SGT. Louis Urso
U.S. Army – Fire Support Coordinator
2/77 ARTY. – 3rd BDE
4th Infantry Division
Dau Tieng, Vietnam
1966-1968
U.S. Army – Fire Support Coordinator
2/77 ARTY. – 3rd BDE
4th Infantry Division
Dau Tieng, Vietnam
1966-1968
Louis Urso was born on August 11th, 1946, in New Britain, CT. He grew up in a two-family house with his older brother and sister and developed a great love of sports. “It was a great place to grow up. You were close with your neighbors”. Lou remembered the family got their first television in 1951. Growing up, Lou loved to participate in sports. He was small but fast and excelled in track and field.
Lou’s father immigrated to the United States from Italy in 1915 at the age of 16. He enlisted in the U.S. Army and fought in WWI. The war ended and by 1920 his father was back on U.S. soil. He returned to Italy to marry Lou’s mother and brought her back to New Britain.
Lou graduated from New Britain High School in June of 1965. He registered for the draft in July and took a job at the local General Electric plant for $1.81/hour. In July of 1966 he reported for a military physical and testing in New Haven. Lou performed very well on the tests and was told he could have any military job he wanted. He decided to enlist in hopes of getting a job that would keep him out of Vietnam. It didn’t work out as he expected.
Artillery
Lou reported for eight weeks of Basic Training at Fort Dix, NJ. He was athletic and performed well during boot camp. Lou was a good shot with his rifle. He earned his marksman, sharpshooter and expert shooting badges.
Lou then received orders for Advanced Individual Training (AIT) at Fort Sill in Oklahoma. Lou was assigned to be an artillery surveyor. “We did a lot of math work and learned the instruments”. There were three different job responsibilities in an artillery battery. Artillery survey sets the artillery pieces in a Fire Support Base and make sure they are properly positioned to point toward true north. Fire Direction Control is considered the brains of the battery. They take the coordinates of the target and generate the firing instructions for the Cannoneers. The Cannoneers load and fire the guns. “What I was trained for (artillery survey), I never did. I did everything else but”.
After two months he received orders to Ft. Lewis in the state of Washington, home of the 4th Infantry Division. Lou was initially assigned to the 1st battalion of the 20th artillery regiment, A battery. It was an Honest John rocket unit but by the mid 60’s the rockets were obsolete. Lou described it as a parade unit. “Basically, it was all spit and polish”.
In early July Lou received orders for 2nd battalion of the 77th Artillery regiment that used 105mm howitzers. There were too many surveyors, and he was transferred to Fire Direction Control. They spent several months packing vehicles, equipment and munitions to deploy on a troop ship to Vietnam. Prior to deployment the men received two weeks leave before they shipped out of Tacoma on the General Nelson M. Walker. Lou spent the next 22 days on a troop ship and by the second day he was seasick. The ship had approximately 4,000 GI’s and “it took six hours to feed everybody”.
Arriving in Vietnam
The ship arrived off the coast of Vietnam and anchored in Cam Rahn Bay in early October 1966. The troops jumped into landing craft with all of their equipment and headed for the beach. When they waded ashore, they were greeted by the band from the 1st infantry Division. Lou recalls being issued a box of C rations and a bandolier of 100 rounds for his M14. The GI’s then convoyed to base camp Bear Cat in Long Binh.
When Lou arrived, he was wearing new fatigues that were clean and pressed. As the newbie he was given the nickname, Lord Fauntleroy, after the nattily dressed main character in the 1936 film, Little Lord Fauntleroy. Toward the end of October his unit was sent northwest of Saigon to Dau Tieng, where they set up a base camp in the Michelin Rubber Plantation.
Lou explained that the artillery supported the operations of the infantry. “The Fire Support Base supports infantry sweeps. The theory was when the infantry made contract, they would call for artillery support and really pour it on”. In order to have effective artillery fire the artillery battery would need to know the coordinates of the target and then calculate the direction, the range and the max ord. (the height of the highest point in the trajectory of round).
When the infantry called in for a fire mission the first round fired was a marking round. The shell would explode 200 meters (600 feet +/-) in the air and illuminate the area. The infantry would adjust their coordinates and call them into the artillery to adjust their aim and then fire for effect.
The rounds would detonate on contact or by timer. Contact would explode upon impact and completely devastate the impact area. Timed ordinance would explode above the battlefield and rain down shrapnel on the enemy.
“Artillery was really, really loud and the shock waves are something else”. Lou recalled one time being knocked off his feet by the concussion from the shell.
Lou’s recollection of Vietnam included the scenery and the smells. “Vietnam is a really beautiful, lush country but they don’t have sewage systems. You could smell villages before you got to them”. In addition, The GI’s had to be vigilant for scorpions, snakes, fire ants and poisonous insects. Lou recalled one morning when he awoke during monsoon season to find a deadly bamboo viper in his hooch. “I chopped him up into 10 pieces”.
“It was so hot there you could watch rust form. To keep the rust off my M-16 rifle I would coat it with Kiwi black shoe polish”. The boots Lou had worn into the jungle quickly deteriorated and the soles fell off. He had to upgrade to jungle boots which were more functional. His regular issue fatigues also simply fell apart. He had to upgrade to jungle fatigues.
At the base camp they often had to deal with infiltrators. Between Christmas and New Years, Lou recalled how the camp barber ran through the camp with a 25-pound satchel bomb. He was killed before he could detonate the charge. “Our base camp wasn’t the most peaceful place at nighttime between infiltrators and being mortared (on a regular basis). It was a lively base”.
Lou recalled the coffee which he characterized as terrible. The brewing process was simplified. Fill a five-gallon pot with water, dump in a can of grounds and bring it to a boil. They repeated the same process all day long without cleaning the pot.
When Lou arrived, he found himself in the operations center and was privy to a lot of information the average soldier wasn’t. He found the rules of engagement made little sense. If U.S. troops saw the enemy, they could not fire until fired upon. He also found that they could not operate in Cambodia where they would have been able to disrupt the resupply efforts of the North Vietnamese.
“I never fought the system. I played the game. I picked up skills on the go. Exactly what the Army wanted, that’s what I did. I guess it worked to my benefit. I rose through the ranks quickly. A lot of the senior NCO’s liked me”.
Lou was in-country for 12 months and he served in both the artillery and the infantry. He had more than his share of fire fights and major engagements. These were all large unit operations…the main group they were after was the Viet Cong 9th Division. “The were very bold”.
Operation Attleboro
This operation took place in early November 1966 near Dau Tieng with the objective of engaging with the 9thViet Cong Division.
Operation Cedar Falls
In January of 1967 The United States conducted one of the largest offensive operations to date in Vietnam. The area of operation was the “Iron Triangle” 15 miles north of Saigon where the Viet Cong were located in a heavily fortified base area. U.S and ARVN forces cleared villages of civilians to create free fire zones and give the GI’s access to the extensive tunnel system throughout the area. It was here, the use of “tunnel rats” was employed for the first time. Tunnel rats were soldiers who could physically squeeze into the small underground tunnels to search and map the tunnels. They would often be armed with no more than a pistol and a flashlight with a telephone cord extending back to the tunnel opening to guide them out. The allied forces captured significant intelligence, blew up numerous tunnels and inflicted significant loss of life on the enemy. The operation temporarily disrupted insurgency operations in the area.
Operation Gadsden
In February of 1967 this operation was a search and destroy mission near the Tay Ninh province near the Cambodian border. Tay Ninh’s topography was marked by numerous rice fields and thick triple canopy jungles. Intelligence reports suggested this was a major area where the Viet Cong received supplies from Cambodia. They also believed there were training centers, hospitals, significant amounts of munitions and other supplies. The battle consisted of three phases and lasted 20 days. The Viet Cong were defeated, and a major benefit of this operation was positioning troops for Operation Junction City.
Operation Junction City lasted several months. Lou was involved in its bloodiest battle; the Battle of Soui Tre.
Operation Junction City – Battle of Soui Tre
The primary objective of this operation was to draw out the 9th Viet Cong Division and destroy them. On March 19, 1967 elements of the 3rd Brigade loaded Chinook helicopters to airlift artillery into an open area near the abandon village of Soui Tre. The objective was to establish Fire Support Base Gold, that would be involved in future offensive operations. On their initial infiltration Lou recalled they lost two helicopters to enemy fire. “It seemed like the enemy knew we were coming. How did they know we were coming to set up a fire support base”. Lou believes they were used as bait to draw out the enemy.
On the night of the 20th, Lou was working the noon to midnight shift in the Air Advisory. Lou’s call sign was Square Lobster. He received a call from a Forward Air Controller (FAC) operating from a jet flying overhead. The FAC advised he could see a grid square of campfires. Lou worked up the three critical pieces of information the cannoneers needed to fire a round; the direction, the range and the max ord. (the height of the highest point in the trajectory of round). Lou called for a fire mission, and it was a direct hit confirmed by the FAC. Lou wrote his report and gave it to the Lieutenant and told him it should go to the Battalion Commander because it had hot intel. The Lieutenant folded it and put it in his pocket. This would prove to be a fatal mistake the next morning when waves of the enemy attacked.
The next morning a security patrol made contact with the enemy and the battle was on. Around 6:30 am and the mortars began hitting the fire support base. “It was deafening”. Lou recalled the battle lasted in excess of four and a half hours. The fire support base took heavy RPG and mortar fire and was subjected to five waves of enemy soldier attacking and, in some cases, penetrating the U.S. perimeter. It was later determined there were in excess of 2,500 enemy soldiers. “We were outnumbered 8 to 1”. Lou recalled the enemy relentlessly attacked. “There were five human waves of attack between 200 to 300 guys. Scary as all get out. You’d hear them yellin’ and screamin’ as they were coming in”.
Lou recalled the Viet Cong pushed the U.S. perimeter in and in some locations fighting became hand to hand. There were three batteries of six artillery pieces each in Fire Support Base Gold. Artillery typically provides indirect fire, meaning they shoot at the enemy or enemy positions without a visible line of sight. In the Battle of Soui Tre the enemy was so close the artillery ‘lay their guns’ or lowered the barrel of the artillery piece and fired directly at the enemy which was in sight.
30 minutes into the battle Lou was hit in the left knee with shrapnel from a mortar round. “All of a sudden I feel a hot fire going across my leg and I stumbled”. Lou didn’t think too much of it because of the intensity of the enemy fire, and he spent most of the time crawling to injured teammates. “We were taking fire from two directions. Why I didn’t get hit is beyond me”. Lou recalls pulling at least 10 men to safety. Lou received a Purple Heart for his wound.
Lou received a Bronze Star for his heroism and the citation included information that Lou continually exposed himself to enemy fire with complete disregard for his own safety. It also stated many of the soldiers he saved were over 100 meters from safety. The heavy fire made it impossible to stand up, so Lou pulled the soldiers to safety. He also provided battlefield first aid.
“I treated a guy with an intestinal would. I took my tee shirt off and cradled his intestines”. During his first aid course in basic training, he was taught not to push the intestines back in because you’ll fill the wound with dirt. “A gut wound really smells”.
Lou recalled the jets dropping napalm toward the end of the battle. “That is scary stuff…all you see is flames. They found some (dead enemy) that had turned blue. It pulls all of the oxygen out of the air…they suffocated”. “Its like being exposed to the doorway to hell”.
Over the course of the battle the U.S. used 2,200 rounds of 105mm shells and 40 rounds of beehive shells. At that time Beehive Anti-Personnel rounds were an experimental ordinance used for direct fire in case an artillery unit was in danger of being overrun. The end of the artillery round contained 8,000 small, arrow-like projectiles that explode shortly after firing and subject the enemy to thousands of tiny, but deadly projectiles. Lou recalled seeing several snipers nailed to trees by the beehive.
When the fighting stopped there were 647 dead enemy soldiers. 420+ Viet Cong buried in a mass grave in the southeast corner of the fire support base. There were two other mass graves, but Lou did not remember how many bodies were buried there. Based upon blood trails in and around the battlefield and intelligence received from 10 captured Viet Cong, the U.S. believes there were another 200-enemy killed or wounded. The terrain was fairly flat and open and “the kill zone was massive”.
The U.S. suffered 39 killed and 187 wounded. 92 of the wounded were medevac’d out and the rest were treated in the field and prepared to fight another day. “I remember I helped load some of the body bags on the Huey’s. That was the hard thing…that got to me more than the enemy dead…because you knew who they were”.
The American forces were seriously outnumbered and for close to five hours they held off the Viet Cong and inflicted massive carnage. Lou said his desire to be the best that he developed from playing sports kept him going and unwilling to give up. “I was part of a team… and you go into everything thinking you’re going to win every time. I didn’t think I was bullet proof, but I was going to survive”.
Operation Soui Tre was determined to be the single deadliest engagement in the war to date and one of the most lethal in the entire Vietnam War. The entire operation lasted until May of ’67 and the Allied forces were able to temporarily disrupt Viet Cong operations. However, as long as the U.S. continued to operate by their rules of engagement prohibiting fighting in Cambodia and Laos, the enemy would continue to send waves of soldiers to the south with a willingness to outlast the U.S. in a war of attrition. Thus, surrender of the North Vietnamese Army could never be achieved.
Presidential Unit Citation
Lou’s unit received the Presidential Unit Citation for its involvement in the Battle of Soui Tre. The Presidential Unit Citation is America’s highest decoration that a military unit can receive and is almost always awarded for actions in combat. It is awarded for acts of gallantry performed by a military unit and the judgement must be made that the entire unit went above and beyond the call of duty.
Operation Manhattan
This operation took place in April of 1967 and the objective of the operation was to destroy Viet Cong bases in the Ho Bo Woods, near Binh Duong, along the Saigon River
Operation Diamond Head
In May 1967, the U.S. located a North Vietnamese Army supply base just over the Cambodian border and they further learned that the North Vietnamese were planning an attack in the Tay Ninh province. This operation was to prevent those attacks.
Lou also spent time in the infantry and experienced his fair share of fire fights.
Leaving Vietnam
On September 24, 1967, after 12 months and one day in country Lou, who was not quite 20 years old, received orders to report back to the United States. He flew to San Francisco on a commercial flight and was bused to Oakland to be processed. It took a full day to fly home. “I was tired and happy”. Lou had 32 days of leave before he was to report to Fort Carsen in Colorado.
At the airport Lou went to the restroom where he found a pile of dress green uniforms in a pile. The soldiers were changing their cloths so as not to be identified by the anti-war protestors. Lou wondered what was going on. “I figured I was home, and everyone would be happy to see me. It was the opposite”. His friends asked him to wear his uniform when he arrived home “and it almost set off a riot. It was a real culture shock”.
When Lou arrived at Carsen AFB in October, he was assigned to another Honest John Rocket unit which meant more “spit and polish”. After Martin Luther King was assassinated in April of 1968, “we wound up on riot duty for most of the spring and summer. It was one of the unpleasant things”.
Life After the Army and Managing PTS
Lou was discharged in November of 1968 and arrived home just before Thanksgiving. For a while he collected unemployment and had difficulty dealing with his post-traumatic stress. Then he landed an engineering apprentice job with Fafnir Bearing and started the third week of January 1969.
The program at Fafnir would pay for Lou to go to college at night. Lou was adjusting life in his small Connecticut town playing softball and flag football and enjoying his 1970 Chevy Nova SS. Lou was lucky to be working with compassionate and caring co-workers. The ladies at Fafnir decided Lou need to start dating. Lou PTS was causing him to be very withdrawn and he found dating difficult. Lou dated one of the ladies’ daughters and she told her mother Lou was very nice and polite but during dinner he wasn’t there. “I was having flashbacks”. As luck would have it, Lou met a counselor at the VA who invited Lou to have lunch every Friday to talk about his PTS. The doctor observed that Lou had a very good attitude toward life and always viewed the glass as half full. This has helped him manage his PTS.
Slowly Lou made progress with his PTS and on his 18th date he met Nancy Niedermeyer. “She would do most of the talking on the dates”. Lou and Nancy were married April 15th, 1972. They have one daughter and two granddaughters. Their daughter was a star pitcher for her high school and college softball teams.
Lou worked his way through the ranks at Fafnir moving from apprentice, to journeyman, to drafter and then to designer. Lou worked on the bearings used in aerospace applications which required a high level of design and sold at premium price points. He worked on contracts for Hughes Helicopter, Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky, General Electric and Boeing. In December of 1986 Lou retired from Fafnir after 17 years of service. Lou loved his job. “It was like a family”
Lou has had a long and satisfying career as a football referee and softball umpire. From 2001-2016 Lou umpired women’s fastpitch college games. Many of the kids who played in games he referred went on to have children who played in games Lou officiated. Lou looks back fondly on all of the kids he helped along the way and is looking forward to the upcoming season.
Being a Vietnam Veteran
Vietnam veterans did what their country asked of them. But, the war quickly became very unpopular in the United States, the media turned against the war and that fueled massive protests. The protestors were either incapable, or unwilling, or both, to distinguish between soldiers doing their jobs and American foreign policy. This led to the mistreatment of Vietnam veterans when they returned home. They were often spit on, called baby killers and told they were not welcome in some establishments. For a long time, Vietnam veterans kept their service, sacrifices and experiences secret. This was a tremendous burden to bear. It was not until the Vietnam War Memorial was dedicated in 1982 did the citizens of the U.S. begin to realize how badly the Vietnam Veterans were treated. Only then did the nation begin to recognize the efforts and sacrifices of the Vietnam veterans. A national healing process began and continues to this day.
“For about 30 years I suppressed I was a Vietnam veteran because I got ridiculed a couple of times. After the Vietnam Memorial opened up, I became fiercely proud of it”.
“Years later people recognized we actually stopped the spread of communism in southeast Asia by our presence there”
Lou said, as many veterans do, it is difficult to explain combat to someone who has not experienced it. Lou said the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan most closely portrays the chaos and sounds of combat. “It’s deafening. You feel like you’re moving in slow motion. It’s chaos. It’s not organized at all”.
Some of Lou’s Observations About the Vietnam War
“It’s hard to explain, unless you’re there”.
“It was like being part of a nightmare”.
“I have an only child…that I love with a passion. I don’t remember her early birthdays, but I remember” quite vividly many things that happened in Vietnam.
“I wish the politician would have given us more of a free hand”.
Lou also thinks that many movies portray a Vietnam that he never saw. “We had some wonderful officers”. Some were not. Lou does not recall issues with drugs or drinking among the troops. “Everybody pulled for everybody. I don’t know what it was like a year later”. “Minorities did not make up the majority of soldiers and not all GI’s were drafted. Lou recalled “a good mix”. He does say that he doesn’t know what happened after he left Vietnam but movies like Platoon that portray America and the GI’s in a negative light does not reflect his experience.
”I’d do it again. I don’t feel our time was wasted”.
“I’ve led a good life and I’m proud of the fact that I’m a Vietnam Veteran”.
“I’ve always thanked God that I survived”.
Lou, a more informed United States thanks you for all that you sacrificed and endured during your tour in Vietnam. You did the heavy dangerous, heavy lifting so the rest of us didn’t have to. We can only say, we are sorry it took this long to recognize all that you did for us.
Lou’s father immigrated to the United States from Italy in 1915 at the age of 16. He enlisted in the U.S. Army and fought in WWI. The war ended and by 1920 his father was back on U.S. soil. He returned to Italy to marry Lou’s mother and brought her back to New Britain.
Lou graduated from New Britain High School in June of 1965. He registered for the draft in July and took a job at the local General Electric plant for $1.81/hour. In July of 1966 he reported for a military physical and testing in New Haven. Lou performed very well on the tests and was told he could have any military job he wanted. He decided to enlist in hopes of getting a job that would keep him out of Vietnam. It didn’t work out as he expected.
Artillery
Lou reported for eight weeks of Basic Training at Fort Dix, NJ. He was athletic and performed well during boot camp. Lou was a good shot with his rifle. He earned his marksman, sharpshooter and expert shooting badges.
Lou then received orders for Advanced Individual Training (AIT) at Fort Sill in Oklahoma. Lou was assigned to be an artillery surveyor. “We did a lot of math work and learned the instruments”. There were three different job responsibilities in an artillery battery. Artillery survey sets the artillery pieces in a Fire Support Base and make sure they are properly positioned to point toward true north. Fire Direction Control is considered the brains of the battery. They take the coordinates of the target and generate the firing instructions for the Cannoneers. The Cannoneers load and fire the guns. “What I was trained for (artillery survey), I never did. I did everything else but”.
After two months he received orders to Ft. Lewis in the state of Washington, home of the 4th Infantry Division. Lou was initially assigned to the 1st battalion of the 20th artillery regiment, A battery. It was an Honest John rocket unit but by the mid 60’s the rockets were obsolete. Lou described it as a parade unit. “Basically, it was all spit and polish”.
In early July Lou received orders for 2nd battalion of the 77th Artillery regiment that used 105mm howitzers. There were too many surveyors, and he was transferred to Fire Direction Control. They spent several months packing vehicles, equipment and munitions to deploy on a troop ship to Vietnam. Prior to deployment the men received two weeks leave before they shipped out of Tacoma on the General Nelson M. Walker. Lou spent the next 22 days on a troop ship and by the second day he was seasick. The ship had approximately 4,000 GI’s and “it took six hours to feed everybody”.
Arriving in Vietnam
The ship arrived off the coast of Vietnam and anchored in Cam Rahn Bay in early October 1966. The troops jumped into landing craft with all of their equipment and headed for the beach. When they waded ashore, they were greeted by the band from the 1st infantry Division. Lou recalls being issued a box of C rations and a bandolier of 100 rounds for his M14. The GI’s then convoyed to base camp Bear Cat in Long Binh.
When Lou arrived, he was wearing new fatigues that were clean and pressed. As the newbie he was given the nickname, Lord Fauntleroy, after the nattily dressed main character in the 1936 film, Little Lord Fauntleroy. Toward the end of October his unit was sent northwest of Saigon to Dau Tieng, where they set up a base camp in the Michelin Rubber Plantation.
Lou explained that the artillery supported the operations of the infantry. “The Fire Support Base supports infantry sweeps. The theory was when the infantry made contract, they would call for artillery support and really pour it on”. In order to have effective artillery fire the artillery battery would need to know the coordinates of the target and then calculate the direction, the range and the max ord. (the height of the highest point in the trajectory of round).
When the infantry called in for a fire mission the first round fired was a marking round. The shell would explode 200 meters (600 feet +/-) in the air and illuminate the area. The infantry would adjust their coordinates and call them into the artillery to adjust their aim and then fire for effect.
The rounds would detonate on contact or by timer. Contact would explode upon impact and completely devastate the impact area. Timed ordinance would explode above the battlefield and rain down shrapnel on the enemy.
“Artillery was really, really loud and the shock waves are something else”. Lou recalled one time being knocked off his feet by the concussion from the shell.
Lou’s recollection of Vietnam included the scenery and the smells. “Vietnam is a really beautiful, lush country but they don’t have sewage systems. You could smell villages before you got to them”. In addition, The GI’s had to be vigilant for scorpions, snakes, fire ants and poisonous insects. Lou recalled one morning when he awoke during monsoon season to find a deadly bamboo viper in his hooch. “I chopped him up into 10 pieces”.
“It was so hot there you could watch rust form. To keep the rust off my M-16 rifle I would coat it with Kiwi black shoe polish”. The boots Lou had worn into the jungle quickly deteriorated and the soles fell off. He had to upgrade to jungle boots which were more functional. His regular issue fatigues also simply fell apart. He had to upgrade to jungle fatigues.
At the base camp they often had to deal with infiltrators. Between Christmas and New Years, Lou recalled how the camp barber ran through the camp with a 25-pound satchel bomb. He was killed before he could detonate the charge. “Our base camp wasn’t the most peaceful place at nighttime between infiltrators and being mortared (on a regular basis). It was a lively base”.
Lou recalled the coffee which he characterized as terrible. The brewing process was simplified. Fill a five-gallon pot with water, dump in a can of grounds and bring it to a boil. They repeated the same process all day long without cleaning the pot.
When Lou arrived, he found himself in the operations center and was privy to a lot of information the average soldier wasn’t. He found the rules of engagement made little sense. If U.S. troops saw the enemy, they could not fire until fired upon. He also found that they could not operate in Cambodia where they would have been able to disrupt the resupply efforts of the North Vietnamese.
“I never fought the system. I played the game. I picked up skills on the go. Exactly what the Army wanted, that’s what I did. I guess it worked to my benefit. I rose through the ranks quickly. A lot of the senior NCO’s liked me”.
Lou was in-country for 12 months and he served in both the artillery and the infantry. He had more than his share of fire fights and major engagements. These were all large unit operations…the main group they were after was the Viet Cong 9th Division. “The were very bold”.
Operation Attleboro
This operation took place in early November 1966 near Dau Tieng with the objective of engaging with the 9thViet Cong Division.
Operation Cedar Falls
In January of 1967 The United States conducted one of the largest offensive operations to date in Vietnam. The area of operation was the “Iron Triangle” 15 miles north of Saigon where the Viet Cong were located in a heavily fortified base area. U.S and ARVN forces cleared villages of civilians to create free fire zones and give the GI’s access to the extensive tunnel system throughout the area. It was here, the use of “tunnel rats” was employed for the first time. Tunnel rats were soldiers who could physically squeeze into the small underground tunnels to search and map the tunnels. They would often be armed with no more than a pistol and a flashlight with a telephone cord extending back to the tunnel opening to guide them out. The allied forces captured significant intelligence, blew up numerous tunnels and inflicted significant loss of life on the enemy. The operation temporarily disrupted insurgency operations in the area.
Operation Gadsden
In February of 1967 this operation was a search and destroy mission near the Tay Ninh province near the Cambodian border. Tay Ninh’s topography was marked by numerous rice fields and thick triple canopy jungles. Intelligence reports suggested this was a major area where the Viet Cong received supplies from Cambodia. They also believed there were training centers, hospitals, significant amounts of munitions and other supplies. The battle consisted of three phases and lasted 20 days. The Viet Cong were defeated, and a major benefit of this operation was positioning troops for Operation Junction City.
Operation Junction City lasted several months. Lou was involved in its bloodiest battle; the Battle of Soui Tre.
Operation Junction City – Battle of Soui Tre
The primary objective of this operation was to draw out the 9th Viet Cong Division and destroy them. On March 19, 1967 elements of the 3rd Brigade loaded Chinook helicopters to airlift artillery into an open area near the abandon village of Soui Tre. The objective was to establish Fire Support Base Gold, that would be involved in future offensive operations. On their initial infiltration Lou recalled they lost two helicopters to enemy fire. “It seemed like the enemy knew we were coming. How did they know we were coming to set up a fire support base”. Lou believes they were used as bait to draw out the enemy.
On the night of the 20th, Lou was working the noon to midnight shift in the Air Advisory. Lou’s call sign was Square Lobster. He received a call from a Forward Air Controller (FAC) operating from a jet flying overhead. The FAC advised he could see a grid square of campfires. Lou worked up the three critical pieces of information the cannoneers needed to fire a round; the direction, the range and the max ord. (the height of the highest point in the trajectory of round). Lou called for a fire mission, and it was a direct hit confirmed by the FAC. Lou wrote his report and gave it to the Lieutenant and told him it should go to the Battalion Commander because it had hot intel. The Lieutenant folded it and put it in his pocket. This would prove to be a fatal mistake the next morning when waves of the enemy attacked.
The next morning a security patrol made contact with the enemy and the battle was on. Around 6:30 am and the mortars began hitting the fire support base. “It was deafening”. Lou recalled the battle lasted in excess of four and a half hours. The fire support base took heavy RPG and mortar fire and was subjected to five waves of enemy soldier attacking and, in some cases, penetrating the U.S. perimeter. It was later determined there were in excess of 2,500 enemy soldiers. “We were outnumbered 8 to 1”. Lou recalled the enemy relentlessly attacked. “There were five human waves of attack between 200 to 300 guys. Scary as all get out. You’d hear them yellin’ and screamin’ as they were coming in”.
Lou recalled the Viet Cong pushed the U.S. perimeter in and in some locations fighting became hand to hand. There were three batteries of six artillery pieces each in Fire Support Base Gold. Artillery typically provides indirect fire, meaning they shoot at the enemy or enemy positions without a visible line of sight. In the Battle of Soui Tre the enemy was so close the artillery ‘lay their guns’ or lowered the barrel of the artillery piece and fired directly at the enemy which was in sight.
30 minutes into the battle Lou was hit in the left knee with shrapnel from a mortar round. “All of a sudden I feel a hot fire going across my leg and I stumbled”. Lou didn’t think too much of it because of the intensity of the enemy fire, and he spent most of the time crawling to injured teammates. “We were taking fire from two directions. Why I didn’t get hit is beyond me”. Lou recalls pulling at least 10 men to safety. Lou received a Purple Heart for his wound.
Lou received a Bronze Star for his heroism and the citation included information that Lou continually exposed himself to enemy fire with complete disregard for his own safety. It also stated many of the soldiers he saved were over 100 meters from safety. The heavy fire made it impossible to stand up, so Lou pulled the soldiers to safety. He also provided battlefield first aid.
“I treated a guy with an intestinal would. I took my tee shirt off and cradled his intestines”. During his first aid course in basic training, he was taught not to push the intestines back in because you’ll fill the wound with dirt. “A gut wound really smells”.
Lou recalled the jets dropping napalm toward the end of the battle. “That is scary stuff…all you see is flames. They found some (dead enemy) that had turned blue. It pulls all of the oxygen out of the air…they suffocated”. “Its like being exposed to the doorway to hell”.
Over the course of the battle the U.S. used 2,200 rounds of 105mm shells and 40 rounds of beehive shells. At that time Beehive Anti-Personnel rounds were an experimental ordinance used for direct fire in case an artillery unit was in danger of being overrun. The end of the artillery round contained 8,000 small, arrow-like projectiles that explode shortly after firing and subject the enemy to thousands of tiny, but deadly projectiles. Lou recalled seeing several snipers nailed to trees by the beehive.
When the fighting stopped there were 647 dead enemy soldiers. 420+ Viet Cong buried in a mass grave in the southeast corner of the fire support base. There were two other mass graves, but Lou did not remember how many bodies were buried there. Based upon blood trails in and around the battlefield and intelligence received from 10 captured Viet Cong, the U.S. believes there were another 200-enemy killed or wounded. The terrain was fairly flat and open and “the kill zone was massive”.
The U.S. suffered 39 killed and 187 wounded. 92 of the wounded were medevac’d out and the rest were treated in the field and prepared to fight another day. “I remember I helped load some of the body bags on the Huey’s. That was the hard thing…that got to me more than the enemy dead…because you knew who they were”.
The American forces were seriously outnumbered and for close to five hours they held off the Viet Cong and inflicted massive carnage. Lou said his desire to be the best that he developed from playing sports kept him going and unwilling to give up. “I was part of a team… and you go into everything thinking you’re going to win every time. I didn’t think I was bullet proof, but I was going to survive”.
Operation Soui Tre was determined to be the single deadliest engagement in the war to date and one of the most lethal in the entire Vietnam War. The entire operation lasted until May of ’67 and the Allied forces were able to temporarily disrupt Viet Cong operations. However, as long as the U.S. continued to operate by their rules of engagement prohibiting fighting in Cambodia and Laos, the enemy would continue to send waves of soldiers to the south with a willingness to outlast the U.S. in a war of attrition. Thus, surrender of the North Vietnamese Army could never be achieved.
Presidential Unit Citation
Lou’s unit received the Presidential Unit Citation for its involvement in the Battle of Soui Tre. The Presidential Unit Citation is America’s highest decoration that a military unit can receive and is almost always awarded for actions in combat. It is awarded for acts of gallantry performed by a military unit and the judgement must be made that the entire unit went above and beyond the call of duty.
Operation Manhattan
This operation took place in April of 1967 and the objective of the operation was to destroy Viet Cong bases in the Ho Bo Woods, near Binh Duong, along the Saigon River
Operation Diamond Head
In May 1967, the U.S. located a North Vietnamese Army supply base just over the Cambodian border and they further learned that the North Vietnamese were planning an attack in the Tay Ninh province. This operation was to prevent those attacks.
Lou also spent time in the infantry and experienced his fair share of fire fights.
Leaving Vietnam
On September 24, 1967, after 12 months and one day in country Lou, who was not quite 20 years old, received orders to report back to the United States. He flew to San Francisco on a commercial flight and was bused to Oakland to be processed. It took a full day to fly home. “I was tired and happy”. Lou had 32 days of leave before he was to report to Fort Carsen in Colorado.
At the airport Lou went to the restroom where he found a pile of dress green uniforms in a pile. The soldiers were changing their cloths so as not to be identified by the anti-war protestors. Lou wondered what was going on. “I figured I was home, and everyone would be happy to see me. It was the opposite”. His friends asked him to wear his uniform when he arrived home “and it almost set off a riot. It was a real culture shock”.
When Lou arrived at Carsen AFB in October, he was assigned to another Honest John Rocket unit which meant more “spit and polish”. After Martin Luther King was assassinated in April of 1968, “we wound up on riot duty for most of the spring and summer. It was one of the unpleasant things”.
Life After the Army and Managing PTS
Lou was discharged in November of 1968 and arrived home just before Thanksgiving. For a while he collected unemployment and had difficulty dealing with his post-traumatic stress. Then he landed an engineering apprentice job with Fafnir Bearing and started the third week of January 1969.
The program at Fafnir would pay for Lou to go to college at night. Lou was adjusting life in his small Connecticut town playing softball and flag football and enjoying his 1970 Chevy Nova SS. Lou was lucky to be working with compassionate and caring co-workers. The ladies at Fafnir decided Lou need to start dating. Lou PTS was causing him to be very withdrawn and he found dating difficult. Lou dated one of the ladies’ daughters and she told her mother Lou was very nice and polite but during dinner he wasn’t there. “I was having flashbacks”. As luck would have it, Lou met a counselor at the VA who invited Lou to have lunch every Friday to talk about his PTS. The doctor observed that Lou had a very good attitude toward life and always viewed the glass as half full. This has helped him manage his PTS.
Slowly Lou made progress with his PTS and on his 18th date he met Nancy Niedermeyer. “She would do most of the talking on the dates”. Lou and Nancy were married April 15th, 1972. They have one daughter and two granddaughters. Their daughter was a star pitcher for her high school and college softball teams.
Lou worked his way through the ranks at Fafnir moving from apprentice, to journeyman, to drafter and then to designer. Lou worked on the bearings used in aerospace applications which required a high level of design and sold at premium price points. He worked on contracts for Hughes Helicopter, Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky, General Electric and Boeing. In December of 1986 Lou retired from Fafnir after 17 years of service. Lou loved his job. “It was like a family”
Lou has had a long and satisfying career as a football referee and softball umpire. From 2001-2016 Lou umpired women’s fastpitch college games. Many of the kids who played in games he referred went on to have children who played in games Lou officiated. Lou looks back fondly on all of the kids he helped along the way and is looking forward to the upcoming season.
Being a Vietnam Veteran
Vietnam veterans did what their country asked of them. But, the war quickly became very unpopular in the United States, the media turned against the war and that fueled massive protests. The protestors were either incapable, or unwilling, or both, to distinguish between soldiers doing their jobs and American foreign policy. This led to the mistreatment of Vietnam veterans when they returned home. They were often spit on, called baby killers and told they were not welcome in some establishments. For a long time, Vietnam veterans kept their service, sacrifices and experiences secret. This was a tremendous burden to bear. It was not until the Vietnam War Memorial was dedicated in 1982 did the citizens of the U.S. begin to realize how badly the Vietnam Veterans were treated. Only then did the nation begin to recognize the efforts and sacrifices of the Vietnam veterans. A national healing process began and continues to this day.
“For about 30 years I suppressed I was a Vietnam veteran because I got ridiculed a couple of times. After the Vietnam Memorial opened up, I became fiercely proud of it”.
“Years later people recognized we actually stopped the spread of communism in southeast Asia by our presence there”
Lou said, as many veterans do, it is difficult to explain combat to someone who has not experienced it. Lou said the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan most closely portrays the chaos and sounds of combat. “It’s deafening. You feel like you’re moving in slow motion. It’s chaos. It’s not organized at all”.
Some of Lou’s Observations About the Vietnam War
“It’s hard to explain, unless you’re there”.
“It was like being part of a nightmare”.
“I have an only child…that I love with a passion. I don’t remember her early birthdays, but I remember” quite vividly many things that happened in Vietnam.
“I wish the politician would have given us more of a free hand”.
Lou also thinks that many movies portray a Vietnam that he never saw. “We had some wonderful officers”. Some were not. Lou does not recall issues with drugs or drinking among the troops. “Everybody pulled for everybody. I don’t know what it was like a year later”. “Minorities did not make up the majority of soldiers and not all GI’s were drafted. Lou recalled “a good mix”. He does say that he doesn’t know what happened after he left Vietnam but movies like Platoon that portray America and the GI’s in a negative light does not reflect his experience.
”I’d do it again. I don’t feel our time was wasted”.
“I’ve led a good life and I’m proud of the fact that I’m a Vietnam Veteran”.
“I’ve always thanked God that I survived”.
Lou, a more informed United States thanks you for all that you sacrificed and endured during your tour in Vietnam. You did the heavy dangerous, heavy lifting so the rest of us didn’t have to. We can only say, we are sorry it took this long to recognize all that you did for us.