NVA Find Deuces Wild, Lose 28 Near Dau Tieng
By SP4 D.J. Caldwell
DAU TIENG - An enemy force paid dearly for an attempt to overrun a
Triple Deuce position three miles west of Dau Tieng, as 28 North Vietnamese Army
soldiers were left behind dead on the battlefield.
Not a single casualty was sustained by Bravo Company, 2d Battalion
(Mech) 22d Infantry during the four-hour fight in which they raked the enemy
with machinegun fire, small arms, and a devastating barrage of mortars and
artillery.
A warning of the attack had come two days earlier when the company
killed three members of a five-man enemy reconnaissance patrol which was
camouflaged with charcoal. After the mechanized infantrymen fired at the
NVA patrol, they discovered three bodies outside the perimeter.
When the much larger attack came shortly before midnight two days
later, the company, commanded by Captain John Johnson of Missoula, Mont., was
ready.
From a vantage point atop a high bunker, members of the 3d Brigade
company spotted enemy soldiers coming toward their perimeter. At the same
time, members of a command observation post several hundred meters outside the
wire spotted heavy movement and were told to pull back.
“We came to within 100 yards of the perimeter but could still see
groups of five to 15 enemy advancing toward the company,” said Sergeant Aubry
L. Crumb of New Orleans.”
Crumb’s patrol came back within the perimeter to engage the enemy
as the Triple Deuce company opened up with its heavy organic weapons.
Artillery support from Charlie Battery, 2d Battalion, 77th
Artillery in Fire Support Base Wood and Alpha Battery, 1st Battalion, 27th
Artillery in Dau Tieng began pouring deadly fire on the attackers.
While enemy mortars, RPG’s and heavy small arms fire hit around
the company’s armored personnel carriers, Johnson got on top of the
position’s highest bunker and observed enemy movement through a starlight
scope. He directed the company’s fire so effectively that no enemy
approached any closer than 50 meters from the Perimeter.
During the height of the battle an 81mm counter-mortar round fired
by Triple Deuce mortarmen apparently struck in the midst of an enemy mortar
crew, sending up a secondary explosion and silencing the NVA tube.
A sweep of the battle area the following morning turned up the
bodies plus four enemy RPG launchers and 25 rounds, three AK-47 assault rifles
and several hundred rounds, six bangalore torpedoes, two anti-tank mines and 151
Chicom hand grenades.