Tet-68 in Bien Hoa information
for A/3/5 CAV
9 INF
For date 680131
A/3/5 CAV was a US Army unit
9 INF was a US Army unit
Primary service involved, US Army
Bien Hoa Province, III Corps, South Vietnam
Location, Bien Hoa
Description: MAJ Mahler, the squadron XO, continues his account of Tet by stating that A Troop had been alerted to be ready to move to Bien Hoa and at 0700H they were told to move out. Leaving one platoon at FSB Apple, the rest of A Troop started down QL 1. They moved through a fire fight at Trang Bom, a village near Apple, and through a gauntlet of strip villages along the highway where each house seemed to contain a gunner of one kind or another. Just as the lead tank rolled across a concrete bridge, a tremendous explosion dropped the span. The ACAVs found a ford across the stream but their heavy tanks could not cross. A Troop raced for Bien Hoa with only one tank.
When this force entered the city of Bien Hoa, which lay between it and the air base, the lead platoon found the city’s central city square filled with people. Because of the pressure on them to reach the air base quickly, they just kept moving, dispersing the crowd by the force of their passage. It was only after they were in the midst of the crowd that it dawned on them that they had hurtled into several companies of VC and NVA soldiers. The enemy soldiers quickly recovered from their surprise at seeing an American column burst into their midst and opened fire on the passing vehicles, disabling two ACAVs. The second platoon in column, alerted by the firing, drove into the square with all its machine guns blazing and was able to push the two disabled ACAVs off to the side, pick up their crews, and continue on. The troop now consisted of one tank and eight ACAVs.
At this point the squadron commander joined the troop overhead in his LOH and reestablished the communications link between it and the squadron TOC. He stayed over the column and directed it through the narrow maze of city streets and out again toward the air base by the most direct route. As the column approached the nearest entrance to the base, the squadron commander spotted several hundred VC and NVA in the ditches ahead on both sides of the road, where they were apparently waiting to stop just such a relief column as ours on its way to reinforce the besieged base. Forewarned, the remnants of A Troop swung off the road and drove parallel to it, but behind the waiting enemy. As they passed, the ACAVs raked the waiting ambushers from their rear, inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy, who had suddenly become vulnerable because of our quick maneuver. Then the troop was through the gate and into the air base, where it joined up with an infantry battalion. They moved with hardly a halt to one end of a runway that was about to be overrun by sheer force of numbers, arriving just in time to stop the penetration.
At about this time the squadron commander, who was still circling above the troop, was almost blown out of the air by the force of an explosion that we actually heard a moment later at Blackhorse, some 23 miles away. The ammunition bunkers at the Long Binh ammo depot had gone up in a blast of orange flames and black smoke that had almost engulfed his helicopter flying some thousand feet above it. Our report of the incident, relayed by radio a moment later, was the first information the 9th Inf Div HQ had of what the explosion meant, though they were located much closer to Long Binh than we were.
The remnants of A Troop fought on for the rest of the day, combining with the infantry battalion to fend off one attempt after another to penetrate the outer defenses of Bien Hoa Air Base. Late in the afternoon they launched an attack together to try to clear one corner of the sprawling base that had been occupied during the initial attack by the enemy forces. The concentrated firepower of our automatic weapons finally told on the VC and NVA, and they attempted to withdraw, but the quick-moving ACAVs cut them off and killed them as they ran. Therefore, the troop, now down to six ACAVs and a badly beat-up tank, acted as the fire brigade for the air base, going where it was needed to supply the extra firepower to ward off attackers as pressure built up at first one point then another. By the time darkness fell and the situation at Bien Hoa had begun to stabilize, the tank had been hit 19 times and the crew had been replaced twice. It was, however, still operation as night closed in, and it had done what it was supposed to do.
With full dark came relief as more reinforcing units began to move into the Saigon area, and the pressure on Bien Hoa began to lessen. A Troop had lost two killed and 21 WIA in its 16 hours of fighting. MAJ Mahler states that late that night we flew the weary troop commander back to Blackhorse for a debriefing. With him came our dead. I vividly remember meeting the helicopter as it landed and helping to unload the bodies. The troop commander stayed with us long enough to have a hot meal and to give us the details of the days fighting and the status of his remaining vehicles. Then he flew back to his troop, tired but exhilarated at having been able to fight back after weeks of running the roads and taking hits from unseen rocketeers. His feeling was shared by the troopers who marched back down QL-1 without incident the next morning to rejoin the platoon that had stayed at FSB Apple.
A Troop received the Valorous Unit Award for its actions at Bien Hoa Air Base.
Hotlinks: http://pone.com/bk/
The source for this information was Ringed in Steel by Mahler :90-95
Additional information is available on CD-ROM.
Please send additions or corrections to: Gary Roush Email address: webmaster@vhpa.org
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Last updated
11/05/1999
Date posted on this site:
05/13/2023