Pacific Stars and Stripes information
for 35 ENG
For date 680519
35 ENG was a US Army unit
Primary service involved, US Army
Quang Nam Province, I Corps, South Vietnam
Location, Hai Van Pass
Description: The following is an edited version of an article titled "Road Engineers Press On Despite VC Attacks."
Photo Caption - With smoke still rising from an ambush, a medevac copter lands to evacuate wounded men of the 35th Combat Engineer Bn.
Hai Van Pass - 1LT Daniel Ortman's jeep twisted slowly down the north rabbit ear at the top of the Hai Van Pass heading down to check on construction work along his area of responsibility on Highway 1. As his jeep rounded the bend at the bottom of the ear a 2 1/2 ton truck filled with Vietnamese soldiers came up behind him. There was a loud sudden blast and the back of Ortman's jeep lurched in the air as Claymore mine exploded and sent deadly small steel fragments across the road. Ortman, an old hand at ambushes, quickly ran his surprisingly undamaged jeep on out of the fire zone. He then jumped clear of the jeep and he and his men ran for cover. The Vietnamese truck had not been so lucky. The claymore fragments tore holes in the cab of the truck, wounding three soldiers, but the truck ran on through the fire zone. Ortman sent them on down the road to Lang Co where they could get their wounded men treated. Other U.S. forces at the top of the rabbit ear witnessed the command-detonated explosion. 1Lt Gary D. Snyder, acting company commander of C Co. of the 35th Combat Engineer Bn., jumped in his jeep with two sergeants and headed down the hill to investigate. Some U.S. Marines, stationed at the top of the pass, also came down. As Snyder's jeep passed the place where the enemy claymore fragments spewed through the jeep. The three wounded men rolled out of the jeep and ran for cover. Snyder was slightly wounded in the neck, one of the sergeants was also wounded in the neck and Snyder's operations sergeant was hit in the side. There was a short silence, and then Ortman and his men began firing up the slopes. Their fire was answered with light white puffs of smoke from a wooded area as the enemy opened up with AK47 automatic rifles. From the top of the hill where the other U.S. forces were watching the ambush unfold, more fire was directed into the enemy's position. A Marine .50 cal. machine gun began saturating the slopes above the pinned down engineers. There was a white puff of smoke from the ridgeline - before the smoke had cleared a 106mm recoilless rifle round wiped it out. A man on the hill yelled, "He got one. I saw him fall out."
About 15 other men with automatic rifles just below the Marine hilltop position also opened up on the enemy about 400 yards away. Another of the big recoilless rounds from the Marines on the hill exploded near where the first had landed. And then there was silence. The ambush was over. But six men had been wounded in the 10-minute incident. A medivac helicopter was called to pick up Snyder and his two wounded sergeants. For the helicopter pilot from the 45th Engineer Group to which the 35th Bn. belongs, it was his third medivac mission of the day. Earlier in the day, another unit from the 35th had been ambushed. The helicopter pilot had been driven off at first in that ambush by a B40 rocket, but he later came back and made the pick-up. He had also picked up a wounded U.S. civilian whose truck hit a mine earlier in the day. So it goes for the men of the Army's 35th Engineer Bn. as they try to keep highway 1 leading out of Da Nang toward Hue open. At the same time they are trying to improve the once one-lane road through the twisting Hai Van Pass north to Phu Loc - a stretch of 31 miles. During the first week of May the engineers lost one man killed and 38 wounded, as the Viet Cong stepped up efforts to close the vital link of highway through the pass. The casualties for that week were more than the battalion had suffered in a little more than two months since they began the gigantic job of opening and improving the road through the heavily infested enemy territory. During the same week the Viet Cong command detonated four claymore mines, planted eight pressure mines in the highway, set two booby traps, mortared the battalion's spread out units six times, sniped at the engineers at work three times, sprang three ambushes and blew seven culverts. The road the engineers are trying to shove through the infected enemy territory runs out of Nam O, nine miles north of Da Nang, winds up along the steep slopes of the Hai Van Pass to the rabbit ears down through "Turtle Point" to Lang Co. From Lang Co the road twists over the Phu Gia Pass onto a flat and straight stretch of road dubbed the "Bowling Alley." On north of the "Bowling Alley" the road runs through "Claymore Pass," whose once almost vertical sides presented excellent enemy ambush sites, on into Phu Loc. On the 31 miles of road there are 25 bridges and 179 culverts the engineers must keep repaired, improved and in some cases rebuilt. In mid-February the 35th Engineer Bn., plus two attached companies began working on highway 1. The unit had been working in the vicinity of Qui Nhon when they were ordered north after the Tet offensive. When the unit arrived, the road was closed. There were three major breaks in the then narrow one-lane road through the Hai Van Pass plus several obstacles. In the area of the "Bowling Alley" between Phu Gia and Phu Loc, every bridge and culvert was destroyed and the enemy had created obstacles by interdicting the road with cuts caused from small explosive charges in more than 70 places. Efforts to reopen the road over the Hai Van Pass by units of the 7th Marine Engineer Bn. and the 61st Naval Construction Bn. in the first two weeks of February had been costly and unsuccessful. On Feb. 13 and 14 the 35th tried to move up the pass, but were also forced back.
On Feb. 15, the commanding general of the 1st Marine Div. ordered efforts on the road to be stopped until the tactical situation could be dealt with. On Feb. 17, two battalions of the 101st Airborne Div. moved into the Phu Loc area and began searching for the enemy along the highway. For four days, beginning on the Feb. 20, A and B companies from the engineer battalion moved up the Hai Van Pass with the 2nd Bn. of the 502nd Airborne and repaired the damage and opened the road across. The two companies then set up a forward position on the north side of the Lang Co bridge where they could continue to extend the open portion of the road. As the engineers began reconnaissance work on the "Bowling Alley" on to Phuoc An, north of their current area of responsibility, they were held up by enemy ambushes.
On Feb. 27, M company from the 3rd Bn., 5th Marines, assaulted enemy positions near Phuoc An and the engineers were able to move on through and complete temporary repairs to within two mile os Phuoc An. The next day the engineers worked their way on into Phuoc trestle dry span bridge across the river at Phuoc An. The next day they worked on the east to link up with the 32nd Naval Construction Regt. and the highway was open from Da Nang to Phu Bai, and the first convoys to the stricken areas around Hue moved north on March 1. For the next two months the engineers worked on improving the highway, replacing bridges, culverts and widening the road to two lanes with only scattered incidents. Then in early May the Viet Cong decided they wanted to close the highway again. "Before the first of May the incidents were very amateurish, but lately the jobs have been more professional." said LTC John V. Parish Jr., commanding officer of the battalion. Intelligence reports indicate that the 402nd North Vietnamese Sapper Bn., has been training the local Viet Cong in the area, and according to a couple of Chieu Hois - Viet Cong defectors-they want to close the road for a second-wave offensive. Recently the Reds have been dropping propaganda leaflets for the engineers. They read: "Officers and Men in Units belonging to U.S. Engineer Corps. "Your works are not on these roads but to build your native land and your families happiness. Along with the American people, you had better create a wealthy, beautiful and progressive society of the United States. Struggle for your repatriations. Don't work on the roads and the bridges serving for mopping-up operations of U.S. aggressors and their lackeys. Don't go to the battlefield for the money bags of the U.S. monopolists and tycoons. Don't intervene in the Vietnamese Peoples internal affair." The pamphlet is signed by the Quang Nam - Da Nang Peoples Liberation Army. In spite of the increased enemy activity along the road, the work goes on. The blasting of rock continues. Road graders are working. Bulldozers are pushing in rock fill, and the more than 1,000 Combat Engineers sweat in the sun-determined to have the pass open, and a paved two-lane road through by September.
The source for this information was 6805pss.avn supplied by Les Hines
Additional information is available on CD-ROM.
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Last updated
02/23/2000
Date posted on this site:
05/13/2023