Pacific Stars and Stripes information
for 1 BDE 1 CAV
For date 680118
1 BDE 1 CAV was a US Army unit
Primary service involved, US Army
Binh Dinh Province, II Corps, South Vietnam
Location, Bong Son
Description: The following is an edited version of an article titled "N. Viet Soldiers Fail to Duck Alert GIs."
Bong Son (IO) - A North Vietnamese Army attempt to find a better way to conceal troops from 1st Air Cav. Div. helicopters has been foiled by an alert scout team from the 1st Cav.'s 1st Brigade aviation platoon. Four NVA soldiers were killed by the team of two OH13 observation helicopters who spotted unusual structures in a flooded rice paddy near the scene of a heavy contact between 1st Brigade elements and the NVA. "They looked like duck blinds," said WO Arthur Essenpreis, Jr., Prairie View Ill., one of the scout pilots. They were building them in the reeds that grow near the paddy dikes. They had woven some reeds together to make the top and sides and the whole thing was supported by stakes driven into the mud. "We could tell them from the rest of the reeds because they were rigid," said WO Phillip Rybolt, Clinton, Ill., the other pilot. "They didn't bend from the propwash when we flew over them." A wooden plank floating in the middle of the enclosure and large enough to support a man was part of each structure, the flyers reported. Each had a small opening, enabling a rifleman inside to fire at helicopters or at a nearby village. "I guess they figured that nobody would think to look for them in the middle of an open paddy," Essenpreis said, "That water was five feet deep in places."
Comments: WO Essenpreis, Arthur Jr.; 1 BDE 1 CAV pilot; ;
WO Rybolt, Phillip; 1 BDE 1 CAV pilot; ;
The source for this information was 6801pss.avn supplied by Les Hines
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Last updated
02/21/2000
Date posted on this site:
05/13/2023