The 1st Squad departed sometime after sundown. En route to the ambush site, the patrol twice exchanged fire with VC. In response, Williams swung the squad to a new position south of the hamlet, where it spent the rest of the night without incident.

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Other enemy sightings came at about 2000 hours, when Pfc Frank A. Jones–in bunker 5 along with ammo-bearer Spc. 4 Fred Greer–used his Starlight scope and spotted three VC on the hill west of the perimeter. Williams directed Pfc David Bowman to fire on them with an M-79 grenade launcher, then sent Spc. 4 Ronald Homicz and three men from the 3rd Squad to check the area. They found nothing. When Homicz and his group returned, the 3rd Platoon departed for its ambush site.

At least two companies of the VC 48th LF Battalion–about 180 men–meanwhile began to take up positions around the 2nd Platoon’s perimeter. At about midnight the men manning the bunkers heard dogs barking and birds calling. An hour later, Pfc Tommy Smith, a machine-gunner in bunker 4, reported two VC near the perimeter’s south gate. Williams joined him and checked the area through a Starlight scope–but too late, as the VC had faded into the darkness.

Thirty minutes later, Smith reported chopping sounds beyond the banana trees and hooches south of his position. Then at about 0230 he heard cattle bel-lowing and pigs squealing. ‘When I heard all of this,’ he recalled later, ‘I got wide awake and watched.’

That was about the time that Spc. 4 Gilbert Rivera in bunker 9 heard a cracking noise that sounded as if someone was tearing down the fence. Later, around 0300, Williams heard a woman scream from somewhere out in the hamlet.

Private Click stood his watch outside bunker 3, because the bunker’s narrow apertures limited his field of vision. Chapman and Haskell slept. As Click listened to owllike noises coming out of the darkness, he recalled that a PF had once told him the VC hooted like owls. An incoming grenade that exploded 20 meters to his front gave the tale credence.

Click rolled into the ditch and took up a firing position as three shadowy figures hastened across his front. He pointed his M-16 at their midsections and fired two bursts. Click recounted later: ‘I saw the three go down….As soon as the grenade went off, Bingo and Haskell joined me in the ditch. Bingo came up like a snake.’ It was Click’s first firefight. Minutes later, a satchel charge ripped a gaping hole in the bamboo fence, and more VC charged out of the blackness, amid a barrage of hand grenades. Haskell, who had ducked into the bunker, looked out and saw three VC standing near it. He fired a burst at the one to his front, then turned his rifle on the others. A grenade, luckily a dud, bounced to a halt a few feet from him. He clambered from the bunker, thinking, ‘They want this position pretty bad.’ When he rejoined his friends in the ditch, Haskell heard someone he thought was a VC leader screaming and haranguing his men. He said to Click, ‘God, don’t let them listen to him.’

When the attack started, Williams radioed Lieutenant James A. Smith, the company executive officer, and told him: ‘We are being hit extremely hard. Mortar rounds are landing all over the place.’

Smith replied, ‘OK, buddy, help is on the way,’ then ran to wake Ruane.

Captain Ruane first thought the attack on the 2nd Platoon was a diversion, but quickly changed his mind. He informed the 4-31 battalion tactical operations center (BTOC), and the BTOC radioed an immediate request to brigade for gunships and flareships. Ten minutes later, a team of Firebird gunships was headed south toward the flare-lit sky above Van Tuong 1. Because of the truce, Lieutenant Gominial’s request for artillery was at first denied pending the approval of Brig. Gen. Frank Linnel, who had assumed command of the brigade just three days before. Captain Ruane was livid. ‘To hell with the truce,’ he said, and began firing his 81mm mortars to support the platoon. It became dangerous when the command net became cluttered with chatter, so he ceased firing high explosive and switched to illumination. Clearance to fire artillery did not come until 30 minutes after the attack started, well past the point of effectiveness.

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