The
night of August 27th 1970 I pulled guard duty with a few of the guys in the
platoon on the flight line at
We got back to the hooch and crashed. Before I lay down I was either told or I saw my name on the load list to be ready to go out on a mission if the platoon was alerted.
About
11:00 hours that morning the platoon Sgt, [Sgt Van Horne] got the call to move.
And the word went out. Scramble !!! Scramble!!!!
Get on!!! Get on !!!
Every
one on alert hauled ass to the heli pad where our ships were. I
jumped into the first ship on the left side. The platoon was air born in about
5 minutes and was headed out to where we didn’t know yet. But we didn’t
have far to go. It was a small mountain {hill 674} with a ridgeline
running north and south, with an old abandoned fire support base on top with
little cover and a trail running the length of the ridge down to highway 19,
the main highway running through the central high lands of Vietnam.
As we approached the LZ, I was still
trying to rub the sleep from I eyes. As we came in the word was given to
"lock and load"!!. As we got closer to the
LZ, I got closer to the door readying my self to jump out and deploy. our LZ was about from 1/8 to 1/4 mile down from the top of
the hill.
As we
came into the LZ, I jumped out first on my side and deployed out from the LZ
about 10 feet. the LZ was very grassy and brushy about
10 to 15 feet high. You could only see about 5 or 6 feet in front
of your positions. The LZ was small and tight.
We
were facing out waiting for the other ships to come in and drop off
the rest of the platoon.
As I remember the first
ship had departed and the second ship was coming in to drop off the
next squad. Then all hell broke loose. I heard the Lt. Yell, "contact !!! Contact!!!!" and then
gunfire. I put my M16 rifle on full auto and started to firing in
an arc in front of me. I was firing and not watching what was happening
behind me. What I didn’t know and didn’t see was the second ship had
been shot down in the LZ blocking it. At the same time the automatic
weapons fire is getting stronger and closer to us. I lay down as flat as I
could. Trying to return fire. The muzzle blast
of the AK 47s was deafening. The enemy was very close to us but we
couldn’t see them for the brush and thick grass.. They
were not only close, they were in the LZ in a spider
hole. and with the crashed ship in the LZ we were
cut off, the other ship couldn’t come in.
Dan
Jackson and someone else pulled the pilots out of ship after it crashed. One or
both pilots had been shot one through the legs. That's when the ship went
out of control. I think Jackson and the other guy got the Silver Star for
their actions. Doc Lamora did a good job taking care of the wounded that day
to. There were a lot of purple hearts earned that day.
I
remember Don Ronnea [pineapple] next to me, he's firing back at the enemy
but the in coming fire is so great and low it's hard to return fire. I've
got my head and body so low that my spine is kissing the ground and my
rifle in front of me shooting back. Thinking back none of us had any way of
digging in. No one had an entrenching tool with them.
Then I
looked over at Don. He's been shot in the head. His face is very bloody his
arms and head are shacking and jerking uncontrollably. It shocked the hell out
of
Every
thing was happening so fast and all at once, I remember meeting up with Dan
Jackson a Sgt. When I met up with him I’ll have to say I was shock up some from
all I’d seen up to that point I said something to the effect that we
needed to get the fuck out of here and now.!!!
But Dan to his credit spoke to me in a calm voice and told me to take it
easy and then I was ok.
The
RTO was wounded and the radio had been hit and was out of action, someone
had taken the radio off of him, I remember that me and some one else cut his
shirt open and tried to put a bandage on him but the wound was almost the
length of his back. The bullet had gone between the radio and his back, it was
long but not deep some how the bandage stayed on and he was
able to walk when the time came to medi-vac him out.
One of
our scout ships brought in another radio so we could
communicate with our commanders and gun ships and who ever else
needed to talk to us. Dan and I were
both Sgts. at the time so we shared command he would work the radio [he was a
good RTO] and I would see what I could do with the perimeter and the
wounded.
I
tried taking a head count by voice but that didn’t work, so I ran around the
perimeter to see who was still in the fight and who we had lost from wounds or
who was killed.
It was about that time I
found Tom. He had been killed, possibly by the helicopter. One of the
skids was on top of his body. I saw one of the door gunners about that
time to. He was a little banged up but
he had found himself a gun and was helping out. We needed every person and gun
we could get.
The
helicopter was on fire in the LZ, it burned down and
caught the grass in the LZ on fire. And about that same time the fuel cell blew
up .it blew burning fuel on some of us. I got 2 slight burns on my back
that I didn’t know I had until I was back at base,
I
remember we were all prone at one time or another, firing back at the gunfire.
We couldn’t see them so we shot at gunfire.
The fire was burning Ray
and Tom, there wasn’t much we could do for them, Ray had 2 or 3 grenades on
him, and the fire started cooking them off one by one. We didn’t dare get close
to him for fear of getting wounded or killed. One good thing though we
were below the blast cone of the explosion we
were only a few feet away. But no one wanted to try to get a hot grenade off of
Ray. The smell of them burning was sickening.
The
Lt. had been shot, but he had killed 2 dinks in the spider hole that was in the
LZ.
He showed me where the spider hole
was, he wanted me to put a grenade in it to make sure the dinks were dead.
I crawled over to it looked in and saw that they were pretty dead. I
couldn’t see wasting a grenade on them so I threw it out in the brush where we
had been taking fire.
Some
time after the ship had burned down and the fire was out in the LZ we started
getting the wounded out by medi-vac helicopters. I was helping get
the wounded on as they came in. We got the 2 pilots out along with the lt., Sgt
Hyatt, and Pineapple Don Ronnea and the rest. The ARVN Scout that was with us
tried to leave with the wounded, but I wasn’t going to have any part of
that, I pulled his ass off the ship. We needed every one that could shoot
and secure the LZ.
After
we got the wounded out we just hunkered down and fired back at the dinks
at different times to keep them off of us. We'd fire for a few seconds then
stop for about 2 of 3 minutes then fire again trying to keep them off balance.
After awhile the incoming fire seem to have died down. The cobras helped suppress the dinks fire a
whole lot with rocket and mini guns. They saved our bacon for sure.
Finally a medi-vac
ship came in to pull the rest of us out.
I remember standing about 30 feet from the ship with my back to
it as I backed up I was firing again in an arc to keep the dinks heads
down. I waited until everyone was on the ship before I got on. Then
we got the hell out of there and back to base.
After
we got back we learned the fate of the rest of the platoon. They were inserted
at the top of the hill where an old fire support base was they were going to try
and fight their way down to us. There was little or no cover for them the
dinks were waiting for them, they met the same fate as we had, 3
KIA and 8 wounded. Some how they were able to hold on,
as we had long enough to be pulled out. In the lower LZ we had 2 killed
8 or 9 wounded.
We
learned later on that we jumped on top of a NVA battalion that was strung
out from the top of the hill clear to the highway 19 where a battle had
been going on before we had been inserted. The NVA had laid a big trap for
us and we jumped right on top of them. When I think about it I wonder
how in the hell did we get out of there alive. God for sure was they’re helping
us.
To
this day I don't know how the rest of us got out of that trap alive. They could
of overrun us if they had the mind to. Both sections
of the platoon were just holding on by the skin of their teeth. I still get chills and a bite shaky thinking
about that day, that day changed my life forever. I thought I was really going
to get killed.
That afternoon I went to the morgue to identify one of our guys that had been killed, he didn’t have any ID on him. The trooper was Joe Luna he was only 18 years old, Joe had taken a round through the head, later on I was told that Joe said "I’m died" as the bullet hit him and he feel off the ship. I don't know how the others were killed. Or how the others were wounded. I was told that Sgt Van Horne had been shot in the chest and took some grenade shrapnel. But he made it out.
The Air Force fighters’ bombers and
our own artillery gave that hill and ridge line a pounding!!! It made my
heart feel good seeing those dinks catching so much hell.
We went to see the guys at the
hospital a few days later. That was a
rough day. The guys were in good spirits considering all that they had
been through. I think I went to see them a couple of times. But it pulled
at my heart too much. It really tore me
up to see my friend shot up like that. I just couldn’t go see them anymore and
I still feel bad about that, "guilt "!
The more information about the
action of August 28th that I find I’ll add it to the story of the 10th CAV D
troop history. I’m trying to find the guys that were there that
day so they can add their stories. If you know anyone who was there that day please have him or her call me so they can add their story.
Ron
Stillwell 970-487-0286 or