TRẬN ÔNG THÀNH
The Ordenl of the Big Red Olle
On the morning of 17 October Hay left to attend a MACV conference
in Saigon. At the time he noted that his forces had accounted for about
one hundred fifty enemy dead in the Long Nguyen, had found and
destroyed many base camps, and had captured over sixty tons of rice.
Although some Viet Cong obviously remained in the base area, many
signs suggested that the 27151 had suffered a major defeat and was in the
process of attempting to leave the Long Nguyen. Assuming the enemy
would move west into the Michelin Plantation, blocking forces of the 25th
Division had already deployed there to prevent his escape.
OngThanh
General Hay appeared ready to end his campaign in the Long
Nguyen, but increased enemy activity in the area of the Ong Thanh
Stream caused him to reconsider. The stream flowed near the Binh
Duong-Binh Long provincial boundary, where the 1st Brigade had made
all its major contacts. The enemy's continued presence there suggested
that the Viet Cong were determined to defend their jungle bases. '9
On the morning of 16 October Colonel Allen had moved out from his
temporary base along the Ong Thanh with two companies to patrol to the
southeast. After traveling two kilometers, the point of his column spotted
a fo rtified enemy camp. Allen pulled his men back and placed air strikes
on the area in accordance with 1st Division policy.
After the bombing runs, the Americans entered the camp. Suddenly, an
enemy mine exploded, and sniper fire erupted from the surrounding trees.
Several soldiers went down in the hail of bullets. Allen ordered a quick
withdrawal and formed a two-company perimeter around his casualties.
Meanwhile, several batteries of artillery rained shells into the camp from
firebases along Highway 13, and within an hour enemy fire had ceased.
Allen's men returned to the area and counted seventeen enemy dead.
While probing the western edge of the camp, the Americans saw and
fired on two Viet Congo That set off a second firefight against an estimated
sixty enemy soldiers hiding in the jungle. Again, Allen formed a perimeter
and called in air strikes, but late that afternoon, to avoid committing to a
fi ght that might continue into the night, he broke contact and returned to
his base. Allen's mission for 17 October was to reenter the area of the previ
ous day's encounter to determine if the enemy was still there.20
At the time Colonel Newman, who had commanded the brigade for
only a month, believed that battalion commanders should accompany
their men in the jungle. Allen, also in command of his unit for a month, preferred supervising the action from a helicopter. Although that practice
was normal in the 3d Brigade, as long as Allen was serving under 1st
Brigade control he followed Newman's policy. (Mnp 36)
At 0800 on 17 October, a bright, sunny morning, Allen's unit struck out,
with Company A in the lead followed by Company D. He intended to
move directly south for 1,500 meters and then to head east to reenter the
enemy camp from a slightly different direction. The column would then
continue farther east to assess the damage in an area that 8-52s had hit on
the fourteenth. Allen and a command group of six went with Company O.
Both companies were far below their normal combat field strength of
100 to 120 men, and some of their leaders had left for training or other
temporary duty. Each company had left behind its mortar sections, a divi
sion policy, to help guard the battalion base along with Company B and
the men from the battalion headquarters company. Allen's fourth rifle
company was under the direct control of the 1st Brigade, protecting
another supporting firebase, CAISSON V. Because of the reduced strength
Company A had only sixty-five men and Company 0 seventy-three
each unit had reorganized two of its three rifle platoons into two-squad
platoons. Allen could count on artillery support from four batteries of
105-mm. howitzers and one battery of 155-mm. howitzers located at CAIS
SON V and two other firebases, CAISSON IIl-S and LORRAINE III. The men of
both companies carried extra ammunition.
Preceded by marching artillery fire, Allen's men entered the jungle
with flank security extending twenty to thirty-five meters. During the
first forty-five minutes, they traveled no more than five hundred meters,
periodically halting to conduct cloverleaf patrols to the front, rear, and
fl anks. At 0956, after continuing in the same manner for another five hun
dred meters, the point squad of the column from the 1st Platoon, Compa
ny A, came upon a well-traveled northeast-southwest trail that had been
used within the hour. The acting platoon leader, sensing that another
enemy camp was close by, obtained permission to make cloverleaf patrols
east and west of the trail. The rest of the column halted, placed flank secu
rity out at a greater distance, and awaited the findings of the patrols.
At that time most of Allen's men were in moderate jungle that did not
form a complete canopy. The vegetation did not obstruct movement by
foot, but it obscured ground visibility beyond fifteen to twenty meters. At
a greater distance to the flanks and to the south, where the lead unit of
Company A was moving, the jungle was more dense, with some trees as
high as forty meters.
Almost immediately, the men of the 1st Platoon, scouting west of the
trail, sighted a Viet Cong soldier. Moments later a group of enemy troops
appeared on the trail just ahead. The commander of Company A, Capt.
James E. George, told the patrol to form a hasty ambush, but by the time
his men were in position the enemy had disappeared and all was quiet.
As they lay silent on the jungle floor, the 1st Platoon leader heard
movement in the trees, the clicking of rifle bolts, and the rattle of metal. George told him to reinforce the ambush patrol at once. Moving out, the
rest of the men of the platoon immediately ran into sniper fire. They
pressed on until a machine-gun burst from a well-camouflaged bunker
killed one man and wounded two others. Then heavy fire poured into
both flanks and the platoon was pinned down.
The next platoon in the column, the 2d, tried to reinforce but was
brought up short by the same hidden machine-gun nest. As the bullets
fl ew, the radio went dead and the company commander could no longer
communicate with either platoon.
Captain George had few options. His trail unit, the 3d Platoon, had
only eleven men, and since he needed to maintain a link with Company
D, George decided to move his own command group forward to join his
beleaguered platoons. Maneuvering to a position some fifteen meters in
front of the enemy bunker, he tossed in a flurry of grenades and tem
porarily silenced the troublesome machine gun.
But the enemy was still in the fight. Perhaps an alert Viet Cong soldier
spotted the antennas on the radios carried by members of George's com
mand group and realized the importance of what he had found. Whatev
er the case, one soldier dashed forward with a claymore-type mine and
set off the explosive before the Americans could cut him down. The blast
killed a radio operator and wounded Captain George and most of the rest
of the command group.
As Company A battled on, Company D began drawing sniper fire
from trees west of its position. The shooters wounded two men before
return fire silenced them. Colonel Allen directed his command group to
remain in place beside a prominent ant hill and told the Company D com
mander, 1st Lt. Albert C. Welch, to form a two-platoon perimeter around
the command group. Welch's leading platoon, the 3d, was to stay in con
tact with Company A's rear. Since he needed to call in artillery and air
strikes, Allen radioed George to break contact and withdraw into Compa
ny D's perimeter, the same kind of maneuver the battalion had conducted
successfully the day before.
Captain George, blind and deaf from the explosion of the claymore,
gave the order to pull back. But all three of his platoons were under heavy
fire, and all three platoon leaders were wounded. With his officers out of
action, George radioed Allen that he was placing his senior noncommis
sioned officer, M. Sgt. Jose B. Valdez, in command of the company.
Company A's plight was serious. The fight had unfolded so quickly,
and it was so difficult to see through the underbrush, that few survivors
would remember seeing the enemy. Despite heavy return fire by the
Americans, enemy fire continued undiminished. And with most of the
company's officers wounded early in the action, communication within
the unit broke down almost immediately.
As the firefight degenerated into a general melee, withdrawing to
safety became a matter of individual initiative. Pfc. James c. Jones, the
artillery forward observer's radio operator, found himself with two jobs-calling in artillery and fighting off the enemy closing in around
h;m. After emptying his .45-caliber pistol at his attackers, he snatched up
a wounded soldier's M16 and kept firing. As the bullets flew, Jones
stayed on the radio, walking in the artillery fire so close that shell frag
ments spattered all around him. When the enemy fire lessened, Jones,
believing himself to be the sole survivor in the area, crawled to the rear,
eventually rejoining Company A's command group.
Meanwhile, many of the men from Company A's 2d and 3d Platoons
were able to join Company D. Some reached the perimeter arow1d Colonel
Allen and Ius command group, wlule others joined a second perimeter that
Company D's 3d Platoon had set up some fifty meters away. Having no con
tact with Company A's platoons, Sergeant Valdez and Company A's surviv
ing command group formed their own perimeter a hundred meters or more
east of where the fight had started. In an effort to assemble all survivors,
Valdez repeatedly fired shots into the air, shouting, "Come to the shot in the
air! Come to us! Be calm!" Individuals and small groups gradually filtered
into Valdez's position, most of them from the 1st Platoon."
The use-or possibly misuse-of air strikes influenced how the bat
tl e would play out. Earlier that morning F-100s and B-57 Canberras had
fl own preplanned air strikes against known and suspected enemy base
camps within the 1st Brigade's sector, but none were in direct support of
Allen's advance. The last was completed at 1012, only minutes before
Company A ran into the enemy and Colonel Newman, flying overhead
at 1020, called for close air support for Allen's battalion. Even so, appar
ently 110 planes were immediately available to answer Newman's
request. Thirty minutes would pass before A-37 Dragonflies on strip
alert at Bien I-Ioa Air Base, nearly sixty kilometers from the fight, could
arrive. Another ten minutes would elapse before a forward air controller
could brief the pilots on the target. By then, about nOD, only sporadic
fire threatened Allen's men.
Believing that the Viet Cong were withdrawing south, Newman
directed the air strikes to two hundred meters south of the southernmost
point where he had seen smoke, which Company A had used to mark its
position. Before the first of what would eventually total sixteen strikes
went in, Newman agreed to halt the supporting artillery fire coming from
CAISSON III-S and CAISSON V; during the partial check-fire only the two
artillery batteries at LORRAINE III continued to fire, striking an area west of
Company A's initial contact. According to Colonel Allen's operations offi
cer, Maj. John F. Sloan, the check-fire was against Allen's wishes, but he
deferred to the judgment of his brigade commander.
The target that Colonel Newman had indicated was in dense jungle,
and the forward air controller who was to vector in the fighter-bombers had no direct communication with the troops on the ground. For these
reasons, the air controller had the attacking aircraft make several passes
over the designated target to ensure that the pilots knew exactly where to
deliver their bombs. After obtaining final clearances, the first of two air
craft attacked at 1110. The second began its run ten minutes later, at which
time Allen informed Newman that all enemy fire had ceased.
The duration of the check-fire was difficult to reconstruct. Conflicting
reports ranged from fifteen to forty-five minutes. Whatever its length, the
enemy, far from withdrawing, used the respite to redeploy into a horse
shoe with troops west, south, and east of Company D.
Starting at 1135 enemy fire against Company 0 began to intensify.
Lieutenant Welch had chosen his position around a prominent ant hill,
and the small landmark may have made it easier for the Viet Cong to pin
point his location. Because the men could make out few targets in the
underbrush, Welch told them to hold their fire until they either had the
enemy in their sights or could pick out muzzle flashes. As the enemy fire
grew in volume, the men could make out the distinctive sound of an
American-made M60 machine gun firing at them from the south.
When Sergeant Valdez had assumed command of Company A,
Colonel Allen had instructed him to move on an azimuth of 360 degrees
(due north) to join him. When Allen heard the machine-gun fire, he
assumed that it indicated Company As approach and that Valdez's men
were mistakenly firing into Company D. He yelled for Company A to cease fire, but the word also passed down the line of Company D. With
American fire slacking, the volume of enemy fire grew, forcing Allen's
troops to hug the ground and making it impossible for them to challenge
enemy fire superiority.
Colonel Newman later recalled that as soon as the new enemy attack
began at 1135, Allen contacted him by radio, saying, "Sir, I can use my
artillery now." Newman halted all further air strikes and ordered the
artillery to resume firing. Newman later noted that the switch took about
two minutes, but explained that "it was never made known to me that he,
Allen, was experiencing difficulty with artillery fire support."2l
Meanwhile, Sergeant Valdez and the twenty-four men with him,
many of them wounded, stumbled through the jungle, dodging not only
enemy fire, but also friendly artillery rounds. Although they had hoped
to link up with Company D, they never found it and eventually arrived
instead at the battalion base.
Within Company D's perimeter, the situation was also deteriorating.
Allen himself had been wounded, and enemy snipers in trees and
machine gunners firing low grazing fire six to twelve inches off the
ground were pounding the trapped Company D from three sides. Any
American who tried to move instantly became a target. Many of the com
pany's leaders were now casualties, including the company commander,
Lieutenant Welch.
Shortly before noon Allen ordered the wounded Welch to pull the wlit
back to the battalion base and Company B to come forward to cover the
withdrawal. Refusing assistance from those men about to leave, the battal
ion commander elected to remain with those wounded who were immobile.
The withdrawal proved costly. As the troops began to move back,
enemy fire cut down several of them, and the movement north quickly
turned into a disorganized scramble. A platoon sergeant moving to the
rear was the last to see Allen alive. With the help of the sergeant, Allen
had begun removing a radio from the back of a dead operator to call in
more artillery fire. Moments later a short burst of machine-gun fire
grazed Allen's helmet, knocking him down. Allen told the sergeant to for
get the artillery and get his people "the hell out of there."" Shortly after
leaving, the sergeant looked back and saw either an RPG round or a clay
more mine explode near Allen, followed quickly by a burst of machine
gun fire, which killed him.
As the withdrawal proceeded, the brigade commander, Colonel New
man, headed for the battalion base to assume command of the unit. An
assistant division commander, Brig. Gen. William S. Coleman, in his heli
copter above the battlefield, took control of the brigade. Soldiers arriving
at the base said that many of the wounded had been left behind, so the brigade operations officer, Maj. Donald W. Holleder, who had landed
with Newman, organized a small group of men to attempt to reach Com
pany D's old position. Holleder himself took the lead and soon outdis
talKed the other men by fifty meters. Suddenly, an enemy sniper in a tree
fired and Holleder fell mortally wounded.
Meanwhile, Colonel Newman obtained helicopters to evacuate the casu
alties and to bring Allen's Company C from CAISSON V. Newman planned to
lead Company C and the battalion's reconnaissance platoon to Company
D's former position while Company B kept a corridor open to the base.
Expecting to find many wounded, he instructed the battalion surgeon and
medical aid men, augmented from division by another physician and other
aid men, to accompany him. Unsure as to where the wounded were, he
intended to advance without artillery support for fear of hitting them.
While Newman gathered the relief force, a wounded grenadier from
Company A, Pfc. Joseph J. Costello, managed to locate a radio near Allen's
last position and about 1330 sent a message over the battalion conunand net:
"This is Costello, please help, we need help."" Overhead, General Coleman
heard his call and told him to mark his position with a smoke grenade.
Seeing the smoke rise from the trees, Coleman told Costello that help
would soon arrive. Instructing those stations on the battalion command
net to switch to an alternate frequency so he and Colonel Newman could
remain in continuous contact with Costello, Coleman planned to vector
Newman's relief to Costello's position. Meanwhile, he encouraged Costel
lo to set up a perimeter defense with the surviving troops and gave him
advice for treating the wounded. When the enemy fire around Costello's
position finally ended at 1430, a helicopter dropped bags of smoke
grenades and medical supplies.
By that time Newman's relief force, with the reconnaissance platoon in
the lead, was on the move with volunteers from Companies A and D to
assist in the search for their comrades. The relief force arrived at Costello's
location at 1515, reporting that it had found 30 to 40 dead or wounded
Americans. As Company C passed through the reconnaissance platoon and
began to form a perimeter, the company came upon another group of
Americans, raising its estimate to 50 killed and wounded. On a sweep
around the area, the reconnaissance platoon found 3 enemy weapons, sev
eral blood-covered trails leading away from the area, and 22 enemy bodies.
While air and artillery struck likely routes of withdrawal, Colonel
Newman's most pressing problem was how to evacuate the large number
of American casualties from the area. There were no clearings for Hueys
to land, and moving the dead and wounded overland would take too
much time. Flying above the battlefield, General Coleman found the solu
ti on. Within a short distance from where Colonel Allen's body had been found, he spotted a deadfall that could be made into a helicopter landing
zone. While troops cut down the vegetation with machetes and chain
saws, a helicopter lowered a jungle penetrator rig to take out the most
critically wounded. Not until late that afternoon was "the hole," as the
men called it, large enough for a helicopter to land, and not until 1810
was the last of the wounded finally evacuated. Because of the presence of
enemy snipers and the lateness of the day, Newman decided to leave the
American dead near the hole until the next morning.
Throughout the night, to keep the enemy away from the bodies,
"skyspots" (radar-directed air strikes) and artillery fire boxed the area.
The next morning, when Newman's men returned to remove the dead,
they found no evidence that the enemy had tampered with the bodies,
and none were booby trapped, a common enemy practice. A further
search turned up 17 more American dead, none of whom showed evi
dence of having been hit by artillery fire or air strikes. That accounted for
all who had participated in the fight except for two soldiers. American
losses came to 56 killed, 75 wounded, and 2 missing-totaling almost the
entire complement of Allen's original force.
Viet Cong losses were unknown. Based on an estimate from each of
the companies, the 1st Brigade reported an enemy body count of 101, but
the relief force that removed the American dead on the following morn
ing found only 2 enemy bodies.
Looking back, General Coleman felt that when Company A had first
become embroiled in heavy combat at 1020 and had taken casualties, Allen
should have instructed the unit to form a perimeter and then reinforced it
with Company D. Yet 1st Division policy stated otherwise, supporting
Allen's action. The same maneuver had been successfully executed by
Colonel Cavazos' men on the eleventh and by Colonel Allen's men on the
sixteenth. The error, if there was one, may have been using the same tactic
repeatedly and automatically, without considering alternatives.
On the afternoon after the dead had been removed from the battle
fi eld, General Westmoreland met with General Hay to determine why the
engagement had been fought on the enemy's terms. Hay made no
attempt to gloss over the calamity. Allen's men had been ambushed.
Although they had apparently fought well under extreme circumstances,
they had been dealt a terrible blow, taking more casualties in a single
action than any other battalion under Hay's command.
Early in November the 2d Battalion, 28th Infa ntry, would again join
the 1st Brigade to participate in a fight against two enemy regiments of
the 9th Division at Loc Ninh. Missing at Loc Ninh was the 9th Division's
remaining regiment, the 271sl. According to prisoners captured later,
members of the 271s1 who had fought in the Long Nguyen during Octo
ber, their regiment had taken heavy casualties there and for months was
in no condition to fight. But such news was no consolation to Americans
mourning the loss of their own.
