THE WALL OF FACES

HOOAH

Thank you for your service to our country so long ago sir. May you rest in eternal peace.

On the remembrance of your 70th birthday, your sacrifice is not forgotten.

HOOAH

We can never truly repay the debt we owe our fallen heroes.

In the fog-shrouded early morning hours of March 28, 1971, fifty members of a specially trained North Vietnamese Army assault force, their bodies covered with charcoal dust and grease that made them almost invisible in the dark, quietly approached Fire Support Base Mary Ann, a small U.S. Army encampment in the northern part of Vietnam in Quang Tin Province. The remote outpost with about 30 buildings, including bunkers and sleeping quarters, was defended by 231 Americans of the 196th Light Infantry Brigade, 23rd Infantry (Americal) Division, along with 22 South Vietnamese soldiers. The garrison had become lax about basic security measures, partly because of infrequent contact with the enemy. The intruders, from the 2nd Company of the 409th NVA Main Force Sapper Battalion, crouched low in three- and six-man teams, silently slipped through the barbed wire that marked the firebase’s outer defenses. Under an umbrella of NVA mortar fire, the sappers raced through the compound tossing gas grenades and canvas satchels loaded with explosives. They then directed automatic weapons fire at the demolished or burning targets. The infiltrators hit the battalion tactical operations center and C Company’s command bunker, killing CPT Richard V. Knight Jr., the company’s leader. Grunts were shot down trying to escape their quarters or buried alive when enemy explosives were hurled into their hooches. The base “was a shambles…with things burning all over the place,” wrote the Americal commander in a letter to his family. After one hour of close-quarter combat, 30 Americans were dead and 82 wounded. A count of the enemy dead showed 15 NVA bodies in and around the camp. The lost Americans included SP4 Larry D. Austin, SGT Michael J. Bayne, SGT Ronald J. Becksted, CPL Donald C. Bennett, SP4 Victor R. Bennett Jr., SGT Richard J. Boehm, SGT Richard R. Carson, SGT Clifford W. Corr, SGT Michael L. Crossley, PFC Wilbert S. Dupree Jr., SP4 James E. Edgemon, SP5 Kyle S. Hamilton, CPL Druey L. Hatfield, 1LT John L. Hogan, CPL Michael S. Holloway, SGT Myron B. Johnson, CPL William W. Kirkpatrick, CPT Richard V. Knight Jr., 1LT Carl B. McGee, SGT Larry W. McKee, PFC Laymon Palmer, PVT Steven D. Plath, SSG Terry H. Price, SSG Warren P. Ritsema, CPL Dallas D. Robinson, SGT Robert J. Schumacher, PFC Clark V. Shawnee, CPL Paul A. Sheer, SP4 Donald M. Stotts, and SP4 Roger D. Whirlow. [Taken from coffeltdatabase.org and “Sapper Attack: The Elite North Vietnamese Units,” Vietnam Magazine, February 2017]