on the morning of January 31. There, Charlie Company soldiers joined ARVN and U.S. MACV soldiers manning the walls. Charlie Company soldiers, used to months of patrolling and fighting in the jungles, suddenly found themselves fighting house to house as their fathers had done in World War II. I operated a heavy five The explosions at Long Binh, 15 miles northeast of Sia gon rattled windows and shook doors here in the capital. "[3]:205, The Tet offensive attacks on Bien Hoa AB and Tan Son Nhut Air Base slowly led to an improvement in air base defense across South Vietnam, with improved bunkers and heavier defensive armament including 0.50 cal machine guns, M67 recoilless rifles and M29 mortars. At the time of the 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. 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. The Commo track, C-007, nicknamed Abdula and the Rug Merchants, with then- Pfc (and current Vietnam editor) David Zabecki behind the .50-caliber, brought up the rear. Website Terms & Conditions | had defended the Long Binh ammo dump and had helped in the Widow's Village fight. Tet offensive attacks on Bien Hoa and Long Binh - Wikipedia Several soldiers gathered in front of the track to help the wounded, and Love climbed up to man the .50-caliber. [3]:218, The town of Ho Nai (105812N 1065335E / 10.970N 106.893E / 10.970; 106.893) was located on Highway 1 north of the Widow's Village and Long Binh Post. yelling Kortuem! Binh was a logistical mistake because the perimeter was so heavily armed 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. Our outfit was a They both hobbled through the rest of the days fighting. The II Field Force commander, Lt. Gen. Frederick C. Weyand, had correctly guessed that a major attack was going to come during Tet, and his anticipation of the attacks no doubt saved Long Binh and Saigon from being overrun. Charlie Company slammed into the VC before they could get their attack organized. I told him that I wanted to command a company. During Tet 1968, the 856th Radio . Service Battery 6/27th 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. As 1st Lt. Brice Barnes led his scouts into Ho Nai, he ran full speed into a hornets nest. LV WATER TRUCKS ALONG ROAD, EXPLOSION IN B/G. Not only would I not finish my command tour, I was being assigned to a leg division. August 1966 November 1966 December 1966. Each APC could carry almost as much ammunition as a dismounted rifle company. The two of them refused evacuation and neither reported his wound. officer around. 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. Company E engaged the PAVN/VC supported by artillery fire killing 47 PAVN/VC. While much has been written about Tet and the political firestorm that resulted, in the hundreds of surprise battles and skirmishes that unfolded, individual units found themselves thrust into intense danger, turmoil, chaos, confusion, contradictions and outright lunacy as they responded to Viet Cong (VC) attacks.
