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Gary Owen Troopers Victorious in Battle After Setback |
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(EDITOR’S NOTE: Charles Black, Enquirer military writer, has returned home after four months in Viet Nam. He was with men of the 1st Cavalry Division during many of their recent engagements with Communist guerrillas, and his articles on the war as he saw it will continue in The Enquirer daily.) By CHARLES BLACK Enquirer Military Writer |
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Without going through the
long chain of circumstances which occurred from the time I heard the
Second
Battalion Seventh Cavalry was heavily engaged until the time when I
found out
what had happened, I will outline the fight the Gary Owen battalion got
into
and fill out the details later.
Along with the First
Battalion Fifth Cavalry, Lt. Col. Robert McDade’s battalion had left
Columbus
LZ walking toward possible landing zones found by aerial reconnaissance
helicopters.
They had walked about 3,000
meters - moving fast and making good time through relatively open
timber
country - when the column split. The
Second Battalion Seventh turned and headed toward two other landing
zone possibilities
which were already entered on the operations maps as “LZ Albany.”
The pace had continued to be
fast. The battalion had left about 9:30
a.m. and by noon had made about 6,000 meters.
It was a column formation on a narrow front and the companies
covered
about 1,200 meters of trail. A heavily
beaten trail ran within 100 yards of the two fields which Lt. Col.
McDade
intended to secure so the artillery could be moved again.
There was the reconnaissance
platoon from Company D up front followed by two platoons of Company A;
headquarters and two platoons of Company D; Company C and finally
Company A,
Second Battalion Fifth Cavalry which had been working with the Gary
Owen men since
the Chu Pong mountain fight.
Lt. Col. McDade and his
executive officer Maj. Frank Henry had taken the battalion command just
a few
days previously. They heard on the
radio that the scout platoon had found the first field, it was covered
with elephant
grass, and had captured two PAVN soldiers.
A stretch of woods lay between this field and the second smaller
landing
zone the battalion was to secure.
“I became impatient at the
delay and moved on up with Maj. Henry to the landing zone.
The Vietnamese interpreter were questioning
the prisoner. I commenced making a
reconnaissance of the area so I could set up the perimeter and told the
company
commanders to come on up so Maj. Henry and I could show them the
positions they
would occupy,” Lt. Col. McDade told me later.
As the company commander
moved ahead, Capt. Henry Thorpe was 150 meters from the landing zone
and had
left his Company D under his executive officer and Capt. George Forrest
had
left his company at the tail of the column and was moving up, a fierce
hail of
fire struck the entire column.
“There were rockets,
grenades, mortars, rifle and machine guns. . . it came from 360 degrees
and it
came all at once with no warning,” Capt. Thorpe said.
Company C was hit
hardest. A wave of Communists swept up
to its flanks on either side of the trail and eddied around the
Americans. The PAVN’s forced Company C
into outnumbered
isolation.
Capt. Forrest turned and ran
back toward his men. A platoon from his
company was far out in advance of the main body, scattered as security.
“All I could think of was to
get them back there, get them into a defense and to fight it out. I ran 150 meters through the grass with
bullets clipping the ground around me, hollering at guys to get back
down to the
company. I got everybody started I
could and I went back. I saw then I was
all by myself, I had stayed out too long!
I had to pour on the gas and run that 150 meters again. . . it
was a
long, long run. . . I made it. We got
into a perimeter. I didn’t know the
terrain but a ridge. . . a little rise of ground. . .would have solved
it
all. If I could have seen it and moved
200 meters we would have torn them up worse and maybe not have lost so
many. I guess you always think about
things like that later,” Capt. Forrest said.
He had no apologies to make
for what he did do, of course. He
fought his company and kept it intact and the PAVN’s died attacking it.
Up on the landing zone Lt.
Col. McDade was organizing a defense.
Mortar rounds were slashing into the field and heavy fire came
from all
over. Capt. Thorpe got there and under
cover as did other officers and each took charge of the men nearest him.
There were three separate
fights in progress by now, the column was split. Company
C was surrounded, the two other segments of the line were
both pulling into defensive coils. The
PAVN attack reached a crescendo of ferocity.
Lt. Col. McDade was
described as “cool and fearless.” Men
kept calling to him to get down and he kept ignoring the plea. He used his radio sparingly, assuming that
the PAVN’s had captured radios and code cards and would be monitoring
his
transmissions. He pulled his men into a
defense in the woods and radioed for the ones out along the trail to
get in
there if they could.
Artillery commenced coming
from the supporting batteries.
Airplanes began hammering the attacking PAVNs.
Helicopters swept in and dumped loads of rockets and machine gun
bullets into the wood sheltering the force attacking the outnumbered
Americans.
The fight continued in a solid smash of brutal violence throughout the night. There were continuous assaults by both American and PAVN’s. The air and artillery kept hammering. By the next morning, the fighting had tapered off.
There were more than 400
PAVN bodies counted when the fighting was finally finished in the
afternoon. American losses were called
“Moderate” but they seemed heavier than that.
Charlie Company and a platoon of Delta company, cut off with the
men in
the center of the column, had been overrun and Americans were found in
little
circular groups of eight or nine where they had fought to their deaths. The PAVN’s had paid a high price for their
attack but it had been the hardest, most savage single fight the First
Air
Cavalry Division had run into.
It was a fight which went on
in a strange vacuum, too. Word of it
never came to headquarters in Pleiku until casualties commenced
arriving at
Camp Holloway. Newsmen there had asked
the night before and were told that there had been light American
casualties
and that only sporadic contact was still under way.
The captured code books and
Lt. Col. McDade’s decision that he could not risk his surviving troops
by
letting the enemy know his true casualties or the desperation of his
position
was justified by the outcome - the troopers from Gary Owens pulled out
a victory
from the early setback, but it caused worry in Pleiku.
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