(Personal account from Mike Groves [jaspaz@worldnet.att.net] Mike was with A Co. 2/22 Inf (Mech) 25 Inf Div.)

Bill,

I don't know if I provided you with this. If so, sorry. Otherwise, this is

what I wrote home 24 February 1969.

"Mom has probably told you about us getting hit on the 22nd. Whew! That

was the longest night I think I've ever spent. Here I was reading a good

book at a out twelve midnight when everything started breaking loose.

Mortars started dropping on the defense perimeter and tracers from bullets

were flying everywhere. I was standing outside trying to figure if any were

dropping around our headquarters when they started dropping the things not

to far away. You ought to see how fast I can move under those

circumstances. Standing in the bunker, I was listening to sirens when the

phone rang and we were put on a red alert. A red alert is called only when

an all out attack against us is imminent. They were right. I woke everyone

up and we grabbed our weapons and ran to the part of perimeter that we were

assigned to. Everything was happening then. The whole base camp was

shooting at the insurgents. Enemy mortars, rockets, and machine gun fire

was pouring in everywhere. Almost like combat on TV, only this was for

real. I don't need to say I was scared. I stayed awake the whole night

praying they wouldn't hit our sector. Thank God, they didn't. Where they

hit, they hit hard, breaking through the wire. there were firefights all

over the base camp. We had to level one village near us because the NVA

were coming from there. Civilian's were there and a lot were killed and

wounded. It's sad, but the civilians brought it on by not informing on the

enemy. The village isn't standing anymore. The NVA that did get into our

basecamp were running up and down the air strip, shooting up everything and

placing satchel charges on planes and blowing them sky high. A platoon of

APC went to react and the NVA got two of the APCs, they were hit by RPGs and

lost two killed and five wounded. They did kill twenty and capture fifteen

NVA. You might have seen me mention John Caldwell. He and I went through

A.I.T. at Ft. Polk and APC training at Ft. Knox. Well, he was trapped in

the library for six hours. the NVA had the place surrounded for six hours.

They were saved by the APCs which came to help. The enemy finally withdrew

at about 5 a.m., but it still wasn't over. We had a lot of the NVA running

around the base camp and they had to be hunted down. I think we caught the

last one at around 2 p.m. the next day. We have some old French mansions

left over from the French. The NVA hid in these and it was quite a job of

flushing them out. All in all, Dau Tieng lost twenty two killed. We killed

seventy one. That's the number of bodies we found. It's hard telling how

many they dragged away with them. So it's been very tense here.

Intelligence expects another attack, but we don't know when for sure. Last

night we were probed and tonight there's been some action. A few rockets

have been roaming in every now and then."

Mike Groves