Southern Cross information
for 11 BDE 23 INF
174 AHC
1/20 INF 23 INF

For date 700703


11 BDE 23 INF was a US Army unit
174 AHC was a US Army unit
1/20 INF 23 INF was a US Army unit
Primary service involved, US Army
Quang Ngai Province, I Corps, South Vietnam
Location, Duc Pho
Description: The following is an edited version of an article titled "48 ton rice cache found" by SP4 Toby Prodgers (11th INF BDE IO). FSB LIZ - Operating under frequent harassment from VC snipers, a company of the 11th Infantry Brigade soldiers recently uncovered one of the largest enemy rice caches ever found in the I Corps Tactical Zone. The men of Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry conducted an intensive, nine-day search operation that produced 97,500 pounds of enemy rice along the coastline, ten miles north of Duc Pho. Initially, Company C had been "combat assaulted" two miles east of the village of Mo Duc, on information that a large unit of VC was operating in the area. Engineers from the 26th Engineering Battalion had reported several instances of enemy sniper fire and mortar fire as well as a number of booby traps. Company C swept through the flat, open rice paddies, interspersed with hedgerows, mangrove swamps, and small, oasis-type hamlets. A short range patrol from the mortar platoon was sent to check one of these hamlets. A routine search failed to yield any significant results until SGTs James E. Balcarczyk, Lackawanna, N.Y., and Alan P. Denucci, North St. Paul, Minn., entered an old church, fallen into disuse. Once inside, the two men discovered rice hidden in coffin-like boxes. Intensifying their search, they came up with almost two and a half tons of the enemy food staple and sparked company-sized search operation that was to last for the next nine days. Searching all four small hamlets, the company found hidden caches in virtually every hut. "At first we found simple caches hidden under woodpiles, haystacks, and in bunkers. As time went on, though, we found them buried in gardens with fertilizer spread over the rice. It'd be in the pig pens too, under the mud, straw, and dirt. Ninety percent of it was in plastic bags," explained SSG John G. Moore, Oxford, Ala. In one instance, a man put a stick through the floor of one of the hooches and exposed a subfloor full of rice. Up to two layers of caches were found in some of the hooches. The night of the first find, the third platoon was setting up outside one of the hamlets for security, when SP4 James M. McCord, Holly Hill, Fla., hit a 300 pound cache while digging out a foxhole. Later, 1LT John P. Grice, Jackson, Miss., the mortar platoon leader struck a 1,300-pound cache when he stepped outside to dig a field latrine. Two days after the search operation began, a Chinook, hovering above a load of rice to be extracted took a heavy volume of enemy machinegun and automatic weapons fire from one the nearby swamps. "Shark" gunships from the 174th AHC were called in and hit the enemy position with rockets. Immediately after the aerial bombardment the first and second platoons moved into the swamp, destroying bunkers marked by a LOH hovering overhead. During the contact, the men killed one VC and detained 11 others. Much of the rice was reserved for distribution to civilians in the area and the rest was sent to Mo Duc for wider distribution throughout Quang Ngai Province. The enemy's failure to retain his mammoth rice supply will almost certainly have its effect on the main force NVA and VC Infantry Brigade's area of operation. Photo Captions (Photo by SP4 Herbert Brady): 1) Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, 11th Infantry Brigade, moves in line through a rice paddy in a search operation south of Chu Lai which yielded 97,500 pounds of rice (Photo by SP4 Herbert Brady) 2) Soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, 11th Infantry Brigade, load sacks of rice onto a helicopter which was part of the cache found 2 miles east of Mo Duc. The rice cache was distributed to Vietnamese families.

The source for this information was 7007_324_scr supplied by Les Hines 12/23/2000


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Last updated 12/23/2000

Date posted on this site: 05/13/2023