(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