This is a copy of a newspaper article provided to me by the archives
at Texas Tech University
Reds Burst
Into Base,
Kill 21 GIs
By Robert Karlor
DAUTIENG, South Viet-
nam, Feb. 23 (UPI)Commu-
nist sappers burst through
the perimeter of an Amer-
can headquarters here early
today, leaving 21 Americans
and 71 of their own dead in
a fierce 15-hour fight.
Some of the. invaders
never got past the barbed
wire, which surrounds what
was once a large rubber
plantation and now is the
headquarters of the 3d Bri-
gade of the U.S. 25th Infan-
try Division: about 40 miles
northwest of Saigon.
About 70 others made it
in-to the former manager's
residence and had to be dis-
lodged by house-to-house
fighting.
About 70 American sol-
diers were wounded in the
battle, in which GIs and
Communists were inter-
mingled everywhere in the
eerie half-light of fires and
explosions.
Six helicopters at the base
were heavily damaged. Two
were shot down as they at-
tempted to defend the base.
The attack started, at
about 12:35 a.m. with a bar-
rage of rocket, mortar and
recoilless-rifle fire, which
continued through the night.
At 1:15, an estimated 20
Communists neatly snipped
their way through the
barbed wire between bunk-
ers at the end of the air-
strip. Within half an hour
another 75 had worked their
way in at other locations.
They destroyed several
bunkers and blasted the two
armored vehicles which
raced down the airstrip to
reinforce the perimeter, kill-
ing five Americans aboard
them.
The Communists then
went down the airstrip set-
ting off homemade satchel
charges in motor pool and
aircraft areas. At 7 a.m.,
what one officer described
as a "pitched battle" was
raging near the headquar-
ters building itself.
When bunkers at the end
of the airstrip were knocked
out, the U.S. troops put in
an urgent call for help to a
group of U.S. Army Special
Forces who were on the
base.
Three Americans and a
squad of their Montagnard
mercenaries ran the length
of the airstrip through
rocket and mortar fire to
the bunkers.
When dawn came there
was a pile of Communist
bodies in front of the bunk-
ers.
The crew of a helicopter
gunship tried to get their
chopper into the air to de-
fend the camp. As they left
the ground at the end of the
airstrip the helicopter was
hit and burst into flames.
They circled back and
crashed just inside the pe-
rimeter. The crew escaped
and became riflemen for the
rest of the night.
Two headquarters soldiers
were trapped helplessly in-
side a building with no am-
munition for five hours
while the Vietcong fired a
machine gun from the porch
but never looked inside.
The French plantation
owner no longer lives at
Dautieng but the Commu-
nists entered the nearby
town, went to the homes of
his two Vietnamese assist-
ants, and shot them to death.
©1999 Texas Tech University, Used with Permission