Days of Valor

by Robert L. Tonsetic

  AO Columbus was an area bordering the northeast corner of Central Uniontown. This area was hilly and sparsely populated with dense jungle growth covering most of the terrain. Columbus was located south of the confluence of the Song Be and Dong Nai Rivers, and was a perfect staging area for the enemy’s combat formations preparing to attack Long Binh and Bien Hoa. The 199th LIB’s 2/3d Infantry was given responsibility for conducting operations throughout this area.

  The brigade’s third infantry battalion, the 3/7th Infantry, was forward deployed to AO Haverford southwest of Saigon, and operated under the direction of the Capital Military District (CMD). AO Haverford, which included a large portion of Gia Dinh Province, stretched from the outskirts of Cholon southwest toward the Mekong Delta. Highway 4, the primary artery connecting the main population centers in IV Corps with Saigon, ran through the center of the AO. Numerous waterways and canals flowed throughout the flat terrain, most of which consisted of rice paddy areas and swamplands.

  The men of Lieutenant Colonel Schroeder’s battle-scarred Warrior battalion experienced mixed emotions when they learned that they were to be redeployed out of War Zone D to more familiar terrain around Bien Hoa and Long Binh. They had learned many lessons from the battles around Fire Base Nashua, and were reluctant to relinquish the terrain to enemy control. On the other hand, they knew life would be easier after the redeployment. There would be more opportunities for visits to the brigade’s rear base camp at Long Binh, more hot chow and the occasional shower, and perhaps even some visits to the bars and whorehouses in Bien Hoa. Above all, they expected a respite from the heavy fighting they had experienced in War Zone D during the bloody month of December. A ceasefire was scheduled during the Vietnamese Tet Holiday, promising a respite from the high tempo of operations.

  Redeployment of the Warrior battalion to its new AO was completed on 13 January 1968. The battalion headquarters was established at FSB Concord. After the move south, LTC Schroeder relinquished his command to a new Warrior battalion commander, LTC William Mastoris. Schroeder’s six-month command tour was complete, and he was reassigned to the G3 section of II Field Force Headquarters. After the change of command ceremony, Schroeder and his company commanders lined up for a final photo. Several of the commanders had tears in their eyes as they bid goodbye to their outgoing commander who had led them through such tough close-quarter battles.

  Lieutenant Colonel Bill Mastoris, the incoming commander, was a USMA graduate of the class of 1950. The 39-year-old native of Sharon, Pennsylavania was a soft-spoken, even-tempered man who had great confidence in his subordinates. With a strong infantry and airborne background, Mastoris made no immediate changes in the battalion, and relied heavily on his experienced S-3, Major Ed King. Mastoris was about to face the greatest challenge of his life. He would lead the Warrior battalion through six months of the heaviest fighting of the Vietnam War.

  FSB Concord sat atop a ridgeline overlooking the Dong Nai River, about eight kilometers northeast of Bien Hoa in AO Central Uniontown. The sprawling US base complex at Long Binh lay ten kilometers to the southeast. North of FSB Concord across the Dong Nai was “the rocket belt.” It was from this area just north of the Dong Nai River that the enemy launched 122mm rocket attacks on the strategic Bien Hoa Airbase, and the US Army facilities at Long Binh.

  With a maximum range of about 15,000 meters (even greater ranges could be achieved with a booster rocket), the 122mm rocket was used to attack area targets such as ammo dumps, aircraft parking areas, fuel dumps, and troop cantonments. The 122mm rockets and their launchers were relatively lightweight, and were usually transported by foot through the jungle to pre-selected firing sites. The rocket launch crews typically arrived at the firing sites after dark, and were able prepare the weapons for launch in about twenty minutes. After launching their rockets, the crews would recover their launchers and quickly depart the firing area. By mid-January, enemy rocket survey teams were busy selecting and surveying launch sites for the upcoming Tet Offensive. Precise firing azimuths, elevations, and ranges were calculated for each target.

  Situated on high ground just two kilometers south of the Dong Nai River, FSB Concord was an excellent firing location for the 105mm howitzers of Charlie Battery, 2/40th Artillery. With a maximum range of 11,000 meters, Charlie Battery’s howitzers could plaster enemy firing sites anywhere in the “rocket belt” within a matter of a few minutes. Target acquisition support was provided by the TPSI/25 Radar operated by the 101st Division Artillery. When the TPSI/25 acquired a target, the 101st Division Artillery notified the 4/12th TOC at FSB Concord. The artillery liaison officer (LNO) would then send a fire mission to the bases’s howitzers and adjust the fires using the 2/40th Artillery’s Q4 Radar. Secondary explosions from direct hits were often observed from the fire support base.

  To the west of FSB Concord, the terrain sloped gently downward toward a square kilometer of rubber trees. The rubber trees were pushed back by Rome Plows, huge bulldozers with angular tree-cutting blades, to make room for a ten-ship LZ. On the east side of FSB Concord, the ground dropped sharply into a narrow valley. A stream flowed lazily northward through the narrow valley toward the Dong Nai River. The headwaters of the stream were just east of the Bien Hoa airbase. The valley was a natural infiltration route for enemy ground troops entering the Bien Hoa area. The Warrior battalion’s 81mm mortars fired nightly into the valley to interdict enemy movement.

  FSB Concord was a much smaller base than FSB Nashua, and its perimeter was secured by a single rifle company reinforced with a platoon of ACAVs from D/17th Cav. The Warrior battalion’s Charlie Company was assigned the mission of securing FSB Concord. The present author took command of Charlie Company at FSB Nashua on January 1st, replacing the commander who was reassigned after the December 27 firefight. For the remainder of this narrative, the author will be referred to in the third person as Captain Bob Tonsetic.

  Captain Tonsetic reported to the 199th Light Infantry Brigade’s headquarters at Long Binh during October 1967, and was assigned to the Brigade’s S-3, Operations section. In December 1967, he was selected by Brigadier General Forbes to take command of Charlie Company 4/12th, after the near disastrous fight on 27 December. On January 1, 1968, Tonsetic packed his rucksack, drew a CAR-15 from the company arms room, and hopped aboard a UH1 helicopter for a flight to Fire Base Nashua, where he took command of Charlie Company the same day. The company was still in recovery mode from its less than satisfactory performance on December 27th, and Lieutenant Colonel Schroeder informed his newest commander that he planned to keep Charlie Company at FSB Nashua for a few days to allow the Captain “to get his feet on the ground and size up the company.”

  When the Warrior battalion received the order to depart FSB Nashua for it’s new AO, Tonsetic’s Charlie Company was assigned the mission of securing FSB Concord. The company was also assigned as the Brigade Ready Reaction Force. That meant that the company was on-call to respond within 30 minutes to any emergency situation in the Brigade’s area of operation. Deployment of the company could be by helicopter lift, vehicle, or dismounted, depending on the location of the action and the availability of transportation assets. The remainder of the battalion’s rifle companies were deployed throughout AO Uniontown.

  The civilian population density was heavy in most areas of CENTRAL and South Uniontown, but AOs NORTH Uniontown and Columbus were sparsely populated. A total population of some 19,000 civilians lived mainly in the 14 villages and hamlets scattered throughout the region. The villages and hamlets were connected by road networks that were easily trafficable by wheeled vehicles. During the day, road traffic was heavy with an assortment of trucks and smaller vehicles transporting vegetables, cabbages, eggplants, melons, and all types of other fruits into the towns and cities. Firewood was another major commodity. Woodcutters moved into the forested areas on a daily basis using ox drawn carts, and returned before sundown, their carts loaded down with firewood. The enemy took advantage of the trade being carried on to camoufla
ge and conceal the weapons and ammunition being brought into the cities. The rivers, streams, and canals were also major transportation arteries in and out of the populated areas, and were used extensively by the enemy to move men and supplies into the cities of Saigon and Bien Hoa. On any given day, thousands of sampans and other craft plied these waterways, bringing an assortment of legitimate goods into the cities, but along with these goods flowed a steady stream of military equipment for the upcoming offensive. Despite this increase in enemy activity in the countryside surrounding the capital and the US base areas to the north at Bien Hoa and Long Binh, few contacts were made with enemy forces in those areas during early and mid-January of 1968.

  The mission of attacking targets in the Long Binh area was assigned to the 5th VC Division. This Division was also assigned the mission of attacking the Bien Hoa Airbase. The main attack units of the Division were the 274th and 275th VC Regiments, supported by combined Artillery Group U-1. A Local Force Battalion, and other local force VC units were also assigned to support the 5th VC Division’s attacks.

  During early and mid-January, the 5th VC Division and its subordinate units were steadily moving into AOs NORTH Uniontown, and Columbus. To the southwest of Saigon, no less than six VC battalions planned to infiltrate through the 3/7th’s AO Haverford toward Saigon. As the month of January passed, the enemy’s attack regiments and battalions continued to slip closer to their objectives for the offensive.

  The enemy plan was to seize and hold the US installations until Saigon fell and a general uprising of the population occurred, resulting in the capitulation of the South Vietnamese government. At that point, the leaders in Hanoi believed that the US would have no choice other than to withdraw its forces from Vietnam. No one on the US or ARVN side anticipated the scale or the ferocity of the planned attacks.

  Since 199th LIB units experienced few contacts with enemy forces in their new AOs during the first two weeks of January, Brigadier General Forbes, decided that it was an opportune time to take his stateside leave. It was a leave well earned, for Forbes had been in Vietnam for a year and needed a rest. On 14 January 1968, Forbes departed for the States, leaving the 199th Deputy Commander, Colonel Fred Davison, in temporary command of the brigade. Forbes later wrote that he “left the brigade for home leave believing the enemy threat for the period of my absence to be minimal and in the complete confidence in the ability of the REDCATCHERS under Colonel Davison to do a bangup job.” His assessment of the enemy threat was dead wrong, but his confidence in Colonel Davison and the men of the brigade proved to be more than justified.

  Colonel Fred Davison was well qualified to command an infantry brigade in combat. It was a leadership position that he spent his entire career preparing for. Frederick Davison was born in Washington DC in 1917, and graduated from Howard University in 1938, receiving an ROTC commission. Davison was called to active duty during World War II in 1941, and was assigned to the all-black 366th Infantry Regiment. The regiment deployed to Italy where it was attached to the 92d Infantry Division, the WWII “Buffalo Soldiers.” Proving his mettle in the heavy fighting in the mountainous terrain of Italy, Davison was promoted to captain and took command of a rifle company of the 371st Infantry regiment, a position that he held until the end of the war. Afterward, Davison returned to civilian life for two years before receiving a regular Army commission in 1947. Although President Truman officially desegregated the Army in 1948, African-American officers of that era had to constantly struggle to overcome racial prejudice and bias. This did not deter Fred Davison. He continued to earn promotion and was selected to attend the Army’s Command and General Staff College, and was later promoted to full colonel before attending the Army War College. It was no small accomplishment for an African-American officer to reach the rank of colonel in the Army of the 1960s.

  When Davison arrived in Vietnam as a full Colonel in 1967, he hoped to command a brigade in one of the Army’s combat divisions. Brigade command positions in the Army’s divisions were full colonel billets. However, the bar was set high for these positions, and a black officer had never been assigned to command a brigade in combat. Instead, Davison was told that the 199th LIB needed a Deputy Commander, a position that was filled by a full colonel.

  There was one hitch. The brigadier general commanding the 199th would have to accept him for the job. Brigadier General Forbes reviewed Davison’s qualifications for the job and eagerly accepted him for the position. He later said it was one of the smartest personnel decisions he ever made. Though Davison would have to wait for his chance to command a combat brigade,. his chance would come.

  Colonel Davison had a sixth sense that something was afoot in the 199th’s AO during January 1968. It wasn’t all based on a gut instinct. He was particularly attuned to the information gathered by the Brigade’s reconnaissance and intelligence assets. Aerial reconnaissance was one source of battlefield intelligence. A Troop, 3rd Squadron, 17th Air Cavalry supported the 199th LIB with aerial sightings. This versatile outfit provided continuous aerial patrols of the brigade area of operations including the rocket belt. In addition to locating the enemy, the troop could engage the enemy with its light fire teams, and an aero-rifle platoon reaction force.

  Davison also relied on Company F, 51st LRP, the II Field Force’s long-range reconnaissance company, and the 199th’s own 71st Infantry Detachment (LRRP) to monitor and report enemy activity. Each day and night, the LRPs, dubbed “the men with painted faces” by the Vietnamese, prowled jungles of AO s Uniontown and Columbus, shadowing the enemy units.

  Along with the human intelligence gathering assets, the brigade also received information gathered by technical means. Helicopters equipped with electronic devices known as “people sniffers” flew daily missions of the brigade’s AOs. The “people sniffer” was a 24-pound device that was mounted in the nose of UH-1 helicopters and other aircraft, and could locate enemy forces by picking-up the carbon dioxide and ammonia gases produced by human perspiration. Some 264 “hotspots” of probable enemy locations were detected by “people sniffer” missions during late January and early February 1968. Another source of operational intelligence was the 856th Radio Research Detachment. Only a few members of the brigade knew of the existence of this highly secretive unit.

  The 856th was a 50-man unit working to support the 199th LIB and other US units through the collection, analysis, and dissemination of signal intelligence. This organization intercepted radio traffic of the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong. Part of the collection effort was Radio Direction Finding (DF). The DF effort was conducted by three PRD-1 teams. These two-man teams were forward deployed with US forces with their PRD-1 Direction Finding equipment. The PRD-1 was World War II vintage equipment with limited range. Typically, the DF teams would set up on a fire support base where they would set up their equipment and go about the business of scanning the airwaves for enemy transmitter sites and determining bearings to these sites. Once a site was identified, the team would report their results to other DF teams that would attempt to identify the same site. The information was also passed back to the 856th headquarters where the bearings from the field teams were plotted on a map. The idea was to gain a “tight fix” on the site using triangulation, or by identifying a small triangle encompassing a small area where the enemy transmitter was located. The information was then passed to the 199th Brigade’s commander. The brigade commander could pursue several courses of action. He could order artillery or mortar fire on the target to attempt to destroy it, or he could employ his aviation fire support elements to neutralize the site. He could also direct that his ground forces attempt to locate the enemy site and destroy it, or attempt to capture it intact. In all cases time was of the essence since the enemy typically moved their transmitters on a routine basis after going on the air, and they rarely used the same site twice. Since the enemy knew that US forces were capable of locating their transmitters, they often remoted their radios and antennas to distances of a mile or more from their hea
dquarters.

  Specialist-five Dave Parks led one of the PRD-1 teams that supported the 199th LIB. Son of an Army command sergeant major, Parks joined the Army in 1965, opting for an enlistment in the Army Security Agency (ASA). After a tour with an ASA outfit in Okinawa, Parks volunteered for Vietnam where he was trained as a Direction Finding (DF) operator. Under the best of circumstances it was a tough and demanding job. With only two men on each team, the men worked continuous twelve-hour shifts under austere conditions on the firebases. On occasion, they also operated out of remote Special Forces camps and Vietnamese Popular Force (PF) compounds to get closer to the enemy units. The PRD teams were responsible for their own security when deployed and received little in the way of support from their host units.

  When the 199th deployed into AO s Uniontown and Columbus, Dave Parks’ team set up operations at Bien Hoa Airbase. The airbase was a high value strategic target for the enemy. It was the first and last stop for US troops entering and leaving Vietnam, and was one of the major fighter support bases in Vietnam. It was also located just a few kilometers from the southern portion of War Zone D and the “rocket belt.”

  Parks selected a site just off the end of one of the bases’s main runways. The team lugged their PRD-1 to the top of a large sandpile. The site afforded good coverage of the surrounding area with line of sight all the way to the Song Be River and across it. Parks wrote, “We lugged that damned heavy PURD up the sand hill and installed it—leveled it, shot an azimuth and oriented it north-south, plotted our position on the map…and radioed that information to the detachment. We lugged up some water and c-rats, ammo and grenades and remote unit for our Jeep radio and went to work.” Parks and his partner were surprised at the amount of enemy radio traffic around the base. Parks recalled, “We were supposed to work 12 (hours) on and 12 off, but in practice, 12 hours in the heat and dust was too much for anyone, so we set up our own schedule and worked two on and two off during the day and four on four off during the night.” The VC/NVA usually used the early evening and night to communicate. Parks recalled that the enemy radio traffic continued to increase throughout the month of January, a strong indicator that the enemy was up to something.