Tet Offensive: The Battles of Bien Hoa and Long Binh
Mac
By John E. Gross
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The fog of war was especially thick on the morning of January 31,
1968. While much has been written about Tet and the political
firestorm that resulted, in the hundreds of surprise battles and
skirmishes that unfolded, individual units found themselves thrust
into intense danger, turmoil, chaos, confusion, contradictions and
outright lunacy as they responded to Viet Cong (VC) attacks. This is
the story of one rifle company�comprised of some of the finest
soldiers to ever wear the uniform of the U.S. Army�and what they all
faced on that decisive day.
�In April 1967, I was a first lieutenant commanding a rifle company in
the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C. In command for five
months, I had been assured that I would be leading the company for one
year, which suited me fine. My plan was to make captain and go to
Vietnam as an experienced company commander. Since I was in an
airborne unit, it seemed certain that I would go to the 173rd Airborne
Brigade or the 101st Airborne Division.
Consequently, I was disappointed when I received orders to join the
9th Infantry Division. Not only would I not finish my command tour,
but I was also being assigned to a �leg� division. When I arrived at
9th Division in June, I was further shocked to learn that I was going
to a mechanized battalion, rather than be assigned to one of the
battalions in the Delta where I could use my light infantry and Ranger
school experience. My only previous contact with M-113 armored
personnel carriers (APCs) was during a training exercise at the
officers� basic course.
At the headquarters of the 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Infantry
(2-47), nicknamed the Panthers, the �commander, Lt. Col. Arthur
Moreland, asked me what job I wanted. I told him that I wanted to
command a company. He replied that I would have to wait. I was to be a
platoon leader again, in Charlie Company, commanded by Captain John
Ionoff. After commanding 180 paratroopers, taking on four APCs and 40
troops seemed like a dream�except that now I was responsible for
troops in combat, not training.
In mid-September, when Ionoff moved to battalion headquarters to
become the operations officer (S3), I assumed command of Company C. In
October, the 2-47 was tasked to secure engineers as they cleared
Highway 1 from Xuan Loc to the II Corps boundary near Phan Thiet. The
battalion made only sporadic contact and suffered few casualties.
As my airborne mentality faded, I learned to love the M-113�or
�track.� We could haul more personal gear, live more comfortably and
walk less than straight-leg troops. Each APC could carry almost as
much ammunition as a dismounted rifle company. 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. We could ride, walk or be airlifted to war, and we
arrived with many times the ammo and equipment that could be lifted in
by heli�copter. We could use our tracks as a base of fire or in a
blocking position as the company maneuvered on foot. We carried
concertina wire, sand bags and hundreds of Claymore mines and trip
flares to make our defensive positions practically impenetrable.
Gradually, I became a mechanized soldier. When offered the chance to
go to II Field Force to help establish a new long-range reconnaissance
patrol outfit, I turned it down to stay with the company.
During December we made little enemy contact, prob�ably because the
Communists were lying low, preparing for Tet. In January 1968, our
battalion relocated to the area between Xuan Loc and Bien Hoa, where
intelligence had located a VC battalion. On January 23, during a
battalion sweep through heavy jungle south of Highway 1, Alpha Company
walked into a camouflaged, well-defended enemy bunker system and was
badly mauled. Four men were killed and more than 20 wounded, including
most of the officers. Charlie Company quickly reinforced Alpha, and a
daylong fight ensued. At dusk, airstrikes had to be called in to blast
the VC from the hill. The battle proved significant, as Alpha�s
leadership was seriously depleted immediately prior to Tet.
Then, for the last week in January, the 2-47 was sent south of the 9th
Division�s base camp to patrol the jungles east of Highway 15, near
the Binh Son rubber plantation.
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.
Charlie Company was ordered to a large open field across Highway 15
from the Long Thanh airfield. From our positions we could see and hear
the celebratory fireworks lighting the sky over Saigon to the west.
The II Field Force commander, Lt. Gen. Frederick C. Weyand, had
correctly predicted a major attack during Tet, and his anticipation no
doubt saved Long Binh and Saigon from being overrun. 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.
Early on January 30, we were told the Tet cease-fire was canceled, and
our unit was deployed into a defensive line along the road that ran
around the east side of the Long Binh base. The recon platoon was
ordered to establish a blocking position south of Long Binh on Highway
15. The 1st Platoon of Bravo Company was made the II Field Force
reaction force and was placed in the PX parking lot at Long Binh.
Charlie Company�s 3rd Platoon was also detached for a security mission
inside the base. Alpha Company, still licking its wounds from the
January 23 fight, was left intact.
The three companies formed a line almost three kilometers long, facing
east, with their backs to the Long Binh wire, based on the mistaken
assumption that the VC would attack from the jungle. In fact, the
Communists had already infiltrated the city of Bien Hoa, suburban Ho
Nai village and Widow�s Village, where pensioned families of deceased
ARVN soldiers lived. Widow�s Village made a perfect attack position,
since it lay directly across Highway 316 from II Field Force
headquarters. 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.
Toward dusk on January 30, Charlie Company soldiers stripped to the
waist to dig bunkers next to their APCs. As the sun sank over the Long
Binh base, they tossed a football and ate cold C rations. All night
they scanned the jungles with Starlight scopes, seeing nothing.
At 3 a.m. on January 31, I received a call from Major Bill Jones, who
had recently taken Ionoff�s place as operations officer. He stated
that Bien Hoa airbase, the Long Binh facility, the II Field Force
headquarters and the 199th Light Infantry Brigade (LIB) base camp were
under heavy mortar and rocket attack. This was no surprise to us,
since we could hear the enemy rounds slamming into Long Binh.
As usual, each company had sent two ambush patrols into the jungle to
our front. At 4 a.m., Jones ordered us to pull in our ambushes and be
prepared to move, and told Charlie Company�s noncombatants to report
to battalion headquarters. We all knew these moves were more than
precautionary.
We packed up our gear, rolled up our wire and waited. I was not sure
what to do about the bunkers. Policy was to fill in all holes and
empty our sandbags when we left a position, to leave nothing the VC
might use against us. I called battalion headquarters and was told to
forget about them, which reinforced our sense that combat was
imminent.
At about 6 a.m., Lt. Col. John Tower, the new battalion commander,
called with orders. Normally, operations orders issued over the radio
were encoded and sent by the operations officer�s radio operator. In
another sign that the situation was serious, the battalion commander
himself gave map coordinates of company objectives in the clear.
Alpha Company was ordered to the 199th LIB compound, which was under
attack. Now commanded by a brand-new second lieutenant, the men of
Alpha Company balked when they were told to move. Tower sent Major
Jones to take command, and once Alpha got moving, it did a magnificent
job. Bravo Company was sent to protect the Long Binh ammunition dump
and Charlie Company was ordered into downtown Bien Hoa, where the ARVN
III Corps headquarters was in danger of being overrun.
After I got the coordinates of our objective, I yelled, �Crank �em
up!� into the radio handset. We rolled through Long Binh and out the
main gate, then turned onto Highway 316. The 2nd Platoon led the way
under Lieutenant Fred Casper, followed by my track, then Lieutenant
Howard Jones� 1st Platoon and, finally, the weapons platoon under
Lieutenant Don Muir. The Commo track, C-007, nicknamed Abdula and the
Rug Merchants, with Pfc (current Vietnam editor) David Zabecki behind
the .50-�caliber, brought up the rear. We charged southeast down
Highway 316 to the Highway 15 intersection, situated on a small hill
overlooking the 90th Replacement Company. As we rolled by, we looked
down into the compound and saw soldiers in khakis milling about with
boarding passes in hand. But no one would be leaving the country that
day.
As we turned right onto Highway 15, an unbelievable spectacle
stretched before us. Having been struck by mortars or rockets, the
fuel tanks at the air base, as well as several buildings throughout
Bien Hoa, were burning brightly. Flames illuminated the clouds,
forming an eerie glow; flares hung in the sky and helicopter gunships
crossed back and forth firing red streams of tracers into the city.
Through sporadic fire, we continued northwest on Highway 15 to where
it intersected Highway 1 on the western edge of Bien Hoa. As we made
the turn eastward on Highway 1, the lead platoon was ambushed. We
opened up with everything we had and kept driving. We had run through
the rear of the 274th VC Regiment, which was attacking the airfield.
As we cleared the ambush, the column suddenly came to a halt because
of some kind of block in the road; simultaneously, someone keyed the
company net. With a push-to-talk button stuck in the transmit
position, no one could use the radio. I jumped down and ran from track
to track, pounding on the sides and yelling, �Check your handsets!� As
I ran back through the weapons platoon in the pre-dawn gloom, with
small-arms fire cracking overhead, I was amazed to see young girls
carrying bottles of Coca-Cola, trying to sell them to the troops.
After the roadblock was cleared and communications restored, Charlie
Company continued toward its objective. At 7 a.m., as daylight was
breaking, my track rolled past the ARVN III Corps compound gate. I
realized we were driving past our objective, halted the company and
called for the 2nd Platoon to find a place to turn around. As the C-23
track in the lead, Stormy, turned into a side street, a rocket
propelled grenade (RPG) slammed into its front, smashing the radiator
and wounding several soldiers. A VC guerrilla hiding behind a parked
ARVN jeep had fired the rocket. Despite the confusion and wounds, our
troops returned fire. 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.
Several soldiers gathered in front of the track to help the wounded,
and Love climbed up to man the .50-caliber. Just then a three-man VC
RPG team calmly walked across the street right in front of the damaged
APC. Love was so startled, he didn�t fire.
�I realize now that the track was high enough that the rounds would
have passed over� the troops in front of the vehicle, Love recalls. �I
yelled at Lieutenant Casper, and everybody looked around as the VC
tore out running the last few yards to safety. We threw grenades over
the wall behind them, but hit nothing.�
Under fire, Staff Sgt. Benny Toney, the 2nd Platoon sergeant, hooked a
tow cable to Stormy. The 2nd Platoon pulled the damaged track out of
the side street and towed it back to the III Corps compound. There,
Charlie Company soldiers joined ARVN and U.S. MACV soldiers manning
the walls. Zabecki remembers taking his place on the wall with his
M-79 grenade launcher. Our arrival had canceled fears that III Corps
headquarters might be overrun.
As our medics treated the wounded, I reported to the American
lieutenant colonel who was the III Corps G3 adviser. Tower had called
and told me Charlie Company was under the operational control of III
Corps and I was to take my orders from them. They ordered us to clear
the VC from the houses surrounding the corps headquarters. I assigned
areas of operation to my two rifle platoons, and positioned the
weapons platoon inside the compound as a reserve and security force.
But their 81mm mortars were useless, since we were told we could not
put any indirect fire into the town.
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. During this fighting, the two
platoon leaders were wounded, Lieutenant Casper in the leg and
Lieutenant Jones in the foot. Refusing evacuation, neither reported
his wound. They both hobbled through the rest of the day�s fighting.
The combat around III Corps headquarters was intense. According to the
VC 5th Division official history, the 3rd Battalion, 5th VC Regiment
was supported by the Bien Hoa Sapper Company; its mission was to
overrun the compound, which was defended by about 15 ARVN soldiers and
a smattering of MACV advisers. However, Charlie Company slammed into
the VC before they could organize their attack.
Sergeant John Ax, squad leader of 1st Squad, 2nd Platoon, recalls the
fighting near III Corps: �An RPG hit Shocker, the C-21 track, in the
side; but it must have been a glancing blow, because it did not
explode. It knocked a dimple in the side of the track as I fired up
the gunner.�
Later in the fighting, Casper and several 2nd Platoon troops were
pinned down next to a building. Casper rose from the prone position
and yelled for his troops to follow him. �When Lieutenant Casper
jumped up, our legs became entangled and I tripped him,� Ax remembers.
�As he fell, a burst of automatic weapons fire stitched the wall right
where he would have been had he not fallen.� (Casper, one of the
bravest of the brave, died during the May offensive in Saigon, leading
from the front.)
After we finished clearing the area around the compound and as our
wound�ed were being dusted off, I received an absolutely incredible
order from III Corps. The G3 adviser told me that they had received
intelligence that Vo Nguyen Giap, the North Vietnamese commanding
general, had his command post in a Catholic church about 1 kilometer
east of III Corps. We were ordered to go there and detain every male
between the ages of 16 and 80. To get to the church, we had to run a
gantlet of fire, through the VC 238th Regiment and into the flank of
the 275th, which was fighting the 2-47�s scout platoon in Widow�s
Village. We fired all we had into the buildings lining the roadway and
took several wounded while getting to the church.
When we arrived, we found the churchyard packed with thousands of
civilians. I called III Corps to report that we had detained all of
these people, and was told to wait for the Vietnamese National Police
to take charge. A few minutes later, a jeep drove up carrying two
extremely frightened white-shirted policemen. As best I could, I
explained that they were to take charge and that General Giap might be
among the civilians. They bowed and looked confused.
Meanwhile, Charlie Company was ordered back to III Corps. As we turned
to head back, a tremendous blast shook the whole city of Bien Hoa. The
Long Binh ammo dump had exploded. Satchel charges blew pallets of
artillery ammunition, creating a mushroom cloud that made us think the
VC had set off a tactical nuclear weapon.
We suffered more wounded during the trip back to III Corps, where I
was called to a meeting in the headquarters. As I walked around the
front of a track, the .50-caliber gunner accidentally hit the trigger
and pumped five rounds into the ground about three feet in front of
me. All I could think of to say was, �Please clear that weapon!�
During the meeting, a master sergeant adviser to a Vietnamese ranger
battalion ran into the compound. He said his battalion was in heavy
contact, and he had several wounded rangers he needed to evacuate. He
wanted to borrow one of our tracks. When the G3 adviser told me to
lend the rangers a track, I told the sergeant that the M-113 was not a
tank and to be careful with it. He manned the .50 and, with a Charlie
Company driver, headed down Highway 1. About 30 minutes later, the
track was back with only the driver, who reported the ranger sergeant
had been killed and that it had been impossible to get the wounded.
At the meeting, I was joined by the S3 of a battalion from the 101st
Airborne Division. The Vietnamese brigadier general�the ranking man at
III Corps�drew circles on a map around two areas of downtown Bien Hoa.
He assigned one to the airborne battalion and the other to Charlie
Company. When I pointed out that the 101st Battalion had more than 500
troops and I had only two line platoons and less than 90 troops, he
said, �You�re mechanized, you�re very strong.�
I told him we couldn�t take the tracks off Highway 1 into town because
the streets were too narrow. He waved me off. I walked back to my
track, thinking this was going to be a nightmare. I told the platoon
leaders to prepare to dismount and to take all the ammunition and
grenades they could carry. Then I got a call from battalion commander
Tower, asking how things were going. I told him about the order to
clear an area of operations equal in size to that assigned the
airborne battalion.
�Forget that,� he said. �I�ve just been told you work for me again.
Come back up on the battalion freq.� I had never been so happy in my
life. The ARVN general and III Corps G3 adviser, however, were not
happy when we pulled out.
Tower ordered Charlie Company to attack eastward to clear the village
of Ho Nai, a Bien Hoa suburb. No tactic I had learned at infantry
school fit that situation, so we improvised. We came up with a �T�
formation. I dismounted the platoons and placed them on line on each
side of the road: the second on the left, or north, and the first on
the right, or south. The platoons attacked by successive bounds
through the village as the tracks, forming the base of the �T,� gave
fire support from the .50s and resupplied the troops with ammo.
The progress was slow and ammo was becoming scarce, particularly
grenades, which get consumed at an enormous rate in city fighting. As
the 2nd Platoon began to run short, Spc. 4 Joseph �Sugar Bear� Dames
returned to the tracks for more grenades. Dames walked down a side
alley toward the highway. Suddenly he came upon a VC RPG team drawing
a bead on my command track, which was a prime target given the number
of radio antennas jutting from it. Unfortunately for the VC, they had
no weapons other than the RPG launcher. Dames killed them with a burst
from his M-16 probably saving the lives of everyone on my track.
As enemy resistance stiffened, we realized we had bottled at least a
company of the VC 275th Regiment in the village. The 2-47�s scout
platoon had just finished a brutal fight in Widow�s Village, and at 4
p.m., it was ordered to move to the junction of Highways 1 and 316,
and to attack westward through the village of Ho Nai toward Charlie
Company, in the hope of pinning the VC between us. As 1st Lt. Brice
Barnes led his scouts into Ho Nai, he ran full speed into a hornet�s
nest. Several tracks were hit by RPGs and surrounded by the enemy.
Listening to the scouts� desperate fight on the radio, Charlie Company
attacked with renewed vigor as we tried to get to Barnes and his men.
Fighting our way to the scout platoon, we were stopped when we came
upon two large churches, straddling Highway 1, each occupied by VC.
The 2nd Platoon took the one north of the road, the 1st Platoon
attacked the other. Troops opened their attacks with volleys of
grenades, then charged in shooting. The churches were cleared in short
order.
After the fight for the churches, there occurred one of the most
bizarre and inexplicable incidents of the day. An MP full colonel,
accompanied by a Los Angeles deputy sheriff (dressed in his deputy
uniform) and two jeeploads of National Police, drove up to my track.
The colonel explained that since we were infantry soldiers and did not
know the proper method of searching a house, he and his crew had come
to teach us. I told the colonel that this was not a police action,
that we weren�t searching houses, we were in combat. He ignored me and
went to a nearby house where he and the deputy sheriff kicked in the
front door. At that moment, a burst of VC machine gun fire erupted,
causing the colonel, the deputy and their Vietnamese escorts to pile
into their vehicles and roar off in the direction from whence they had
come. We never saw them again.
We closed within a few hundred meters of the scout platoon and watched
as helicopter gunships destroyed a large yellow house from which the
VC were pinning down Barnes� troops. As the Hueys� rockets smashed the
VC strongpoint, the scouts fought their way out of the encirclement
and evacuated their dead and wounded. Lieutenant Barnes and one of his
soldiers would be awarded Distinguished Service Crosses for their
heroism that day.
As the scouts escaped, the volume of enemy fire began to slacken, then
died altogether. All day civilians had been darting from their homes
and running from the fighting. Now someone pointed out that there were
a lot of young men, all dressed in black pants and white shirts,
walking among the refugees. Simultaneously, platoon leaders reported
finding discarded AK-47s. Then a report came in that a body had been
found wearing a white shirt under a black pajama tunic. It dawned on
us that the VC were throwing down their weapons, changing clothes and
slipping away. We began detaining the well-dressed young men among the
refugees.
Meanwhile, Hueys reported VC running from the village. The armed
helicopter teams had a field day shooting guerrillas trying to flee
into the jungle. Later, captured VC said many guerrillas only had two
magazines for their weapons in expectation that the population would
rise up against the Americans and have plenty of captured weapons to
fight with.
As darkness settled in, Charlie Company was ordered back to the
junction of Highways 1 and 316, where we would form a screen in front
of the 199th LIB base camp. Rolling back through Bien Hoa, we were
astounded to come upon the battalion S4, Captain Leroy Brown, in the
middle of town with a 5,000-gallon fuel tanker and several ammunition
trucks. Bringing that volatile convoy through the city, which had not
been totally cleared and was still burning in many places, was a
tremendously heroic act. We topped off our fuel tanks, replenished our
ammo and continued to move toward our assigned blocking position.
That night, frightened bunker guards in the 199th compound shot into
the darkness to their front. The only trouble was that Charlie Company
tracks were sitting in the road right in front of their bunkers. We
began to pop hand-held flares so they could see we were there, but the
shooting persisted, one round hitting my track. After much frequency
changing, I finally got the commander of the bunker guards on the
radio. Specialist 4 Bill Rambo, assistant driver and .50-gunner on my
command track, remembers my response to the firing as being absolutely
irate. According to him, I told him that any fool could see that the
VC did not have M-113s, and that we had 22 .50-calibers and a 106mm
recoilless rifle and they, for sure, did not want us to return fire.
Soon we could hear leaders moving up and down the bunker line yelling
for the guards to stop firing.
As dawn broke on February 1, it was deathly quiet. The village of Ho
Nai, now a ghost town, still smoldered. Incredibly, nobody in my
company had been killed the day before. Charlie Company had reported
38 VC killed, at the cost of only 11 U.S. wounded and three APCs
damaged by RPGs. In addition we detained more than 20 probable VC
fighters dressed in civilian clothes. The 2-47�s enemy body count came
in at more than 200, while the battalion suffered only four KIA. An
accurate body count could never be compiled since so many VC bodies
were dragged away or were burned in the many fires that ravaged the
towns and villages.
Although initially surprised, U.S. forces had reacted quickly. 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.
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