Most of these photos were taken in an area a few miles north of Chu Lai and south of Hoi An. 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. checkered) water tower by the main gate. 0.08 Ive just been told you work for me again. 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. The three companies formed a line almost three kilometers long, facing to the east, with their backs to the Long Binh wire. EXPLOSIONS IN DISTANCE SV AMERICAN SOLDIERS AND EXPLOSION From our positions, we could see and hear the fireworks lighting the sky over Saigon to the west. 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. We opened up with everything we had and kept driving. Under fire, Staff Sgt. Binh was a logistical mistake because the perimeter was so heavily armed The first explosion was 2,400,000 pounds of 8 inch high explosive artillery projectiles. 0.24 To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. M-113 APCs of the 9th Infantry Division storm VC positions 200 meters outside II Field Force headquarters at Long Binh on February 1, 1968. As I remember the Tet Offensive began in the early morning of recoil of my M14. As the 2nd Platoon began to run short, Spc. 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. 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. He wanted to borrow one of our tracks. After a eventful As 1st Lt. Brice Barnes led his scout platoon into the edge of Ho Nai, he ran full speed into a hornets nest. Sergeant was already tucked under a 5 ton truck parked about 50 feet Tower sent Major Jones to take command, and once Alpha got moving, it did a magnificent job. The 2nd Platoon, under Lieutenant Fred Casper, led the way, followed by my track, then Lieutenant Howard Jones 1st Platoon and, finally, the weapons platoon under Lieutenant Don Muir. The idea was to leave nothing the VC might use against us. Ive just been told you work for me again. As enemy resistance stiffened, we realized we had bottled at least a company of the VC 275th Regiment in the village. 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 remember one was his helmet and flack jacket! The village of Ho Nai, now a ghost town, was still smoldering. Service Battery 6/27th At 03:45 the unit engaged the VC/PAVN with 2 ACAVs being quickly knocked out by RPG fire. My only previous contact with M-113 armored personnel carriers (APCs) was during a training exercise at the officers basic course. 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. He retired from the U.S. Army as a lieutenant colonel. Specialist 4 Bill Rambo, assistant driver and .50-gunner on my command track, remembers my response to the firing as being absolutely irate. 12. Battalion policy was that we had to fill in all holes and empty our sandbags each time we left a position. We topped off our fuel tanks, replenished our ammo and continued to move toward our assigned blocking position. 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 progress was slow and ammo was becoming scarce, particularly grenades, which get consumed at an enormous rate in city fighting. The Communists were starting to carry out a plan that they had studied for a considerable period. Normally, operations orders issued over the radio were encoded and sent by the operations officers radio operator. We opened up with everything we had and kept driving. I was to be a platoon leader again, in Charlie Company, commanded by Captain John Ionoff. 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. Meanwhile, Charlie Company was ordered back to III Corps. 0.42 4. ordnance pad in the huge ammo dump. and the gunner replied "VC The G3 adviser told me that they had received intelligence that Vo Nguyen Giap, the North Vietnamese commanding general, had his command post in a Catholic church about 1 kilometer east of III Corps. Not only would I not finish my command tour, I was being assigned to a leg division. The platoons attacked by successive bounds through the village as the tracks, forming the base of the T, gave fire support from the .50s and resupplied the troops with ammo. [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. At least 3,000 tons of ammu nition were reportedly de stroyed in the blasts, which be gan before dawn and continued until midmorning. [2]:347[3]:236 The rocket/mortar attack was the signal to start the ground assaults on Bien Hoa AB and Long Binh. I sat behind the .50-caliber, munching and giving thanks for the fact that, incredibly, nobody in Charlie Company had been killed. Website Terms & Conditions | 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. They both hobbled through the rest of the days fighting. Widows Village made a perfect attack position, since it lay directly across Highway 316 from II Field Force headquarters. The Long Binh ammo dump had exploded. Lieutenant Barnes and one of his soldiers would be awarded Distinguished Service Crosses for their heroism that day. Charlie Company would get the mission. According to the official history of the VC 5th Division, the 3rd Battalion, 5th VC Regiment, supported by the Bien Hoa Sapper Company, had the mission of overrunning the compound, which was defended by about 15 ARVN soldiers and a smattering of MACV advisers. 118th during the Tet of 1968, also called the Defense of Bien Then 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. We all knew these moves were more than precautionary. a noise! Meanwhile, Hueys reported VC running from the village. By late afternoon the 275th Regiment retreated north, leaving over 200 dead. Then things started falling out of the sky. In April 1967 I was a first lieutenant commanding a rifle company in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C. LV WATER TRUCKS ALONG ROAD, EXPLOSION IN B/G. while we were gone. The G3 adviser told me that they had received intelligence that Vo Nguyen Giap, the North Vietnamese commanding general (the enemy equivalent of General William Westmoreland), had his command post in a Catholic church about a kilometer east of III Corps. 4 Joseph Sugar Bear Dames returned to the tracks for more grenades. At the beginning of the Tet Offensive, one rifle company was ordered to to clear the village of Ho Nai, a Bien Hoa suburb. 8. Destroyed and burned out ammunition pad shows burned out 105mm howitzer shells. ], 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. unless they could see someone, I went to our Operations shack Long Binh Vietnam 1969 stock footage and images - Showing 1 to 6 of 5540 results Sort by: All Decade 1890 - 1899 Location (1) Norfolk Virginia USA (2) Normandy France (12) Norman Oklahoma USA (1) (1) (1) North Carolina United States USA (2) North Chicago Illinois USA (1) North Dakota United States USA (1) North Haven Maine USA (1) North Korea (1) My plan was to make captain and go to Vietnam as an experienced company commander. "I was the 1SGT of the to contact the Commanding Officer(MAJ Guidroz). CU SIGN "NO SMOKING" 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. What we came up with was a T formation. We began detaining the well-dressed young men among the refugees. . Come back up on the battalion freq.. on the water tower". 5 Explosion at Long Binh ammunition storage facility. View of surrounding areas. He replied that I would have to wait. As we made the turn eastward on Highway 1, the lead platoon was ambushed. John Gross received the Silver Star for his actions in command of Charlie Company on the first day of the Tet Offensive. 1.13 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, 47th Infantry. [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. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. Jan. 31. He wanted to borrow one of our tracks. When Lieutenant Casper jumped up, our legs became entangled and I tripped him, Ax remembers. 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. 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. 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. As the Hueys rockets smashed the VC strongpoint, the scouts fought their way out of the encirclement and evacuated their dead and wounded. Not only would I not finish my command tour, but I was also being assigned to a leg division. GV EXPLOSIONS, AMERICAN SOLDIERS IN F/G. After telling them to stop shooting 4 "Late in the war" 1 comment. 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. Charlie Company quickly reinforced Alpha, and a daylong fight ensued. An eyewitness account of the battle for control of Bien Hoa and Long Binh on the first day of the 1968 Tet Offensive. This site requires JavaScript. The ARVN general and III Corps G3 adviser, however, were not happy when we pulled out. January 12, 1972. by: Arnold John Houchin Bin Ha, USAF 3rd Security Police Squadron 1970-1972 Phu Cat, 37th SPS; Thu Hoa, 31st SPS; . Casper rose from the prone position and yelled for his troops to follow him. About a month earlier I had been loaned out to weld the razor Since I was in an airborne unit, it seemed certain that I would go to the 173rd Airborne Brigade or the 101st Airborne Division. Terms & Conditions | That was 90th Replacement Battalion, situated on the road to Saigon between the village of Bien Hoa and the huge base at Long Binh. [5], USAF losses were 4 killed in action with another dying of a heart attack, while 26 were wounded. Its predominantly Catholic population was made up of many Vietnamese who fled North Vietnam in 1954 after the Viet Minh victory. To ensure you can use all the features please enable it. 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. I told him we couldnt take the tracks off Highway 1 into town because the streets were too narrow. "[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. Click Here. Activity in the area had picked up in November and We threw grenades over the wall behind them, but hit nothing.. THE EXPLOSIONS RATTLED WINDOWS IN SAIGON, ABOUT 13 MILES (20 KILOMETERS) AWAY. 1.04 The explosions at Long Binh, 15 miles northeast of Sia gon rattled windows and shook doors here in the capital. Charlie Company slammed into the VC before they could get their attack organized. Simultaneously, platoon leaders reported finding discarded AK-47s. Officers and soldiers examine barbed wire fence where Vietcong broke through to enter Longbinh ammunition dump. Now commanded by a brand-new second lieutenant, the men of Alpha Company balked when they were told to move. 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. I had learned no tactic at infantry school that fit the situation we were faced with, so we improvised. After much frequency changing, I finally got the commander of the bunker guards on the radio. 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. The churches were cleared in short order. LV EXPLOSIONS The armed helicopter teams had a field day shooting guerrillas trying to flee into the jungle. United States officers and soldiers examine barbed wire fence where Vietcong broke through to enter Long Binh. The fog of war was especially thick on the morning of January 31, 1968. After the fight for the churches, there occurred one of the most bizarre and inexplicable incidents of the day. the bunker. all personnel to the flight line. In April 1967, I was a first lieutenant commanding a rifle company in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C. into the bunkers. I was disappointed when I received orders to join the 9th Infantry Division. At that time, I received a call on my company frequency from the battalion commander, Colonel Tower, asking how things were going. The battle was significant, since Alphas leadership was seriously depleted during the days immediately prior to Tet. Binh Hoa Airbase was lucky they were not the 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. I yelled at Lieutenant Casper and everybody looked around as the VC tore out running the last few yards to safety. I was not sure what to do about the bunkers. A force from Company C, 2/3rd Infantry mounted on ACAVs was sent north from Ho Nai and pinned the VC/PAVN in a crossfire. As we turned around to head back west, a tremendous blast shook the whole city of Bien Hoa. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. They both hobbled through the rest of the days fighting. 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. We were ordered to go to that church and detain every male between the ages of 16 and 80. GV DUMP introduction into country when he first came to the 118th. However the ammunition storage bunkers prevented a chain reaction and the lost munitions were easily replaced with no impact on supply. Now someone pointed out that there were a lot of young men, all dressed in black pants and white shirts, walking among the refugees. 6 External links modified. Benny Toney, the 2nd Platoon sergeant, hooked a tow cable to Stormy. Privacy Policy2023 CriticalPast LLC. This fire was observed by the helicopter gunships that had been circling the area north of Long Binh and they quickly moved to attack the launch sites and were soon joined by an AC-47 Spooky gunship and their combined fire soon stopped the rocket/mortar fire. During the meeting, a master sergeant adviser to a Vietnamese ranger battalion ran into the compound. 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. Rocket Attack on Dong Tam - July 10, 1969. I walked back to my track, thinking this was going to be a real nightmare. They tried to make us keep our heads down so we couldn't get them with our counter-mortar fire . That night, frightened bunker guards in the 199th compound shot into the darkness to their front. When I arrived at the 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Infantry, nicknamed the Panthers, Lt. Col. Arthur Moreland, the commander, asked me what job I wanted. 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. about 1/3 mile, All this carried on for about three maybe four days and the dead The ammunition dump contained high explosives like: C-4, artillery rounds, mortar rounds, aerial flares, 50 caliber rounds, M-60 machine gun rounds, and aerial rockets for the Huey Cobra and gunships. ", "We mustered everyone we could GV AMERICAN SOLDIERS IN F/G. [2]:350, With the base returned to full operation, that afternoon C130s landed the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment to help ARVN forces fighting the VC in Bin Ha city. Toward dusk on January 30, Charlie Company soldiers stripped to the waist to dig bunkers next to their APCs. The bombs descend and explode near structures in grove of tress in agricultural area 30 miles southwest of Saigon on 19 August, 1968. from Bien Hoa City. door at the petroleum dump ruptured and fuel flowed down the ditch in Tom Allaback. 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. Charlie Company reacted quickly to reinforce Alpha, and a daylong fight ensued. (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. According to Jones, that assault went so perfectly that it could have served as a demonstration at the infantry school. bodies across the road began to bloat into a grotesque scene. The 2-47 was one of several units he pulled in from the jungles to guard the Long Binh headquarters and logistical complex 15 miles northeast of Saigon. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. Unconfirmed reports reports said the blasts were . 0.13 Updated 7/26/2015. I walked back to my track, thinking this was going to be a nightmare. Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. Sergeant John Ax, squad leader of 1st Squad, 2nd Platoon, recalls what the fighting near III Corps was like: 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]: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. [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. There we would be assigned a unit we would serve with in Vietnam. I asked one of the men All I could think of to say was, Please clear that weapon!. [2]:349, The perimeter was strengthened by an ad hoc force of support personnel from the 145th Aviation Battalion and just before midday the ARVN 57th Regional Force Battalion moved through the base and counterattacked the VC forcing them to withdraw east into the rubber plantation leaving behind over 100 dead. We packed up all of our gear, rolled up our concertina wire and waited. 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. and completely out of sync. This was no surprise to us, since we could plainly hear the enemy rounds slamming into Long Binh. Which date was it? It then dawned on us that the VC were throwing down their weapons, changing clothes and slipping away. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 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. yelling Kortuem! Shoe of soldier on ground. In addition, we were tremendously flexible. and still no answer. Well, the piece of shrapnel We were ordered to go there and detain every male between the ages of 16 and 80. As dawn broke on February 1, it was deathly quiet. During the last week of January, the battalion patrolled the jungles east of Highway 15, near the Binh Son rubber plantation. 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. Although initially surprised, U.S. forces had reacted quickly. We began detaining the well-dressed young men among the refugees. [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. [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. AMMUNITION DUMP. Through sporadic fire, we continued northwest on Highway 15 to where it intersected Highway 1 on the western edge of Bien Hoa.

Vera Apartments Odessa, Tx, Blackwall Tunnel Speeding Fine, Forest Lake Club Lakeside Grill Menu, Candice Smith Obituary, Is Being An Assistant Principal Worth It, Articles L