Events of January 25, 1969
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On the afternoon of January 25th, 1969, I was sitting in my hooch contemplating what unit I should next attach myself to. As a Public Information Office (PIO) photographer and writer, I more or less had Carte`Blanche when it came to decisions as to what unit within the ¾ Cav or the 25th that I wanted to attach myself to, and photograph and/or write stories on.
As I looked out the door of the hooch, I saw that some men from our Aero-Rifle platoon were walking out toward the flight line in a casual manner, but they were in full field gear. In as, they were not running full tilt, I knew that they were going on some sort of mission, rather than reacting to a call for help from a downed ship or reinforcing a LRRP team in trouble.
I grabbed my camera and field gear and headed to the flight line with the thought of joining up with them. I asked one of the guys what the mission was that we were going on. He replied; “we’re going to do a quick sweep of some village up near the Cambodian border, then return to base camp and remain on the usual stand-by status”.
The casual response gave me the impression that this was going to be a milk-run type mission, which is just perfect for taking field photo’s and perhaps a write human interest story on the village inhabitants inter-acting with GI’s. I knew from experience that the Tropic Lighting loved to print stories of this type, as it was good press for the folks back home to read.
We loaded up on three or four “D” models and took off toward our destination. As we approached the area for insertion, I looked down from the chopper door and could see that we were in an area that I had flown over as a crew chief on a HOG gunship many times.
There was a small village visible out the right door, and an endless expanse of elephant grass covered terrain out the left door. I also noticed that there seemed to be no discernible roads leading to the village. It was just sort of sitting in the middle of nowhere…..no way in and no way out, as the rice paddies were flooded to the tops of the dikes, and there was no possibility that any armored vehicles could navigate the terrain. The short of it was; there was no possibility that the Calvary could come riding over the hill to rescue us if things went badly in the village. This gave me a real bad feeling in my gut.
I could also see a multitude of paths of trampled tall grass that indicated there was considerable foot traffic coming across the Cambodian border toward the village. There were literally hundreds maybe thousands of them as far as the eye could see in every direction toward the border.
We had a flight of two gunships and one LOH accompanying us on the flight in. It was reassuring to see them there, as they could give us a lot of additional fire power should we get into a jam while sweeping the village. And since there were only 20-25 of us going in, we definitely needed all the extra fire power back-up we could get.
The Slick did a tight right hand circle and came in for a steep landing in spite of the ample open area around the LZ. We disembarked in a couple of seconds and the Slicks almost jumped out of the LZ in their take-off, and grabbed as much altitude as they could while heading out over the grass lands. This struck me as being odd, in as my experience as crew chief had taught me that in an open area such as this, slicks usually take a more shallow rate of climb from a cold LZ. Steep climb-outs were usually reserved for hot LZ’s, or a small LZ surrounded by tall tree lines.
We formed-up and proceeded toward the village that was about 200 to 300 meters from the LZ. As we approached the first row of hootches, all Hell broke loose from our right flank and front. We were still pretty much out in the open, just at the edge of the first row of hootches.
We immediately took up defensive positions behind whatever cover we could find. The volume of in-coming AK fire was very heavy. There seemed to be no one specific direction that the fire was coming from.
It seemed as though every hootch around us was the source of the AK firing. Rounds were popping over our heads with an unnerving frequency. I had been under fire before,…… but not like this time.
We were pinned down pretty bad, as there was no real cover close at hand, and there was nothing but grass lands to our rear. In other words we were caught in an exposed position with no viable route of retreat. The LT. yelled that the C&C has instructed us to fight our way into the village center, where there was an old French fort. I think he also yelled that there was a unit of Ruff-Puffs (Rural Forces/Popular Forces) held-up inside the fort as well.
The platoon was more or less separated in half with a narrow road heading toward what we thought was the center of the village. We advanced while trying to take advantage of whatever cover we could find, in a leap frog movement. Several of us on our side of the road half crawled and half crouch-ran from one bit of cover to the next. Rounds were popping past our heads and impacting in the dirt around us. It seemed as though Charley was on all sides of us.
We came to a cross road/path about 100 meters into the village. The enemy fire intensified. They were defiantly on all sides of us at this point, firing from ground positions, trees and hootches. At this point I’m pretty sure that we were also taking fire from the rear as well, which if I was correct, we were now surrounded on all four sides.
One of the men on our side (right side) of the road shouted and motioned (while in a prone position) toward a tall tree approximately 50 meters to our front, at the ~10:00 position. The fronds were moving, but there was no breeze or wind blowing. Just then we saw a rifle muzzle pop out from the foliage and fire a short burst of auto fire directly at our position. The rounds hit the road about ten feet in front of us. Those of us still in the crouching position dove for what ever cover we could find and tried to look invisible.
It was clear that we were in a defiantly bad place and at the wrong time. I spotted a pool of water just across the cross road from my position, with a berm around that was about two feet high. This was the only place that I could see, from my position, that offered us any sort of cover from the enemy tree positions and the hootch firing positions surrounding us. I jumped up and made a mad dash for the pool. I dove in head first trying to get low enough that the in-coming AK rounds wouldn’t get me. The other three or four men with me also jumped up and ran like hell for the pool and dove in too.
The water was about three feet deep in the pool. But if we squatted down low enough, we could just get our heads below the top of the surrounding berm. The tree position and the multiple hootches to our front opened up on us. The rounds were splashing in the water around us and hitting on the sides of the berm on the opposite side of the pool.
We all squatted down to the point that our chins were just barely above the water line. At some point it dawned on us that we were taking cover in the Village Cesspool, as the stench was horrendous, and we could see little brown lumps bobbing in the water all around us. And judging from it’s wreaking smell it was a well used one. We’ve all heard the term; “in deep shit” well…. we literally were in shit up to our chins.
At about this point in time, we could see that the of the rest of the platoon was trying to cross the intersection about 30-50 meters on our left flank, but kept getting driven back by withering enemy fire. Looking around, I could see that there were several other enemy tree positions firing down on them and us. Things were not looking good for them….or us either.
At this point, one of the men crawled out of the cesspool and took up a kneeling position with one knee down in a exposed position in the middle of the road that ran along side the cesspool. He had a M-79 grenade launcher with two claymore bags full of ammunition. He opened fire on the first tree position that we had seen, and then started pivoting on his knee and firing multiple rounds in every direction as fast as he could re-load the chunker. Several AK rounds were impacting in the road around him. Each time a round would hit, a small plume of dust and dirt would be kicked up. At least one spray of dust and dirt flew into his face and eyes, causing him to hit the prone position for a couple of seconds. He than got back up and proceeded to fire and reload rapidly.
The first 79 round that he fired hit the tree position that had initially fired on us earlier dead-on. We saw an AK fall out of the tree and a leg hanging down and not moving.
He then pivoted to his right and started to fire rounds over the cesspool at the trees to the right. Several 79 rounds later the firing from those trees stopped. The NVA in those trees stopped firing as they were either dead or had the Hell scared out of them. Either way, there was no more fire coming at us from them.
He than started to fire round after round at some hootches to our front and right forward flank. Several of the rounds went in through the windows and exploded inside the hootches or hit just below the window sills. Here again the firing stopped from those particular positions.
There were AK rounds impacting all around him on the road and in the bushes just behind him. He emptied one of the claymore bags of 79 rounds and switched to taking round after round out of the bag hanging from his left shoulder. He was left handed as he was shooting from his left shoulder. Taking rounds out of the bag on his left side slowed him down somewhat.
At this point there were no more M-79 rounds in the bags and the guy dropped flat to the ground in the middle of the road. There were still rounds impacting all around him. He than did the fastest low crawl in recorded history towards the cesspool and did a head-first dive over the berm back into the water.
The incoming AK fire had slowed down a bit, and this allowed the rest of the platoon to get across the cross roads intersection, and into a somewhat better firing and cover positions. The guys crouching in the cesspool also got a little breather from the incoming rounds and started to shoot in every direction, as there seemed to be movement and hostile fire coming from all around them.
At this point the cesspool group and the crossroads group moved forward and joined up as one unit. The Lt was on the radio with the C&C ship above.
We did a leap frog movement towards where the C&C had told us the French Fort was. We moved probably 200 meters down the road before we laid eyes on the (so called) Fort. My heart sank when I saw it. I was expecting to see a real fort, with multi strands of wire and claymores set-up all around it. What a I saw was this rather tall triangular shaped berm with one scanty string of wire and no claymores at all.
There was what appeared to be an entry way on the left side of the part facing us. There were a line of hootches on one side of the road and the fort on the other. There probably wasn’t more than 20 meters separating them.
Just as the platoon got within eye sight of the fort, all Hell broke loose from our right and left side. There was also a fair amount of firing coming at us from our rear flank as well. I had been in intense fire fights before, but never had I experienced the volume of in-coming rounds as I did that afternoon. The sound of rounds “cracking” past us and over our heads was unbelievable.
Everyone in the platoon was firing as fast as they could and swapping out the empty clips. It seemed that everyone was returning fire in a different direction from the guy next to him. We were, in fact surrounded on three sides with the fort in front of us. I was down to one clip of 16 ammo, when the Lt. yelled; “everyone into the fort”. We all made a mad dash across the open and exposed road into the fort entrance. I believe that I was one of the last men through the opening, as I was probably the furthest one from the opening when the Lt. shouted the order.
The first thing that I saw as I came stumbling through the entrance, were a group of 8-10 rag-tag looking Ruff Puffs squatting down inside the opening. They were armed with WW II weapons such as M-1 Garand, Carbines and one BAR. The rest of our platoon had moved further into the fort, and were taking cover behind the berm facing the hootches across the road. The firing from the enemy had pretty much died down at this point.
I saw the Lt. talking on the radio and then doing a low duck walk and stoping to talk to each of the other men in the platoon. As it turned out, not a single man had been hit in the withering enemy fire. When he got to me the first words out of his mouth were; “are you ok”? The second thing he said was; “how much ammo do you have?” I held up my one remaining clip and pointed to the three frags hanging from my webbing and said; “this is it!” His response was; “shit!!!”
BACKGROUND:
When we went out each man carried one or two M-60 ammo belts each, and several frags each. The number of 16 ammo clips would vary from one man to another. There were also at least 2-4 M-79 LAW’s present as well.
The M-79 guy would carry at least two Claymore bags full of rounds. I don’t know how many rounds it took to fill a bag. But I do recall that the bags were heavy as Hell though.
There was also a certain amount of detcord, caps and C-4 being carried as well. I don’t recall if there was an SOP regarding the explosives. I don’t recall if Claymores were routinely carried by the Aerorifle platoon. I do recall that when I was with other infantry or track out-fits, the claymores and HE were always present.
My personal ammo load was always one or two belts of 60 ammo, 20 magazines of 16 ammo, several speed clips of 16 ammo, 2 frags, one canteen of water and two cans of meat stripped from C-rations, whenever I went to the field. The remainder of my gear was the camera and several canisters of B&W film, along with the other day-to-day equipment.
One of the RF/PF spoke somewhat broken English. He told us that he and the others in his small unit had been trapped in the fort for the past several days, and that they were pretty much out of ammunition and water with no food at all. He also related that the enemy force surrounding us were NVA regulars, who had just crossed over the border into the village the previous couple of nights.