Rescue at LZ Albany

 | Vietnam  | 3 comments  |  Print This Post  |  Email This Post

‘My battalion,’ Moore recalled, ‘had come looking for trouble in the Ia Drang; we had found all we wanted and more. Two regiments of People’s Army of Vietnam [PAVN] Regulars–more than 2,000 men–were resting and regrouping in their sanctuary near there and preparing to resume combat operations, when we dropped in on them the day before. General Man’s [NVA Brig. Gen. Chu Huy Man] commanders reacted with speed and fury, and now we were fighting for our lives.’

In the jungle valley surrounding LZ X-ray, the leaders of the 325-B Division of the PAVN were no doubt astounded to learn they had at last lured a battalion of the U.S. 7th Cavalry into the jaws of a vicious ambush. General Vo, however, faced a problem when Moore’s battalion bent but would not break. The shattered battalion regrouped and fought fiercely–sometimes resorting to entrenching tools, rifle butts and bayonets but refusing to let the jaws of the enemy snap shut. The 2nd Platoon of Captain John Herren’s Bravo Company had been cut off and was being systematically chopped to pieces by the enemy while Captain Ray LeFebvre’s Delta Company had taken casualties and killed 25 NVA within 10 minutes of landing on X-ray.

LZ X-ray was heating up for helicopter pilots, too. Major Bruce Crandall, who commanded the 16 helicopters assigned to the mission, recalled: ‘I saw a North Vietnamese firing at us from just outside my rotor blades. After taking on wounded, I pulled pitch [lifted out] in a hurry. I had three dead and three wounded, including my crew chief, who was shot in the throat.’ The situation was perilous for the troops crammed inside the birds. ‘I started to unhook my seat belt when I felt a round crease in the back of my neck,’ LeFebvre remembered. He had been grazed. ‘I turned to my right and saw that my radio operator had been hit in the left side of his head. I grabbed the radio and jumped out….I fired two magazines of M-16 ammo at the enemy, then I was hit.’

For the most part, the free-for-all on the ground at X-ray on the 14th did not yet involve Bennett’s unit. ‘My company was normally supporting the 2nd Battalion of the 7th Infantry,’ Bennett explained. ‘We picked up the infantry and would make air assaults into the jungle with them. That morning we put in Bravo Company [2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry], and although we’d taken some rounds, no one got shot down.

‘We had very little to do with X-ray,’ Bennett continued. ‘I think I got in there on the second morning–the day they got napalmed.’ The NVA had thrown everything it had at the 7th and, although ravaged (Charlie Company lost all five of its officers and 57 of its 102 enlisted men), the survivors, with the help of Army and Air Force aviators, held the thin line and refused to accept defeat.

Air Force Lieutenant Charlie Hastings, the forward air controller, called in help. ‘On the second morning, I used the code word for an American unit in trouble and received all available aircraft in South Vietnam for close air support. We had aircraft stacked at 1,000-foot intervals from 7,000 feet to 10,000 feet, each waiting to receive a target,’ Hastings remembered. With the enemy so near and artillery and aircraft being called in closer and closer, perhaps an unfortunate mistake was inevi-table: An Air Force North American F-100 Super Sabre accidentally dropped two canisters of napalm into the melee, hitting American troops, before Hastings could call them off.

‘We went in after the napalmed guys,’ Bennett said. ‘The LZ was shrouded in early morning mist or fog, and the guy we came for was burned black, without a stitch of clothing on. He was a big man, a Pathfinder, and he was screaming and screaming. I don’t think he made it.’

Additional reinforcements, the 2nd Battalion of the 5th Cavalry led by Lt. Col. Robert Tully, marched in from LZ Victor, two miles distant, and the NVA melted into the tall grass and mountains, leaving some of its 2,000 dead behind on the battlefield.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to

Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Aerial Combat, Historical Conflicts, Vietnam War

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.