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Hope Rainvet doesn't mind me borrying his stuff from another board. This is what I'm talking about.

rainvet
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Vietnam Tour 1968/69



Joined: Jan 2008
Gender: Male
Posts: 195
Re: Army
« Reply #8 Today at 8:33am »		 [Quote]
I was assigned to Long Binh {Provisional) Troop Command from order's from Mac Headquarters out of Saigon.

Was drafted after High School and service in the US Army for two years. Service a Tour at Long Binh, Vietnam in 1968-{12 months or 366 days}. I did my Basic training at Ft. Campbell, Ky. and then was flows to Ft. Hauachuan, Az. for advance training, then went back hone for a few weeks before being shipping to Vietnam. After my Tour was over, I was sent back to the states and was assigned to compete my Time in the Military at Ft. Stewart, Ga.

I was assigned to a re-actional force and was based on the perimeter next to the road and lived on the Long Binh Base and was assigned to the 1st Log Provisional Troop Command out of Saigon.

I was assigned to a Unit and lived in a 4-man hooch next to the pimeterimter where I smell Agent Orange all the time I was there because the Army was always spraying the fence and there were many land mines around there and its was very close to our our living quarters. My Unit was Company F Provisional Troop Command which was a re-actional force group base at Long binh just for the purpose of filling in any units that need hands for that day or duty and it was at time with many differents units and that including sweeps, convoys, and gaurds duty of all types, and I never knew where i would go from day to day and never had a steady duty to comperhend.

I did a lots of traveling to and fro to Saigon(New Port Base) , pull sweeps at times with the Inf, also I was put on Convoy and rec'd siper fire and a whole lots of in-coming mortar rounds, pus all the guard duty I had to pull while there. To much was going on for me to even try to remenber all that I did.

One of the most record on base fighting was on 20 Seconds Over Long Binh, when its was dark, and Long Binh came under attact right at my direct area, and I still recall those nights as if its was still today and that when a Spooky 71, an AC-47 gunship, took off from Bien Hoa Air Base, a few miles northwest of Saigon. It was Feb. 24, 1969, and the second day of the Tet counter-offensive.

It was early February 1969 and the Viet Cong/North Vietnamese Army "Post Tet Offensive" had just ended. At that time I was a young Infantry Captain serving my second combat tour in Vietnam. As a member of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), I commanded a five man Mobile Advisory Team (MAT) which was assisting a South Vietnamese thirty six man Popular Force (PF, Militia) platoon stationed in the Village of Binh Chuan, Chau Tan District, Binh Doung Province.

During the offensive the enemy objective in the III Corps Tactical Zone was the large US Army logistical installation at Long Binh located a few kilometers to the South East of Binh Chuan. To concentrate two regiments at Long Binh (more than 2,000 troops), the NVA used VC guides from Binh Chuan to infiltrate through the village at a rate of two to three hundred per night for about a week.

Our 36 man platoon had nightly contacts with these large enemy forces, many of them harrowing. On the first night of the enemy infiltration effort, one of our eight man ambush patrols valiantly engaged 350 NVA soldiers sweeping on line through our village. The patrol successfully and safely broke contact with the enemy while alerting all allied units to a major enemy offensive effort. Although we continued to bump into large forces every night thereafter, the enemy made a studied effort to avoid a general engagement. Binh Chuan was not their objective. It was Long Binh.

The NVA eventually reached Long Binh in strength. After the battle, a friend of mine who was an eyewitness, counted more than 800 enemy dead on the field.

A1C John Levitow, badly wounded, threw himself on the burning flare and dragged it to the cargo door-saving the entire crew of Spooky 71.


Diversion to Long Binh

Spooky 71 flew with a crew of eight. The pilot, copilot, and navigator were in the forward cabin, and the flight engineer, two gunners, and the loadmaster were in the cargo bay in back. There was also a Vietnamese liaison officer. Partway through the mission he had come forward and was talking to the flight crew when the action unfolded that night. The pilot was Maj. Kenneth B. Carpenter, flying his first combat mission as aircraft commander.

About 11:30 p.m., the gunship was diverted from patrol over the village of Lai Kai, north of Long Binh. The Long Binh Army post, adjacent to Spooky's home base at Bien Hoa, was under mortar attack.

Upon arrival, "we observed a large battle going on in the south and east perimeters of the base," Carpenter said. "On the second firing pass, the mortars firing on Long Binh were silenced."

The attack lifted momentarily, and the gunship began dropping flares to provide illumination requested by a nearby ground unit.

Shortly, another mortar battery began firing. The Spooky 71 crew could see mortar tube flashes about one mile south of the area of the earlier attack. Carpenter rolled the gunship wings level and began his run on the mortar positions. Small-arms fire opened up in his path. Spooky was flying at about 3,500 feet.

"They tell me that I had 40 pieces of shrapnel in me at the time," Levitow said. "I couldn't walk. I crawled to the location of the flare. I had a real tough time grabbing hold of it with two hands because of the pain in my leg and everything. They tell me I ended up jumping on it, finally getting control and dragging myself and the flare back to the rear cargo door which was open and just managed to push it outside the door as it ejected and ignited simultaneously."

Later, the citation to accompany the Medal of Honor put it this way: "Unable to grasp the rolling flare with his hands, he threw himself bodily upon the burning flare. Hugging the deadly device to his body, he dragged himself back to the rear of the aircraft and hurled the flare through the open cargo door. At that instant the flare separated and ignited in the air, but clear of the aircraft."

"I had the aircraft in a 30-degree bank and how Levitow ever managed to get to the flare and throw it out, I'll never know," Carpenter said.

Despite his wounds, Levitow helped secure the airplane on the way back. "So here I was, wounds and all, finally managed to stand up and I'm lifting 140-pound ammo cans and stuffing them between the guns [so they would not] go flying all around and really hurt somebody," Levitow said.

It took considerable effort to get Spooky 71 back to base. "I consider the fact that the aircraft was able to fly at all a miracle," Carpenter said.

Shot up and near stalling, Spooky approached Bien Hoa in the dark. Between the town of Bien Hoa and the base was an old French minefield, never cleared and fenced by barbed wire. Landing short would have been a disaster.

The airplane made it over the minefield and onto the overrun, just barely. Carpenter set it down in a full shuddering stall. The right tire was flat, having been cut by shrapnel, and it was all Carpenter could do, standing on the left brake, to keep control until he brought the airplane to a stop.




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