Days of Valor: An Inside Account of the Bloodiest Six Months of the Vietnam War by Robert Tonsetic

Author:Robert Tonsetic [Tonsetic, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: War, Bisac Code 1: HIS027070
ISBN: 9781932033526
Goodreads: 889127
Publisher: Casemate
Published: 2006-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

POW Compound—0600–0730 Hours

PFC Gary Coufal, an M79 gunner from Syracuse, New York, and another grunt from 1st Platoon were in the observation tower scanning the area across the highway from the main gate of the compound. It was just after dawn, and the morning mists still hugged the ground. The compound had received about twenty minutes of small-arms fire shortly after 0400 hours, but the VC were silenced by helicopter gunship strikes. Lt. Tuber had kept his men on 100 percent alert. It had been a long night, and the men welcomed the first light of dawn.

PFC Coufal thought he spotted movement in the rubber trees across the road, but he didn’t have time to process what he saw. Coufal later wrote, “As I looked in that direction rounds struck the sandbags in front of me. The type of fire we had coming in was small arms fire. But I was worried that we were going to be RPG’d. I told my buddy to get out fast, which he did, and I was getting all the equipment together as fast as I could.”

After tossing their rucksacks to the ground below, the two men climbed down the ladder in a hail of VC gunfire, and ran for cover in one of the ground bunkers. Then, according to Coufal, “All Hell broke loose…. We were being hit by automatic weapons and small arms fire and I don’t recall any RPG fire, but the fighting was very intense. D Troop and our unit were putting out a lot of rounds. I was an M79 gunner and ran out of ammo and had to get to one of the tracks for more.” A company from the 275th VC Regiment began to assault the compound, bent on freeing the 2,000 POWs held there.

Twenty-two-year-old Lieutenant Howard Tuber and his RTOs were in a ground bunker directing the defense of the compound. As soon as the fighting started, Tuber radioed his CO, Captain Tonsetic, requesting gunships and reinforcements. Tonsetic, who had his own fight going on north of Ho Nai village, told Tuber to switch radio frequencies and pass his request directly to the battalion TOC at FSB Concord. When the lieutenant radioed the TOC, LTC Mastoris told him that a relief force from the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment was on the way. The 11th ACR’s 2d Squadron was given the mission of reinforcing the POW Compound, but the unit was north of the Michelin Rubber Plantation in War Zone C when they received the order. It would take a nine-hour road march through hostile territory for the troopers of the “Black Horse” regiment to reach the beleaguered compound. Tuber and his platoon were on their own.

At 0635 hours, Tuber’s men spotted an enemy assault force, including six enemy soldiers armed with rocket launchers, moving to firing positions across the road from the main gate. A gunship team, that had so far held the VC company at bay, had expended all its ordnance and departed the area ten minutes earlier.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.