1st Battalion 22nd Infantry May 1970 Page 4

On the second morning, 8 May, it was to be Alpha Company that discovered a six-foot-wide road cutting through the jungle. Shortly thereafter they engage in a bloody firefight that results in 2 US WIA and 1 US KIA. Sgt Patrick Ernest Hennen, from Watkins, Minnesota had paid the ultimate price on this day. Enemy causalities were 4 NVA KIA.

Sergeant Patrick Ernest Hennen
KIA May 8, 1970

Photo from theVVMF website

Delta Company also has more contact that results in 2 more NVA KIA. They find even more bunkers, hootches, and sleeping quarters. There is too much to list but some of the things are 4000 punji stakes, old French rifles, more rice, an unexploded 500 lb bomb, 50 pounds of tobacco. More medical equipment, including an x-ray machine, a generator and fuel.

Later that same day, Alpha Company discovers what appears to be a huge sapper training camp or compound. Again, an omen of things to come

Sappers were highly trained and highly skilled soldiers who were infiltrators into our bases. They carried explosives referred to as satchel charges. They would very stealthily infiltrate our defenses in the dark of night and then create death, destruction, and mayhem by hurling their satchel charges, more often than not they wound up giving their own life in the process. They were sort of a precursor to the modern-day suicide bomber.

That same evening, our second in Cambodia, at 1614 hours, in a tragic mix- up, our Recon Platoon is shot up by one of our own, a hunter/killer team. These hunter/killer teams were composed of two helicopters, a small, quick, maneuverable OH6 referred to as a Loach and the very deadly gunship, an AH1 Cobra attack helicopter. The Loach flew low and slow and tried to draw enemy fire as the gunship circled slowly high above, perhaps 1500 feet above, awaiting direction from the Loach and an opportunity to swoop down and shoot up whatever the Loach had identified - - or in this case, misidentified. The hunter killer team had mistakenly thought they received ground to air fire. They did not. The result was 4 US WIA. Luckily, no one was killed. Wounded by White Phosphorus burns, a WP grenade was thrown from the Loach, were SP4 Joseph Koss, PFC Clarence Walton and PFC Mullen. SGT VanDyke was shot in the head when the Loach opened fire with a machine gun. Thank God the Cobra never fired on them. I’m sure it would have been much worse if that were the case. Once the mistake was realized, the Loach landed and took SGT VanDyke to the Brigade aid station themselves.

At 1830 hours Recon is requesting Dust Offs for three WIA with White Phosphorus burns as a result of the friendly fire incident. At 1945 they are on station and at 1957 the Dust Off’s are completed.

Alpha Company has found what looks to be a sapper base camp complete with carved wooden jet airplanes. There is too much equipment and supplies for me to list but it is literally page after page of the S-3 Logs.

At 2220 hours that night, still 8 May, flashlights are once again spotted by Bravo Company on the bunker line. We respond with M79 HE, High Explosive, fire power and the flashlights go out.

It is now the wee early hours of 9 May, beginning our third day, at 0045 hours, Delta Company hears screams within their perimeter and fires shots at what is believed to be some type of large cat, perhaps a panther or even a tiger. Either way it was most unwelcome and disconcerting in the near pitch-black darkness. The Logs never mention what it was, and I never heard.

At 1020, the morning of 9 May, they are once again requesting clearance for an air strike.

Alpha Company has found 15 cultivated acres and a one-acre lake. We are clearly in their back yard.

One day, one of the hunter killer Loach’s landed at our chopper pad. I walked over just to have a look. Several other grunts were there also. It seems the chopper had taken several hits from small arms fire. The pilot had stored his c-ration lunch behind his seat, it was all shot up. He was macho strutting around, wearing a .38 in a shoulder holster, making a show of how angry he was at having his peaches and pound cake with bullet holes in it and not with how close he came to being killed! Those guys really did have nerves of steel.

Most of the rest of 9th passes with us of Bravo Company conducting cloverleaf patrols around Valkyrie and working on the firebase. Every day we ran cloverleaf patrols in all directions around the base. A cloverleaf patrol was simply a patrol that left the firebase perimeter at one point, went out a certain distance made a slow, rounded 360 turn and came back into the perimeter at a different point. Never walking the same ground twice. It prevented the enemy from setting booby traps or from them setting up ambushes. These were referred to as S&D, search and destroy. That’s pretty much self-explanatory. Everything we did around the firebase or anything any of the other companies did in the field was considered S&D.

It was not thick triple canopy jungle such as we were accustomed to in the Central Highlands. I would describe it more as heavily wooded. We always found more hootches, bunkers, equipment and supplies than I had ever seen before, as did all the other companies. On one such patrol we found what appeared to be a training area. There were carved wooden helicopters and aircraft. They were very detailed, a Cobra AH1 gunship was easily distinguishable from a Huey UH1 supply/troop carrier which we sometimes called “slicks”, we called them slicks because they had no armament, save a door gunner on each side with an M60 machine gun. A POW told us that they were schooled “don’t shoot at the skinny ones” (Cobra’s). We thought that quite humorous. There was undoubtedly tremendous enemy activity in the area.

The enemy soldiers were taught not to fire at the "skinny" helicopter (the Cobra)
because it could rain death and destruction upon them

The weather was very hot and dry. One day it came a really hard downpour and a couple of guys, I don’t remember who, got a bar of soap and stood out in the rain washing their hair, face and upper body. They get all lathered up and the rain stops as suddenly as it started, it was just a brief shower. They were left all lathered up with nowhere to go, it was quite a sight!

That night at 2140 on the bunker line, B Company, reports flashlights but it turns out to actually be a smoldering fire.

Then at 0020 on the 10th, 3rd Platoon Bravo has movement and employs M79 fire, still more movement and they pop illumination and employ small arms, finally the movement ceases.

Later, still in the wee hours of 10 May, Charlie Company, and Recon both are reporting movement. There was not much sleep to be had by anyone while in Cambodia.