5th Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, Cambodia

May 5-19, 1970

199th Infantry Brigade

"Light Swift Accurate"

                      12infrgt.gif

The 1st Cavalry Division's Operational Report for that period gives a broad outline of the swift moving events, to include the dates and events involving the 5th Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment who were under the operational control of the 1st Cavalry Division's 2nd Brigade. The 5th Battalion, 12th Infantry had for nearly six months operated around Firebase Libby and Gladys in Long Khanh Province. Daily, they worked in extreme heat, heavy jungle, and monsoon rains, searching for the 274th Viet Cong Main Force Regiment and the 33rd NVA Regiment - with occasional success resulting in 2 to 3 enemy KIA:

../ds/SpencerAx01k.jpg

Cambodian events for the 5th Battalion of the 12th Infantry Regiment, 199th Light Infantry Brigade (LIB) (Separate) began during the morning of 5 May, 1970 when the 5-12th Infantry was released by the 199th to the operational control of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, effective at 1840 hours. The battalion relocated to Phouc Long Province, near Song Be, in South Vietnam to operate and provide defense for FSB Buttons, the headquarters of the Cav's 2nd Brigade.

Below shows SGT Arlie Spencer with men from his unit; date, location, and men unknown. SGT Spencer is on far left of photo.

../ds/SpencerAx01e.jpg

From 5 May until 12 May, the "Redcatchers" 12th Infantry Regiment worked in their new area of operations, seeking the locations of the enemy, again encountering light enemy resistance. Then they went into Cambodia from 12 May until 25 June 1970.

On 9 May, the battalion was extracted from their field locations and combat assaulted into FSB Snuffy at BU GIA MAP, taking 3 hours to complete the move. They deployed to conduct operations to interdict enemy eastward movement from their Base Area 351 and along the JOLLEY Trail.

On 12 May, Companies B and C, 5-12th Infantry were released from their Battalion control to be OPCON with Task Force 2-12, led by the 2nd Battalion, 12th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division. The next day, the Battalion moved from FSB Snuffy and establised a command post at FSB Brown, Cambodia. B & C Companies, 5/12th Infantry, part of TF 2-12, had occupied FSB Brown the night before.

One of the Alpha Company men, a rifleman with the company since February described Alpha Company's first day in Cambodia. "On our first day, all the line units from the battalion were sent several klicks from FSB Brown on Reconnaissance in Force (RIF) missions. The terrain and jungle here was absolutely terrible. The jungle foliage, versus back in Vietnam, was much, much thicker. It was almost impenetrable in most places and there was bamboo everywhere. The bamboo grew in super-thick stands well over 8 to 10 feet. The place was also infested by huge, black leeches that sought us out everywhere we went. Combined with these factors with the NVA soldiers we were fighting, it made for a very unhealthy place." (Information used with permission of Robbie Gouge, author of "Raiding the Sanctuary".)

At 0215 hours, 13 May, 40 to 50 individuals were observed movng toward the FSB. Supporting 12th Infantry Regiment's companies engaged the enemy with organic weapons supported by artillery, Aerial Rocket Artillery (ARA), Shadow, Nighthawk, tactical air, a flare ship and Blind Bat (C-130 air support). They received small arms, automatic weapons, and B-40 rocket fire in return. The battle ensued for 2 and a half hours, breaking at 0545 hours. Enemy losses were 50 KIA, 4 rocket launcers, 11 SKS rifles, 17 AK-47s, 2 K54 pistols, a 6mm mortar captured. The US lost one soldier killed in action and 4 wounded in action. Later in the day, Task Force 2-12 was dissolved and became TF 5-12th under command of the 5th Battalion, 12th Infantry and now included Troop I, 3rd Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. The soldier killed on FSB Brown during the early morning fight on 13 May 1970 was:

SP4 Richard Gill DeSillier, A Company, Pawcatuck, Connecticut

On 14 May, men from Alpha Company were busting brush trying to find enemy storage depots and cache sites. Late in the morning, they were being shadowed by an OV-10 Bronco plane flown by 1LT Patrick W. Kellogg and an artillery spotter from the 184th Aviation Company, 1st Aviation Brigade.

CPT Kellogg was well-known among the company commanders and platoon leaders in 5-12 as he had worked with them before in Vietnam, calling in timely and accurate air and artillery strikes for various units in contact.

As Kellogg was making another pass over Alpha buzzing the treetops looking for anything out of place or suspicious, his plane was suddenly cut in two by a hidden NVA .51 caliber heavy machine gun. Kellogg was killed instantly. (This was possibly the same enemy machine gun that had riddled LZ Brown with bullets during the firefight two nights before. The next day, Sniper Team B from Echo Company, 5-12th Infantry found what was left of the aircraft, along with the log book and confirmed that both Kellogg and the spotter were killed by enemy small arms) (Information used with permission of Robbie Gouge, author of "Raiding the Sanctuary"). The two men killed (data from Coffelt Database and 184th Recon Airplane Company History, states the men who were killed on 15 May) in their O-1 Birddog aircraft by enemy fire while flying over Khet Mondul Kiri Province, Cambodia were:

1LT Peter Patrick W Kellogg, Seattle, Washington (Pilot)

SP4 Kenneth Eugene Smith, Woodville, Wisconsin, (Spotter)

219th Military Intelligence Detachment, II Field Force.

Also on the morning of May 15, 1970, while a Command and Control Helicopter from Charlie Company, 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion (AHB) was on the ground at YU 067398 to drop off reporters, it was attacked by 8 NVA with rifles and B-40 rockets. The aircraft went up in flames as troops from the 5-12th Infantry Regiment had been in contact to secure the area. Casualties were 1 US KIA and 3 US WIA. The men killed were:

SFC Arnold Lee Robbins, Salamanca, New York

8th Engineers, 1st Cavalry Division, killed outright,

SP4 John Richard Stinn, Panama, Iowa, (Crewman)

229th AHB, 1st Cavalry Division, wounded, evacuated, died later.

SGT Melvin Ray Thomas, Ada Michigan,

8th Engineers, 1st Cavalry Division, wounded, evacuated, died later

The men of Bravo Company walked into an ambush late in the afternoon in what they thought was an abandoned enemy base camp. SGT Pete Spencer lost his life during this event, and several were wounded in the firefight which lasted most of the night.

No 'official' unit information on the encounter was documented in the Cambodia report by the 1st Cavalry Division, nor in the documents of the 12th Infantry Regiment. The story was told by the men who lived it and can be found in detail in the book "Raiding the Sanctuary". Exerpts from the book used with permission of the author.

By 1400 hours, Bravo Company, with the daily monsoon rains soaking the already exhausted Redcatchers to the bone, had moved out of the contact area, once again jungle pounding through the extremely thick Cambodian countryside. The company was paralleling the same river where the chopper had gone down, two hundred meters or so northeast of FSB Brown.

When the 2nd and 3rd Platoons finished crossing over [rope bridge into enemy base camp], CPT Lee formed the company into a defensive perimeter. From the outset, it was apparent that the basecamp was huge and much too large for one regular line infantry company to handle.

Allen Thomas of the 2nd Platoon states that, "This NVA compound was huge. After we formed a perimeter, each platoon started taking out short reconnaissance patrols to find out just what the extent of the camp was and see if there were any NVA around..." The patrol from the 3rd Platoon, which went in the opposite direction of Thomas's, was led by Terry Braun and Arlie "Pete" Spencer.

Braun remembers, "CPT Lee summoned Pete Spencer and me to meet with him. He told us to take a few men and run a short recon patrol about 75 to 100 meters outside of the perimeter we had just set up. He suggested that we stay off any trails and then report back to him when we had gone a sufficient distance. We took along our RTO's, three M60 machine gun teams and a pointman. We tried to stay off the trails, but the thick bamboo bordering the camp kept forcing us back onto the well-beaten paths. When we had gone approximately 75 meters, we came upon a gully that ran next to the river we were paralleling. I stopped and told Pete, 'That's it. 75 meters. Let's go back.' Pete quickly shot back, 'The Captain said 75 to 100 meters.' He then pointed out fresh sandal tracks. You could actually see where the NVA wearing them had hurriedly slid down the embankment into the gully and back up the other side. The gully wasn't that large of a physical feature. It was probably an 8 to 12 foot drop down a very slippery and muddy trail. It ran about 50 to 80 feet to where the trail went back up a hill to the other side and it was probably a little less than that to the hill that surrounded the gully to our right. The river was to our left."

Braun immediately called up CPT Lee and told him the situation and about the tracks. Loaning SGT Spencer his M60 team consisting of Ken Burmeister and Vaughn Bartley, he then told CPT Lee that Spencer was going to probe a little further.

Braun continues. "Walter Case, who just hours ago had helped to rescue the burning crew of the Huey that was shot down, was pleading with the patrol to not enter the gully. He somehow knew that it was a bad omen. I was the seventh one to descend the hill and enter into it. My RTO would have been the eighth and final one, but as I was going down the hill, Pete Spencer was slipping and sliding in the mud trying to get up to the top on the other side. While watching him, I took a quick glance at the area around me. I immediately noticed an enemy bunker pointing in our direction from across the river. I put my hand up to stop the squad from going any further and halted my RTO, who was himself halfway down the trail leading into the gulley. Just at that moment, at approximately 1650 hours, there were two ear-splitting bursts of automatic weapons fire. There is a distinct difference in sound between and M16 rifle and an AK-47. The AK is much louder and makes more of a cracking noise when fired. The M16 looks like a toy and it has a milder popping sound. These bursts of fire were from an M16 and my first thought was that Pete Spencer had crawled up the other side, seen some enemy soldiers and fired at them. ..."

Spencer had made it up to the opposite side of the gully when the firing began. However, it was not from his weapon or from anyone else's in the patrol. An NVA soldier, using an M16, had shot Spencer through the back of the head when he had appeared at the top of the gulley. He never knew what hit him. Seconds before the shots were fired, Spencer turned around to help Ron Scarbrough, who was carrying another M60 machine gun. The rounds that killed Spencer also hit Scarbrough, seriously wounding him in the back and buttocks.

After the two bursts of fire, there was total silence in the gulley for several heart-pounding minutes. The men at the bottom of the ditch were sure that the enemy were fleeing as they had done many times prior to artillery fire crashing after them. That was not the case on May 15th.

Within minutes, the 1st and 2nd Platoons at the company perimeter, 100 yards or so back from the 3rd Platoon, began receiving heavy and accurate AK-47, RPD and RPG fire at a distance of less than 75 meters. At least nine grunts were wounded in the opening fusillade. Bravo Company was strung out and under heavy enemy fire. There was nothing for the men to do but pray and spray the jungle in front of them with their weapons on full-automatic. Serpent A1, the O-1 observation plane buzzing over the contact was immediately driven off by a string of accurate ground to air machine gun fire. "

The battle continued for hours more with the Company finally consolidating their platoons but they spent the night repelling probes by the NVA who were trying to find a weak spot. The firing would suddenly start up again, reach a crescendo after a few minutes and then die back down.

The next morning, an overland attempt by Bravo Company of the 1st Cav's, 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry was made earlier that morning to reach the survivors of Bravo Company at the basecamp. After two hours of hacking and tromping through the bush, they were themselves ambushed a couple of kilometers from FSB Brown and suffered one KIA and seven WIA right from the start. Bravo 2-12 immediately pulled back. It was the Sheridan's and ACAV's from I Troop, 3rd Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry who finally got them out of the bunker complex where they continued to fight all day until 1630 hours.

Several of the men from 3rd Platoon, including the platoon leader, raced back into the gully to retrieve the body of Pete Spencer. They made it back just as the column was leaving the area. But the column was ambushed about 1 klick from FSB Brown and another 8 men were wounded in action before they finally reached the relative safety of FSB Brown.

SGT Arlie 'Pete' Spencer was posthumously awarded the Silver Star for his heroic actions of May 15, 1970. The names of the men from 5th Battalion, 12th Infantry who were killed in action in Cambodia were:

SP4 Donald Gene Busse, Pontiac, Michigan

PFC Charles Castulo Cisneros, Cerro, New Mexico

CPL Raul De Jesus-Rosa, Juncos, Puerto Rico

SP4 Richard Gill Desillier, Pawcatuck, Connecticut

SGT Dannie Lee Hawkins, Hanceville, Alabama

SGT Michael William Notermann, Victoria, Minnesota

CPL Allen Eugene Oatney, Waterville, Kansas

SGT Jon William Rich, Menominee, Michigan

SGT Warren Lee Scanlan, Exmore, Virginia

SGT Arlie "Pete" Spencer, Westland, Michigan

PFC Ronald Richard Stewart, Glenrock, Wyoming

SP4 Robert John Urbassik, Cleveland, Ohio

PFC Johnny Mack Watson, Mobile, Alabama /li>

Visit the following links to read more on the 5th Battalion, 12th Infantry, in Cambodia

Visit a 'Redcatchers' website for more details

From Terry Braun's email of July 1, 2013. "The helicopter exploded (was shot down) the morning of May 15th. It brought a camera crew from CBS in to film our unit. Pete was killed in the afternoon of May 15th, at least 6 hours after the helicopter was shot down."

"I was in the entire 26 hour firefight on May 15th to May 16th in the NVA Bunker Complex and we never saw a helicopter explode (except that morning). We had a soldier dropped from a Medevac as we were dusting him off (Vaughn Bartley, Pontiac, Michigan) but he survived and went to Fort Knox then Valley Forge for the next 56 weeks for multiple surgeries. My machine gunner, Ken Burmeister and I went to visit him at Christmas, the following year."

"As far as the chopper that was shot down the morning of May 15, 1970, I can personally confirm 2 KIAs and 2 severely wounded (burned all over their bodies) that we dusted off but I was later told those 2 also died. The CBS crew left on that chopper and missed the May 15th -16th firefight."

"I have included my versions of May 12-13 and May 15-16 to help clarify those events (Read them here). "Again, thank you so much for doing this for all the soldiers and families, it is greatly appreciated. I think of Arlie "Pete" Spencer everyday."

- - - Terry Braun

From Robert Gouge June 24, 2013 email: "I am glad that the information will be helpful. Once again, please use anything and everything at your leisure."

"I have also attached the full manuscript to "Raiding the Sanctuary" for you to use as well [Read Chapter 2 of his manuscript here]. There is quite a bit of information in there that you may be able to use for other personnel and incidents during the Cambodian Incursion."

"Please contact me at any time if you have any further questions or concerns. I'd be happy to help out in any way."

- - - Robby Gouge

Contact Us Copyright© 1997-2013 www.VirtualWall.org, Ltd ®(TM) Last update 06/30/2013

 On 12 May, Companies B and C, 5-12th Infantry were released from their Battalion control to be OPCON with Task Force 2-12, led by the 2nd Battalion, 12th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division. The next day, the Battalion moved from FSB Snuffy and establised a command post at FSB Brown, Cambodia. B & C Companies, 5/12th Infantry, part of TF 2-12, had occupied FSB Brown the night before.

One of the Alpha Company men, a rifleman with the company since February described Alpha Company's first day in Cambodia. "On our first day, all the line units from the battalion were sent several klicks from FSB Brown on Reconnaissance in Force (RIF) missions. The terrain and jungle here was absolutely terrible. The jungle foliage, versus back in Vietnam, was much, much thicker. It was almost impenetrable in most places and there was bamboo everywhere. The bamboo grew in super-thick stands well over 8 to 10 feet. The place was also infested by huge, black leeches that sought us out everywhere we went. Combined with these factors with the NVA soldiers we were fighting, it made for a very unhealthy place." (Information used with permission of Robbie Gouge, author of "Raiding the Sanctuary".)

At 0215 hours, 13 May, 40 to 50 individuals were observed movng toward the FSB. Supporting 12th Infantry Regiment's companies engaged the enemy with organic weapons supported by artillery, Aerial Rocket Artillery (ARA), Shadow, Nighthawk, tactical air, a flare ship and Blind Bat (C-130 air support). They received small arms, automatic weapons, and B-40 rocket fire in return. The battle ensued for 2 and a half hours, breaking at 0545 hours. Enemy losses were 50 KIA, 4 rocket launcers, 11 SKS rifles, 17 AK-47s, 2 K54 pistols, a 6mm mortar captured. The US lost one soldier killed in action and 4 wounded in action. Later in the day, Task Force 2-12 was dissolved and became TF 5-12th under command of the 5th Battalion, 12th Infantry and now included Troop I, 3rd Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. The soldier killed on FSB Brown during the early morning fight on 13 May 1970 was:

• SP4 Richard Gill DeSillier, A Company, Pawcatuck, Connecticut

On 14 May, men from Alpha Company were busting brush trying to find enemy storage depots and cache sites. Late in the morning, they were being shadowed by an OV-10 Bronco plane flown by 1LT Patrick W. Kellogg and an artillery spotter from the 184th Aviation Company, 1st Aviation Brigade.

CPT Kellogg was well-known among the company commanders and platoon leaders in 5-12 as he had worked with them before in Vietnam, calling in timely and accurate air and artillery strikes for various units in contact.

As Kellogg was making another pass over Alpha buzzing the treetops looking for anything out of place or suspicious, his plane was suddenly cut in two by a hidden NVA .51 caliber heavy machine gun. Kellogg was killed instantly. (This was possibly the same enemy machine gun that had riddled LZ Brown with bullets during the firefight two nights before. The next day, Sniper Team B from Echo Company, 5-12th Infantry found what was left of the aircraft, along with the log book and confirmed that both Kellogg and the spotter were killed by enemy small arms) (Information used with permission of Robbie Gouge, author of "Raiding the Sanctuary"). The two men killed (data from Coffelt Database and 184th Recon Airplane Company History, states the men who were killed on 15 May) in their O-1 Birddog aircraft by enemy fire while flying over Khet Mondul Kiri Province, Cambodia were:

• 1LT Peter Patrick W Kellogg, Seattle, Washington (Pilot)
  
  
• SP4 Kenneth Eugene Smith, Woodville, Wisconsin, (Spotter)
  219th Military Intelligence Detachment, II Field Force.

Also on the morning of May 15, 1970, while a Command and Control Helicopter from Charlie Company, 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion (AHB) was on the ground at YU 067398 to drop off reporters, it was attacked by 8 NVA with rifles and B-40 rockets. The aircraft went up in flames as troops from the 5-12th Infantry Regiment had been in contact to secure the area. Casualties were 1 US KIA and 3 US WIA. The men killed were:

• SFC Arnold Lee Robbins, Salamanca, New York
  8th Engineers, 1st Cavalry Division, killed outright,
  
  
• SP4 John Richard Stinn, Panama, Iowa, (Crewman)
  229th AHB, 1st Cavalry Division, wounded, evacuated, died later.
  
  
• SGT Melvin Ray Thomas, Ada Michigan,
  8th Engineers, 1st Cavalry Division, wounded, evacuated, died later

The men of Bravo Company walked into an ambush late in the afternoon in what they thought was an abandoned enemy base camp. SGT Pete Spencer lost his life during this event, and several were wounded in the firefight which lasted most of the night.

No 'official' unit information on the encounter was documented in the Cambodia report by the 1st Cavalry Division, nor in the documents of the 12th Infantry Regiment. The story was told by the men who lived it and can be found in detail in the book "Raiding the Sanctuary". Exerpts from the book used with permission of the author.

By 1400 hours, Bravo Company, with the daily monsoon rains soaking the already exhausted Redcatchers to the bone, had moved out of the contact area, once again jungle pounding through the extremely thick Cambodian countryside. The company was paralleling the same river where the chopper had gone down, two hundred meters or so northeast of FSB Brown.

When the 2nd and 3rd Platoons finished crossing over [rope bridge into enemy base camp], CPT Lee formed the company into a defensive perimeter. From the outset, it was apparent that the basecamp was huge and much too large for one regular line infantry company to handle.

Allen Thomas of the 2nd Platoon states that, "This NVA compound was huge. After we formed a perimeter, each platoon started taking out short reconnaissance patrols to find out just what the extent of the camp was and see if there were any NVA around..." The patrol from the 3rd Platoon, which went in the opposite direction of Thomas's, was led by Terry Braun and Arlie "Pete" Spencer.

Braun remembers, "CPT Lee summoned Pete Spencer and me to meet with him. He told us to take a few men and run a short recon patrol about 75 to 100 meters outside of the perimeter we had just set up. He suggested that we stay off any trails and then report back to him when we had gone a sufficient distance. We took along our RTO's, three M60 machine gun teams and a pointman. We tried to stay off the trails, but the thick bamboo bordering the camp kept forcing us back onto the well-beaten paths. When we had gone approximately 75 meters, we came upon a gully that ran next to the river we were paralleling. I stopped and told Pete, 'That's it. 75 meters. Let's go back.' Pete quickly shot back, 'The Captain said 75 to 100 meters.' He then pointed out fresh sandal tracks. You could actually see where the NVA wearing them had hurriedly slid down the embankment into the gully and back up the other side. The gully wasn't that large of a physical feature. It was probably an 8 to 12 foot drop down a very slippery and muddy trail. It ran about 50 to 80 feet to where the trail went back up a hill to the other side and it was probably a little less than that to the hill that surrounded the gully to our right. The river was to our left."

Braun immediately called up CPT Lee and told him the situation and about the tracks. Loaning SGT Spencer his M60 team consisting of Ken Burmeister and Vaughn Bartley, he then told CPT Lee that Spencer was going to probe a little further.

Braun continues. "Walter Case, who just hours ago had helped to rescue the burning crew of the Huey that was shot down, was pleading with the patrol to not enter the gully. He somehow knew that it was a bad omen. I was the seventh one to descend the hill and enter into it. My RTO would have been the eighth and final one, but as I was going down the hill, Pete Spencer was slipping and sliding in the mud trying to get up to the top on the other side. While watching him, I took a quick glance at the area around me. I immediately noticed an enemy bunker pointing in our direction from across the river. I put my hand up to stop the squad from going any further and halted my RTO, who was himself halfway down the trail leading into the gulley. Just at that moment, at approximately 1650 hours, there were two ear-splitting bursts of automatic weapons fire. There is a distinct difference in sound between and M16 rifle and an AK-47. The AK is much louder and makes more of a cracking noise when fired. The M16 looks like a toy and it has a milder popping sound. These bursts of fire were from an M16 and my first thought was that Pete Spencer had crawled up the other side, seen some enemy soldiers and fired at them. ..."

Spencer had made it up to the opposite side of the gully when the firing began. However, it was not from his weapon or from anyone else's in the patrol. An NVA soldier, using an M16, had shot Spencer through the back of the head when he had appeared at the top of the gulley. He never knew what hit him. Seconds before the shots were fired, Spencer turned around to help Ron Scarbrough, who was carrying another M60 machine gun. The rounds that killed Spencer also hit Scarbrough, seriously wounding him in the back and buttocks.

After the two bursts of fire, there was total silence in the gulley for several heart-pounding minutes. The men at the bottom of the ditch were sure that the enemy were fleeing as they had done many times prior to artillery fire crashing after them. That was not the case on May 15th.

Within minutes, the 1st and 2nd Platoons at the company perimeter, 100 yards or so back from the 3rd Platoon, began receiving heavy and accurate AK-47, RPD and RPG fire at a distance of less than 75 meters. At least nine grunts were wounded in the opening fusillade. Bravo Company was strung out and under heavy enemy fire. There was nothing for the men to do but pray and spray the jungle in front of them with their weapons on full-automatic. Serpent A1, the O-1 observation plane buzzing over the contact was immediately driven off by a string of accurate ground to air machine gun fire. "

The battle continued for hours more with the Company finally consolidating their platoons but they spent the night repelling probes by the NVA who were trying to find a weak spot. The firing would suddenly start up again, reach a crescendo after a few minutes and then die back down.

The next morning, an overland attempt by Bravo Company of the 1st Cav's, 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry was made earlier that morning to reach the survivors of Bravo Company at the basecamp. After two hours of hacking and tromping through the bush, they were themselves ambushed a couple of kilometers from FSB Brown and suffered one KIA and seven WIA right from the start. Bravo 2-12 immediately pulled back. It was the Sheridan's and ACAV's from I Troop, 3rd Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry who finally got them out of the bunker complex where they continued to fight all day until 1630 hours.

Several of the men from 3rd Platoon, including the platoon leader, raced back into the gully to retrieve the body of Pete Spencer. They made it back just as the column was leaving the area. But the column was ambushed about 1 klick from FSB Brown and another 8 men were wounded in action before they finally reached the relative safety of FSB Brown.

SGT Arlie 'Pete' Spencer was posthumously awarded the Silver Star for his heroic actions of May 15, 1970. The names of the men from 5th Battalion, 12th Infantry who were killed in action in Cambodia were:

• SP4 Donald Gene Busse, Pontiac, Michigan
• PFC Charles Castulo Cisneros, Cerro, New Mexico
• CPL Raul De Jesus-Rosa, Juncos, Puerto Rico
• SP4 Richard Gill Desillier, Pawcatuck, Connecticut
• SGT Dannie Lee Hawkins, Hanceville, Alabama
• SGT Michael William Notermann, Victoria, Minnesota
• CPL Allen Eugene Oatney, Waterville, Kansas
• SGT Jon William Rich, Menominee, Michigan
• SGT Warren Lee Scanlan, Exmore, Virginia
• SGT Arlie "Pete" Spencer, Westland, Michigan
• PFC Ronald Richard Stewart, Glenrock, Wyoming
• SP4 Robert John Urbassik, Cleveland, Ohio
• PFC Johnny Mack Watson, Mobile, Alabama /li>

---

Visit the following links to read more on the 5th Battalion, 12th Infantry, in Cambodia

Visit a 'Redcatchers' website for more details

---

From Terry Braun's email of July 1, 2013. "The helicopter exploded (was shot down) the morning of May 15th. It brought a camera crew from CBS in to film our unit. Pete was killed in the afternoon of May 15th, at least 6 hours after the helicopter was shot down."

"I was in the entire 26 hour firefight on May 15th to May 16th in the NVA Bunker Complex and we never saw a helicopter explode (except that morning). We had a soldier dropped from a Medevac as we were dusting him off (Vaughn Bartley, Pontiac, Michigan) but he survived and went to Fort Knox then Valley Forge for the next 56 weeks for multiple surgeries. My machine gunner, Ken Burmeister and I went to visit him at Christmas, the following year."

"As far as the chopper that was shot down the morning of May 15, 1970, I can personally confirm 2 KIAs and 2 severely wounded (burned all over their bodies) that we dusted off but I was later told those 2 also died. The CBS crew left on that chopper and missed the May 15th -16th firefight."

"I have included my versions of May 12-13 and May 15-16 to help clarify those events (Read them here). "Again, thank you so much for doing this for all the soldiers and families, it is greatly appreciated. I think of Arlie "Pete" Spencer everyday."

- - - Terry Braun

---

From Robert Gouge June 24, 2013 email: "I am glad that the information will be helpful. Once again, please use anything and everything at your leisure."

"I have also attached the full manuscript to "Raiding the Sanctuary" for you to use as well [Read Chapter 2 of his manuscript here]. There is quite a bit of information in there that you may be able to use for other personnel and incidents during the Cambodian Incursion."

"Please contact me at any time if you have any further questions or concerns. I'd be happy to help out in any way."

 Assault on LZ Brown (Cambodia, May 12 & 13, 1970)

Robert J. Gouge   

Tuesday, May 12th, 1970, dawned as another unbelievably hot, sweltering day. It ended in an unusually heavy monsoon rainstorm that utterly drenched the already saturated jungle.  For the exhausted grunts from Bravo and Charlie Companies of the 5th Battalion, 12th Infantry, 199th Infantry Brigade (Sep)(Lt), that day, especially late that evening and into the early morning hours of May 13th was anything but ordinary.  Unbeknownst to them, before the sun broke over the horizon ushering in a new day, they would fight in a bloody, savage, and desperate contest for survival against an equally tough, motivated, and battle-hardened enemy.         

Eleven days prior, after spending nearly six months patrolling the rolling hills and triple canopy jungles of Long Khanh and Binh Tuy Provinces in the III CTZ, the 5-12th Infantry and Delta Battery, 2-40th Artillery were op-conned to the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division.  This rapid shift in control was done in anticipation for the much-awaited cross-border Cambodian Incursion, which kicked-off with both a military and political boom on May 1st, 1970.     

Beginning in the early morning hours of May 1st, after a ground-shaking mission of thirty-six B-52 “Arc-Lights,” a World War I vintage walking artillery barrage, and 151 tactical air strikes, a trooper from C/2-7th Cavalry became the first American trooper to combat assault into the Fishhook region of Cambodia.    For those organic and attached units of the force being deployed into Cambodia, specifically into the Fishhook region, their primary mission was to neutralize the COSVN Headquarters and wipe Base Area 351 from the face of the earth.      

On May 3rd, after a pleasant but intoxicated two-day stand-down at Camp Frenzell-Jones, the Brigade Main Base for the 199th Infantry Brigade, the entire “Warrior” battalion reluctantly made the journey northward from Bien Hoa Airbase towards the Vietnamese-Cambodian border.       

Reid Mendenhall, a combat veteran Echo Company, 5-12th Infantry describes the wave of emotions that came along when they were told they were going to Cambodia.  “It all started with rumors, like so many other things, and nobody could have imagined something quite so bazaar.  We all knew that Cambodia was a major problem, but we thought that it was out of reach, until now.  We had heard stories about covert units going into Laos and Cambodia, but now the story was ours.  Soon after the rumors began, the word finally came down that we were going.  There was some trepidation in our small unit, but we were all together, at least for the moment, and that was of great comfort.”    

Ironically, when the battalion reached Bien Hoa Airbase, they were given their monthly pay.  Many soldiers in the battalion wondered, “Just what in the hell are we going to do with this money in Cambodia?”

Packed aboard noisy Air Force C-123 cargo planes at the 8th Aerial Port at Bien Hoa, the trip was a solemn one as the young soldiers could sense that they were getting into something big.  Horseplay and joking around was kept to a minimum as the men were preoccupied with thoughts of home and a foreboding feeling about what was to come.  By 1905 that evening, the airlift was completed at Duc Phong, with all companies of the battalion on the ground and dispersed to FSB Buttons.      

From May 4th to May 11th, the Redcatchers conducted mundane screening operations and short-range patrols along the Vietnamese side of the border at Song Be and Bu Dop.  Elements of the battalion also guarded the dilapidated earthen airstrip at Bu Gia Map, located just two kilometers from the Cambodian border.        

John Wensdofer had been with Charlie Company since January 15th, 1970.  “When we started the move to Cambodia, we were sent up north to Song Be for a little over a week.  As soon as we got there, action started to pick up.  They expected the place to be hit and hit hard when we moved in.  Where we had been operating in Vietnam, the Viet Cong rarely moved in groups larger than four or five soldiers.  Around Song Be and once inside Cambodia, they moved in groups anywhere from 20 to 100.”     

With each passing day, the young men from the 199th LIB wondered just when the time would come when they too would cross the border and take part in what was commonly called “The Great Souvenir Hunt.”      The time came on the morning of May 12th, when Colonel Carter Clarke, the commanding officer of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, summoned his reserves.  The Redcatchers were ordered to take up the slack left by the 5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry, and quickly re-deploy to a place called LZ Brown after the Cavalry soldiers had been ordered to assault an enemy basecamp several klicks to the north.    Landing Zone Brown had been a target hit by the 5-7th Cavalry on the first day of the Incursion. 

Located approximately three kilometers north of the border and two kilometers west of Route 14-A (one of the only major roads in the region) in a natural clearing that was surrounded by the thick Cambodian jungle, the “hole called LZ Brown” was used as a patrol base by the 5-7th Cavalry for the first week and a half of the Cambodian operation.  The site was also in the middle of a huge North Vietnamese logistical complex.    By midday on May 12th, the 5-7th Cavalry had vacated LZ Brown, taking anything of use with them and leaving the small perimeter all but vacant and bare.  The patrol-base now consisted of a pitiful-looking dirt berm roughly four feet in height and a single strand of floppy razor wire. 

“When we received the word to go into Cambodia,” relates John Wensdofer, “Charlie Company flew in by Huey late in the afternoon of May 12th.    “We were the first ones from the battalion to cross the border.  Bravo Company came in later that evening by Chinook.  For some reason, we dug no foxholes or fighting positions on our side of the perimeter.       

The 1st Platoon of Charlie and the Company CP were the first elements of the battalion to land at LZ Brown.  They began the lift at 1800 hours and were flaring into the landing zone at 1810.  It took six sorties for them to get in.  The rest of the company followed.  Bravo Company did not start the move until 1825.  After 17 sorties, all of Bravo was inside by 1930, quite late to be settling into a new and unfamiliar area of operations.   

Allen Thomas had been with the 2nd Platoon of Bravo Company in the field as an infantryman since July, 1969.  He had 63 days to go in-country when the battalion moved to Cambodia.  Thomas remembers that, “When the Chinooks started ferrying troops out, it was late in the day.  Everyone who could held back and waited.  LZ Brown, when viewed from the air, looked like a very small, very dirty hole in the middle of the jungle.  We built no bunkers nor did we dig any foxholes.  I was on the last Chinook to arrive and it was almost dark when I walked over the berm.”    

Terry Braun, a veteran sergeant and squad leader with the 3rd Platoon of Bravo Company states, “My squad arrived by Huey’s about an hour before sunset.  It was a magnificent sight.  The afternoon rains were finally beginning to lift and the sun sparkled off the green vegetation surrounding LZ Brown.  It almost had the appearance of a well-kept golf course.  LZ Brown consisted only of dirt surrounded by a berm.  The entire base could have fit inside a football field.  It was more oblong than circular and had a smaller berm located within the larger perimeter towards the western half.  One single strand of concertina wire surrounded the entire landing zone.  It was located about 35 to 40 meters from the berm.  There were no bunkers, just mud and dirt pushed up about chest high.  Those of us arriving had no idea that the Ho Chi Minh Trail was approximately 100 yards to our west.  Also, as we were leaving the Bien Hoa airport a few days earlier, we were issued M8 bayonets for the first and only time in Vietnam.”    

By the time complete darkness had crept in, only Bravo and Charlie Companies of the battalion and one 81 mm mortar from Bravo Company’s mortar platoon had been airlifted into the perimeter.  All other lifts for the night were cancelled.    CPT David Ashworth, the S-4 officer for the Warriors during Cambodia recalls, “When all the lifts were called off going into LZ Brown, only Bravo and Charlie Companies down.  No 105’s from Delta Battery made it in that night.  The guns were not flown in until the morning of the next day.”   For the exhausted infantrymen of Bravo and Charlie Companies, all that could be done the night of May 12th was to set up the small number of claymore mines and trip-flares that were on hand a few meters beyond the perimeter wire, eat a cold meal of C-rations and huddle silently on the soggy ground, hoping that nothing major happened until the next day.  There was, however, an unexplained, deep feeling of apprehension amongst most there that night that something big was about to happen.Terry Braun remembers this dreadful premonition.  

 “That evening, we sensed that something was different.  As we positioned our claymore mines by the concertina wire, we listened to the Armed Forces Radio Network, which was something we normally did at basecamp as we were getting ready to pull guard.  We set up five soldiers to a position that night, not the usual four.  LZ Brown was split in half.  On a clock, Charlie Company took the western half from 6 to 9 to 12.  Bravo Company took the eastern half from 12 to 3 to 6.”  

 In the surrounding jungle, the change in tempo and activity at LZ Brown did not go unnoticed by the NVA.  As early as mid-afternoon on the twelfth, the 1st Cav’s, 2nd Brigade intelligence units began receiving reports from roving aviation and reconnaissance patrols that the NVA had watched the cavalrymen vacate the base.  There were even a couple of reports stating that large numbers of NVA had been spotted moving in the direction towards LZ Brown.     

Stealthily moving toward the LZ were veteran NVA regulars from the 174th North Vietnamese Regiment.  Originally formed in North Vietnam in the early 1960’s, the regiment had seen considerable combat in the II and III Corps Tactical Areas of South Vietnam.  Barely two and a half years before in November of 1967, the 174th NVA Regiment had fought against the 173rd Airborne Brigade and the 4th Infantry Division in one of the Vietnam War’s largest and costliest battles.  The battle was Dak To and it was fought on a little-known mountainside called Hill 875.  By the time the hill was secured by the weary paratroopers on Thanksgiving Day, 1967, the 174th NVA, along with several other supporting Communist units had lost over 1,600 personnel killed in action.

 Sometime after midnight on May 13th, the last of the sputtering afternoon monsoon rains slackened and then finally quit.  The muggy and humid temperatures immediately returned, along with the serenading noises of millions of tropical insects and mosquitoes.   

Unnoticed and slowly inching closer to the dirt berm were enemy sappers.  Clad in only dark loincloths, their deliberate movements and sounds concealed by the thin layer of ghostly fog that was emanating from the tree line, the sappers proceeded to disarm or cut the wires on the claymore mines that were pointed outwards surrounding the Redcatcher positions.    

On Charlie Company’s side of the perimeter, John Wensdofer, draped in heavy belts of 7.62mm machine-gun ammunition, peered into the darkness from behind his M60.  Suddenly, less than ten feet to his right, an enemy sapper with his AK-47 at the ready jumped up on top of the berm and cut loose with a long, sweeping burst of automatic rifle fire.     

According to Wensdofer, “The AK fire hit my squad leader, who was a muscular black sergeant with a size 15 jungle boot.  The rounds missed me and plowed into the foot of the guy who was to my right.  Despite being hit, our squad leader then killed the NVA soldier on the berm.”  Sp4 William Barry, who was also on that side of the berm, saw the opening shots.  “One enemy soldier got on the berm and was shooting into the camp.  He was the first to get it.”    Staff Sergeant Malcolm Smith had previously served as a platoon sergeant in the second platoon of Bravo Company from September of 1969 until April of 1970, at which time he was moved to the Company CP.  When the battalion moved into Cambodia, he was then on his second of three combat tours.  Smith recounts his version of the opening shots.     

“Shortly before the fireworks started, I remember making rounds and speaking briefly with exhausted Bravo Company soldiers.  At approximately 0310 hours, the firing suddenly began in the C Company area, followed by a brief stillness.  Our lone mortar fired a flare or two to illuminate the night.  After this brief exchange of gunfire, which was immediately followed by the crump of grenades and the deafening crack of claymore mines, there was a brief silence around the firebase that seemed almost surreal. Smith continues.  “Then, all hell broke loose.”   

Terry Braun, who was just a few meters from SSG Smith remembers, “My second shift of guard duty was to begin at 3:15 AM.  At 3:00 a.m., I awakened and watched PFC Davis from Tennessee pull his final few minutes of guard.  I approached the berm and joined him.  His attention was towards Charlie Company‘s position.  He pointed out to me three silhouettes standing on the berm.  His first comment was that although those guys must be having a tough time sleeping they should not be silhouetting themselves in the moonlight on top of the berm.  We immediately knew then that was not something a GI would do. 

Seconds later, M16’s and M60’s started firing and a claymore mine blew.  Then the battle started.”     

The waiting NVA assault force in the tree line cut loose and slammed the base with intensive rocket, mortar, and .51 caliber machine gun fire.  For 15-20 minutes, the North Vietnamese lobbed round after round of 60mm mortar and RPG rounds into the perimeter.  A full-scale ground attack by an estimated two reinforced companies from the 3rd Battalion of the 174th NVA Regiment was fanatically launched when the mortars stopped firing.   

When the flares went up on John Wensdofer’s side of the perimeter, he quickly looked over the berm and to his shock, watched as a large human wave of screaming NVA soldiers charged crazily out of the tree line.  “When the flares went up, I could see them running at us and I immediately opened up with the M60.  On and on they came.  I fired so many rounds, the barrel got white hot.  We were firing so furiously, I think that we almost ran out of ammo.  I know that I had several belts of 100 rounds linked together.  It is hard to remember how much time went by from when the gook got on top of the berm to when I stopped firing the M60.  I can remember praying for daylight.”   

Allen Thomas, who was on the eastern side of the perimeter with Bravo Company states, “The attack was mostly on Charlie Company’s side of the perimeter.  The fire was the heaviest that many of us had heard and experienced in Vietnam and I remember that the NVA were firing all different sorts of tracer rounds at us.  Red and green tracers were lighting up the sky, explosions were all over the place, both inside and outside, and illumination was going up from either parachute flares or from the smaller, hand-held white star clusters.     

John Wensdofer can testify as to how danger close the contact was.  “At times, the fighting was so close, we crawled up to the top of the berm and either emptied magazines from our weapons straight down at them or just rolled grenades off the top of the dirt and let them roll down.”  One of Wensdofer’s M60 bi-pod legs was literally bent from the force of an explosion from one of the grenades that he rolled over the berm.  Several of the claymore mines that had been placed outside the wire and armed before the attack were useless.  The detonation wires had been cut or the mine had been removed altogether by the sappers.    At one point in the firefight, some of the men on the perimeter line could hear the NVA shouting commands and blowing whistles at one another.         

“Tracers were coming in and different colored tracers were going out from the berm.  It was actually very colorful.  The guys at our position, myself included, began singing ‘Sunshine Superman’ during the firefight for no apparent reason.  A Spooky gunship was called in to support us and we could see the tracers from their .51 caliber gun just missing the back of our aircraft.  Fortunately, they were not leading the aircraft enough so they continued to miss,” recounts Terry Braun.    Jim Horine had served as a line grunt in Bravo for six months and was humping the battalion RTO at the time of Cambodia.  He remembers, “I was inside the LZ perimeter at the CP with our company commander.  It was the heaviest firefight that most of us had ever seen.  The noise from the machine gun and rifle fire was unbelievable.  While on the battalion net, I overheard the pilot of the Spooky gunship (call sign Blind Bat) that was supporting us call back and say that he had expended every single round for his mini-guns on targets of opportunity.  As he veered off, there was a long line of green .51 caliber machine gun rounds trailing him.”    

A Cobra gunship was also dispatched for close air-support.  The Cobra’s deadly 2.75 rocket and mini-gun fire was called in so close to the fighting that the men on the berm were actually ordered to pull back a few meters so the gunship could make gun-runs up, down, and around Brown’s perimeter.  Terry Braun states, “The fighting had raged on for about an hour and a-half when unbelievably, Bravo got a call on the PRC-25 radio from our CO to, “Fix bayonets!  They’re coming in!!!”  Fighting persisted until dawn when the Air Force dropped a series of concussion bombs just west and slightly south of our perimeter.  When each of those bombs went off, there was a brief instant magnified by stillness in the air followed by a loud explosion that just seemed to suck the air out all around us.  The only thing I can recall that was more impressive was being in the vicinity of B-52s when they dropped their payload and the ground actually shook like an earthquake.”    

For two and a half hours, despite the withering fire coming from the Redcatcher M60’s, M16’s, and M79 grenade launchers, the determined NVA still kept coming.  The lone 81mm mortar crew from Bravo was loading and firing illumination their small supply of high-explosive rounds like men possessed.  While doing so, they were terribly exposed to the incoming enemy fire.   

“We conserved our ammunition the best that we could,” remembers 1LT Charles Barnes, the Bravo Company mortar platoon leader.  “We fired our last round just prior to 5:45 a.m.”    

Throughout the firefight, enemy bullets and shrapnel whined and bounced around the mortar-men hanging rounds in the tube.  About an hour into the firefight, Sp4 Richard G. Desillier of the mortar platoon was shot and killed as he prepared to fire a round.  Despite the loss, the rest of the crew continued to thump out what rounds were available.        

Captain David Thursam, the Charlie Company commander at LZ Brown praises the mortar crew.  “The mortar gave my men great supporting fire.  They moved their gun around and hit on target every time.  What amazes me to this day about that fight was how we won.  With all of the fire that we were put out, an equal amount or more was coming in, including mortars and rockets.”    Jim Horine watched from the CP as the mortar crew worked.  “They fired and fired and fired.  I would bet that they set some kind of record for the amount of both HE and Illumination rounds that they were putting out.”   

“We had a great medic in Bravo Company,” recalls Allen Thomas, “named Doc Uhde.  He was a Japanese-American from California.  The medics carried an enormous rucksack full of medicine, bandages and salves.  To keep from carrying the big rucksack around, he carried a smaller Claymore bag.  Doc Uhde made his rounds, as he called it, around the perimeter periodically to see if the men needed anything.  During the middle of this firefight, Doc Uhde decided go make his rounds.  Here came this little, black-haired Japanese-American carrying a shoulder bag, running with his head down.  My friend, Tony Reece, saw Doc and naturally thought that he was a sapper and drew a bead on him.  He could make out his silhouette in the flashes of light.  Reece, however, never pulled the trigger.  Something was telling him not to do it.”     

From 0300 to 0545, the opposing sides were locked in mortal combat for control of LZ Brown.  The North Vietnamese onslaught signaled the first major Communist counter-attack of the Cambodian Incursion.   At approximately 0500 hours, much needed support from helicopter gunships, Air Force A-37 jets, and fixed wing “Shadow” gunships began pounding the attacking NVA from the air.  Incredibly, the NVA in the tree line responded to the thundering air strikes and gun-runs with more .51 caliber machine gun fire.Luckily, when the 81mm mortar fired its last round at approximately 0545, the fight for LZ Brown finally began to fizzle out.  Several minutes later, when the first rays of sunlight began streaking over the horizon, the firing eventually ceased and the surviving NVA melted back into the dark jungle, dragging away significant numbers of their dead and wounded.   

With full daylight, the rest of the 5-12th Infantry was hurriedly airlifted into the base.  Combat engineers from the 31st Combat Engineer Battalion, along with their heavy equipment, arrived at the base after literally carving a new road through the jungle.  One of the first tasks for the engineers was to dig a trench in which to bury the dead enemy soldiers.    

 The scene around Brown was one of utter death, carnage, and destruction.  Only those who have fought in war can understand its pitiful sufferings and tragic ramifications.  Fifty-three enemy bodies and pieces of bodies surrounded the perimeter.  Heavy blood trails were seen from the berm leading back into the jungle.  Discarded weapons and equipment were strewn everywhere.    The Redcatchers lost one man killed in action along with eight others from Bravo and Charlie who were wounded.   “At the conclusion of the firefight, some of the Redcatchers started to shout expletives and vulgar comments at the retreating NVA, challenging them to stand and fight some more,” recalls Malcolm Smith.  “In the aftermath, I remember carrying the dead to the bulldozed hole and throwing them in.  Some of the enemy had been hit multiple times and were bandaged more than once.  Some were not complete bodies either.”     

Terry Braun states, “As the sun rose and daylight crept in, to our amazement the area west of Brown was littered with bodies and body parts.  It almost looked like an Easter egg hunt with the eggs poorly hidden.  Heavy blood trails led back into the jungle.  This was a sight that we rarely saw in Vietnam.  Usually after a firefight, the NVA would withdraw and we would see very few bodies.  My machine gunner from Chicago, Ken Burmeister, raised an American Flag that he had carried with him on a flag pole and placed it on the berm.  That picture appeared with headlines on the front page of the New York Times.  Burmeister was later verbally reprimanded for raising an American Flag in Cambodia, but at the time it seemed appropriate.”   

In front of John Wensdofer’s red-hot M60 machine-gun were 12 dead NVA.  “They were all wearing regular green and khaki, NVA uniforms with pith helmets.  There were six enemy bodies inside the wire.  I took a 9mm pistol from what looked like to be a Chinese advisor.  His body was lying just inside the wire, close to the bottom of the berm.  I know he was not Vietnamese as he was taller than the rest and he looked to be about 180 lbs. or more.  He even had body fat on him.”   

Allen Thomas explains that, “One thing that has always stuck out in my mind is that all of the enemy dead were facing the berm.  They didn’t die retreating.”    Several soldiers also recall seeing what they believed were Chinese advisors among the dead.  Another odd find on the enemy KIA’s were what was thought to be drugs and vials of liquid speed.    According to Smith, “Some of the dead looked too big to be Vietnamese.  Most of the bodies were found with speed in their possession.  They had fresh haircuts and their uniforms, as I recall, were light green, khaki and even light blue.  I also remember that when we started to police up the enemy weapons, their bayonets were affixed.  What really stood out in my mind was the number of discarded bandages, blood trails and drag marks that were going in all directions from Brown.  The ground was even soft and mushy in spots.  I remember thinking to myself that the battlefield looked as if a blood bank blew up.”   

In addition to the bodies, blood trails and discarded equipment, 34 individual weapons were collected which included SKS and AK-47 rifles, three light RPD machine guns, four RPG’s, and two 60mm mortars.    As for the 5th Battalion, 12th Infantry’s first day in Cambodia, Allen Thomas sums up of the thoughts of many that fought there.  “In Cambodia, we learned that the enemy stood and fought.  The enemy soldiers here were smart and hardcore.  Most of us wanted to go back to Vietnam, not stay in Cambodia.”

 

Scenes from the berm and immediate perimeter area of FSB Brown the morning after the fight, 13 May 1970.  Image by SP4 Peter Nagurny, 40th PIO.

                                                               

                                                                Stanley Buchanan, B/5-12

 Assault on LZ Brown (Cambodia, May 12 & 13, 1970)

Robert J. Gouge   

Tuesday, May 12th, 1970, dawned as another unbelievably hot, sweltering day. It ended in an unusually heavy monsoon rainstorm that utterly drenched the already saturated jungle.  For the exhausted grunts from Bravo and Charlie Companies of the 5th Battalion, 12th Infantry, 199th Infantry Brigade (Sep)(Lt), that day, especially late that evening and into the early morning hours of May 13th was anything but ordinary.  Unbeknownst to them, before the sun broke over the horizon ushering in a new day, they would fight in a bloody, savage, and desperate contest for survival against an equally tough, motivated, and battle-hardened enemy.         

Eleven days prior, after spending nearly six months patrolling the rolling hills and triple canopy jungles of Long Khanh and Binh Tuy Provinces in the III CTZ, the 5-12th Infantry and Delta Battery, 2-40th Artillery were op-conned to the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division.  This rapid shift in control was done in anticipation for the much-awaited cross-border Cambodian Incursion, which kicked-off with both a military and political boom on May 1st, 1970.     

Beginning in the early morning hours of May 1st, after a ground-shaking mission of thirty-six B-52 “Arc-Lights,” a World War I vintage walking artillery barrage, and 151 tactical air strikes, a trooper from C/2-7th Cavalry became the first American trooper to combat assault into the Fishhook region of Cambodia.    For those organic and attached units of the force being deployed into Cambodia, specifically into the Fishhook region, their primary mission was to neutralize the COSVN Headquarters and wipe Base Area 351 from the face of the earth.      

On May 3rd, after a pleasant but intoxicated two-day stand-down at Camp Frenzell-Jones, the Brigade Main Base for the 199th Infantry Brigade, the entire “Warrior” battalion reluctantly made the journey northward from Bien Hoa Airbase towards the Vietnamese-Cambodian border.       

Reid Mendenhall, a combat veteran Echo Company, 5-12th Infantry describes the wave of emotions that came along when they were told they were going to Cambodia.  “It all started with rumors, like so many other things, and nobody could have imagined something quite so bazaar.  We all knew that Cambodia was a major problem, but we thought that it was out of reach, until now.  We had heard stories about covert units going into Laos and Cambodia, but now the story was ours.  Soon after the rumors began, the word finally came down that we were going.  There was some trepidation in our small unit, but we were all together, at least for the moment, and that was of great comfort.”    

Ironically, when the battalion reached Bien Hoa Airbase, they were given their monthly pay.  Many soldiers in the battalion wondered, “Just what in the hell are we going to do with this money in Cambodia?”

Packed aboard noisy Air Force C-123 cargo planes at the 8th Aerial Port at Bien Hoa, the trip was a solemn one as the young soldiers could sense that they were getting into something big.  Horseplay and joking around was kept to a minimum as the men were preoccupied with thoughts of home and a foreboding feeling about what was to come.  By 1905 that evening, the airlift was completed at Duc Phong, with all companies of the battalion on the ground and dispersed to FSB Buttons.      

From May 4th to May 11th, the Redcatchers conducted mundane screening operations and short-range patrols along the Vietnamese side of the border at Song Be and Bu Dop.  Elements of the battalion also guarded the dilapidated earthen airstrip at Bu Gia Map, located just two kilometers from the Cambodian border.        

John Wensdofer had been with Charlie Company since January 15th, 1970.  “When we started the move to Cambodia, we were sent up north to Song Be for a little over a week.  As soon as we got there, action started to pick up.  They expected the place to be hit and hit hard when we moved in.  Where we had been operating in Vietnam, the Viet Cong rarely moved in groups larger than four or five soldiers.  Around Song Be and once inside Cambodia, they moved in groups anywhere from 20 to 100.”     

With each passing day, the young men from the 199th LIB wondered just when the time would come when they too would cross the border and take part in what was commonly called “The Great Souvenir Hunt.”      The time came on the morning of May 12th, when Colonel Carter Clarke, the commanding officer of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, summoned his reserves.  The Redcatchers were ordered to take up the slack left by the 5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry, and quickly re-deploy to a place called LZ Brown after the Cavalry soldiers had been ordered to assault an enemy basecamp several klicks to the north.    Landing Zone Brown had been a target hit by the 5-7th Cavalry on the first day of the Incursion. 

Located approximately three kilometers north of the border and two kilometers west of Route 14-A (one of the only major roads in the region) in a natural clearing that was surrounded by the thick Cambodian jungle, the “hole called LZ Brown” was used as a patrol base by the 5-7th Cavalry for the first week and a half of the Cambodian operation.  The site was also in the middle of a huge North Vietnamese logistical complex.    By midday on May 12th, the 5-7th Cavalry had vacated LZ Brown, taking anything of use with them and leaving the small perimeter all but vacant and bare.  The patrol-base now consisted of a pitiful-looking dirt berm roughly four feet in height and a single strand of floppy razor wire. 

“When we received the word to go into Cambodia,” relates John Wensdofer, “Charlie Company flew in by Huey late in the afternoon of May 12th.    “We were the first ones from the battalion to cross the border.  Bravo Company came in later that evening by Chinook.  For some reason, we dug no foxholes or fighting positions on our side of the perimeter.       

The 1st Platoon of Charlie and the Company CP were the first elements of the battalion to land at LZ Brown.  They began the lift at 1800 hours and were flaring into the landing zone at 1810.  It took six sorties for them to get in.  The rest of the company followed.  Bravo Company did not start the move until 1825.  After 17 sorties, all of Bravo was inside by 1930, quite late to be settling into a new and unfamiliar area of operations.   

Allen Thomas had been with the 2nd Platoon of Bravo Company in the field as an infantryman since July, 1969.  He had 63 days to go in-country when the battalion moved to Cambodia.  Thomas remembers that, “When the Chinooks started ferrying troops out, it was late in the day.  Everyone who could held back and waited.  LZ Brown, when viewed from the air, looked like a very small, very dirty hole in the middle of the jungle.  We built no bunkers nor did we dig any foxholes.  I was on the last Chinook to arrive and it was almost dark when I walked over the berm.”    

Terry Braun, a veteran sergeant and squad leader with the 3rd Platoon of Bravo Company states, “My squad arrived by Huey’s about an hour before sunset.  It was a magnificent sight.  The afternoon rains were finally beginning to lift and the sun sparkled off the green vegetation surrounding LZ Brown.  It almost had the appearance of a well-kept golf course.  LZ Brown consisted only of dirt surrounded by a berm.  The entire base could have fit inside a football field.  It was more oblong than circular and had a smaller berm located within the larger perimeter towards the western half.  One single strand of concertina wire surrounded the entire landing zone.  It was located about 35 to 40 meters from the berm.  There were no bunkers, just mud and dirt pushed up about chest high.  Those of us arriving had no idea that the Ho Chi Minh Trail was approximately 100 yards to our west.  Also, as we were leaving the Bien Hoa airport a few days earlier, we were issued M8 bayonets for the first and only time in Vietnam.”    

By the time complete darkness had crept in, only Bravo and Charlie Companies of the battalion and one 81 mm mortar from Bravo Company’s mortar platoon had been airlifted into the perimeter.  All other lifts for the night were cancelled.    CPT David Ashworth, the S-4 officer for the Warriors during Cambodia recalls, “When all the lifts were called off going into LZ Brown, only Bravo and Charlie Companies down.  No 105’s from Delta Battery made it in that night.  The guns were not flown in until the morning of the next day.”   For the exhausted infantrymen of Bravo and Charlie Companies, all that could be done the night of May 12th was to set up the small number of claymore mines and trip-flares that were on hand a few meters beyond the perimeter wire, eat a cold meal of C-rations and huddle silently on the soggy ground, hoping that nothing major happened until the next day.  There was, however, an unexplained, deep feeling of apprehension amongst most there that night that something big was about to happen.Terry Braun remembers this dreadful premonition.  

 “That evening, we sensed that something was different.  As we positioned our claymore mines by the concertina wire, we listened to the Armed Forces Radio Network, which was something we normally did at basecamp as we were getting ready to pull guard.  We set up five soldiers to a position that night, not the usual four.  LZ Brown was split in half.  On a clock, Charlie Company took the western half from 6 to 9 to 12.  Bravo Company took the eastern half from 12 to 3 to 6.”  

 In the surrounding jungle, the change in tempo and activity at LZ Brown did not go unnoticed by the NVA.  As early as mid-afternoon on the twelfth, the 1st Cav’s, 2nd Brigade intelligence units began receiving reports from roving aviation and reconnaissance patrols that the NVA had watched the cavalrymen vacate the base.  There were even a couple of reports stating that large numbers of NVA had been spotted moving in the direction towards LZ Brown.     

Stealthily moving toward the LZ were veteran NVA regulars from the 174th North Vietnamese Regiment.  Originally formed in North Vietnam in the early 1960’s, the regiment had seen considerable combat in the II and III Corps Tactical Areas of South Vietnam.  Barely two and a half years before in November of 1967, the 174th NVA Regiment had fought against the 173rd Airborne Brigade and the 4th Infantry Division in one of the Vietnam War’s largest and costliest battles.  The battle was Dak To and it was fought on a little-known mountainside called Hill 875.  By the time the hill was secured by the weary paratroopers on Thanksgiving Day, 1967, the 174th NVA, along with several other supporting Communist units had lost over 1,600 personnel killed in action.

 Sometime after midnight on May 13th, the last of the sputtering afternoon monsoon rains slackened and then finally quit.  The muggy and humid temperatures immediately returned, along with the serenading noises of millions of tropical insects and mosquitoes.   

Unnoticed and slowly inching closer to the dirt berm were enemy sappers.  Clad in only dark loincloths, their deliberate movements and sounds concealed by the thin layer of ghostly fog that was emanating from the tree line, the sappers proceeded to disarm or cut the wires on the claymore mines that were pointed outwards surrounding the Redcatcher positions.    

On Charlie Company’s side of the perimeter, John Wensdofer, draped in heavy belts of 7.62mm machine-gun ammunition, peered into the darkness from behind his M60.  Suddenly, less than ten feet to his right, an enemy sapper with his AK-47 at the ready jumped up on top of the berm and cut loose with a long, sweeping burst of automatic rifle fire.     

According to Wensdofer, “The AK fire hit my squad leader, who was a muscular black sergeant with a size 15 jungle boot.  The rounds missed me and plowed into the foot of the guy who was to my right.  Despite being hit, our squad leader then killed the NVA soldier on the berm.”  Sp4 William Barry, who was also on that side of the berm, saw the opening shots.  “One enemy soldier got on the berm and was shooting into the camp.  He was the first to get it.”    Staff Sergeant Malcolm Smith had previously served as a platoon sergeant in the second platoon of Bravo Company from September of 1969 until April of 1970, at which time he was moved to the Company CP.  When the battalion moved into Cambodia, he was then on his second of three combat tours.  Smith recounts his version of the opening shots.     

“Shortly before the fireworks started, I remember making rounds and speaking briefly with exhausted Bravo Company soldiers.  At approximately 0310 hours, the firing suddenly began in the C Company area, followed by a brief stillness.  Our lone mortar fired a flare or two to illuminate the night.  After this brief exchange of gunfire, which was immediately followed by the crump of grenades and the deafening crack of claymore mines, there was a brief silence around the firebase that seemed almost surreal. Smith continues.  “Then, all hell broke loose.”   

Terry Braun, who was just a few meters from SSG Smith remembers, “My second shift of guard duty was to begin at 3:15 AM.  At 3:00 a.m., I awakened and watched PFC Davis from Tennessee pull his final few minutes of guard.  I approached the berm and joined him.  His attention was towards Charlie Company‘s position.  He pointed out to me three silhouettes standing on the berm.  His first comment was that although those guys must be having a tough time sleeping they should not be silhouetting themselves in the moonlight on top of the berm.  We immediately knew then that was not something a GI would do. 

Seconds later, M16’s and M60’s started firing and a claymore mine blew.  Then the battle started.”     

The waiting NVA assault force in the tree line cut loose and slammed the base with intensive rocket, mortar, and .51 caliber machine gun fire.  For 15-20 minutes, the North Vietnamese lobbed round after round of 60mm mortar and RPG rounds into the perimeter.  A full-scale ground attack by an estimated two reinforced companies from the 3rd Battalion of the 174th NVA Regiment was fanatically launched when the mortars stopped firing.   

When the flares went up on John Wensdofer’s side of the perimeter, he quickly looked over the berm and to his shock, watched as a large human wave of screaming NVA soldiers charged crazily out of the tree line.  “When the flares went up, I could see them running at us and I immediately opened up with the M60.  On and on they came.  I fired so many rounds, the barrel got white hot.  We were firing so furiously, I think that we almost ran out of ammo.  I know that I had several belts of 100 rounds linked together.  It is hard to remember how much time went by from when the gook got on top of the berm to when I stopped firing the M60.  I can remember praying for daylight.”   

Allen Thomas, who was on the eastern side of the perimeter with Bravo Company states, “The attack was mostly on Charlie Company’s side of the perimeter.  The fire was the heaviest that many of us had heard and experienced in Vietnam and I remember that the NVA were firing all different sorts of tracer rounds at us.  Red and green tracers were lighting up the sky, explosions were all over the place, both inside and outside, and illumination was going up from either parachute flares or from the smaller, hand-held white star clusters.     

John Wensdofer can testify as to how danger close the contact was.  “At times, the fighting was so close, we crawled up to the top of the berm and either emptied magazines from our weapons straight down at them or just rolled grenades off the top of the dirt and let them roll down.”  One of Wensdofer’s M60 bi-pod legs was literally bent from the force of an explosion from one of the grenades that he rolled over the berm.  Several of the claymore mines that had been placed outside the wire and armed before the attack were useless.  The detonation wires had been cut or the mine had been removed altogether by the sappers.    At one point in the firefight, some of the men on the perimeter line could hear the NVA shouting commands and blowing whistles at one another.         

“Tracers were coming in and different colored tracers were going out from the berm.  It was actually very colorful.  The guys at our position, myself included, began singing ‘Sunshine Superman’ during the firefight for no apparent reason.  A Spooky gunship was called in to support us and we could see the tracers from their .51 caliber gun just missing the back of our aircraft.  Fortunately, they were not leading the aircraft enough so they continued to miss,” recounts Terry Braun.    Jim Horine had served as a line grunt in Bravo for six months and was humping the battalion RTO at the time of Cambodia.  He remembers, “I was inside the LZ perimeter at the CP with our company commander.  It was the heaviest firefight that most of us had ever seen.  The noise from the machine gun and rifle fire was unbelievable.  While on the battalion net, I overheard the pilot of the Spooky gunship (call sign Blind Bat) that was supporting us call back and say that he had expended every single round for his mini-guns on targets of opportunity.  As he veered off, there was a long line of green .51 caliber machine gun rounds trailing him.”    

A Cobra gunship was also dispatched for close air-support.  The Cobra’s deadly 2.75 rocket and mini-gun fire was called in so close to the fighting that the men on the berm were actually ordered to pull back a few meters so the gunship could make gun-runs up, down, and around Brown’s perimeter.  Terry Braun states, “The fighting had raged on for about an hour and a-half when unbelievably, Bravo got a call on the PRC-25 radio from our CO to, “Fix bayonets!  They’re coming in!!!”  Fighting persisted until dawn when the Air Force dropped a series of concussion bombs just west and slightly south of our perimeter.  When each of those bombs went off, there was a brief instant magnified by stillness in the air followed by a loud explosion that just seemed to suck the air out all around us.  The only thing I can recall that was more impressive was being in the vicinity of B-52s when they dropped their payload and the ground actually shook like an earthquake.”    

For two and a half hours, despite the withering fire coming from the Redcatcher M60’s, M16’s, and M79 grenade launchers, the determined NVA still kept coming.  The lone 81mm mortar crew from Bravo was loading and firing illumination their small supply of high-explosive rounds like men possessed.  While doing so, they were terribly exposed to the incoming enemy fire.   

“We conserved our ammunition the best that we could,” remembers 1LT Charles Barnes, the Bravo Company mortar platoon leader.  “We fired our last round just prior to 5:45 a.m.”    

Throughout the firefight, enemy bullets and shrapnel whined and bounced around the mortar-men hanging rounds in the tube.  About an hour into the firefight, Sp4 Richard G. Desillier of the mortar platoon was shot and killed as he prepared to fire a round.  Despite the loss, the rest of the crew continued to thump out what rounds were available.        

Captain David Thursam, the Charlie Company commander at LZ Brown praises the mortar crew.  “The mortar gave my men great supporting fire.  They moved their gun around and hit on target every time.  What amazes me to this day about that fight was how we won.  With all of the fire that we were put out, an equal amount or more was coming in, including mortars and rockets.”    Jim Horine watched from the CP as the mortar crew worked.  “They fired and fired and fired.  I would bet that they set some kind of record for the amount of both HE and Illumination rounds that they were putting out.”   

“We had a great medic in Bravo Company,” recalls Allen Thomas, “named Doc Uhde.  He was a Japanese-American from California.  The medics carried an enormous rucksack full of medicine, bandages and salves.  To keep from carrying the big rucksack around, he carried a smaller Claymore bag.  Doc Uhde made his rounds, as he called it, around the perimeter periodically to see if the men needed anything.  During the middle of this firefight, Doc Uhde decided go make his rounds.  Here came this little, black-haired Japanese-American carrying a shoulder bag, running with his head down.  My friend, Tony Reece, saw Doc and naturally thought that he was a sapper and drew a bead on him.  He could make out his silhouette in the flashes of light.  Reece, however, never pulled the trigger.  Something was telling him not to do it.”     

From 0300 to 0545, the opposing sides were locked in mortal combat for control of LZ Brown.  The North Vietnamese onslaught signaled the first major Communist counter-attack of the Cambodian Incursion.   At approximately 0500 hours, much needed support from helicopter gunships, Air Force A-37 jets, and fixed wing “Shadow” gunships began pounding the attacking NVA from the air.  Incredibly, the NVA in the tree line responded to the thundering air strikes and gun-runs with more .51 caliber machine gun fire.Luckily, when the 81mm mortar fired its last round at approximately 0545, the fight for LZ Brown finally began to fizzle out.  Several minutes later, when the first rays of sunlight began streaking over the horizon, the firing eventually ceased and the surviving NVA melted back into the dark jungle, dragging away significant numbers of their dead and wounded.   

With full daylight, the rest of the 5-12th Infantry was hurriedly airlifted into the base.  Combat engineers from the 31st Combat Engineer Battalion, along with their heavy equipment, arrived at the base after literally carving a new road through the jungle.  One of the first tasks for the engineers was to dig a trench in which to bury the dead enemy soldiers.    

 The scene around Brown was one of utter death, carnage, and destruction.  Only those who have fought in war can understand its pitiful sufferings and tragic ramifications.  Fifty-three enemy bodies and pieces of bodies surrounded the perimeter.  Heavy blood trails were seen from the berm leading back into the jungle.  Discarded weapons and equipment were strewn everywhere.    The Redcatchers lost one man killed in action along with eight others from Bravo and Charlie who were wounded.   “At the conclusion of the firefight, some of the Redcatchers started to shout expletives and vulgar comments at the retreating NVA, challenging them to stand and fight some more,” recalls Malcolm Smith.  “In the aftermath, I remember carrying the dead to the bulldozed hole and throwing them in.  Some of the enemy had been hit multiple times and were bandaged more than once.  Some were not complete bodies either.”     

Terry Braun states, “As the sun rose and daylight crept in, to our amazement the area west of Brown was littered with bodies and body parts.  It almost looked like an Easter egg hunt with the eggs poorly hidden.  Heavy blood trails led back into the jungle.  This was a sight that we rarely saw in Vietnam.  Usually after a firefight, the NVA would withdraw and we would see very few bodies.  My machine gunner from Chicago, Ken Burmeister, raised an American Flag that he had carried with him on a flag pole and placed it on the berm.  That picture appeared with headlines on the front page of the New York Times.  Burmeister was later verbally reprimanded for raising an American Flag in Cambodia, but at the time it seemed appropriate.”   

In front of John Wensdofer’s red-hot M60 machine-gun were 12 dead NVA.  “They were all wearing regular green and khaki, NVA uniforms with pith helmets.  There were six enemy bodies inside the wire.  I took a 9mm pistol from what looked like to be a Chinese advisor.  His body was lying just inside the wire, close to the bottom of the berm.  I know he was not Vietnamese as he was taller than the rest and he looked to be about 180 lbs. or more.  He even had body fat on him.”   

Allen Thomas explains that, “One thing that has always stuck out in my mind is that all of the enemy dead were facing the berm.  They didn’t die retreating.”    Several soldiers also recall seeing what they believed were Chinese advisors among the dead.  Another odd find on the enemy KIA’s were what was thought to be drugs and vials of liquid speed.    According to Smith, “Some of the dead looked too big to be Vietnamese.  Most of the bodies were found with speed in their possession.  They had fresh haircuts and their uniforms, as I recall, were light green, khaki and even light blue.  I also remember that when we started to police up the enemy weapons, their bayonets were affixed.  What really stood out in my mind was the number of discarded bandages, blood trails and drag marks that were going in all directions from Brown.  The ground was even soft and mushy in spots.  I remember thinking to myself that the battlefield looked as if a blood bank blew up.”   

In addition to the bodies, blood trails and discarded equipment, 34 individual weapons were collected which included SKS and AK-47 rifles, three light RPD machine guns, four RPG’s, and two 60mm mortars.    As for the 5th Battalion, 12th Infantry’s first day in Cambodia, Allen Thomas sums up of the thoughts of many that fought there.  “In Cambodia, we learned that the enemy stood and fought.  The enemy soldiers here were smart and hardcore.  Most of us wanted to go back to Vietnam, not stay in Cambodia.”

 

Scenes from the berm and immediate perimeter area of FSB Brown the morning after the fight, 13 May 1970.  Image by SP4 Peter Nagurny, 40th PIO.

                                                               
                                                                Stanley Buchanan, B/5-12