The morning and afternoon of 30 January were quiet in the Warrior battalion’s AO. Alpha and Echo Companies resumed their patrolling operations in the “rocket belt,” while Bravo Company patrolled around FSB Hotel in AO Central Uniontown. Charlie Company worked to improve the bunkers on the FSB Concord perimeter.
Charlie Company’s 1st Platoon, led by newcomer 2nd Lieutenant Howard Tuber, departed around midday for their security mission at the POW compound. Charlie Company’s 2nd Platoon, under 2nd Lieutenant Al Lenhardt, prepared for their night ambush patrol. The ambush site selected by the Warrior battalion commander, LTC Mastoris, was in the valley just east of the firebase. Neither Captain Tonsetic nor his First Sergeant, George Holmes, were particularly concerned that the truce had been cancelled, but the two decided not to authorize any of the troops to leave the firebase to visit Bien Hoa that afternoon. For the past few days, Holmes had appointed an NCO to take a 2-1/2-ton truck load of troops into Bien Hoa for a few hours relaxation at the local bars
Captain Tonsetic and his 81mm mortar platoon leader, Lieutenant Paul Viola, conferred on the defensive fires concentations (DEFCONS) around the fire base perimeter, and pre-planned 81mm mortar fires for the 2nd Platoon ambush site. The two also conferred on the Company’s Ready Reaction Force mission. Options were limited on which platoons would deploy on such a mission, since 1st Platoon was at the POW compound, and 2nd Platoon had an ambush mission. If brigade called for Charlie Company to deploy, it would be the company headquarters, 3rd Platoon, and part of the 4th (mortar) Platoon. Tonsetic instructed Viola to leave a minimum of two crewmen on each of the platoon’s three 81mm mortars, and to man the fire direction center with two men only. The remainder of the platoon would deploy as a rifle platoon with the Ready Reaction Force, leaving the 81mm mortars behind at FSB Concord.
After conferring with Viola, Tonsetic visited his 3rd Platoon. The platoon’s leader, Lieutenant Bob Stanley, was on R&R, so Captain Tonsetic spoke with the platoon sergeant, Orville Wyers. Wyers asked who would take over the 3rd Platoon’s portion of the fire base perimeter if the company was called out on the Ready Reaction Force Mission. “That’s battalion’s problem, probably the clerks, cooks, drivers and other headquarters personnel,” Tonsetic replied.
While the Warrior battalion resumed normal daylight operations, Specialist Dave Parks and his partner worked atop their sandpile off the Bien Hoa runway. They tried to rig a poncho to shade themselves from the brutally hot sun as they manned their DF equipment, trying to intercept enemy radio transmissions and identify DF targets. The wind took the poncho and blew it toward the bunker line. According to Parks, “The eve of Tet was…nothing special beyond working on the PRD-1, flash reports to the 856th, other DF sites for bearings, drinking gallons of water and sweating it out, munching Cs, while sweat ran out from under the hot headsets attached to the DF unit.” But he remembered that throughout the afternoon the enemy radio traffic was “perhaps a little less than normal.” Not enough to alarm the operators, however. The PRD team anticipated another quiet night.
At dusk on 30 January, all remained quiet at FSB Concord. Captain Tonsetic walked the firebase checking light discipline. He’d had his “ass chewed” several times by the battalion S3, Major Ed King, who had spotted lanterns and generator-powered light sets illuminating bunkers and tents on the base. Most of the violators were battalion headquarters troops, or the artillerymen. Concord sat on a bare hilltop, and even a lit cigarette could be spotted from miles away. The enemy knew the precise coordinates of the firebase, but the lights made nice aiming points for rockets, mortars, and RPGs.
As he walked the perimeter, Tonsetic stopped to observe Charlie Company’s 2nd Platoon ambush patrol slipping silently through the coils of razor sharp concertina and barbed wire that ringed the base, headed for their ambush site. He observed that the men wore blackened face camouflage and soft jungle hats as opposed to their steel helmets. All loose equipment was tied down on their bodies to prevent it being snagged on bushes and other vegetation. These were precautions that he’d stressed with his platoon leaders. After, the last man in the patrol was out of sight entering the surrounding jungle, Tonsetic returned to his CP, where he stretched out for a nap. He hoped to get a couple of hours sleep in case the company was called out on a reaction force mission. He didn’t have long to wait.
CHAPTER 7
A BATTLE JOINED
The Vietnamese national holiday called Tet, celebrating the lunar new year, was to have been a brief period of truce. Just as Christmas 1967 saw a cessation of hostilities on behalf of the Christians, primarily American, 1968’s Tet was to have been a brief interlude in the war on behalf of the Vietnamese. Instead the Communists scheduled their greatest offensive of the war on the holiday, correctly assuming that many opposing units, particularly ARVN, would be caught off guard. The Tet Offensive of 1968 became one of the greatest battles in history. The 199th Light Infantry Brigade was engaged with all units and at all points in the immediate environs of Saigon.
Bien Hoa Airbase—2300 Hours, 30 January 1968
Specialist Dave Parks was puzzled when around 2300 hours on 30 January, enemy radio traffic “petered out to nothing, nothing at all.” Parks further recalled that “This was surprising, very unusual, I’d never heard nothing before…. We switched off, taking turns on the knobs, that is, turning the frequency knob while straining to hear an enemy radio. Neither of us were able to bring one up—the whole NVA-VC radio world had gone silent.” Parks got on his radio and contacted his teammates at other sites who reported the same anomaly. Then he radioed the 856th Detachment’s duty officer at Long Binh. The duty officer confirmed what Parks was thinking. The enemy had gone to radio silence everywhere. To signal intelligence analysts this meant one thing: a major attack was about to begin.
AO North Uniontown, “The Rocket Belt”—2300 to 0300 Hours
At 2310 hours, Charlie Battery, 2/40th Artillery fired on a suspected enemy rocket site three kilometers north of the Dong Nai River. A platoon-size patrol from the Warrior battalion’s Delta Company patrolling in the same area observed the artillery fire and reported a large secondary explosion. After requesting a C-47 Spooky flareship for illumination and fire support, Captain Dabney, the new Delta CO, ordered the patrol to search the area.
Captain Jim Dabney was still getting a feel for his company. He was a career officer who first joined the Army at age 17 as an enlisted man. He made Sergeant on his first hitch, and was leading a squad in the 101st Airborne Division before his 20th birthday. Shortly thereafter, he was selected to attend Officer Candidate School. Upon graduation, Second Lieutenant Dabney was assigned to Panama, where he honed his jungle warfare skills. After his tour in Panama, Dabney was promoted to Captain and reassigned to Vietnam. He was assigned to the 9th Infantry Division where he commanded a company until he took an AK round through his lower leg. Brigadier General Forbes was assistant commander of the 9th Infantry Division at that time. When Forbes took command of the 199th LIB, he had Dabney, who had recovered from his wound, reassigned to the 199th. Captain Dabney was subsequently assigned to command Delta Company of the Warrior battalion. Forbes knew a good company commander when he saw one.
Delta’s patrol moved cautiously, stopping every few meters to listen and observe. Spooky orbited overhead and began to drop flares. The flares suspended from tiny parachutes floated slowly downward, casting long shadows on the ground below. As the patrol moved closer to the scene of the explosion, the patrol leader, Lieutenant Wayne Smith, reported hearing voices chattering excitedly in Vietnamese. Smith radioed his company commander and reported that the enemy force probably numbered in the hundreds. He then called in an artillery fire mission, and Captain Dabney ordered his 3rd and 4th platoons to reinforce the patrol. The Captain decided to accompany the reinforcing platoons with his CP group. Dabney considered Smith, a lanky Texan, his best platoon leader, who would not exaggerate the size of an enemy force. As the reinforcements moved to link up with the 2nd Platoon patrol, the flare shi
p was diverted to another mission. Dabney requested a helicopter gunship team to for aerial fire support.
After linking up with the 2nd Platoon patrol, Dabney ordered his platoons to form a defensive perimeter in an area that close enough to observe the artillery strikes. At 0250 hours, all artillery fire ceased. A “checkfire” was called on all artillery firing north of the Bien Hoa air corridor. The checkfire could not have been called at a worse time. The enemy rocket artillery crews rushed to load their launchers with 122mm warheads. Unaware that Delta Company was less than a kilometer away, the enemy rocket artillerymen made no effort at noise control. Delta Company estimated that a force of about 200 to 300 enemy including a security force were preparing multiple firing sites and fighting positions. Captain Dabney later recalled that he considered launching a ground attack, but after weighing the odds he decided to wait for some heavy fire support.
Ho Nai Village—2300 Hours, 30 January
Twelve members of the brigade’s Combined Reconnaissance/ Intelligence Platoon (CRIP) were on stake-out in the village’s Catholic orphanage. Earlier in the day, the team had heard rumors circulating among the villagers that there were small numbers of VC hiding in the village. Warrant Officer Ken Welch of the 179th MI Detachment drove into Ho Nai village around 2300 hours to get the latest information from members of the CRIP. Welch recalled that the village was eerily silent when he drove up to the orphanage. Too quiet for a national holiday, he thought. After getting the latest information from the CRIP leader, Welch hopped in his jeep and instructed his driver to “haul ass” back to the base. He was convinced that an attack on the 199th LIB’s base camp, Camp Frenzell-Jones was just hours away. As the two Americans drove the village’s darkened streets, they heard the familiar sound of the bolts of AK-47 rifles jacking rounds into the firing chambers. After returning to the base camp, Welch went straight to the Brigade TOC to brief Colonel Davison on the latest information. He told Davison that the attacks would be launched before dawn. He wasn’t wrong.
North of Ho Nai Village—0100 Hours, 31 January
Two kilometers north of Ho Nai village, Specialist Vincent’s six-man LRP team lay hidden in the brush as a long column of enemy troops moved quickly through the darkness past their position. The enemy troops were moving along the engineer road that led south from the Dong Nai River straight towards Ho Nai village. The LRPs stopped counting after 80 VC passed their hiding place. There were just too many more to count. The VC were armed with assault rifles, heavy and light machine guns, shoulder -fired rocket launchers, and 61mm mortars. Shaken by the numbers of enemy troops in their immediate vicinity, the LRPs hunkered down lower in the grass. Vincent whispered into his radio handset to report the sighting to the 71st LRP TOC. LTC Maus, the F Company CO, listened carefully to the report and ordered his team leader to sit tight. Realizing that the team might be discovered at any moment, Maus grabbed his S3, Captain Randall, and the pair ran to the helipad and climbed aboard the Huey that was on strip alert. It was around 0130 hours, when the UH-1 lifted off the pad. Maus knew his team was in imminent danger, and he wanted to extract them from the area.
Fire Support Base Concord—0115–0145 Hours, 31 January
Captain Tonsetic dozed on his air mattress in the Charlie Company CP. He’d grown used to the nightly H&I fires of Charlie Battery’s 105mm howitzers, and the rushing sound of the CP’s radios. Specialist Cliff Kaylor, the company’s senior RTO, was on radio watch. First Sergeant George Holmes, the commo chief, Larry Abel, and Bob Archibald, who carried the company’s second PRC-25 radio, were also asleep in the CP. At 0115 hours, a runner from the battalion’s TOC arrived at the Charlie Company CP to inform Captain Tonsetic that his unit was on alert for deployment as the brigade’s ready reaction force. Colonel Davison, the brigade commander, wanted Captain Tonsetic’s men to move to intercept the VC unit that was moving toward Ho Nai village.
Tonsetic’s Ready Reaction Force consisted of two platoons from Charlie Company and seven ACAV from 1st Platoon, Delta Troop 17th Cavalry, reinforced with one 106mm recoilless rifle track. Captain Tonsetic was skeptical of the LRPs’ report of 80 VC. The number seemed too large. He was unaware of the latest intelligence that was pouring into the brigade headquarters.
Checking the LRPs’ position on his map, the Charlie Company CO recognized the area. It was close to where his unit had deployed on 27 January after the LRPs had ambushed a VC reconnaissance unit. Captain Tonsetic began to take the LRPs’ latest sighting more seriously. There was no doubt in his mind that there was a connection between the two sightings.
FSB Concord was a beehive of activity. Bleary-eyed battalion headquarters troops, rousted from their bunkers on the inner perimeter, grabbed their M16s and bandoliers of ammunition, and rushed toward fighting positions along the base’s outer perimeter. Meanwhile, Charlie Company soldiers assembled in full combat gear near the ACAVs that were lining up in column formation. As the grunts grabbed extra hand grenades, Claymore mines, and bandoliers of ammunition from open boxes strewn on the ground near the tracks, First Sergeant Holmes got a quick head-count from Platoon Sergeants Wyers and Jaynes. Holmes had to shout over the noise of the ACAVs’ engines to make himself heard. Captain Tonsetic arrived with his two radio operators after conferring with the Warrior battalion commander, LTC Mastoris. Holmes informed his CO that the combined strength of the two Charlie Company platoons was 38 men. Half of the 4th Platoon had to remain on the firebase to man the platoon’s 81mm mortars.
The Charlie Company CO gave the word for his men to board the ACAVs. The infantrymen scrambled on the crowded ACAV decks, trying to find a few inches of space. With the extra men, rucksacks, and weapons aboard, space was at a premium. The ACAV crew members who manned each vehicle’s two M60 machineguns and the track commander’s cupola-mounted .50 caliber machine gun advised the grunts not to block their fields of fire. Once his men were loaded, Captain Tonsetic climbed aboard the lead ACAV, and the track commander tossed him a headset so the two could communicate over the vehicle’s intercom system. Donning the headset, the Captain ordered the column to move out. The column of eight ACAVs moved south from FSB Concord leaving a cloud of dust along the trail. Tonsetic looked at the luminous dial on his wristwatch. It was 0145 hours, 31 January.
Camp Frenzell-Jones (199th LIB Main Base Camp)—0200 Hours
While the brigade’s ready reaction force sped toward their first checkpoint, the 199th TOC at the brigade’s main base was at full alert status. Senior staff officers, including Lieutenant Colonel Ken Hall, the Brigade S3, along with the other primary staff officers began to arrive. Duty officers and NCOs were monitoring the radios and plotting friendly and enemy locations with black and red grease pencils on acetate covered maps mounted on the walls of the TOC. A US Air Force liaison officer hovered over his radio talking to a Forward Air Controller (FAC) who sat in his OV-10, on “strip alert” at Bien Hoa Airbase. Colonel Davison was huddled with his S3, LTC Hall, at a small desk in the corner of the TOC, when WO Ken Welch of the 179th MI Detachment approached. He had some alarming new intelligence. He told Davison that a reliable source had reported there were 17 enemy battalions moving on Saigon. According to Welch, Davison calmly responded. “Good! For the first time in the entire war, I know right where the enemy is!”
The scene outside the large bunker that housed the brigade’s TOC resembled a large anthill that had been poked with a stick. Rear echelon soldiers were rushing from their barracks toward their company arms rooms to draw weapons and ammunition. Most of the troops were members of the 7th Support Battalion, who in accordance with the base defense plan were to man the perimeter bunkers in the event of an attack. The men were a mixture of cooks, mechanics, clerks, drivers, and a host of other military specialists. Few of the support troops had fired their weapons since they zeroed them after they arrived incountry. Those support troops not assigned to the perimeter bunkers were organized into a provisional rifle company. This company was to act as a reaction force to reinforce the more th
an two-mile long perimeter and counterattack any enemy that managed to penetrate the wire barriers around the camp.
Backing up the support troops were three 105mm howitzers from 2/40th Artillery. Contingency firing positions for the howitzers were located at various points around the base perimeter. The defense plan called for the howitzers to displace to those positions during attacks to place direct fire on assaulting enemy troops. The artillerymen were prepared to fire high explosive rounds or “bee hive” rounds to break up the enemy’s ground attacks.
Although Camp Frenzell-Jones had come under mortar and rocket attack on several occasions, a full-scale ground attack had never been launched against the brigade’s main base camp. Its defense plan looked good on paper, but it had never before been put to the test.
Bien Hoa Airbase, Long Binh—0300 Hours, 31 January
Precisely at 0300 hours, a battalion of the 5th VC Division’s 84th Rocket Artillery launched a salvo of 122mm rockets from several firing sites north of the Dong Nai River and from AO Manchester. As each rocket blasted from its launcher, it left a fiery vapor trail as it arched upward to its apogee in the pitch-black sky, then plunged downward like a burning comet as it shrieked toward its target.
This first salvo, an estimated forty-five rockets, were aimed at targets on Bien Hoa Air Base. These targets included the base control tower, barracks, warehouses, parking ramps, and POL storage tanks. At least one of the high explosive warheads struck a POL storage tank, setting off huge explosions that sent shock waves throughout the base and surrounding area. Flames and thick black smoke from the burning fuel could be seen from miles away. The base control tower, several barracks and warehouses, and a number of vehicles were also damaged or destroyed. Additionally, there was significant damage to aircraft on the parking ramps. An F-100 SuperSaber and a Vietnamese Air Force Skyraider were set ablaze. Three airmen were killed and sixteen more were wounded in the rocket attack on Bien Hoa Airbase.
Days of Valor Page 14
