https://history.army.mil/Publications/Publications-Catalog-Sub/Publications-By-Title/Advice-and-Support-The-Middle-Years/

As Thi’s leadership brought the 9th Division to life, the 7th Division won two more 

victories in June. After agents reported an assemblage of the National Liberation Front’s 

Dinh Tuong Province leadership at Xom Dao, near Ap Bac, General Nguyen Bao Tri 

struck on the twenty-seventh. Four infantry battalions and three reconnaissance 

companies crashed the meeting. The enemy leaders expected the unwelcome guests, 

as their agents had reported the government’s plan. Rather than withdraw, they had 

decided to stay and fight. Defending the position was the 514th PLAF Battalion and a 

portion of the 261st PLAF Battalion. 

Aircraft delivered a preliminary bombardment at dawn, hitting the tree lines and 

canal banks that normally housed enemy entrenchments. The attack had little effect, 

as the enemy instead had deployed in foxholes in the rice fields. At 0600, U.S. Army 

helicopters began delivering the assault troops 400 meters away from the 514th PLAF 

Battalion’s concealed position. The enemy repulsed two attacks in fighting that lasted 

all day. According to one enemy participant, the bombs dropped by air force aircraft 

had only minimal effect, often hitting empty positions. “If helicopters had been there 

we would have been killed,” he recalled, “because we were out in the open. But no 

helicopters came, and when the fighter-bombers left, we returned to our foxholes.” 

Liberation Radio claimed the Communists had won the battle, killing 300 South 

Vietnamese soldiers, but the actual outcome was somewhat different. The attackers 

destroyed a fifty-bed hospital, killed thirty-one insurgent soldiers, and estimated the 

enemy had evacuated another fifty casualties. The government also killed the entire 

seven-man Communist provincial committee and captured twenty-nine insurgents 

and sixteen weapons. South Vietnamese casualties amounted to one dead and two 

wounded.15 

Two days later, government forces returned to Dinh Tuong’s Cai Lay District to 

hit the 261st PLAF Battalion and one hundred guerrillas. A ranger and seven infantry 

battalions, a reconnaissance company, and an M113 troop assaulted the enemy, 

killing 164 insurgents and capturing 9 individual weapons and 3 machine guns. The 

allies estimated the enemy had carried off another ninety-one casualties. The South 

Vietnamese lost twenty-nine dead and fifty-eight wounded. Two Americans died, and 

another two suffered wounds. The twin battles shook the local population’s faith in the 

Front, and many chose to leave Xom Dao thereafter.16