Captain Ruane and the S-3 (battalion operations officer) agreed with Williams’ choice of locations. Ruane said later, ‘The big point was to show the villagers that we were there to stay, that the U.S. Army would protect them from the VC.’ Setting up a perimeter defense is a straightforward infantry mission that the 2nd Platoon had performed many times. Lieutenant Williams established the perimeter along the trace of the ditch, designated squad sectors of fire and covered two avenues of approach into the platoon’s sector with machine guns. The 60mm mortar section, under Sergeant Richard Wezalis, dug in near the pagoda. Also present were Private Frederick A. Baker and Spc. 4 Arthur Lloyd Jr., the 2nd Squad leader.

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While Williams’ men prepared fighting positions, he spotted artillery and mortar concentrations around the perimeter and reported them to the company, where they were placed on a fire-support plan and given numerical designations for rapid reference. When the village chief saw where the platoon had formed its defense, he sent villagers to clear fields of fire. The chief, a veteran of the First Indochina War, later told Williams that he was also going to build a fence around the position. The chief’s initiative immediately boosted Williams’ confidence in him.

The first night in the hamlet passed quietly. The next day the platoon built bunkers and patrolled the area. There was no contact with the enemy. The village chief began work on the promised perimeter fence on May 19 and had it completed within two days. Sergeant Wezalis said later: ‘It was built so you could see through it, and the sharp sticks were at angles to one another, making it difficult to get through.’ As an added measure of security, the platoon strung concertina wire between the fighting positions and the bamboo fence.

On the morning of May 21, Williams received word through a PF soldier that the VC planned an attack on the platoon. Later that day a patrol picked up three male VC suspects. Under questioning by the village chief, the three let slip that a VC company was within 800 meters of the hamlet, and claimed that a second enemy company was 1,500 meters to the south. Lieutenant Williams dispatched patrols to check the areas.

Although they found nothing, Williams had the platoon set out extra trip flares and place cans filled with dirt, sandbags and gasoline around the perimeter to mark its boundaries at night for supporting gunships in case needed. Ammunition for the 60mm mortar was increased. Each rifleman was issued four hand grenades and 400 rounds of M-16 ammunition. The two machine guns had 1,600 rounds each. After sunset, the troops set out Claymore mines and waited for an attack. Nothing happened.

The next day, May 22, a local woman told Williams that 200 VC had been in the village during the night. The woman said that she earnestly believed they would attack the platoon shortly.

Williams passed the woman’s remark on to Ruane, who later recalled that there had been several such reports of pending VC attacks within the company’s AO. One of the enemy’s purported objectives was the 105mm howitzers positioned in the company base camp. The other enemy objective was the 2nd Platoon at Van Tuong 1. Ruane, however, had no solid intelligence. A 24-hour truce was declared on May 22, in observation of Buddha’s birthday. Captain Ruane and 1st Lt. Jack Gominial, the company’s forward observer (FO), had planned to spend that night with the 2nd Platoon, but a late afternoon meeting at battalion caused them to miss the platoon’s last resupply helicopter. Ruane radioed Williams that he and the FO would join him the next day and remain overnight.

That afternoon the 3rd Platoon, led by a Staff Sgt. Daetweiler, joined Williams in the hamlet and prepared for a night ambush east of Van Tuong 1. Williams’ 1st Squad would establish an ambush site to secure the platoon flank west of the hamlet. The departure of the 1st Squad would leave only 23 men to defend the perimeter. Williams left bunker 2 empty and shifted Pfc Douglas ‘Bingo’ Chapman to join Pfc Robert D. Click and Pfc Haskell in bunker 3.

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