Assault on LZ Brown (Cambodia, May 12 & 13, 1970)
Robert J. Gouge
Tuesday, May 12th, 1970, dawned as another unbelievably hot, sweltering day. It ended in an unusually heavy monsoon rainstorm that utterly drenched the already saturated jungle. For the exhausted grunts from Bravo and Charlie Companies of the 5th Battalion, 12th Infantry, 199th Infantry Brigade (Sep)(Lt), that day, especially late that evening and into the early morning hours of May 13th was anything but ordinary. Unbeknownst to them, before the sun broke over the horizon ushering in a new day, they would fight in a bloody, savage, and desperate contest for survival against an equally tough, motivated, and battle-hardened enemy.
Eleven days prior, after spending nearly six months patrolling the rolling hills and triple canopy jungles of Long Khanh and Binh Tuy Provinces in the III CTZ, the 5-12th Infantry and Delta Battery, 2-40th Artillery were op-conned to the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division. This rapid shift in control was done in anticipation for the much-awaited cross-border Cambodian Incursion, which kicked-off with both a military and political boom on May 1st, 1970.
Beginning in the early morning hours of May 1st, after a ground-shaking mission of thirty-six B-52 “Arc-Lights,” a World War I vintage walking artillery barrage, and 151 tactical air strikes, a trooper from C/2-7th Cavalry became the first American trooper to combat assault into the Fishhook region of Cambodia. For those organic and attached units of the force being deployed into Cambodia, specifically into the Fishhook region, their primary mission was to neutralize the COSVN Headquarters and wipe Base Area 351 from the face of the earth.
On May 3rd, after a pleasant but intoxicated two-day stand-down at Camp Frenzell-Jones, the Brigade Main Base for the 199th Infantry Brigade, the entire “Warrior” battalion reluctantly made the journey northward from Bien Hoa Airbase towards the Vietnamese-Cambodian border.
Reid Mendenhall, a combat veteran Echo Company, 5-12th Infantry describes the wave of emotions that came along when they were told they were going to Cambodia. “It all started with rumors, like so many other things, and nobody could have imagined something quite so bazaar. We all knew that Cambodia was a major problem, but we thought that it was out of reach, until now. We had heard stories about covert units going into Laos and Cambodia, but now the story was ours. Soon after the rumors began, the word finally came down that we were going. There was some trepidation in our small unit, but we were all together, at least for the moment, and that was of great comfort.”
Ironically, when the battalion reached Bien Hoa Airbase, they were given their monthly pay. Many soldiers in the battalion wondered, “Just what in the hell are we going to do with this money in Cambodia?”
Packed aboard noisy Air Force C-123 cargo planes at the 8th Aerial Port at Bien Hoa, the trip was a solemn one as the young soldiers could sense that they were getting into something big. Horseplay and joking around was kept to a minimum as the men were preoccupied with thoughts of home and a foreboding feeling about what was to come. By 1905 that evening, the airlift was completed at Duc Phong, with all companies of the battalion on the ground and dispersed to FSB Buttons.
From May 4th to May 11th, the Redcatchers conducted mundane screening operations and short-range patrols along the Vietnamese side of the border at Song Be and Bu Dop. Elements of the battalion also guarded the dilapidated earthen airstrip at Bu Gia Map, located just two kilometers from the Cambodian border.
John Wensdofer had been with Charlie Company since January 15th, 1970. “When we started the move to Cambodia, we were sent up north to Song Be for a little over a week. As soon as we got there, action started to pick up. They expected the place to be hit and hit hard when we moved in. Where we had been operating in Vietnam, the Viet Cong rarely moved in groups larger than four or five soldiers. Around Song Be and once inside Cambodia, they moved in groups anywhere from 20 to 100.”
With each passing day, the young men from the 199th LIB wondered just when the time would come when they too would cross the border and take part in what was commonly called “The Great Souvenir Hunt.” The time came on the morning of May 12th, when Colonel Carter Clarke, the commanding officer of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, summoned his reserves. The Redcatchers were ordered to take up the slack left by the 5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry, and quickly re-deploy to a place called LZ Brown after the Cavalry soldiers had been ordered to assault an enemy basecamp several klicks to the north. Landing Zone Brown had been a target hit by the 5-7th Cavalry on the first day of the Incursion.
Located approximately three kilometers north of the border and two kilometers west of Route 14-A (one of the only major roads in the region) in a natural clearing that was surrounded by the thick Cambodian jungle, the “hole called LZ Brown” was used as a patrol base by the 5-7th Cavalry for the first week and a half of the Cambodian operation. The site was also in the middle of a huge North Vietnamese logistical complex. By midday on May 12th, the 5-7th Cavalry had vacated LZ Brown, taking anything of use with them and leaving the small perimeter all but vacant and bare. The patrol-base now consisted of a pitiful-looking dirt berm roughly four feet in height and a single strand of floppy razor wire.
“When we received the word to go into Cambodia,” relates John Wensdofer, “Charlie Company flew in by Huey late in the afternoon of May 12th. “We were the first ones from the battalion to cross the border. Bravo Company came in later that evening by Chinook. For some reason, we dug no foxholes or fighting positions on our side of the perimeter.
The 1st Platoon of Charlie and the Company CP were the first elements of the battalion to land at LZ Brown. They began the lift at 1800 hours and were flaring into the landing zone at 1810. It took six sorties for them to get in. The rest of the company followed. Bravo Company did not start the move until 1825. After 17 sorties, all of Bravo was inside by 1930, quite late to be settling into a new and unfamiliar area of operations.
Allen Thomas had been with the 2nd Platoon of Bravo Company in the field as an infantryman since July, 1969. He had 63 days to go in-country when the battalion moved to Cambodia. Thomas remembers that, “When the Chinooks started ferrying troops out, it was late in the day. Everyone who could held back and waited. LZ Brown, when viewed from the air, looked like a very small, very dirty hole in the middle of the jungle. We built no bunkers nor did we dig any foxholes. I was on the last Chinook to arrive and it was almost dark when I walked over the berm.”
Terry Braun, a veteran sergeant and squad leader with the 3rd Platoon of Bravo Company states, “My squad arrived by Huey’s about an hour before sunset. It was a magnificent sight. The afternoon rains were finally beginning to lift and the sun sparkled off the green vegetation surrounding LZ Brown. It almost had the appearance of a well-kept golf course. LZ Brown consisted only of dirt surrounded by a berm. The entire base could have fit inside a football field. It was more oblong than circular and had a smaller berm located within the larger perimeter towards the western half. One single strand of concertina wire surrounded the entire landing zone. It was located about 35 to 40 meters from the berm. There were no bunkers, just mud and dirt pushed up about chest high. Those of us arriving had no idea that the Ho Chi Minh Trail was approximately 100 yards to our west. Also, as we were leaving the Bien Hoa airport a few days earlier, we were issued M8 bayonets for the first and only time in Vietnam.”
By the time complete darkness had crept in, only Bravo and Charlie Companies of the battalion and one 81 mm mortar from Bravo Company’s mortar platoon had been airlifted into the perimeter. All other lifts for the night were cancelled. CPT David Ashworth, the S-4 officer for the Warriors during Cambodia recalls, “When all the lifts were called off going into LZ Brown, only Bravo and Charlie Companies down. No 105’s from Delta Battery made it in that night. The guns were not flown in until the morning of the next day.” For the exhausted infantrymen of Bravo and Charlie Companies, all that could be done the night of May 12th was to set up the small number of claymore mines and trip-flares that were on hand a few meters beyond the perimeter wire, eat a cold meal of C-rations and huddle silently on the soggy ground, hoping that nothing major happened until the next day. There was, however, an unexplained, deep feeling of apprehension amongst most there that night that something big was about to happen.Terry Braun remembers this dreadful premonition.
“That evening, we sensed that something was different. As we positioned our claymore mines by the concertina wire, we listened to the Armed Forces Radio Network, which was something we normally did at basecamp as we were getting ready to pull guard. We set up five soldiers to a position that night, not the usual four. LZ Brown was split in half. On a clock, Charlie Company took the western half from 6 to 9 to 12. Bravo Company took the eastern half from 12 to 3 to 6.”
In the surrounding jungle, the change in tempo and activity at LZ Brown did not go unnoticed by the NVA. As early as mid-afternoon on the twelfth, the 1st Cav’s, 2nd Brigade intelligence units began receiving reports from roving aviation and reconnaissance patrols that the NVA had watched the cavalrymen vacate the base. There were even a couple of reports stating that large numbers of NVA had been spotted moving in the direction towards LZ Brown.
Stealthily moving toward the LZ were veteran NVA regulars from the 174th North Vietnamese Regiment. Originally formed in North Vietnam in the early 1960’s, the regiment had seen considerable combat in the II and III Corps Tactical Areas of South Vietnam. Barely two and a half years before in November of 1967, the 174th NVA Regiment had fought against the 173rd Airborne Brigade and the 4th Infantry Division in one of the Vietnam War’s largest and costliest battles. The battle was Dak To and it was fought on a little-known mountainside called Hill 875. By the time the hill was secured by the weary paratroopers on Thanksgiving Day, 1967, the 174th NVA, along with several other supporting Communist units had lost over 1,600 personnel killed in action.
Sometime after midnight on May 13th, the last of the sputtering afternoon monsoon rains slackened and then finally quit. The muggy and humid temperatures immediately returned, along with the serenading noises of millions of tropical insects and mosquitoes.
Unnoticed and slowly inching closer to the dirt berm were enemy sappers. Clad in only dark loincloths, their deliberate movements and sounds concealed by the thin layer of ghostly fog that was emanating from the tree line, the sappers proceeded to disarm or cut the wires on the claymore mines that were pointed outwards surrounding the Redcatcher positions.
On Charlie Company’s side of the perimeter, John Wensdofer, draped in heavy belts of 7.62mm machine-gun ammunition, peered into the darkness from behind his M60. Suddenly, less than ten feet to his right, an enemy sapper with his AK-47 at the ready jumped up on top of the berm and cut loose with a long, sweeping burst of automatic rifle fire.
According to Wensdofer, “The AK fire hit my squad leader, who was a muscular black sergeant with a size 15 jungle boot. The rounds missed me and plowed into the foot of the guy who was to my right. Despite being hit, our squad leader then killed the NVA soldier on the berm.” Sp4 William Barry, who was also on that side of the berm, saw the opening shots. “One enemy soldier got on the berm and was shooting into the camp. He was the first to get it.” Staff Sergeant Malcolm Smith had previously served as a platoon sergeant in the second platoon of Bravo Company from September of 1969 until April of 1970, at which time he was moved to the Company CP. When the battalion moved into Cambodia, he was then on his second of three combat tours. Smith recounts his version of the opening shots.
“Shortly before the fireworks started, I remember making rounds and speaking briefly with exhausted Bravo Company soldiers. At approximately 0310 hours, the firing suddenly began in the C Company area, followed by a brief stillness. Our lone mortar fired a flare or two to illuminate the night. After this brief exchange of gunfire, which was immediately followed by the crump of grenades and the deafening crack of claymore mines, there was a brief silence around the firebase that seemed almost surreal. Smith continues. “Then, all hell broke loose.”
Terry Braun, who was just a few meters from SSG Smith remembers, “My second shift of guard duty was to begin at 3:15 AM. At 3:00 a.m., I awakened and watched PFC Davis from Tennessee pull his final few minutes of guard. I approached the berm and joined him. His attention was towards Charlie Company‘s position. He pointed out to me three silhouettes standing on the berm. His first comment was that although those guys must be having a tough time sleeping they should not be silhouetting themselves in the moonlight on top of the berm. We immediately knew then that was not something a GI would do.
Seconds later, M16’s and M60’s started firing and a claymore mine blew. Then the battle started.”
The waiting NVA assault force in the tree line cut loose and slammed the base with intensive rocket, mortar, and .51 caliber machine gun fire. For 15-20 minutes, the North Vietnamese lobbed round after round of 60mm mortar and RPG rounds into the perimeter. A full-scale ground attack by an estimated two reinforced companies from the 3rd Battalion of the 174th NVA Regiment was fanatically launched when the mortars stopped firing.
When the flares went up on John Wensdofer’s side of the perimeter, he quickly looked over the berm and to his shock, watched as a large human wave of screaming NVA soldiers charged crazily out of the tree line. “When the flares went up, I could see them running at us and I immediately opened up with the M60. On and on they came. I fired so many rounds, the barrel got white hot. We were firing so furiously, I think that we almost ran out of ammo. I know that I had several belts of 100 rounds linked together. It is hard to remember how much time went by from when the gook got on top of the berm to when I stopped firing the M60. I can remember praying for daylight.”
Allen Thomas, who was on the eastern side of the perimeter with Bravo Company states, “The attack was mostly on Charlie Company’s side of the perimeter. The fire was the heaviest that many of us had heard and experienced in Vietnam and I remember that the NVA were firing all different sorts of tracer rounds at us. Red and green tracers were lighting up the sky, explosions were all over the place, both inside and outside, and illumination was going up from either parachute flares or from the smaller, hand-held white star clusters.
John Wensdofer can testify as to how danger close the contact was. “At times, the fighting was so close, we crawled up to the top of the berm and either emptied magazines from our weapons straight down at them or just rolled grenades off the top of the dirt and let them roll down.” One of Wensdofer’s M60 bi-pod legs was literally bent from the force of an explosion from one of the grenades that he rolled over the berm. Several of the claymore mines that had been placed outside the wire and armed before the attack were useless. The detonation wires had been cut or the mine had been removed altogether by the sappers. At one point in the firefight, some of the men on the perimeter line could hear the NVA shouting commands and blowing whistles at one another.
“Tracers were coming in and different colored tracers were going out from the berm. It was actually very colorful. The guys at our position, myself included, began singing ‘Sunshine Superman’ during the firefight for no apparent reason. A Spooky gunship was called in to support us and we could see the tracers from their .51 caliber gun just missing the back of our aircraft. Fortunately, they were not leading the aircraft enough so they continued to miss,” recounts Terry Braun. Jim Horine had served as a line grunt in Bravo for six months and was humping the battalion RTO at the time of Cambodia. He remembers, “I was inside the LZ perimeter at the CP with our company commander. It was the heaviest firefight that most of us had ever seen. The noise from the machine gun and rifle fire was unbelievable. While on the battalion net, I overheard the pilot of the Spooky gunship (call sign Blind Bat) that was supporting us call back and say that he had expended every single round for his mini-guns on targets of opportunity. As he veered off, there was a long line of green .51 caliber machine gun rounds trailing him.”
A Cobra gunship was also dispatched for close air-support. The Cobra’s deadly 2.75 rocket and mini-gun fire was called in so close to the fighting that the men on the berm were actually ordered to pull back a few meters so the gunship could make gun-runs up, down, and around Brown’s perimeter. Terry Braun states, “The fighting had raged on for about an hour and a-half when unbelievably, Bravo got a call on the PRC-25 radio from our CO to, “Fix bayonets! They’re coming in!!!” Fighting persisted until dawn when the Air Force dropped a series of concussion bombs just west and slightly south of our perimeter. When each of those bombs went off, there was a brief instant magnified by stillness in the air followed by a loud explosion that just seemed to suck the air out all around us. The only thing I can recall that was more impressive was being in the vicinity of B-52s when they dropped their payload and the ground actually shook like an earthquake.”
For two and a half hours, despite the withering fire coming from the Redcatcher M60’s, M16’s, and M79 grenade launchers, the determined NVA still kept coming. The lone 81mm mortar crew from Bravo was loading and firing illumination their small supply of high-explosive rounds like men possessed. While doing so, they were terribly exposed to the incoming enemy fire.
“We conserved our ammunition the best that we could,” remembers 1LT Charles Barnes, the Bravo Company mortar platoon leader. “We fired our last round just prior to 5:45 a.m.”
Throughout the firefight, enemy bullets and shrapnel whined and bounced around the mortar-men hanging rounds in the tube. About an hour into the firefight, Sp4 Richard G. Desillier of the mortar platoon was shot and killed as he prepared to fire a round. Despite the loss, the rest of the crew continued to thump out what rounds were available.
Captain David Thursam, the Charlie Company commander at LZ Brown praises the mortar crew. “The mortar gave my men great supporting fire. They moved their gun around and hit on target every time. What amazes me to this day about that fight was how we won. With all of the fire that we were put out, an equal amount or more was coming in, including mortars and rockets.” Jim Horine watched from the CP as the mortar crew worked. “They fired and fired and fired. I would bet that they set some kind of record for the amount of both HE and Illumination rounds that they were putting out.”
“We had a great medic in Bravo Company,” recalls Allen Thomas, “named Doc Uhde. He was a Japanese-American from California. The medics carried an enormous rucksack full of medicine, bandages and salves. To keep from carrying the big rucksack around, he carried a smaller Claymore bag. Doc Uhde made his rounds, as he called it, around the perimeter periodically to see if the men needed anything. During the middle of this firefight, Doc Uhde decided go make his rounds. Here came this little, black-haired Japanese-American carrying a shoulder bag, running with his head down. My friend, Tony Reece, saw Doc and naturally thought that he was a sapper and drew a bead on him. He could make out his silhouette in the flashes of light. Reece, however, never pulled the trigger. Something was telling him not to do it.”
From 0300 to 0545, the opposing sides were locked in mortal combat for control of LZ Brown. The North Vietnamese onslaught signaled the first major Communist counter-attack of the Cambodian Incursion. At approximately 0500 hours, much needed support from helicopter gunships, Air Force A-37 jets, and fixed wing “Shadow” gunships began pounding the attacking NVA from the air. Incredibly, the NVA in the tree line responded to the thundering air strikes and gun-runs with more .51 caliber machine gun fire.Luckily, when the 81mm mortar fired its last round at approximately 0545, the fight for LZ Brown finally began to fizzle out. Several minutes later, when the first rays of sunlight began streaking over the horizon, the firing eventually ceased and the surviving NVA melted back into the dark jungle, dragging away significant numbers of their dead and wounded.
With full daylight, the rest of the 5-12th Infantry was hurriedly airlifted into the base. Combat engineers from the 31st Combat Engineer Battalion, along with their heavy equipment, arrived at the base after literally carving a new road through the jungle. One of the first tasks for the engineers was to dig a trench in which to bury the dead enemy soldiers.
The scene around Brown was one of utter death, carnage, and destruction. Only those who have fought in war can understand its pitiful sufferings and tragic ramifications. Fifty-three enemy bodies and pieces of bodies surrounded the perimeter. Heavy blood trails were seen from the berm leading back into the jungle. Discarded weapons and equipment were strewn everywhere. The Redcatchers lost one man killed in action along with eight others from Bravo and Charlie who were wounded. “At the conclusion of the firefight, some of the Redcatchers started to shout expletives and vulgar comments at the retreating NVA, challenging them to stand and fight some more,” recalls Malcolm Smith. “In the aftermath, I remember carrying the dead to the bulldozed hole and throwing them in. Some of the enemy had been hit multiple times and were bandaged more than once. Some were not complete bodies either.”
Terry Braun states, “As the sun rose and daylight crept in, to our amazement the area west of Brown was littered with bodies and body parts. It almost looked like an Easter egg hunt with the eggs poorly hidden. Heavy blood trails led back into the jungle. This was a sight that we rarely saw in Vietnam. Usually after a firefight, the NVA would withdraw and we would see very few bodies. My machine gunner from Chicago, Ken Burmeister, raised an American Flag that he had carried with him on a flag pole and placed it on the berm. That picture appeared with headlines on the front page of the New York Times. Burmeister was later verbally reprimanded for raising an American Flag in Cambodia, but at the time it seemed appropriate.”
In front of John Wensdofer’s red-hot M60 machine-gun were 12 dead NVA. “They were all wearing regular green and khaki, NVA uniforms with pith helmets. There were six enemy bodies inside the wire. I took a 9mm pistol from what looked like to be a Chinese advisor. His body was lying just inside the wire, close to the bottom of the berm. I know he was not Vietnamese as he was taller than the rest and he looked to be about 180 lbs. or more. He even had body fat on him.”
Allen Thomas explains that, “One thing that has always stuck out in my mind is that all of the enemy dead were facing the berm. They didn’t die retreating.” Several soldiers also recall seeing what they believed were Chinese advisors among the dead. Another odd find on the enemy KIA’s were what was thought to be drugs and vials of liquid speed. According to Smith, “Some of the dead looked too big to be Vietnamese. Most of the bodies were found with speed in their possession. They had fresh haircuts and their uniforms, as I recall, were light green, khaki and even light blue. I also remember that when we started to police up the enemy weapons, their bayonets were affixed. What really stood out in my mind was the number of discarded bandages, blood trails and drag marks that were going in all directions from Brown. The ground was even soft and mushy in spots. I remember thinking to myself that the battlefield looked as if a blood bank blew up.”
In addition to the bodies, blood trails and discarded equipment, 34 individual weapons were collected which included SKS and AK-47 rifles, three light RPD machine guns, four RPG’s, and two 60mm mortars. As for the 5th Battalion, 12th Infantry’s first day in Cambodia, Allen Thomas sums up of the thoughts of many that fought there. “In Cambodia, we learned that the enemy stood and fought. The enemy soldiers here were smart and hardcore. Most of us wanted to go back to Vietnam, not stay in Cambodia.”
Scenes from the berm and immediate perimeter area of FSB Brown the morning after the fight, 13 May 1970. Image by SP4 Peter Nagurny, 40th PIO.
Stanley Buchanan, B/5-12
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