Photo By Staff Sgt. Daniel Stoutamire | Retired Sgt. Maj. Ira Whitaker, center, and Retired Col. John Seitz, left, speak with...... read more read more
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FORT RILEY, Kan. — Sometime in the dark early morning of Nov. 1, 1968, the North Vietnamese sapper battalion got its orders to attack and overwhelm the U.S. Soldiers inside a remote fire support base near the Cambodian border.
Those Soldiers were with the 1st Infantry Division, and belonged to two artillery batteries, one troop of cavalrymen, and an infantry company. Several of those artillerymen were at Fort Riley Mar. 26-28 for the annual division artillery reunion, and as they recall, it was a fierce fight to survive.
“They threw Bangalore torpedoes across the wire and blew it and they came straight in and blew a vehicle and its ammunition, two machine guns were knocked out instantly,” retired Sgt. Maj. Ira Whitaker, at that time the first sergeant of Battery C, 8th Battalion, 6th Artillery Regiment, 1st Infantry Division. “We had a perimeter where there were no U.S. forces except for our firing battery blocking that perimeter.”
The Soldiers were at the base as part of a wider strategy to deprive the North Vietnamese forces from resupply from Cambodia on its way to Saigon. They had been at the fire support base, called FSB Rita, for a little more than two weeks before the sapper battalion struck.
“The theory was we’ll go out and set up these bases, go out and poke around the bush a little bit, but the main idea was they would come and get us, because they don’t want us cutting off their (main supply route),” said Col. (ret.) Frank Alexander, at that time an assistant operations officer with 1st Battalion, 5th Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Inf. Div. “It took a little longer than expected, but they came.”
The enemy forces had penetrated deep within the base within the first few confused minutes, but the work of repelling them lasted through the night and into the morning.
“The fight went on until daylight,” Whitaker said. “We fought all night. The whole thing wasn’t over in just an hour.”
Because of the limited visibility and short range they had to fire, artillerymen found themselves loading round after round of “beehive” or canister rounds, which are devastating at close range to groups of people.
“We had people basically aiming right down their barrels and putting rounds out all around the perimeter,” Alexander said.
Indeed, the fighting was so intense that the commander of the U.S. forces on the ground, Lt. Col. Charles Rogers, was wounded three times and later awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions. He retired a major general in 1984.
“This man was not afraid to go where the rubber met the road,” retired Col. Sam Floca said. “This was in perfect character for him.:
Retired Capt. Rick Callahan was with Rogers when he was wounded for the third and final time.
“It was early morning and we were firing,” he said. “The 122-mm rockets came in and it was one of those ‘one over, one short — the third was right on us. The (wheels) of the cannon were in the air, the barrel was in the ground. It wounded Lt. Col. Rogers and me and killed my section chief.”
With determined defending and assistance from aerial assets such as an AC-47 the Soldiers called “Puff the Magic Dragon” due to the volume of rounds and tracer rounds its miniguns produced, the enemy attack petered out in the early morning. The 1st Inf. Div. Soldiers waited on resupply and headed back to a nearby base to recover. Twelve U.S. Soldiers had been killed in the fighting, as well as an unknown number of North Vietnamese.
| Date Taken: | 03.31.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 07.01.2014 10:20 |
| Story ID: | 134936 |
| Location: | FORT RILEY, KANSAS, US |
| Web Views: | 2,806 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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