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Posted on 06/08/2003 3:48:24 AM PDT by snippy_about_it
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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Not one, but two ambushes would be set up to greet the deploying armored cavalry of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division in a test of strength along National Route 13 in Binh Long Province.  Paradoxically, each battle was the result of a VC ambush, and one doesn’t stretch the truth by saying that the Viet Cong were masters of the ambush -- so much so that in their technique they almost turned the ambush into a work of art. Their planning-and-execution approach was the "one slow, four quick" formula. The first step, the slow one, dictated that the commander and his aides, without haste and very thoroughly, plan the ambush. The commander would study the enemy, the proposed location of the ambush, and plan the actual assault. In many cases he might actually visit the proposed area to personally check out possible locations for bunkers, gun positions, mines and troop deployment. The commander would also prepare routes to move his troops to the battlefield and withdrawal routes to move them out when the ambush was over. Next, the commander and his men would pull back to a safe area and rehearse the ambush until all unit leaders and each individual knew the terrain, his job, and the general situation. Last, came the execution ("four quick") phase. The Viet Cong now advanced quickly to the battle area and then, assuming that their timing was good (it usually was because of their very capable intelligence organization), they would go directly into the second ("quick") step -- assault quickly. After the actual ambush, or whenever the commander had decided the time had come, the Viet Cong would clear the battlefield quickly. They would carry off anything in the way of weapons, ammunition and supplies that might be useful in the future, destroying what they could not carry. Finally they would also carry off their dead and wounded. This led into the fourth quick step -- withdraw as fast as possible along previously selected escape routes.  In mid 1966 it was clear that the Americans in South Vietnam had yet to devise a consistently successful way of dealing with such attacks. The experience gained in El Paso II in June and July of 1966 would provide some improvement. The events that triggered the first major battle of El Paso II, the Battle of Ap Tau O on Route 13, began to unfold early in the morning of June 8, 1966. Troop A, 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry, left its base camp at Phu Loi -- moving north to the provincial capital of An Loc. The troop was made up of 135 men and 41 armored vehicles -- nine M48 tanks, 29 armored cavalry assault vehicles (ACAVs), including two flame-throwing vehicles and two radar vehicles, plus two engineer "dozer" tanks, and one armored recovery vehicle. Troop A was commanded by Captain Ralph Sturgis, whose three platoons moved northward in inverted order -- the 3rd Platoon first and the 1st last. The convoy’s purpose was to place the squadron armor more centrally for operational use in El Paso II -- to help protect against an expected Viet Cong attack on An Loc. As a routine precaution the 2nd Battalion, 18th Infantry (2/18), acting as a ready-reaction force, was flown from its base camp to Lai Khe on the morning of June 8. It would be well located to react to any contact made by Captain Sturgis’ road column.  Because the enemy’s penchant for mining Route 13 was well known, the convoy at first traveled on the abandoned roadbed of an old French railway and on dirt paths in hopes of a safer ride. (After all, the enemy would hardly lay mines beneath a no-longer-used roadbed or on dirt paths -- or so it was hoped.) The roadbed and dirt paths ran roughly parallel to Route 13. Troop A reached the intermediate destination of Lai Khe at 11 a.m. At Lai Khe, headquarters of the 3rd Brigade, the soldiers of Troop A took their lunch while the tanks and ACAVs refueled. The troop then left Lai Khe on Route 13, but quickly abandoned the highway for the relative safety of the railway roadbed. The troop’s journey northward continued without incident to Chon Thanh, capital of Chon Thanh District. As Troop A arrived at Chon Thanh, the 2/18 moved by helicopter from its own earlier stop at Lai Khe to Hon Quan airfield at An Loc, so as to be better positioned to provide assistance should Troop A need it. As further safety precaution, a trail party was left behind at Chon Thanh and would catch up later. The troop now found it slow going off the highway. After it reached and passed through Chon Thanh, the jungle foliage made traveling and defending against a potential ambush so difficult that Troop A -- balancing safety against the need to move on -- returned to Route 13. The 135 men of Troop A were now on the last leg of their journey to An Loc -- and, although they did not know it, just about to enter the killing zone of an enemy ambush.  Strung out along the west side of Route 13, from the village of Ap Tau O to a point about three kilometers to the north, the 272nd regiment of the 9th Viet Cong Division was waiting for the Americans. The VC had dug in the previous night and formed an L-shaped ambush. A small number of the guerrillas positioned themselves on the east side of the road. From north to south the regiment’s 1st, 2nd and 3rd Battalions massed along Route 13, while the regiment’s reconnaissance company arranged itself across the base of the L. The location was just beyond, or at the maximum range of, nearby friendly artillery. The Viet Cong commander and his staff had selected an excellent place for an ambush. They also had fulfilled another Viet Cong tactical requirement -- substantial and in this case enormous, numerical superiority over the Americans. In addition, the American cavalry troop was strung out for almost three kilometers. Accounts differ as to precisely when and how the battle began. Most likely, it was about 2:30 p.m. when a recoilless rifle or a mine (or both) hit the column’s lead tank and triggered the ambush. Immediately, according to the cavalry squadron’s annual historical report, "the entire column came under intense small arms, automatic weapons, mortar and recoilless rifle fire." The logical next step would have been for the Viet Cong to attempt overrunning the column. However, a captured enemy document indicates that the U.S. troops reacted so quickly that the VC were themselves pinned down by heavy American fire. Within Troop A, the 3rd Platoon came under the most intense fire, the 2nd Platoon received less intense fire, and the trailing 1st Platoon suffered hardly any. Captain Sturgis, whose command ACAV was in the middle of the column, quickly began moving toward its head. As he did, the left side of his vehicle received a direct hit from a recoilless rifle. With no great damage done, he continued. Then a second recoilless-rifle team began taking a bead on Sturgis’ ACAV. Fortunately, the commander of an American M132 flame-thrower vehicle saw the VC team and quickly turned his weapon on the guerrillas, with devastating results. Sturgis was saved.  HERRINGBONE FORMATION - This formation gave vehicles best all-round firepower when they were ambushed in a restricted area. In the confusion surrounding the first minutes of battle the troopers could not ascertain the origin of enemy fire -- the east or west side of the road. Third Platoon’s vehicles automatically went into a herringbone formation so as to cover both sides. The 2nd Platoon meanwhile, acting on Sturgis’ order, moved up to reinforce the lead 3rd Platoon, while the 1st Platoon, much farther back, began moving toward the sounds of gunfire. Shortly thereafter it became clear that almost all enemy fire came from west of the road, from an area of trees and secondary growth about a hundred meters back. Sturgis ordered his men to organize the vehicles into a circular defensive perimeter -- a laager -- on a slight rise a bit to the right, i.e. east, of the highway. Almost simultaneously he called for air support through the on-station Forward Air Controller (FAC), Captain Richard Wetzel. Within 11 minutes the first USAF flight had arrived. The situation was fluid for a while, as the inevitable confusion that attends the start -- and sometimes all -- of a battle prevailed. Even though Sturgis had ordered the formation of a laager, it could not -- because elements of his Troop extended along 3,000 meters of Route 13 -- be accomplished immediately. As the 1st Platoon attempted to make its way toward the laager area, its commander Lieutenant Louis Bouault, noticed a large number of Viet Cong moving parallel to his platoon. Presumably from the 272nd’s Second Battalion, they presented an inviting target. Bouault ordered his men to open fire, which they did, causing a good number of casualties among the advancing Viet Cong. Indeed, his fire caused the enemy to attack his own platoon. In the ensuing fight one ACAV was damaged and another destroyed. However, Bouault’s platoon, now within 500 to 800 meters of the laager, continued on and soon reached the laager’s southern edge. There, he attached his platoon to the rest of the troop. As vehicles in the now-completed defensive perimeter continued firing, the laager obviously became the main focus of enemy attention. Although it is unlikely that the Viet Cong so intended, the battle, in the main, soon became one of fire, not maneuver, and a pattern of static conflict emerged. At this point the enemy commander had two options -- retreat or stay and inflict as much damage and take as many American lives as possible. The American armored force, on the other hand, had three options -- attack, retreat or stand pat. Given the substantial firepower of an armored cavalry troop, one might have expected the option of attack. The squadron commander, Lt. Col. Leonard Lewane was overhead in his helicopter throughout the battle -- he in fact landed and walked the perimeter twice. In addition, the 3rd Brigade commander and both assistant divisional commanders and the division commander, General DePuy, were all kept abreast of events. None ordered an attack, and in the division’s after-action report, that decision was indirectly criticized.  Regarding the second option, meanwhile, there was obviously no reason to retreat. Not only is an armored cavalry troop in and of itself a powerful entity, but in this case the Air Force presence made it certain that the troop would not be overrun. Further, the 2/18th Infantry was at An Loc as a ready-reaction force. Additionally, elements of the 5th ARVN (South Vietnamese) Division at An Loc were ready to move south on Route 13 to reinforce Troop A. As it turned out, the option chosen was to stand pat. Troop A in its own defensive perimeter with its own tanks and ACAVs -- in conjunction with the Air Force and, to a lesser degree, artillery -- blasted away at the enemy in the woods across Route 13 for hours. In the late afternoon the Viet Cong commander decided his troops had inflicted -- and absorbed -- all the damage they could. He began withdrawing to the west, effectively to end the main portion of the battle. At an earlier lull, Captain Sturgis had ordered the trail party, under the command of his executive officer, Lieutenant Ronald Copes, to leave Chon Thanh, where it had stayed when the rest of the troop moved on toward An Loc. On reaching the southern edge of the battle area, it was to pick up any tank or other Troop A vehicle that had been dropped off along the way. While so engaged, the trail party itself encountered a small ambush, set up by the VC 3rd/272, which resulted in the loss of an American tank to a recoilless rifle -- possibly the only time that the 272nd’s 3rd Battalion participated in the battle. With the aid of close air support, the trail party drove the enemy away in a firefight that lasted about 30 minutes and then proceeded to link up with the main body of Troop A. Meanwhile the 2/18th was ordered, as the ready-reaction force, to the battle area to relieve and reinforce Troop A. Since the closest landing zone (LZ) was four miles to the north, by the time the helicopter-lifted battalion landed and swept down to the battle area, the enemy had withdrawn. The ARVN units, coming south on Route 13 by truck, also arrived too late to be of materiel assistance.  M113 AFTER HITS BY VIET CONG 57-mm. RECOILLESS RIFLE Troop A and the 2nd Battalion, 18th Infantry, remained near the battle site overnight. On June 9, they policed the battlefield and then moved on to Hon Quan to provide security for an artillery battery and the divisional command post being established there. The Air Force contribution to repulse off the ambush had been a key factor. Not only did a flight arrive just minutes after the ambush opened, but air sorties consisting of 17 flights of bombers delivered 27 tons of high explosives and napalm, six tons of fragmentation bombs and 24 canisters of cluster bomb units over the next several hours. On the few occasions when the Air Force did not have a flight on station, helicopter gunships filled the void. In short, the enemy was under constant bombardment from 11 minutes after he triggered the ambush until he began disengaging. For the most part, the Air Force pounded the area to the immediate west of the troop’s perimeter. The 3rd Brigade’s after-action report gave generous praise -- "Close air support was considered the decisive factor in the success of the battle on June 8 along Highway 13." There were still some rough spots to be worked out in the procedures by which tactical air support could help the 1st Infantry, but basically the job had been done well. Evaluating the battle later, the planners saw an engagement which started as an ambush and continued long enough to become a fierce fire fight. At its end, 14 Americans were dead and approximately 40 wounded. The enemy had taken much higher casualties -- approximately 100 killed in action (by body count), with an additional 200 to 250 estimated killed, and doubtlessly a large number of wounded. On balance the Americans saw the engagement as a success. The 1st VC Battalion had suffered 90 percent casualties and the 2nd Battalion, 50 percent. (The 3rd Battalion had been considerably south of the main attack and only participated in peripheral action. This accounts for its having only minimal casualties.)  SHERIDAN M551 AND CREW MEMBERS At the very beginning, a VC mistake helped Troop A. The Viet Cong laid out the ambush in such a way that their own lines extended for at least three kilometers. Over-extended, the enemy could not easily maneuver against Troop A once the ambush was triggered. But the Americans also made mistakes. The divisional after-action report makes it clear that, instead of going into a tight circular defense perimeter as soon as the battle began, Troop A should have maneuvered and attacked aggressively. Among other improvements adopted, the report disclosed "Communications were tightened up, the coordination of air and artillery was improved by the simple means of preplanning artillery support on one side of the road and air support on the other so these two decisive weapons could be used continuously and simultaneously. It was also decided that the infantry reaction would be divided into two elements. First, a battlefield relief force to preclude a defeat in the area of the main attack, and second, a battlefield-exploitation force which would be landed along the routes of withdrawal in order to destroy VC forces some distance from the ambush site." Members of the division at all levels felt that the enemy had been soundly defeated in the battle at Ap Tau O, but they also felt that important lessons had been learned. The 1st Infantry battles fought later in the same campaign seem to bear this out. This thread is dedicated to the memory of his Uncle - KIA - Battle of Ap Tau-O, June 8, 1966
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L-R Unknown Trooper, Avery Smith, and Roger Conner in San Francisco before shipping out.
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