A great deal has been written about the battles of Tet 1968 and the political firestorm that resulted from them. Less has been written about the danger, turmoil, chaos, confusion, contradictions and outright lunacy that confronted individual units as they responded to VC attacks on the morning of January 31. This is the story of one rifle company, and what it faced on that decisive day. Mainly it is the story of some of the finest solders to ever wear the uniform of the U.S. Army and how they reacted not only to fierce combat, but also to the fog of war.

In April 1967 I was a first lieutenant commanding a rifle company in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C. I had been in command for five months and had been assured that I would be in command for one year, which suited me fine. My plan was to make captain and go to Vietnam as an experienced company commander. Since I was in an airborne unit, I was sure I would go to the 173rd Airborne Brigade or the 101st Airborne Division.

I was disappointed when I received orders to join the 9th Infantry Division. Not only would I not finish my command tour, I was being assigned to a leg division. When I arrived at 9th Division in June, I was shocked to learn that I was going to a mechanized battalion. I had assumed I would be assigned to one of the battalions in the Delta where I could use my light infantry and Ranger school experience. The only contact I had had with M-113 armored personnel carriers (APCs) was during a training exercise at the officers’ basic course just after I entered the Army.

When I arrived at the 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Infantry, nicknamed the Panthers, Lt. Col. Arthur Moreland, the commander, asked me what job I wanted. I told him that I wanted to command a company. He said I would have to wait. I was to be a platoon leader again, in Charlie Company, commanded by Captain John Ionoff. After commanding 180 paratroopers, taking on four APCs and 40 troops seemed like a dream–except that now I was responsible for troops in combat, not training.

In mid-September, when Ionoff moved to battalion to become the operations officer (S3), I assumed command of Charlie Company. In October, the 2-47 was given the mission of securing engineers as they cleared Highway 1 from Xuan Loc to the II Corps boundary near Phan Thiet. During this time, the battalion made only sporadic contact and suffered few casualties.

As my airborne mentality faded, I learned to love the M-113–or ‘track,’ as we called it. We could haul more personal gear, live more comfortably and walk less than straight-leg troops. Each APC could carry almost as much ammunition as a dismounted rifle company, and in a fight, the company had 22 .50-caliber machine guns, a 106mm and several 90mm recoilless rifles, and more radios and M-60 machine guns than a walking company could ever carry. In addition, we were tremendously flexible. We could ride, walk or be airlifted to war, travel great distances in a short amount of time, and arrive with many times the ammunition and equipment that could be lifted in by helicopter. We could use our tracks as a base of fire or in a blocking position as the company maneuvered dismounted. We carried concertina wire, sand bags and hundreds of Claymores and trip flares to make our defensive positions practically impenetrable.

As time passed, I became a mechanized soldier. So, when I was offered a chance to go to II Field Force to help establish a new long-range reconnaissance patrol outfit, I actually turned it down to stay with the company.

Dismounted troops of the 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Regiment, 9th Infantry Division, stay close to their M-113 armored personnel carriers (APCs) as they clear Widow’s Village, near Long Binh Army Post, of Viet Cong who had overrun it during the Communist 1968 Tet Offensive (National Archives).

During December we made little enemy contact, probably because the Communists were lying low preparing for Tet. In January 1968, our battalion relocated to the area between Xuan Loc and Bien Hoa, where intelligence had located a VC battalion. On January 23, during a battalion sweep of a heavily jungled area south of Highway 1, Alpha Company walked into a well-camouflaged, well-defended enemy bunker system and was badly mauled, losing four men killed and more than 20 wounded, including almost all of the officers. Charlie Company reacted quickly to reinforce Alpha, and a daylong fight ensued. Toward dark, airstrikes had to be called in to blast the VC from the hill. The battle was significant, since Alpha’s leadership was seriously depleted during the days immediately prior to Tet.

Following that fight, the 2-47 was ordered south of the 9th Division’s base camp. During the last week of January, the battalion patrolled the jungles east of Highway 15, near the Binh Son rubber plantation.

When the Tet cease-fire period began on January 28, the battalion was called back to the vicinity of Bear Cat, and Charlie Company was ordered to a large open field across Highway 15 from the Long Tan airfield. From our positions, we could see and hear the fireworks lighting the sky over Saigon to the west. Besides the fireworks, ARVN soldiers had linked tracer bullets together and were stitching the darkness with weaving streams of machine gun fire.

The II Field Force commander, Lt. Gen. Frederick C. Weyand, had correctly guessed that a major attack was going to come during Tet, and his anticipation of the attacks no doubt saved Long Binh and Saigon from being overrun. The 2-47 was one of several units General Weyand pulled in from the jungles to guard the Long Binh headquarters and logistical complex 15 miles northeast of Saigon.

During the morning of January 30, the 2-47 Mech was notified that the Tet cease-fire was canceled, and the unit was deployed into a defensive line along the road that ran around the east side of the Long Binh base. The recon platoon was ordered to establish a blocking position south of Long Binh on Highway 15. The 1st Platoon of Bravo Company was made the II Field Force reaction force and was placed in the PX parking lot at Long Binh. Charlie Company’s 3rd Platoon was also detached for a security mission inside the base. Alpha Company, still licking its wounds from the January 23 fight, was left intact.

The three companies formed a line almost three kilometers long, facing to the east, with their backs to the Long Binh wire. All of these placements were made with the wrongful assumption that the VC would attack from the jungles outside the base. In fact, the Communists had already infiltrated the city of Bien Hoa, suburban Ho Nai village and Widow’s Village, where pensioned families of deceased ARVN soldiers lived. Widow’s Village made a perfect attack position for the VC, since it lay directly across Highway 316 from II Field Force headquarters in the Long Binh complex. Dressed as travelers returning to ancestral homes for the Tet holiday, the guerrillas had quietly drifted into their urban assembly areas and put together their weapons.

As the afternoon of January 30 drifted toward dusk, Charlie Company soldiers stripped to the waist and dug bunkers next to their M-113s. Later, as the sun sank over the Long Binh base, they tossed a football and ate cold C rations. That night, no one slept, but instead scanned the jungles with Starlight scopes, seeing nothing.

At 0300 hours I received a call from Major Bill Jones, who had recently taken Ionoff’s place as S3, stating that Bien Hoa airbase, the Long Binh facility, the II Field Force headquarters and the 199th Light Infantry Brigade (LIB) base camp were under heavy mortar and rocket attack. This was no surprise to us, since we could plainly hear the enemy rounds slamming into Long Binh.

As was our normal practice, each company had sent two ambush patrols into the jungle to our front. At 0400 Jones ordered us to pull in our ambushes and be prepared to move. The S3 also told Charlie Company’s noncombatants to report to battalion headquarters. We all knew that these moves were more than just precautionary. Something was definitely about to happen.

We packed up all of our gear, rolled up our concertina wire and waited. I was not sure what to do about the bunkers we had dug. Battalion policy was that we had to fill in all holes and empty our sandbags each time we left a position. The idea was to leave nothing the VC might use against us. I called battalion headquarters and asked what to do about the bunkers. I was told to forget about them, which reinforced our feeling that this situation was different and that combat was certainly imminent.

At about 0600, Lt. Col. John Tower, the new battalion commander, called with orders. Normally, operations orders issued over the radio were encoded and sent by the S3’s radio operator. Here was another sign that the situation was serious: The battalion commander personally gave out map coordinates of company objectives in the clear.Alpha Company was ordered to the 199th LIB compound, which was under attack. Now commanded by a brand-new second lieutenant, the men of Alpha Company balked when they were told to move. Tower sent the battalion S3, Major Jones, to take command, and once Alpha got moving, it did a magnificent job. Bravo Company was sent to protect the Long Binh ammunition dump, and Charlie Company was ordered into downtown Bien Hoa, where the ARVN III Corps headquarters was in danger of being overrun.

After I received the coordinates of our objective, I yelled, ‘Crank ‘em up!’ into the radio handset, and we moved out. We rolled through Long Binh and out the main gate, then turned left onto Highway 316. The 2nd Platoon, under Lieutenant Fred Casper, led the way, followed by my track, then Lieutenant Howard Jones’ 1st Platoon and, finally, the weapons platoon under Lieutenant Don Muir. The Commo track, C-007, nicknamed Abdula and the Rug Merchants, with then- Pfc (and current Vietnam editor) David Zabecki behind the .50-caliber, brought up the rear. We charged southeast down Highway 316 to the Highway 15 intersection, located on a small hill overlooking the 90th Replacement Company. As we rolled by, we looked down into the compound and saw soldiers in khakis, boarding passes in hand, milling about. But no one would be leaving the country that day.

As we turned right onto Highway 15, an unbelievable spectacle stretched before us. Having been struck by mortars or rockets, the fuel tanks at the air base, as well as several buildings throughout Bien Hoa, were burning brightly. Flames illuminated the clouds, forming an eerie glow; flares hung in the sky and helicopter gunships crossed back and forth firing red streams of tracers into the city.

Through sporadic fire, we continued northwest on Highway 15 to where it intersected Highway 1 on the western edge of Bien Hoa. As we made the turn eastward on Highway 1, the lead platoon was ambushed. We opened up with everything we had and kept driving. We had run through the rear of the 274th VC Regiment, which was attacking the airfield. As we cleared the ambush, the column suddenly came to a halt because of some kind of block in the road; simultaneously, someone keyed the company net. With a push-to-talk button stuck in the transmit position, no one could use the radio. I jumped down and ran from track to track, pounding on the sides and yelling, ‘Check your handsets!’ As I ran back through the weapons platoon, I came upon an unbelievable sight. With small-arms fire cracking overhead, young girls carrying bottles of Coca-Cola were trying to sell them to the troops.

M-113 APCs of the 9th Infantry Division storm VC positions 200 meters outside II Field Force headquarters at Long Binh on February 1, 1968. (National Archives)

After the roadblock was cleared and communications restored, Charlie Company continued toward its objective. At 0700, as daylight was breaking, my track rolled past the ARVN III Corps compound gate. Realizing we were driving past our objective, I halted the company and called for the 2nd Platoon to find a place to turn around. As the C-23 track Stormy, which was in the lead, turned into a side street, an RPG slammed into its front, smashing the radiator and wounding several soldiers. A VC guerrilla hiding behind a parked ARVN jeep had fired the rocket. Despite the confusion and wounds, our troops returned fire. The VC who had fired the RPG slipped away, but Pfc Jim Love, who was tossed into a sewage ditch by the explosion, remembers ‘killing the jeep’ with his M-16.

Several soldiers gathered in front of the track to help the wounded, and Love climbed up to man the .50-caliber. Just then a three-man VC RPG team calmly walked across the street right in front of the damaged APC. Love was so startled, he didn’t fire.

‘I realize now that the track was high enough that the rounds would have passed over’ the troops in front of the vehicle, Love recalls. ‘I yelled at Lieutenant Casper and everybody looked around as the VC tore out running the last few yards to safety. We threw grenades over the wall behind them, but hit nothing.’

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