The very next afternoon (even before I could get out to coordinate with the SF team at Ben Het), a critical piece of intelligence dropped in our lap when the rifle platoon securing the bridge captured an NVA recon team. We quickly learned through interrogation that they were from the 2nd NVA Division and had in their possession sketches of the division's operations plans for taking Dak To. Hill 1338 was to be the location of the division headquarters, while the ridgeline (which we came to call 1001) was to hold the main firing positions for their heavy weapons. And we were the main target: fish down in a fishbowl.
When I told the battalion commander that we'd better get a couple of companies up on that ridgeline, and fast, he agreed. "If you can get the airlift together," he told me, "we'll do it tomorrow afternoon."
Because our parent brigade headquarters had remained at Jackson's Hole, some seventy kilometers away, we had been put directly under the control of the 4th Division at Pleiku. That's the way it works when you are operating apart from a brigade that can no longer support you.
I contacted Division and requested and got ten Hueys and six gunships for the air assault. This would give us enough lift to put eighty riflemen on the ground in a single lift. But finding a good place to put them down again proved much harder. Only one small grassy knoll on the eastern end of the ridgeline would accommodate ten Hueys landing at a time. Everything else in the neighborhood was triple-canopy jungle. It's possible to clear a landing zone in that stuff, but difficult and time-consuming: much too difficult in the time we had. In that jungle, clearing an LZ just large enough to accommodate a single Huey would take a couple of days and several air strikes of 750-pound bombs and hundreds of rounds of 155mm and 8-inch fire. And besides, our only artillery was a 105mm battery with six tubes.
That meant we were forced to use the clearing for the air assault.
On October 28, 1967, at 1500 hours, C Company began the air assault. This was preceded by an artillery prep of the landing zone, consisting of about 150 rounds of 105mm howitzer fire. When the I Iueys set down, the LZ proved to be cold, and the first lift of eighty secured it, then waited for the second lift to arrive before they moved as a company toward the woodline.
The helicopters took about twenty minutes for the turnaround, and the second lift arrived with the remainder of the company. The lift was expected to continue until the second company (B Company) had also been inserted.
As soon as C company was complete, the company commander began his movement toward the woodline, which was about 100 meters away. Chest-high elephant grass provided good concealment for the formation. After advancing fifty meters inside the woodline, the point squad began receiving very heavy fire from a well-dug-in NVA position, which was concealed by spider holes with overhead cover. Although they'd been hit by artillery during the prep, they'd held their fire until the squad was inside their position, thus forcing C Company to temporarily pull back without reaching the woodline.
During the exchange, the NVA deliberately shot about half of the members of the point squad — one of their favorite tricks; they knew that U.S. forces would not leave their wounded or dead on the battlefield. Once the U.S. wounded were on the ground, the NVA would go back down into their holes to await the inevitable U.S. artillery barrage, which would be followed by the company's attempt to recover their casualties. As the company launched another attack, the NVA would attempt to shoot more, all the while holding the company forward of the NVA's main defensive position without compromising its true location. If the American attack had not been successful by darkness, the company would find itself in a very vulnerable position — not properly dug in to defend itself against an NVA attack — with the likelihood that the NVA would drag the U.S. dead and wounded off during the night (they carried body hooks for this purpose).
As a result of all this, B Company, now approaching the LZ, was waved off and returned to Dak To by the battalion commander, who was airborne and controlling the operation.
Meanwhile, the C Company commander had requested artillery fire on the enemy position, and the battalion commander had also requested immediate air strikes. After a couple hundred rounds of artillery fire, the company commander decided to make another push in order to try to recover his wounded personnel. This time he was able to reach the treeline before most of the company came under a hail of withering fire. It was now obvious that he was up against at least an NVA company and perhaps a well-dug-in larger unit.
Several flights of close support aircraft arrived shortly after that, and the airborne forward air controller began to put strikes on the enemy position. Afterward, C Company was able to advance far enough to reach the point squad and recover the dead and wounded.
During the air strikes, it proved possible to lift in B Company, and they were able to link up with C Company. By nightfall, and after hundreds of rounds of artillery and mortar fire and many more air strikes (including napalm), both companies had advanced approximately 300 meters inside the woodline, several NVA had been killed, and their position had been overrun, while our troops had suffered fifteen to twenty casualties. A couple of captured NVA soldiers revealed during interrogation that they were part of a battalion of the 2nd NVA Division. Their division had moved into the area two to three weeks earlier and now occupied the lower ridgeline.
Throughout the night, we continued to defend our two companies with close artillery support, while at the same time pounding the area farther down the ridge with air strikes and artillery fire. Throughout the night, periodic enemy mortar fire was received from Hill 1338, which dominated the ridgeline. This was the terrain over which our two companies would have to advance the next morning.
Before movement began the next morning, October 29, it was decided to send a recon patrol up Hill 1338 to determine if it was occupied. Before they'd gotten a third of the way up, the patrol was pinned down by enemy fire, but they were able to disengage and returned to report that the fire was coming from an enemy position constructed with concentric and interconnecting trench lines.
Based on this report and contact the previous evening, it was obvious that we were up against more than a battalion of NVA — and maybe a regiment. All this information was reported to Division, along with our assessment that reinforcements were definitely needed: All indications were that a major battle was in the making.
In the meantime, the best thing our battalion could do was get a third company up on that ridgeline and try to clear it far enough back to protect the airfield (where reinforcements would have to land) from direct enemy fire. While we were doing this, we could attempt to keep the NVA forces on Hill 1338 under control by fire until a major attack could be mounted against them.
Division bought our recommendation, and the next morning, October 30, the third company, A Company, was lifted up to the ridgeline. Throughout the day while the 3rd/12th pushed down the ridgeline, with two companies in the lead, advanced elements from the First Brigade, our parent brigade, began arriving, along with advanced elements from its other two organic battalions. Next day, the two companies pushing down the ridge were only able to advance a couple of kilometers, even with the assistance of continuing air strikes. Several very intense engagements were fought, some at very close range. (One sergeant won the Distinguished Service Cross when he used a shotgun with double-0 buckshot to fight off an NVA squad charging directly at the company command element.)
Searches of dead NVA revealed that some of them were carrying photos of girlfriends and canteens taken from soldiers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade that had been killed in that same area in June. These discoveries enraged our own soldiers, and increased their determination to make the NVA pay a high price for the Americans they'd killed earlier on this same battleground.