Delta Company vs the 66th NVA Regiment | Ngọc Kom Liệt Ridge | Đắk Tô 1967 

Delta Company vs the 66th NVA Regiment | Ngọc Kom Liệt Ridge | Đắk Tô 1967 

You son of a You don’t know a damn thing. My company is going to be overrun if we don’t get air support. Captain Bowers screamed into the handset at the Lieutenant Colonel commanding the battalion. Fewer than 60 rifles remained of the 65 men. Delta Company, Fourth Battalion, 503rd Infantry, had carried into the field that morning.

 Captain Bowers, the company commander, already wounded in the wrist, grabbed the radio handset, and shouted at Lieutenant Colonel Johnson, the battalion commander, “You son of a You don’t know a damn thing. We are in heavy contact. If we don’t get air support, we are going to be overrun.” At that moment, the battalion commander was circling overhead in his command and control helicopter at 1500 ft, dense jungle covered mountains below him, while the aircraft on station were busy working over the hill for Bravo Company.

If this account moved you, we’d be grateful if you’d subscribe, leave a like, share it with someone who’d appreciate this history, and let us know your thoughts in the comments. Thank you very much. Fourth Battalion 503rd Infantry Airborne under Lieutenant Colonel James Johnson had been operating near Tuihoa when it was ordered north to C1.

The next day trucks carried the battalion to Jacko and from there it moved roughly 20 km west to Ben Het coming under the operational control of Colonel Richard Johnson’s first brigade fourth infantry division. To avoid confusion once contact was made, the companies dropped their letter designations A, B, C, D, in favor of their phonetic call signs, Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta or dog.

 Within fourth battalion, 5003rd of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, Alpha Company was commanded by Captain Mulun, Bravo by Captain Beck, Charlie by Captain Connell, and Delta by Captain Bowers, a former long range reconnaissance team leader. Briefing the operation, Lieutenant Colonel Johnson told his company commanders that a reconnaissance team had found signs of freshly dug fighting positions along a ridgefinger south of Benhhat.

 The three company’s mission was to move there and make contact. Captain Connell of Charlie Company raised a concern. If the enemy had dug that many positions, there had to be a sizable unit in place. He said he was worried that three under strength rifle companies would have to go up against an entire enemy regiment.

 If the intelligence was accurate, it was. Two days earlier on November 2nd, a North Vietnamese sergeant named Vu Huang of the 66th NVA Regiment had rallied to the South Vietnamese government at an outpost west of Ben Hett while reconoitering the ground around Jack toe. He said he had overheard one of his officers say that the 66th regiment would attack Jack to from the southwest while the 32nd NVA regiment took up blocking positions south of the town to stop any counterattack aimed at the 66th.

The 24th regiment held ground in the hills northeast of Jackto, ready to strike any relief column coming from that direction, while the 174th regiment waited northwest of the town as a reserve, ready to attack on order. According to the sergeant, the assault had originally been planned for October 28th, time to coincide with a 122 mm rocket barrage on the provincial capital, but General Nguan Huan, commanding the first NVA division, had postponed it because his artillery wasn’t yet in position at Jakto.

 You will have air and artillery support. I expect you to get up there and do the job right. Lieutenant Colonel Johnson told his three company commanders. They had reason to worry. Charlie Company numbered only about 125 men, Alpha 110 and Delta just 65. To bolster their strength, each company had a platoon of civilian irregular defense group troops from the Benet camp attached, led by a special forces NCO.

Men who knew the terrain and the enemy in this area far better than the American paratroopers did. Early on the morning of November 4th, 1967, trucks carried the battalion minus Bravo Company, which stayed behind at Ben Hett to the jump off point. By 08:45, they had crossed into the operational area. On the first day, the three companies pushed south of Benhead, crossing the valley of the Jackha River.

 Ha River toward the northern end of a jungle covered hillmass, the local Montineyard called Enok Kumliet. Enok in the Montineyard language, meaning mountain. They found no trace of the North Vietnamese all day. That night, they dug in along the northeastern edge of the hill mass. Company strength stood at 110 for Alpha, 125 for Charlie, and just 65 for Delta.

 On November 5th, the three companies pushed into the broken, difficult ground of Nakok Comlat. Charlie moved along the right flank to the east. Alpha held the left. The dense jungle and steep terrain slowed everyone to a crawl. Just before noon, Captain Connell’s Charlie Company found a small abandoned enemy base camp. Less than an hour later, only 500 meters on, they found a second one, also empty, but far larger, with numerous bunkers and fighting positions.

Captain Bowers and Captain Mulun reported the same thing from their own sectors. There was still no sign of the enemy himself, but by now, everyone understood they were walking through his backyard. Lieutenant Allen, commanding a platoon in Delta Company, thought contact was close.

 Around 1300 that same day, Lieutenant Colonel Johnson ordered Captain Mulun to send a single platoon 1,000 m east to search the ground. Mulun refused to split off just one platoon. If they went, the whole company would go. Johnson agreed. Alpha found nothing and dug in for the night. On the second night, all three companies halted to take a resupply drop, and it took them several hours to clear a landing zone.

The sound of chainsaws and helicopters left Lieutenant Allen uneasy. Any North Vietnamese within a few kilometers would now know exactly where they were. On the morning of November the 6th, the battalion commander ordered Muloon’s Alpha Company back west, trailing behind Delta. He also ordered all three companies to push toward hill 823 at the southeastern end of Kumlad on the far side of the Jackha River, the planned site for a new fire support base.

 The three companies were to secure the hill and prepare it to receive an artillery battery. Since Charlie had led the column the day before, it was now Lieutenant Burton’s platoon that took point for Delta Company. They moved out at 40845, followed by second platoon, the Montineyard CG platoon with Captain Bowers and the company command group behind them and Lieutenant Allen’s platoon bringing up the rear.

 Heading for Hill 823, they moved painfully slowly through thick brush and steep broken ground. Sergeant W’s squad led the way, starting up a finger of the ridge around 1100. Specialist Fort Chensen, walking flank security, suddenly froze. A gray telephone wire ran directly across his path. He cut it quickly and reported to his platoon leader, Lieutenant Burton.

 Burton passed the word to Captain Bowers, who told him to follow the wire. Bowers halted the company and sent a squad forward. They advanced about 200 m before spotting a pith helmet lying on the ground and radioed the sighting back. As soon as he heard it, Bowers set up a hasty defensive perimeter and reported to battalion, saying he wanted to keep following the wire.

 Wary of walking into a North Vietnamese trap, though he couldn’t be sure the wire itself wasn’t the trap, Johnson gave his approval. The trailing squad, though they saw no one, could hear North Vietnamese soldiers talking. The vast jungle, broken up by dense stands of bamboo, cut visibility to about 20 meters, so the squad leader couldn’t pin down where the voices were coming from.

 He reported it to Lieutenant Allen. As Delta Company neared the RGEL line, Lieutenant Colonel Johnson concluded that all three companies could not reach Hill 823. That same day, he ordered Captain Beck’s Bravo Company held in reserve at Benhhat until then to be ready to move to Hill 823. Immediately, the battalion commander called in air strikes to clear a landing zone on the Nakcom Le Ridgeline for Bravo.

 Lieutenant Burton, monitoring the battalion net, heard the 105s and the 155s firing from Ben hit toward Hill 823. Before long, the explosions were roaring through the mountains. Standing close to Captain Bowers, Burton overheard him ask the company’s first sergeant what he thought. In the US Army, the first sergeant, usually a battlehardened senior NCO, runs the company’s day-to-day business on the commander’s behalf, medevac, resupply, replacements.

Bowers put great stock in the judgment of First Sergeant William Collins, who had 10 months of that experience in Vietnam, and the bearing of a man who had led troops in action before. Collins answered slowly, deliberately, “I figure, we hit contact going up the hill. We hit contact going down it, and we hit contact standing still.

” Bowowers agreed. Like everyone else, he now believed the North Vietnamese were all around them. Bowers told Burton’s platoon to keep moving and warned the men not to bunch up or spread too thin. They pushed forward along a faint little used trail running along the ridg’s northern flank. To the right of the trail, the ground fell away.

 As the trail climbed toward the ridge finger and neared the crest, the terrain opened up and the jungle thinned, the ground widening to 30 or 40 m before it dropped away down the far side. Shortly before 1300, Burton’s point men spotted fresh footprints in the dirt, a bamboo cross used for spooling telephone wire, and fresh human waste.

 Burton, tense now, ordered the platoon forward. Two point men moved parallel to the trail and crossed a shallow saddle, a low dip in the ground before reaching a spot where the ridge widened out. There, Burton sent one squad left, another toward the center of the ridge, and held a third near the trail. The center and right squads held their ground because of the terrain.

 Only the squad on the left, a sergeant squad, kept advancing. As that squad inched forward, Specialist 4H in the center squad, happened to glance uphill and caught sight of a North Vietnamese soldier, peering out from a bush about 20 m up the slope. Before he could react, a man was gone. a note on rank, a specialist 4, SP4, sits below corporal but above private first class in paygrade, and is typically a soldier with a specialized skill.

 Driving an armored vehicle, running a communications net at a command post, or serving as a radio operator. Sergeant W’s squad kept creeping forward. Private Brand or Brang, sensing the enemy was close, fixed his bayonet to his M16 and licked his dry lips, certain that things were about to change fast. Another soldier saw a North Vietnamese approaching along a trail further up the ridge and whispered to the man beside him that he was about to get himself a kill, but the enemy soldier vanished before he could fire. Moments later, Specialist Force

Shum in the same squad spotted another North Vietnamese. Instead of warning the others, he fired a burst from his M16. The enemy soldier bolted into the brush. When it was reported to Captain Bowers, he immediately ordered the squads pulled back into the perimeter. He thought Burton’s men had gotten a little too eager for a fight.

 He had no intention of stumbling into something he couldn’t control. Once the squads were back, he planned to hit the ground ahead of them with air and artillery. Burton called his squads back and fired a magazine from his own M16 into the area where the enemy had been spotted. AK-47 fire answered at once from several directions.

 Enemy rounds shredded a stock of bamboo just to Burton’s right, spraying water in every direction. Burton sprinted for a low spot on the trail. Private Brang had barely found cover before the enemy opened up. The man next to him went down, his chest torn open by rifle fire and dropped flat to the ground. Rounds cracked past just over their heads, close enough to clip leaves and branches loose overhead.

 Bran couldn’t believe he was still alive. The enemy’s fire seemed to be passing only inches from his skull. Within minutes, Burton pulled the platoon back to the lowest point of the saddle they had just crossed. He knew it was a poor position. The enemy held the high ground, but for the moment, it was the best he could do.

 25 m behind him, Captain Bowers and the rest of the command group hit the dirt as fire opened up behind and above them, coming down off the high ground toward the low saddle. The platoon reacted instantly, forming a defensive perimeter, and Burton began crawling toward Bowowers. Bowers, too, was crawling, bent low to stay under the fire, making for a large tree.

 Just behind him crawled the forward observer. A lieutenant from battery B, third battalion, 31st artillery. He hadn’t gone 5 m before a round caught him in the buttocks. Someone dragged him the rest of the way. His radio operator, Specialist Four Fur, immediately began calling in fire missions ahead of Burton’s platoon.

 At almost the same moment Bowers, reached the base of the Big Tree, Burton arrived from another direction. Then, a burst of enemy machine gun fire rad across the area. Burton realized he had unknowingly given away the command post’s location to a North Vietnamese gunner tracking him, and he sprinted back to his platoon. Captain Bowers felt one round strike.

the ammunition pouch on his web gear. Another slam into stock of his rifle and a third punch into his left wrist, severing a nerve and sending waves of agony through his whole body. A medic crawled up and gave him a shot of morphine on the spot, wounded in pain. Bowowers stayed in command. The CDG troops position between Bowowers and Burton had gone to ground at the very first shot.

 But as the volume of fire aimed at Burton’s men grew heavier. Round after round pouring into their position, they began to lose their nerve. One by one, they got up and ran past Bowowers toward Lieutenant Allen’s platoon. Specialist 4J Dy watched them stream past him. Nearby, the Ford observer, Specialist 5 Mattingly, kept working his 4.

2 in mortar section unshaken. He had been through this before in the fighting on July 10th. And even though this fire was heavier than what they had faced at Hill 8:30, he stayed calm, relaying the fire direction to the mortars. First Sergeant Collins ran after the fleeing CG soldiers, knowing he had to stop them before their panic spread to the American paratroopers.

 He shouted for them to halt, but they kept running until they reached Lieutenant Allen’s platoon position. There was simply nowhere left to run. Lieutenant Allen, who had gone back to check on Bowowers after he was hit, had already sent one of his squads to take up positions around the company command post. Now he placed the frightened CIGG soldiers among his own paratroopers.

 Not long after Burton got back to his platoon, the enemy opened fire again, and this time the intensity of it frightened even Burton. Instead of a few scattered weapons, it was now AK-47s and machine guns together. The noise so loud Burton couldn’t even hear the M16s of the men right next to him firing back.

 Round after round tore into the bamboo, spraying the Americans with water. For the first time, Burton began to think he might not walk away from this fight. He had little time to dwell on it. Soldiers up ahead spotted the North Vietnamese massing for an assault and shouted warnings. Burton moved among his men, pointing out the likely approach routes, and sure enough, the enemy was exactly where he expected.

Private regent saw three or four North Vietnamese dash through the brush and bamboo straight at him. He cut them down with bursts from his M16, and as they fell, more appeared behind them. Regent kept reloading and firing. Sergeant Jerry, kneeling in a patch of open ground, emptied magazine after magazine into a dozen enemy soldiers, charging his position, dropping three or four before he himself went down.

First Sergeant Smith stepped in to take his place. Before long, Smith and a Specialist 4 had broken the assault. Two other forward observers struggled to relay adjustments to the 105 mm and mortar batteries. But Bowers had decided their fire wasn’t doing much good. The jungle canopy over the battlefield was simply too thick and he wanted air strikes instead.

 He called Lieutenant Colonel Johnson, still circling overhead in his command helicopter. Johnson refused. From 1500 ft, 457 m. He had no way to appreciate that the sheer weight of fire being thrown at Bower’s small company. He thought Delta didn’t need air support while the F100s were busy working over Hill 823 for Bravo.

 Captain Bowers did not agree. Fewer than 60 rifles remained of the 65 men Delta Company had started the day with. “Your company will be wiped out without close air support,” Bowers said. He grabbed the handset and shouted at his battalion commander. “You son of a You don’t know a damn thing. We are in heavy contact.

 If we don’t get air support, we are going to be overrun. The desperation in Bower’s voice made Johnson pull the F100s off Hill 823. Johnson assumed Bower’s unprecedented fury was the painalking or the morphine. He thought Bowowers had lost his composure and might be on the edge of panic. But Bowowers was not panicking. He was still in command.

 He had simply grasped before his battalion commander could that his company was pinned down and about to be overrun by a numerically superior enemy unless air support arrived. Within minutes, the first jets were screaming over the treetops of Gokcom Leit. On the first path, they dropped high explosive bombs almost directly in front of Burton’s platoon.

Sergeant Smith heard the bombs falling and dove behind a fallen log. They landed close enough that Smith was certain he’d have died without that log for cover. Another bomb fell close enough that one of Burton’s medics was hit. Pit while shielding a wounded man with his own body. Even with the bombs landing accurately, the moment the jets pulled off, the North Vietnamese attacked Burton’s platoon again.

 Enemy soldiers and full uniform and combat gear poured down off the high ground, firing as they came, and Burton’s men began cutting them down. A North Vietnamese sniper drew a bead on Private Regent, but his luck ran out. Someone shot him first and he tumbled head first out of a bamboo thicket, left hanging by a cord tied around his ankle.

 With the ground assault broken, enemy fire dropped to scattered sniping. Burton’s men held their ground. Everyone still able-bodied helped carry the wounded to an aid station. Set up between Bowers and Allen’s positions. This relative lull lasted about 20 minutes before the shooting flared up again for 5 minutes, then eased off.

 The fighting would go on like this in waves for hours. Lieutenant Allen’s platoon, meanwhile, had taken no direct fire in the first 90 minutes of the battle. A single enemy round had landed near his position, but it had clearly been aimed at Burton’s. Allan spent most of that time studying his men and getting them ready for the fight.

 He was sure it was coming. Around 1500, the volume of enemy fire passing overhead rose sharply. A few minutes later, Allan clearly heard AK-47 fire close by. He called his men to be ready. And then someone shouted, “Here they come. M16s and M60s opened up. The dense vegetation meant most of Allen’s men couldn’t see anything.

 They fired at any movement or muzzle flash to their front. Most of the enemy fire was coming from below the ridge line.” Allan realized Delta had been surrounded and squeezed from two sides at once. The enemy had clearly shadowed them right along the ridge, waiting for the moment to overrun the American paratroopers. A sergeant lay beside a tree stump.

 A 15-year-old Montineyard soldier next to him on the other side. When enemy rounds started dropping around them, the young Montenar stood up to run. The sergeant pulled him back down. He did it several times. Then noticing a stump nearby, he fired a burst from his M16 at the enemy Hagui, and the Montineyard bolted upright to run again.

 The sergeant grabbed him by the belt and yanked him back to the ground just as a burst of AK-47 fire tore into the very spot where the young soldier’s head had been a second earlier. He hadn’t even finished telling the frightened boy to stay down. Nearby, Lieutenant Allen was popping smoke grenades to mark his position, for the jets and gunships overhead, close to where the wounded were lying.

 A frightened soldier screamed at him to stop. The enemy would spot their position. Did he want them all dead? He kept screaming until Allan told him to shut up or be shot. Artillery rounds were falling in front of Allen’s position, though he had no idea who was adjusting the fire. Since he had no forward observer of his own, he could only hope whoever was calling it in knew what they were doing.

 The jungle was too thick for him to see where most of the rounds were actually landing. The fighting around Delta Company went on. The enemy launched probing attacks against the perimeter, but each one was beaten back without much difficulty. Gunships, F00s, and artillery had thrown up a protective screen around the company. But Delta still needed help.

 It was clear by now that the company could not break contact and pull out on its own. Earlier that day, Lieutenant Colonel Johnson had already ordered Alpha and Charlie companies to move to their relief. Alpha’s CG platoon, on point that day, opened fire when the Montanard Scouts spotted roughly 10 North Vietnamese moving toward them through the jungle.

 Captain Mulun immediately had the company form a defensive perimeter and told the sergeant commanding his weapons platoon to fire a belt of M60 rounds around the company. His men later found a blood trail and two AK-47s but no bodies. Mulun got the company moving again around400. Not long after he received orders from battalion to move to the relief of Captain Bower’s Delta’s company.

 Alpha was about 1500 meters east of Bowowers near Hill 729. To reach Delta, Alpha would have to come off the high ground, cross a valley with a stream running through it, and climb again on the far side. To move fast, Moldun put the CG platoon on point again since they had done well earlier that day.

 He told their leader plainly, “I know you know this ground. Get me to Captain Bower’s Delta Company, but don’t walk us into a North Vietnamese trap. If you lead us into one, I won’t be able to save you. Now, get us up there fast. Every American rifle company in this fight had a CDG platoon attached to it. Mulun radioed Sergeant Terrace Ford, and it quickly became clear from the exchange that Terrace wasn’t entirely sure where he was, though he could hear the gunfire.

 Mulun told him to head toward it. That had to be Delta. Terrace did link up with Alpha there. Mulun then ordered the advance. At first the CG moved at a reasonable pace, but as Alpha closed on Delta and the gunfire grew louder. The Montinears began to slow down, then to weave and detour around brush that grew thicker with every step.

Before long, the company was barely crawling. Moldun kept shouting for the Montineyards to move faster. It did no good. Finally furious, he ordered them out of the way and put Lieutenant Den’s second platoon on point to get the company moving. He had the men drop their rucks sacks. The lead squad of Den’s platoon started hacking a path through the brush.

 Around the same time, Sergeant Turz and six long range reconnaissance soldiers linked up with Captain Bower’s Delta Company. It was about 15:30. Roughly 30 minutes later, the F100s came back and dropped high explosives and napalm on suspected enemy positions. An L19 spotter plane directed one jet to drop Napalm ahead of Burton’s platoon.

 Instead of laying out in front of the position, the canister came down right alongside it near Delta’s southeastern edge. Burton heard men screaming and thought the napalm had gone off 100 meters away, but it had actually detonated on the far side of a bamboo thicket barely 20 m from him. The dense jungle had smothered the spread of the fire, so he had no way of knowing what damage it had done to the enemy.

What he did know was that it had come in far too close. First Sergeant Collins radioed Captain Bowers. My god, sir, he said breathless. I nearly died. That bomb was way too close. Bowers, for his part, could barely make out what Collins was saying. Captain Connell’s Charlie Company had also received orders to move to Delta’s relief.

 Charlie was about a kilometer line of sight west of Delta, higher up along the same range of ridges that formed Gawk Com. Connell first had to clear the enemy off his own perimeter to relieve the pressure coming from the west. The direct route to Delta ran along a high ridge line and Connell ordered the company to move near its crest.

 The CG platoon on point was suddenly hit by North Vietnamese firing from welldug bunkers covered by the M60s of the paratroopers following behind. The Montineyards destroyed several bunkers and kept climbing only to run into a second line of bunkers further up. This time the CG fell back. Connell ordered them back into the line. They refused, saying they had already done more than enough for one day.

 If the Americans wanted it taken, they could take it themselves. Furious, Connell ordered a squad under 21-year-old Second Lieutenant John to assault the enemy line. Jon was wounded in the attack and the company had to halt. Connell told his forward observer to call for artillery, but was told the guns were committed to supporting Delta and Bravo at Hill 823.

Every rifle company in the field had its own forward observer, a sergeant or lieutenant who called directly into the fire direction center and got support on requests. So Charlie Company kept fighting alone with no artillery of its own, working their way forward, bunker by bunker, gaining a few kilometers to the east.

 Alpha Company meanwhile had dropped down into a valley and found the going easier once they reached the foot of Gakumit. After a short rest in the jungle, the two lead scouts, specialist forcebot and rear spotted three North Vietnamese soldiers walking ahead of them and began tailing them from behind. Because the company was moving too slowly for his liking, Lieutenant Denny radioed the two scouts.

 When they didn’t answer, he called out loudly. The three enemy soldiers, hearing a voice, broke and ran. The two scouts opened fire, but only brought down one of them. A reminder that on the move, a unit always has two point men walking a breast along the ridge. Lieutenant Allen and Sergeant Terz, hearing the gunfire off toward Alpha’s position, took a compass bearing on it and radioed the direction back to Captain Mulun. Alpha pressed on.

 Before long, a scout spotted a gray telephone wire and began following it as the company neared the battle site. They started to hear the cries and moans of North Vietnamese soldiers coming from the jungle around them. Somewhere among the trees, patches of ground scorched by napalm showed black like spilled oil or asphalt.

 Close by, only 20 meters from Lieutenant Allen’s position, Alpha soldiers found the remains of 15 North Vietnamese soldiers, their bodies burned beyond recognition. Their weapons scorched black. The Napalm strike that had come that had come in too close had, it turned out, saved Allen’s platoon. By 1700, Lieutenant Den’s platoon had found a way through to Allen’s position.

Captain Mulun held the rest of Alpha Company outside the perimeter and went forward alone to find Delta’s company commander. A short aside on Napalm gathered from later accounts, a pilot once explained it this way. Back in 1966, one of us asked the chemical plant to improve it. The first batch wasn’t much good.

 If the enemy moved fast enough, they could brush it right off. So the engineers started adding polyyrene and it got sticky like glue on a blanket. But if a man jumped in the water, it would still go out. So they added white phosphorus to make it burn hotter and longer. Now it burns even underwater. And a single drop burned straight through to the bone.

 Either way, if the fire doesn’t kill them, the phosphorus poisoning will. Through the afternoon, Burton’s platoon beat back several more probing attacks. In one of them, Specialist for Cherson was killed defending his position, and an NCO was badly wounded while dragging a body to cover.

 The North Vietnamese had moved more machine guns up close to Burton’s line, so that any movement by the paratroopers drew fire. Burton and his men were bitterly frustrated. They had no good way to deal with those guns. The afternoon hours crawled by. Burton grew increasingly anxious that the relief force wouldn’t reach them while there was still daylight.

 Once darkness fell, he was certain the North Vietnamese would overrun them. With only 20 rifles left in his own platoon, how could they possibly hold if Allen’s platoon and part of Alphas also broke under the weight of enemy fire? When Captain Mulun reached Captain Bower’s position, he found the situation far worse than he’d imagined.

 He ordered Alpha’s medics to start treating Delta’s wounded, then pushed his own platoon forward to reinforce the line. As Alpha’s men neared the perimeter, enemy machine guns on the high ground opened up, sending everyone scrambling for cover. Aircraft came in overhead and the enemy fell silent. Mulun now took over command of Delta Company from Bowers.

 He ordered Lieutenant Den to move his platoon through Burton’s position to search the ground beyond. As they prepared to move out, Burton warned him, “Don’t go up there. There’s a machine gun.” Den just looked at him and laughed. He then ordered one of Burton’s M60 teams to go along with his platoon. They had gone less than 5 m when an enemy machine gun opened fire.

 Burton’s gunner was killed instantly, and his assistant gunner was badly wounded. Burton was furious. Two of his men were dead because of another officer’s carelessness. The two platoon held their ground as darkness deepened and the enemy’s fire tapered off. Mulun called for medevac helicopters. Every earlier attempt to evacuate the wounded had been called off because of enemy fire.

 But now aircraft could land on a landing zone hastily cleared by his own mortar platoon. Between 1830 and 2200, every seriously wounded man was flown out at his request. Captain Bowers of Delta Company, hit in the wrist that morning, was the last man to board. Once the evacuation was finished, Mulun ordered Burton, Allen, and Den to pull their platoon in closer to the center of the perimeter.

 He wanted it as small as possible. The North Vietnamese harassed the paratroopers all night with grenades and mortar fire. AC47 gunships armed with miniguns rained fire down on suspected enemy positions. and artillery from Ben Hett kept up harassing fire around both companies through the night. Captain Connell’s Charlie Company spent that night about a kilometer from Alpha’s position.

 Having cleared the enemy off its own perimeter, Connell eventually concluded he couldn’t reach Delta before nightfall and not wanting to risk contact moving in the dark and knowing Alpha had already linked up with Delta, he had his men dig in where they were. They passed the night without incident.

 At dawn on November 7th, the North Vietnamese had pulled off the battlefield. Mulun sent out but but found no trace of the enemy and turned his attention to the wounded. Lieutenant Colonel Johnson, though had a plan for Alpha. He first ordered Moldun to link up with Charlie and push together toward Hill 823, where Bravo had been fighting all night, then changed his mind.

Charlie would instead move to link up with Alpha and Delta. Once they joined, Alpha would go back for the rucks sacks they had dropped, and the three companies would then move southeast toward Hill 823 while they waited for Charlie to catch up. Mulun sent small teams out ahead of his platoon positions to sweep the battlefield.

 Burton’s men found eight North Vietnamese bodies and a number of weapons. He was struck by how new the enemy’s gear and weapons looked. Proof he thought that he had been fighting a young well-disiplined unit. While examining the bodies of North Vietnamese soldiers killed by the napom strike, Burton pulled a pistol from the belt of an enemy officer, handed it to Sergeant Collins, and asked him to pass it up to the captain as a keepsake.

 The final count came to a substantial number of North Vietnamese dead. The exact figure did not survive in the source recording, along with 34 captured weapons, including several machine guns and two B40 rocket launchers. Delta had lost five killed and 18 wounded. Alpha, one killed and two wounded. Reviewing the battle afterward, Allan and Burton realized the North Vietnamese had occupied positions along the ridge and simply waited for Delta Company to pass by because the enemy had already learned their position during the resupply drop on the night of

November 5th. Intelligence recovered from the enemy dead showed that Delta had been moving directly toward the command post of the second battalion, 66th NVA Regiment. The North Vietnamese had probably hoped Delta would fail to spot their base camp and simply walk past it. But the moment the telephone wire was found, Delta’s fate was sealed.

The under strength company had been squeezed as if in a vice while a separate enemy force pinned down Charlie Company at the same time. Burton believed they had been saved by Bower’s careful, deliberate advance up that trail and by his refusal to back down on his demand for air support. Had Bowowers not fought that hard for it once contact was made, Burton was certain they would have been overrun.

 Just as another Alpha Company from the second battalion 50 and03rd had been the month before, both young lieutenants were also intensely proud of their paratroopers, most of whom had little or no combat experience. It’s worth remembering that in the US military of that era, every soldier from private to battalion commander served only a single one-year tour in Vietnam.

Unless he volunteered to extend for 6 months or a year. These were volunteers who carried out orders instantly without hesitation, even under the heaviest attacks. They held their ground and never lost their nerve against repeated North Vietnamese assaults. Captain Connell’s Charlie Company reached Alpha’s position around noon.

 While they helped secure secure this perimeter and assist with resupply, Alpha backtracked along the previous day’s route to recover the rucks sacks its third platoon had left behind with the CG platoon now covering the rear. As they neared the spot where the packs had been left, one of the Montineyard soldiers fired his weapon.

 Mulun halted the company at once, called the soldier and his sergeant forward and told them furiously that from now on the two of [clears throat] them would walk point. If that shot just told the Vietkong where we are, you two deserve to die. Now move right now. A few minutes later, Alpha found their packs exactly where they’d left them, untouched.

The company returned to Charlie’s position without further incident. Lieutenant Colonel Johnson had planned for all four companies to converge on Hill 823 on the afternoon of November 7th, 1967, but a resupply helicopter went down while taking off from Gotchcom. It crashed just in front of Private Bry’s position.

 He assumed it had been shot down and readied himself for a fight, but it turned out to be a mechanical failure. Because the radios, an M60, and other equipment had to be stripped from the wreck first, the paratroopers stayed in place for one more night until the salvage was finished the next morning. Since the helicopter couldn’t be safely recovered, it was destroyed that afternoon.

 The three companies finally reached the base of Hill 823 and spent the rest of that day patrolling around it. The next day, they were flown back to Benet and Fire Support Base 12. The battalion commander had wanted to push the North Vietnamese westward and keep the pressure on, but Higher Headquarters decided his battalion needed to stand down, rest, and absorb replacements.

 Our sincere thanks to the author, and thank you for staying with us. We’ll see you again in the next account from the Nam Hoa