Besides the fireworks, ARVN soldiers had linked tracer bullets together and were stitching the darkness with weaving streams of machine gun fire. opened his mouth but, SGT Cuffee, the supply SGT. That night, frightened bunker guards in the 199th compound shot into the darkness to their front. They ordered us to clear the VC from the houses surrounding the corps headquarters. We began to pop hand-held flares so they could see we were there, but the shooting persisted, one round hitting my track. The idea was to leave nothing the VC might use against us. SP4 Lawrence Korteum Click Here. 8. 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. The churches were cleared in short order. 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. danger and the probable best course of action. Charlie Company had reported 38 VC killed, at the cost of only 11 U.S. wounded and three APCs damaged by RPGs. As the ammo dump burst into flames, secondary explosions erupted in other storage areas, and . Come back up on the battalion freq. I had never been so happy in my life. From our positions we could see and hear the celebratory fireworks lighting the sky over Saigon to the west. [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. I had been in Vietnam about nine months. When Lieutenant Casper jumped up, our legs became entangled and I tripped him, Ax remembers. The II Field Force commander, Lt. Gen. Frederick C. Weyand, had correctly guessed that a major attack was going to come during Tet, and his anticipation of the attacks no doubt saved Long Binh and Saigon from being overrun. However the ammunition storage bunkers prevented a chain reaction and the lost munitions were easily replaced with no impact on supply. We suffered more wounded during the trip back to III Corps, where I was called to a meeting in the headquarters. All rights reserved. When Lieutenant Casper jumped up, our legs became entangled and I tripped him, Ax remembers. 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. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. 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. 0.42 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. I assigned areas of operation to my two rifle platoons, and positioned the weapons platoon inside the compound as a reserve and security force. AIR V..FIRES 2. The VC who had fired the RPG slipped away, but Pfc Jim Love, who was tossed into a sewage ditch by the explosion, remembers killing the jeep with his M-16. I remember telling him that if the shooting persisted, or if they hit one of my troops, I wouldnt be responsible if my troops shot back. The recon platoon was ordered to establish a blocking position south of Long Binh on Highway 15. Tower sent the battalion S3, Major Jones, to take command, and once Alpha got moving, it did a magnificent job. Although initially surprised, U.S. forces had reacted quickly and, despite what was reported in the press, American and ARVN forces handed the VC a devastating defeat during Tet. We topped off our fuel tanks, replenished our ammo and continued to move toward our assigned blocking position. Ly's grandfather was a soldier stationed in Quang Binh during the war. We opened up with everything we had and kept driving. It was I had learned no tactic at infantry school that fit the situation we were faced with, so we improvised. I Ripped apart barbed wire. Casper rose from the prone position and yelled for his troops to follow him. The bus ride to 90th Replacement was relatively short and everyone seemed exhausted from the long flight. Toward dusk on January 30, Charlie Company soldiers stripped to the waist to dig bunkers next to their APCs. VC informants inside the base had provided detailed information as to the base layout and defenses. [3]:2515, A VC/PAVN attack on the prisoner of war camp in Bin Ha which held over 2000 prisoners was repulsed by a platoon from Company C, 4/12th Infantry and a platoon from Company D, 17th Cavalry and their ACAVs. Despite the confusion and wounds, our troops returned fire. The combat around III Corps headquarters was intense. 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. Service Battery that supplied ordnance to the big guns in our battalion. That night, frightened bunker guards in the 199th compound shot into the darkness to their front. and still no answer. 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. 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. 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. While I was in training, my motivation was to get these wings and I wear them today proudly, the airman recalled in 2015. A soldier, who has been hit, lying prone between two other soldiers, tries to get up. October continued with construction efforts. went off my first thought was that it was a nuclear explosion because of As we turned to head back, a tremendous blast shook the whole city of Bien Hoa. Soon we could hear leaders moving up and down the bunker line yelling for the guards to stop firing. Toward dark, airstrikes had to be called in to blast the VC from the hill. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. As time passed, I became a mechanized soldier. As we turned right onto Highway 15, an unbelievable spectacle stretched before us. John Gross received the Silver Star for his actions in command of Charlie Company on the first day of the Tet Offensive. Construction on the 24 th. door at the petroleum dump ruptured and fuel flowed down the ditch in Ive just been told you work for me again. NEARER V..EXPLOSIONS When the Tet cease-fire period began on January 28, the battalion was called back to the vicinity of Bear Cat, a base camp near Long Thanh. Now someone pointed out that there were a lot of young men, all dressed in black pants and white shirts, walking among the refugees. "What are you firing at? " Our arrival had canceled fears that III Corps headquarters might be overrun. 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. 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. As our medics treated the wounded, I reported to the American lieutenant colonel who was the III Corps G3 adviser. I called III Corps and reported that we had detained all of these people, and was told to wait until the Vietnamese National Police arrived to take charge. After commanding 180 paratroopers, taking on four APCs and 40 troops seemed like a dreamexcept that now I was responsible for troops in combat, not training. Privacy Policy2023 CriticalPast LLC. We had returned from a Big Boom! With a push-to-talk button stuck in the transmit position, no one could use the radio. 9. was a point where the Ho Chi Min Trail came close to the countrys West As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. [2]:347 Within Bien Hoa AB, the USAF 3rd Security Police Squadron was responsible for security manning bunkers and operating mobile patrols within the base perimeter. 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). Those orders were for us to clear the VC from the houses surrounding the corps headquarters. As our medics treated the wounded, I reported to the American lieutenant colonel who was the III Corps G3 adviser. Page contents not supported in other languages. About Us | 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. Each APC could carry almost as much ammunition as a dismounted rifle company, and 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. GV AMERICAN SOLDIERS IN F/G. PAVN/VC losses were 137 killed and 25 captured. Story Text: 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. 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. As we rolled by, we looked down into the compound and saw soldiers in khakis milling about with boarding passes in hand. He read a memorandum charging that 100 days after the signing of the Vientiane ceasefire accords, the seven men had been planning to take command of groups of saboteurs recently infiltrated into the area., See the article in its original context from. Craven and another photographer, were both wounded in the engagement.) At 0400 Jones ordered us to pull in our ambushes and be prepared to move. Somehow the foam trucks from Tet airstrike Long Binh Ammo Dump - YouTube Then things started falling out of the sky. Normally, operations orders issued over the radio were encoded and sent by the operations officers radio operator. - to check-in and see what was going on, and found myself the only "[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. The VC had run out of ammunition and were trying to escape. At that time, I received a call on my company frequency from the battalion commander, Colonel Tower, asking how things were going. We were in a cloud of disarray On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Several tracks were hit by RPGs and surrounded by the enemy. As darkness settled in, Charlie Company was ordered to move back the way it had come, to the junction of Highways 1 and 316, where we would form a screen in front of the 199th LIB base camp. Alpha Company, still licking its wounds from the January 23 fight, was left intact. Our arrival had canceled fears that III Corps headquarters might be overrun. Ammo Dump Explosion 18 Feb 1968 where 8 pads detonated with a total ammo value of $2,774,348: f. On 18 February 1968 at approximately 0300 an attempted penetration of the depot was. The fog of war was especially thick on the morning of January 31, 1968. Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. Something was definitely about to happen. and no one was injured. hightForP2 = 330 The 2-47 was one of several units General Weyand pulled in from the jungles to guard the Long Binh headquarters and logistical complex 15 miles northeast of Saigon. Unfortunately for the VC, they had no weapons other than the RPG launcher. It also contained tons of captured NVA ammo and guns from the A Shau Valley. Then a report came in that a body had been found wearing a white shirt under a black pajama tunic. We could use our tracks as a base of fire or in a blocking position as the company maneuvered on foot. I sat behind the .50-caliber, munching and giving thanks for the fact that, incredibly, nobody in Charlie Company had been killed. This is the airstrike on snipers at the 195th AHC perimeter and the Long Binh ammo dump explosion set off by sappers the morning of the 1968 Tet offensive with sound effects added. Officers and soldiers examine barbed wire fence where Vietcong broke through to enter Longbinh ammunition dump. After the roadblock was cleared and communications restored, Charlie Company continued toward its objective. On that fateful night, explosions began at the bomb dump, I immediately responded to CSC as the SP's . Not only would I not finish my command tour, I was being assigned to a leg division. I asked one of the men 0.35 Aerial view of (USARV) United States Army Republic of Vietnam Headquarters Complex at Long Binh, Vietnam. He said the first thing he could remember was the Most of these photos were taken in an area a few miles north of Chu Lai and south of Hoi An. M-117 bombs explode near and on road on wooden slopes near river north of Pleiku near Dak To, on 18 August, 1968. Company E engaged the PAVN/VC supported by artillery fire killing 47 PAVN/VC. only be entered from off the Bien Hoa Air base and thru the gate Blood stains in ambulance. 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.