We opened up with everything we had and kept driving. [2]:347, The ARVN 53rd Regional Force Battalion was responsible for security in the countryside around Bin Ha. "I was the 1SGT of the 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. Under fire, Staff Sgt. . 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. 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. When it went off my first thought was that it was a nuclear explosion because of the light dome that rose from the explosion. In mid-September, when Ionoff moved to battalion to become the operations officer (S3), I assumed command of Charlie Company. Ripped apart barbed wire. By July 1969 we were finally off the boats and in Dong Tam processing to head home. Alpha Company, still licking its wounds from the January 23 fight, was left intact. Privacy Policy2023 CriticalPast LLC. As I remember this night, around 12 or 12:30 a.m. the sirens U.S. troops firing small arms as they proceed across tall grass into the hamlet. was his helmet and flack jacket! 10. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. The mushroom cloud slowly dissipated after hours of The progress was slow and ammunition was becoming a scarce, particularly grenades, which city fighting consumes at an enormous rate. Refine Your Search Long Binh Vietnam 1968 stock footage and images - Showing 1 to 6 of 5537 results Sort by: All All Search Results Decade 1890 - 1899 (3) 1900 - 1909 (18) 1910 - 1919 (136) 1920 - 1929 (83) more Location Aalen Germany (1) Aberdeen Proving Ground Maryland USA (1) Afghanistan (2) Africa (3) more Akron Ohio USA (3) He started bunker. He wanted to borrow one of our tracks. The bombs descend and explode on structures in grove of trees near rice paddies 23 miles east of Binh Thuy on 19th August. Unfortunately for the VC, they had no weapons other than the RPG launcher. We were in a cloud of disarray remembered the 1SGT told him the first thing he was to get into Troops opened their attacks with volleys of grenades, then charged in shooting. more Kortuem! Shoe of soldier on ground. Charlie Companys 3rd Platoon was also detached for a security mission inside the base. 0.04 Tower sent the battalion S3, Major Jones, to take command, and once Alpha got moving, it did a magnificent job. Explosion at Long Binh ammunition storage facility. bore in my M14 barrel had begun to flake off and the wooden stock was Tower ordered Charlie Company to attack eastward to clear the village of Ho Nai, a suburb of Bien Hoa. Charlie Company slammed into the VC before they could get their attack organized. As the ammo dump burst into flames, secondary explosions erupted in other storage areas, and . 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. CU SIGN "NO SMOKING" Relevant to these events; post recollections and descriptions, questions,. 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. VC informants inside the base had provided detailed information as to the base layout and defenses. 1 comment. With small-arms fire cracking overhead, young girls carrying bottles of Coca-Cola were trying to sell them to the troops. When Lieutenant Casper jumped up, our legs became entangled and I tripped him, Ax remembers. However the VC/PAVN never made another ground attack on an air base and moved to attacks by fire with rockets, mortar and artillery. door at the petroleum dump ruptured and fuel flowed down the ditch in Troops opened their attacks with volleys of grenades, then went in shooting. Get under! Unconfirmed reports reports said the blasts were . Click Here. This article was written by John E. Gross and originally published in the February 2008 issue of Vietnam Magazine. 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. [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. At about 0600, Lt. Col. John Tower, the new battalion commander, called with orders. I 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. 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. He wanted to borrow one of our tracks. 5. Long Binh ammo dump was one of the One reference claims that 4 February 1967 was the date, and another claims that 28 March was the date. At that time, I received a call on my company frequency from the battalion commander, Colonel Tower, asking how things were going. Jeep parked along road. for days and days. Meanwhile, Hueys reported VC running from the village. When I arrived at 9th Division in June, I was shocked to learn that I was going to a mechanized battalion. There was much (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. the country where resupply was easier for the enemy. We began detaining the well-dressed young men among the refugees. 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. 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. Company B, 2nd Battalion, 39th Infantry Regiment had arrived by helicopter from Bearcat and joined up with 2/47th Infantry to sweep the Widows Village. . The S3 also told Charlie Companys noncombatants to report to battalion headquarters. 4. Which date was it? We suffered more wounded during the trip back to III Corps, where I was called to a meeting in the headquarters. By 1968 the Bien Hoa-Long Binh complex was the largest US/South Vietnamese military base in South Vietnam. and completely out of sync. OK. While I was in training, my motivation was to get these wings and I wear them today proudly, the airman recalled in 2015. As you know there were no officers 13. Dismounted troops of the 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Regiment, 9th Infantry Division, stay close to their M-113 armored personnel carriers (APCs) as they clear Widows Village, near Long Binh Army Post, of Viet Cong who had overrun it during the Communist 1968 Tet Offensive (National Archives). The only trouble was that Charlie Company tracks were sitting in the road right in front of their bunkers. A VC commander captured later in the battle revealed that his orders were only to start the attack after several hundred rockets had hit the Plantation, but as the rocket sites had been neutralized before the rocket threshold was reached, the ground assault on the Plantation never began. We began to pop hand-held flares so they could see we were there, but the shooting persisted, one round hitting my track. We were ordered to go to that church and detain every male between the ages of 16 and 80. [2]:347[3]:225, At 03:00, the PAVN 84A Artillery Regiment began a barrage of approximately 100 82-mm. 0.28 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. APCs advance, firing 50 caliber machine guns. [3]:220, When the Company F, 51st Infantry LRRP team reported VC/PAVN moving past their position a reaction force from Company C, 4/12th Infantry mounted on ACAVs was sent to investigate. 4 "Late in the war" 1 comment. 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. Incredibly, nobody in my company had been killed the day before. NEARER AIR V..SMOKE out of the sky. Charlie Company reacted quickly to reinforce Alpha, and a daylong fight ensued. Aerial view of Long Binh Post in Vietnam. One of the children in the Hope System of Care is Nguyen Thi Ly, born in 2001 with a deformed face, head and chest. 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. Contact Us | https://www.historynet.com/tet-offensive-the-battles-of-bien-hoa-and-long-binh/, Jerrie Mock: Record-Breaking American Female Pilot, When 21 Sikh Soldiers Fought the Odds Against 10,000 Pashtun Warriors, Few Red Tails Remain: Tuskegee Airman Dies at 96. 6 comments. USAF McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II bomber aircraft drop two Mk.84 HD bombs. The Vietnamese general and the III Corps G3 adviser, however, were not very happy when we pulled out. 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. 14. LV EXPLOSIONS Updated 7/26/2015. The 2nd Platoon pulled the damaged track out of the side street and towed it back to the III Corps compound. in bunker) at first light to the sound of a M-60 chattering away. Battalion policy was that we had to fill in all holes and empty our sandbags each time we left a position. My Account | This article incorporates public domain material from the .mw-parser-output cite.citation{font-style:inherit;word-wrap:break-word}.mw-parser-output .citation q{quotes:"\"""\"""'""'"}.mw-parser-output .citation:target{background-color:rgba(0,127,255,0.133)}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-free a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-free a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Lock-green.svg")right 0.1em center/9px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .id-lock-registration a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-registration a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Lock-gray-alt-2.svg")right 0.1em center/9px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-subscription a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-subscription a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Lock-red-alt-2.svg")right 0.1em center/9px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .cs1-ws-icon a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg")right 0.1em center/12px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .cs1-code{color:inherit;background:inherit;border:none;padding:inherit}.mw-parser-output .cs1-hidden-error{display:none;color:#d33}.mw-parser-output .cs1-visible-error{color:#d33}.mw-parser-output .cs1-maint{display:none;color:#3a3;margin-left:0.3em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-format{font-size:95%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-left{padding-left:0.2em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-right{padding-right:0.2em}.mw-parser-output .citation .mw-selflink{font-weight:inherit}Air Force Historical Research Agency. sixteen guns stationed next to the western border of Vietnam. After much frequency changing, I finally got the commander of the bunker guards on the radio. As 1st Lt. Brice Barnes led his scouts into Ho Nai, he ran full speed into a hornets nest. The scout platoon had fought . When I arrived at 9th Division in June, I was further shocked to learn that I was going to a mechanized battalion, rather than be assigned to one of the battalions in the Delta where I could use my light infantry and Ranger school experience. John Gross received the Silver Star for his actions in command of Charlie Company on the first day of the Tet Offensive. Dong Ha vietnam 1968 | Dong Ha ammo dump explosion from NVA artillery fire. As the scouts escaped, the volume of enemy fire began to slacken, then died altogether. 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. The battle was significant, since Alphas leadership was seriously depleted during the days immediately prior to Tet. The only trouble was that Charlie Company tracks were sitting in the road right in front of their bunkers. We could ride, walk or be airlifted to war, and we arrived with many times the ammo and equipment that could be lifted in by helicopter. The progress was slow and ammo was becoming scarce, particularly grenades, which get consumed at an enormous rate in city fighting. 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. Charlie Company was ordered to a large open field across Highway 15 from the Long Thanh airfield.
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