Something was definitely about to happen. 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. Shopping Cart |
[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. The bombs descend and explode near structures in grove of tress in agricultural area 30 miles southwest of Saigon on 19 August, 1968. He replied that I would have to wait. As best I could, I explained that they were to take charge and that General Giap might be among the civilians. The 2-47s enemy body count came in at over 200, while the battalion suffered only four KIA. went off my first thought was that it was a nuclear explosion because of
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. 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. (Note: According to Colonel Sonny Craven, then leader of a combat photo team on the scene, these combat sequences was filmed by soldiers of the 221st Signal Company [Pictorial]). This was no surprise to us, since we could hear the enemy rounds slamming into Long Binh. All I could think of to say was, Please clear that weapon!. We found out later from captured VC that many guerrillas had been given only two magazines for their weapons. January 12, 1972. by: Arnold John Houchin Bin Ha, USAF 3rd Security Police Squadron 1970-1972 Phu Cat, 37th SPS; Thu Hoa, 31st SPS; . He started
Elements of B Company, 2/47th Infantry (Mechanized) and C Company, 4/39th Infantry, clearing North Vietnamese Army regulars from "Widows' Village" (a hamlet of housing provided by the government of the Republic of Vietnam for widows and children of fallen ARVN soldiers). As our medics treated the wounded, I reported to the American lieutenant colonel who was the III Corps G3 adviser. 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. About a month earlier I had been loaned out to weld the razor
Long Binh ammo dump was one of the biggest ordnance storage areas in the country. We threw grenades over the wall behind them, but hit nothing.. wire on the top of LBJ (Long Binh Jail). One of the children in the Hope System of Care is Nguyen Thi Ly, born in 2001 with a deformed face, head and chest. (Vietnam War period). I said again, "Who is there"? sixteen guns stationed next to the western border of Vietnam. After the cemetery had been cleared Company B, 2/3rd Infantry joined Company C, 4/12th Infantry and they made a night defensive perimeter north of Ho Nai, while the 2/47th Infantry was withdrawn to Bin Ha. Construction on the 24 th. This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the United States Army Center of Military History. 4 Joseph Sugar Bear Dames returned to the tracks for more grenades. They both hobbled through the rest of the days fighting. October continued with construction efforts. Casper rose from the prone position and yelled for his troops to follow him. One A-37 and 1 F-100 were destroyed while a further 17 aircraft were damaged. 6. We fired everything we had into the buildings lining the roadway and took several wounded while getting to the church. Most of we RAD 152 crew members arrived in-country on July 22, 1968. He ignored me and went to a nearby house where he and the deputy sheriff kicked in the front door. Fighting our way to the scout platoon, we were stopped when we came upon two large churches, straddling Highway 1, each occupied by VC. While I was in training, my motivation was to get these wings and I wear them today proudly, the airman recalled in 2015. Website Terms & Conditions |
Get under! After what seemed like
to contact the Commanding Officer(MAJ Guidroz). Script is copyright Reuters Limited. Bravo Company (one member of which was Spc. 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. Aerial view of Long Binh Post in Vietnam. 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. Several M 113 armored personnel carriers (APCs) are seen accompanying the troops. Somehow the foam trucks from
VC/PAVN losses were 527 dead. Lookout tower in the background. It was
He said his battalion was in heavy contact, and he had several wounded rangers he needed to evacuate. Riflemen moving cautiously. 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. 7. 102 comments 105 shares. Now
We carried concertina wire, sand bags and hundreds of Claymores and trip flares to make our defensive positions practically impenetrable. During this fighting, both platoon leaders were wounded, Lieutenant Casper in the leg and Lieutenant Jones in the foot. After telling them to stop shooting
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. He was alive but he suffered a busted ear drum and singed hair, eye brows and arms. Few areas of the world have been as hotly contested as the India-Pakistan border. After the roadblock was cleared and communications restored, Charlie Company continued toward its objective. NEARER V..EXPLOSIONS At the meeting I was joined by the S3 of a battalion from the 101st Airborne Division. 0.59 Riflemen staying close behind. About 30 minutes later, the track came back with only the driver, who reported the ranger sergeant had been killed and that it had been impossible to evacuate the wounded. As dawn broke on February 1, it was deathly quiet. As the C-23 track Stormy, which was in the lead, turned into a side street, an RPG slammed into its front, smashing the radiator and wounding several soldiers. I then jacked a round into my M-16 and who would you believe
By 1968 the Bien Hoa-Long Binh complex was the largest US/South Vietnamese military base in South Vietnam. Gradually, I became a mechanized soldier. 0.22 Page contents not supported in other languages. He waved me off. out of the sky. Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. On January 23, during a battalion sweep of a heavily jungled area south of Highway 1, Alpha Company walked into a well-camouflaged, well-defended enemy bunker system and was badly mauled, losing four men killed and more than 20 wounded, including almost all of the officers. At the beginning of the Tet Offensive, one rifle company was ordered to to clear the village of Ho Nai, a Bien Hoa suburb. ruary 1968 in support of Saigon and Long Binh Post during the TET Offen- Sive. opened his mouth but, SGT Cuffee, the supply SGT. Aerial view of Long Binh Post in Vietnam. At the headquarters of the 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Infantry (2-47), nicknamed the Panthers, the commander, Lt. Col. Arthur Moreland, asked me what job I wanted. AIR V..EXPLOSION (Vietnam War period). In January 1968, our battalion relocated to the area between Xuan Loc and Bien Hoa, where intelligence had located a VC battalion. 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. [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. General Patton's son, then Lt. Col. George Patton III, commander of the U.S. Army's 11th Armored Cavalry (Black Horse), positioned his tanks in between our big bunker hills . [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. Since I was in an airborne unit, it seemed certain that I would go to the 173rd Airborne Brigade or the 101st Airborne Division. [6]:12, Several dozen of the PAVN rockets exploded near the II Field Force and 199th LIB headquarters in the Plantation Compound (105728N 1065241E / 10.9577N 106.878E / 10.9577; 106.878) causing minimal damage. 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. 15. All night they scanned the jungles with Starlight scopes, seeing nothing. CU SIGN "NO SMOKING" SP4 Lawrence Korteum
Consequently, I was disappointed when I received orders to join the 9th Infantry Division. When it went off my first thought was that it was a nuclear explosion because of the light dome that rose from the explosion. At 0300 hours I received a call from Major Bill Jones, who had recently taken Ionoffs place as S3, stating 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. Satchel charges blew pallets of artillery ammunition, creating a mushroom cloud that made us think the VC had set off a tactical nuclear weapon. Explosion at Long Binh ammunition storage facility. There was an ammo dump explosion in 1968 also and both 1967 and 1968 are correct and were of course separate incidents. The remains of a stack of over 15,000 high explosive 155mm artillery projectiles after the VC attack on February 4. At 7 a.m., as daylight was breaking, my track rolled past the ARVN III Corps compound gate. The first explosion was 2,400,000 pounds of 8 inch high explosive artillery projectiles. As you know there were no officers
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 Long Binh ammunition dump had exploded. In the early morning hours on 31 January, insurgent forces launched I called battalion headquarters and asked what to do about the bunkers. Then I got a call from battalion commander Tower, asking how things were going. Few areas of the world have been as hotly contested as the India-Pakistan border. A burst of VC machine gun fire erupted nearby, 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. Lieutenant Barnes and one of his soldiers would be awarded Distinguished Service Crosses for their heroism that day. 5. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. We could haul more personal gear, live more comfortably and walk less than straight-leg troops. Get under! 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. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. As best I could, I explained that they were to take charge and that General Giap might be among the civilians. (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015. (National Archives), https://www.historynet.com/lt-col-john-e-gross-recalls-the-tet-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. 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. They ordered us to clear the VC from the houses surrounding the corps headquarters. 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. 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. LV WATER TRUCKS ALONG ROAD, EXPLOSION IN B/G. At 03:45 the unit engaged the VC/PAVN with 2 ACAVs being quickly knocked out by RPG fire. I told him we couldnt take the tracks off Highway 1 into town because the streets were too narrow. The armed helicopter teams had a field day shooting guerrillas trying to flee into the jungle. GV EXPLOSIONS AND FIRES Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter with top stories from master historians. I yelled at Lieutenant Casper, and everybody looked around as the VC tore out running the last few yards to safety. My plan was to make captain and go to Vietnam as an experienced company commander. Charlie Companys 3rd Platoon was also detached for a security mission inside the base. Ive just been told you work for me again. The attacks were repulsed with the VC/PAVN suffering heavy losses, having inflicted minimal damage on the bases. the light dome that rose from the explosion. As was our normal practice, each company had sent two ambush patrols into the jungle to our front. Normally, operations orders issued over the radio were encoded and sent by the S3s radio operator. Specialist 4 Bill Rambo, assistant driver and .50-gunner on my command track, remembers my response to the firing as being absolutely irate. When Lieutenant Casper jumped up, our legs became entangled and I tripped him, Ax remembers. We were west of Highway QL1 along a road named 535. Zabecki remembers taking his place on the wall with his M-79 grenade launcher. 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. Come back up on the battalion freq.. 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. 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. We left the clearing of Bien Hoa City in the capable hands of the 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. AIR V..FIRES During December we made little enemy contact, probably because the Communists were lying low, preparing for Tet. We began detaining the well-dressed young men among the refugees. 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 churches were cleared in short order. Featured Collections |
trooper was injured by a piece of shrapnel that had come down
The action occurs January 31st, 1968 (on "Tet", the Vietnamese Lunar New Year holiday). After much frequency changing, I finally got the commander of the bunker guards on the radio. ", "Then we were all in the bunker
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At least 3,000 tons of ammu nition were reportedly de stroyed in the blasts, which be gan before dawn and continued until midmorning. Jim Love recalls lying in a ditch near a dead civilian as the friendly fire cracked over our heads. Service Battery that supplied ordnance to the big guns in our battalion. was his helmet and flack jacket! 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. Advanced Search |
We could use our tracks as a base of fire or in a blocking position as the company maneuvered dismounted. yelling Kortuem! The 2nd Platoon pulled the damaged track out of the side street and towed it back to the III Corps compound. Barbed wire torn apart by Vietcong who infiltrated through Longbinh ammunition camp. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. As he fell, a burst of automatic weapons fire stitched the wall right where he would have been had he not fallen.. Back view of jeep with open doors. border. Several tracks were hit by RPGs and surrounded by the enemy. However, Charlie Company slammed into the VC before they could organize their attack. The progress was slow and ammo was becoming scarce, particularly grenades, which get consumed at an enormous rate in city fighting. was a point where the Ho Chi Min Trail came close to the countrys West
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Around midnight on October 29th, 1966, the Viet Cong mortared or rocketed the Long Binh Ammo Dump. the bunker. 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. With a push-to-talk button stuck in the transmit position, no one could use the radio. A few minutes later, a jeep drove up carrying two extremely frightened white-shirted policemen.
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