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Bomb squads disarmed seven of the charges, but at 07:30 the remainder exploded with three igniting pallets of artillery shells and their Propellant bags causing a massive explosion, blast wave and mushroom cloud. Well, the piece of shrapnel A slightly wounded soldier, lying on the ground, smiles as he points to his leg as another soldier helps him. 0.04 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. remember that my right shoulder and chest were black and blue from the GV AMERICAN SOLDIERS IN F/G. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. No tactic I had learned at infantry school fit that situation, so we improvised. That night, no one slept, but instead scanned the jungles with Starlight scopes, seeing nothing. 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. charred. 0.42 8. NEARER AIR V..SMOKE 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.). The battalion made only sporadic contact and suffered few casualties. The view is from the compound of the 20th. An accurate body count could never be compiled since so many VC bodies were dragged away or were burned in the many fires that ravaged the towns and villages. 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. 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. He wanted to borrow one of our tracks. As we turned around to head back west, a tremendous blast shook the whole city of Bien Hoa. I was disappointed when I received orders to join the 9th Infantry Division. Listening to the scouts desperate fight on the radio, Charlie Company attacked with renewed vigor as we tried to get to Barnes and his men. forever the big pieces stopped. into the bunkers. Bill Langan, aka "Sparky" was on duty in the 573rd hanger at the Bird Cage and took the slide photo. [2]:347, The ARVN 53rd Regional Force Battalion was responsible for security in the countryside around Bin Ha. The 2-47 was one of several units General Weyand pulled in from the jungles to guard the Long Binh headquarters and logistical complex 15 miles northeast of Saigon. [3]:2204, On 1 February Company B, 2/3rd Infantry, Company C, 4/12th Infantry and elements of 2/47th Infantry swept Ho Nai finding only dead VC/PAVN and civilians who had been murdered by the VC or killed in the fighting in the town. 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. Most of these photos were taken in an area a few miles north of Chu Lai and south of Hoi An. ruary 1968 in support of Saigon and Long Binh Post during the TET Offen- Sive. 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. 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. 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. I have . 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. 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. Through sporadic fire, we continued northwest on Highway 15 to where it intersected Highway 1 on the western edge of Bien Hoa. LV EXPLOSIONS remembered the 1SGT told him the first thing he was to get into Under fire, Staff Sgt. Remembering Tet 1968 Fifty Years Ago - quanloi.org Now I told him that I wanted to command a company. By Vietnam terms 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. According to the VC 5th Division official history, the 3rd Battalion, 5th VC Regiment was supported by the Bien Hoa Sapper Company; its mission was to overrun the compound, which was defended by about 15 ARVN soldiers and a smattering of MACV advisers. 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. danger and the probable best course of action. and still no answer. Then things started falling out of the sky. Later, as the sun sank over the Long Binh base, they tossed a football and ate cold C rations. 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. biggest ordnance storage areas in the country. Ly's grandfather was a soldier stationed in Quang Binh during the war. We opened up with everything we had and kept driving. THE EXPLOSIONS RATTLED WINDOWS IN SAIGON, ABOUT 13 MILES (20 KILOMETERS) AWAY. 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. Bucks County Pennsylvania United States USA, Del Rio Texas Laughlin Air Force Base USA, Roxborough Pennsylvania United States USA, U-Tapao Royal Thai Air Force Base Thailand. Flames consuming huts. GV DUMP The 2-47s enemy body count came in at more than 200, while the battalion suffered only four KIA. After I got the coordinates of our objective, I yelled, Crank em up! into the radio handset. 14. sixteen guns stationed next to the western border of Vietnam. ", "I then went to the CP and tried When the Tet cease-fire period began on January 28, the battalion was called back to the vicinity of Bear Cat, a base camp near Long Thanh. Waking Dead. all personnel to the flight line. The probing attack units included VC sapper squads. I called battalion headquarters and was told to forget about them, which reinforced our sense that combat was imminent. 0.59 mortar rounds and 90 122-mm. Soon we could hear leaders moving up and down the bunker line yelling for the guards to stop firing. agreement was that the stockade prisoners would pitch our sandbags, help We use cookies on this website. "[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. Ly's father is a bricklayer. We threw grenades over the wall behind them, but hit nothing.. With the explosion of the entire ammunition dump imminent, and in the midst of exploding shells, fire and debris, the men of COMPANY B, . remember being giddy and my brain was asking What is wrong with me?. As we made the turn eastward on Highway 1, the lead platoon was ambushed. Long Binh Ammo Dump October 29, 1966 . wire on the top of LBJ (Long Binh Jail). Binh was a logistical mistake because the perimeter was so heavily armed I was well seasoned having been through all the scenarios that presented Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. His battalion was in heavy contact and he had several wounded rangers he needed to evacuate. I yelled at Lieutenant Casper and everybody looked around as the VC tore out running the last few yards to safety. The Long Binh ammo dump had exploded. Ive just been told you work for me again. The attacks by Vietcong (VC) and People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) forces were one of several major attacks around Saigon in the first days of the Tet offensive. He started During this fighting, both platoon leaders were wounded, Lieutenant Casper in the leg and Lieutenant Jones in the foot. (National Archives), On February 2, 12968, an APC passes buildings damaged by the Americans in the course of flushing out enemy troops from their hiding places in Bien Hoa. 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. Company E engaged the PAVN/VC supported by artillery fire killing 47 PAVN/VC. We were ordered to go to that church and detain every male between the ages of 16 and 80. 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. 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. 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. Tower sent the battalion S3, Major Jones, to take command, and once Alpha got moving, it did a magnificent job. [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. 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. Now someone pointed out that there were a lot of young men, all dressed in black pants and white shirts, walking among the refugees. I went through the quarters making sure everyone They bowed and looked confused. We could shoot about 21 miles into Cambodia. A soldier, who has been hit, lying prone between two other soldiers, tries to get up. Few areas of the world have been as hotly contested as the India-Pakistan border. The village of Ho Nai, now a ghost town, still smoldered.