Battle of Dai Do Part 3

out in the open during daylight at that time we didn't know what they were doing whether they intended to reinforce and lock or whether they were drawing from an lac or whether they were going to assault donjuan but we did catch them out in the open I think they were probably following a preset plan to occupy those areas nonetheless we inflicted in large number of casualties on them Golf Company arrived Viet landing craft shortly before 10:00 hundred in the morning with its two tanks I moved over to Golf Company and made sure that their commander captain jr. Vargas a tremendous combat leader was certain of what he was to do he was they landed moved around the right flank of Bravo Company at an Lac and assaulted Dido and after some very heavy fighting back and forth pushed their way into the village and through clear to the other side now this village like all the Hamlet's in that area were very heavily fortified with excellent bunkers that could withstand the crushing action of enemy tanks these were a frame type bunkers and they were well connected to each other by communication trenches and protected by various types of fighting positions in between all of which were extremely well camouflaged and these positions were mutually supporting so that in order to attack and seize one bunker you were exposed to the fire from at least two other bunkers so it was very difficult for infantry to move through those bunkers but after several hours Golf Company was successful and they took fairly heavy casualties in the process but they fought their way through to the other side it's about 10:30 in the morning we landed the ramps went down I'd already given the frag order to two up one back we had two tanks with us we move forward and put the 60 Mike Mike Cinna in the treeline I remember the it was a lot of rice paddies to cross 700 meters called in a lot of smoke artillery we went forward we were under fire immediately and never did he's up it was both artillery Rockets small arms bunkers there were so many bunkers to take I think every Marine could have taken his own bunker that's how many bunkers were there we've got into the village the NVA were well entrenched they were well in bunkers they were good fighters I respect him very much but we rolled right through him it took bunker after bunker after Bunker and I remember taken to myself I think there were other Marines it took one or two bunkers by themselves also we got into the village and at that time we it slowed down they broke contact with us they were pulling back the tanks didn't want to come in with us anymore because they were out of ammunition I can recall chasing one of the tanks and getting the phone in the back and said hey I need you to come back I need your psychological effect I remember the spots hello I'm out of ammo and that's when I remember general Weesa I don't get on the line saying if you don't turn that goddamn tank around I'm going to shoot you out of the sand right here as we emerge from the from the landing craft vehicles recall getting the order from captain Vargas as to how we were to maneuver the terrain in front of us we did it by fire team up one at a time under intense rifle fire there was a lot of quick spurts of short running movement by my troops as we cross the terrain that was simply stir with bullets it wasn't long however before the enemy organized the counter-attack and began to push Dolf company out of the positions that had looked for so hard I ordered Golf Company to assume a type perimeter in the eastern end of the village in a position that they thought they could hold while we tried to get reinforcements to golf company and push the enemy back we were unable however to relieve him until the following day we did try but we were unsuccessful later that afternoon we attempted to move across the open area both with hotel company and Foxtrot company but as soon as they left their covered positions at donjuan they came under heavy enemy fire pinned down in the open area and it would been suicide to move across that open area under such heavy fire we mounted broader company which had then received new leaders from their parent battalion on top of amphibian tractors and moved them north across the open rice paddy quickly to attempt to crack dido again from the south however as they reach the edge of dido Bravo Company came under withering fire from enemy positions they were unable to move into the village and were pinned down in the area just short of the main battle positions so there we were at that point with Bravo Company pinned down in the open opposite Dido Foxtrot in hotel in Don Juan and my command group and some of our headquarters people located in analog it was this point that my route morale was raised a few notches because echo company arrived now let go Company under the command of captain Jim Livingston have been taken away from my operational command two days before this a battle to guard a bridge on highway 1 north of the city of Dong Ha they had to move over land on foot to reach our position captain Livingston knew the desperate situation that our battalion was in and he moved as quickly as he could he bypassed enemy strongpoints which were set up to delay his movement into our area we were hearing bits of information about what was going on with the battalion over the radio while we were guarding the bridge above Dong Ha but we had a feeling that our company commander captain Jim Livingston knew a lot more because he was very anxious for us to rejoin the battalion as soon as possible as we were making our return trip we traveled along the western flank of this NVA force that we were going to encounter the next day and we met with a number of pockets of resistance and in fact for many of the Marines that were with us it was the first time that they had actually seen the enemy so the adrenaline was flowing and and they were anxious to engage the enemy and pursue the enemy and because we were the lead platoon in this company column whenever we got bogged down it slowed down the entire company and even though it was very tempting to go after what we saw Jim Livingston knew that our mission was to rejoin the battalion as soon as possible so he was regularly on the radio telling us to disengage and to move forward as quickly as we could but he arrived about 1700 on the second day of the battle to the point where he had to cross a fairly wide stream that separated his company from Adelaide the water if our comb was about five foot deep and we were loaded to the top of our heads with gears you might well surmise so we had to figure out a way to get across that doggone Creek where we could get engaged and I get linked up with a magnificent bastards so the only way I could figure out to get us a crosshair of us I took all the tall guys include myself we took all the gear off of them we put them out in the middle of the stream about ten or twelve empower call so we and then we passed man-to-man or tow man to tow man if you will all the short guys with all the gear in Minnesota had a classic stream crossing it I was very happy to see Jim Livingston and he was raring to get into the fight his first mission along with the recon platoon under Bill Mueller was to help evacuate Bravo from its position in front of Dido and get it and its wounded and dead back into the village of aniline where we could further evacuate the casualties and reorganize that company this was done mostly under the cover of darkness and we were successful in bringing Bravo Company back now one of the interesting things that happen during the Bravo Company attack once all of the leaders were wounded or became or were killed unable to function the commander that you depleted unit was taken over by a young marine who was very nervous and had been in country only a short while and he was beginning to panic and ask for instructions over the radio then the cool calm cool voice of captain junior Vargas who himself was in a very tight position on the eastern end of of Dido comforted this young marine and advised him as to what he should do calm them down and he was able to form a defensive perimeter and execute the withdraw with the help of echo company and the reconnaissance platoon under lieutenant Muir it wasn't hard to dig a bunker or a hole I just told him to dig up the fresh graves whatever they found throw it out and get in those holes and stay there the NVA circles we were low on ammunition they probed us all night they broke our lines some guys came through delivering grenades like it was the LA Times I told the troops nobody gets out of their holes anything that moves you shoot we did run out of ammo I called for more resupply and god bless him Lange forehand came up in the autos and delivered us believe it or not I couldn't use him in the m16 they were there were tank emmos around and I screamed back to he was either the three or the four I said I can't use these damn rounds they're not going to fit in him sixteenth Lee and Lange for hand got word of that and came back a second time and dropped off grenades and small-arms ammunition and and if he wouldn't have done that if he would not have done that I think we were down to about sixty rounds we would not have survived all these years I think it was me that made the mistake and sent the wrong a man issue to the wrong people but in their tale captain for him but when he found out he said well let's load up this ammunition take it over the Gulf and picked up the tank ammunition bring it back to them and we had to cross about 1,500 meters of enemy territory and we picked up a couple of Marines on the way back that night we received probing attacks in all of our positions and especially in the area where Dolph company was located in Dido they were able however to hang on and the next morning we were able to launch echo company in a pre-dawn assault across the open area between Dido and Adelaide they were successful after heavy fighting fighting their way into Dido and once they stalled in their attack do the heavy enemy resistance captain Livingston moved his reserve platoon forward and personally led it through the remainder of that village and I passed a word of the radio the fix bayonets and you could hear the clicking of 150 pin outs down and a whole line of troops you don't believe how that really affects your attitude and your momentum or desire to move out and get the job done and I'll tell you I look back on that battle probably the most important thing we did was that one act so I took the reserve attune and so I guess moved up to the leadership position of that platoon and begin punch the 3rd between between the first and second Platoon and we were able to form some skirmish lines finally penetrate the North Vietnamese overcome their line of resistance which was a significant amount of bunkers and the individual Marines were absolutely magnificent it was close in fighting almost hand-to-hand trench line the trench line bunker the bunker and you had to absolutely love the kids and finally we overcome the obstacle we were able to finally link up with gob company and Jay Vargas's outfit and we consolidated the position and licked our wounds recovered our dead redistributed amination and with many of us left is our recall is only 25 or 30 left there were two wounded or death simultaneously with the assault by echo company Golf Company broke out of their positions

Channel: marinepurple

Views: 30,941

Keywords: Vietnam, Battles, Marines, 2/4 Bastards, History, Dai Do

Id: 2bcheNuHAwk

Length: 14min 33sec (873 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 26 2011