y “longest day” began at 0600, No-vember 27, 1965. It was my firstfull day in the field in Vietnam,

and I had never been in combat.On the previous afternoon, I completed in-

processing in Saigon and boarded a helicopterin Tan Son Nhut for a short flight to Tay Ninhand my assignment as senior advisor to the 3rdBattalion, 7th Regiment, 5th In-fantry Division, Army of the Re-public of Vietnam (ARVN). I wasdressed in new jungle fatigues and boots andarmed with an M2 carbine. Four magazines ofammunition, a bayonet and entrenching tool,two fragmentation grenades, and two smokegrenades hung from my harness. Two water bot-tles, a first aid pouch and a steel helmet com-pleted my dress. I was ready!A sergeant from the regimental advisory team

met me at the airport, and we drove to the regi-mental command post (CP). The regiment wasdeployed in a perimeter defense with the 1st, 2nd

and 4th battalions in the Michelin Rubber Planta-tion east of Tay Ninh. The CP was a lean-to and afew foxholes in the middle of the perimeter.I could not help noticing the contrast between

my spiffy uniform and the faded and tattereddress of the Vietnamese soldiers and their U.S.advisors. I received a blunt greeting from theregimental senior advisor. His first words were:

“I do not carry a weapon norwear a steel helmet because theyare superfluous.” His second

sentence was: “This is a dirty little war betweendirty little people in a dirty little country; it isn’ta real military action.” And there stood I, underarms and wearing a steel pot. Perhaps I was notas ready as I had thought.After that curt introduction, he introduced me

to the other battalion senior advisors and theVietnamese regimental commander, who brieflyoutlined tomorrow’s action. The regiment wouldmove out at first light to exploit a B-52 strikeabout 10 kilometers north of our present posi-

Prelude

42 ARMY � April 2012

tion, with my battalion, the 3rd, leading abouttwo kilometers northwest of the rest of the regi-ment. I thought that separating my battalionfrom the rest of the regiment was a curious de-ployment, but I was too new to question thecommander or the senior advisor.The regimental commander called a Vietnamese

lieutenant from the 3rd Battalion, who saddled uphis platoon. After quick goodbyes to the regimen-tal team and regimental staff, we started towardthe 3rd Battalion position in a platoon diamondformation. I had no inkling that this was the lasttime that I would see any of them alive.The troops were alert and serious. Along the

way, the Vietnamese Air Force (VNAF) con-ducted an air strike on a target about 500 metersto our left flank. The platoon leader told me itwas a village with “many VC [Vietcong],” but Isaw only frightened civilians fleeing toward TayNinh. Two terrified people were carrying awounded baby using a door as a stretcher.I met the battalion commander and his staff at

dinner. It was my first Vietnamese militarymeal: a bowl of rice with some unidentified veg-etables, served out of a community pot. It wasalso my first real experience with chopsticks.After dinner, the battalion commander and I

walked the position. The 350 men of the 3rd Bat-talion were entrenched in a perimeter about 100meters in diameter, with security outposts about100 meters forward of the main position. As wewalked, he explained that the next day’s plan wasto break camp at first light and move out at 0630.It was near dark as I met with my advisory

team, a first lieutenant deputy, a weapons ser-geant, a supply sergeant and a radio-telephoneoperator (RTO). The rule was that any move-ment at night would draw fire, so we finisheddigging our foxholes, hung our hammocks andturned in for the evening. Our hammocks wereslung over foxholes; boots and weapons werelaid beside them. The idea was that if any shotswere fired at night, one had only to flip over tofall into his foxhole and grab his weapon.

April 2012 � ARMY 43

By LTC William P. BaxterU.S. Army retired

as told toCOL Francis R. Stevens

U.S. Army retired

U.S. Army/PFC Henry V. Backes Jr.

The Longest DayThe battalion turned out the next morning

at 0530. Troops packed their gear and filledfoxholes, and the security outposts returned.Just as we began to form for the march, westarted receiving hostile automatic weaponsfire from the south. I radioed the regimentaladvisor to report our situation. I informed himthat this was not a major attack; it was morelike a holding attack. He responded with acurt “Roger, out.” I looked at my watch, and itwas exactly 0600. The battalion redeployed toengage the enemy. I saw tracers lacing amongthe rubber trees—my first taste of hostile fire. Itook my RTO and weapons sergeant andcrawled toward the battalion CP, about 20 me-ters away. I left the rest of the team with ordersto finish closing our position and then to joinus at the CP. We heard the roar of a major bat-tle coming from the direction of the rest of theregiment. The regimental advisor tersely an-nounced on the radio, “We are escaping andevading.” After that, we lost all contact with him and therest of the regiment. It was my last contact with them.

AVietnamese soldier reported that two of myteam were wounded. The rest of the team and Icrawled under fire to where they lay, writhing

on the ground and crying in pain. I could see completelythrough a bullet hole in the weap-ons sergeant’s shin. Mydeputy had been shot in his right armpit, and the bullethad exited from his back near his spine. His wounds bub-bled as he breathed, making the sickening sounds of suck-ing chest wounds. I told the wounded, “Shut up and shoot back!” and di-

rected the other team members to return fire. The RTO wasattempting to contact anyone on the division advisor’s net,while I bandaged the wounded. (I did an outstandinglypoor job of it, but it was impossible to do better while lyingprone under small-arms fire.)

44 ARMY � April 2012

LTC William P. Baxter, USA Ret., graduated from the U.S. Mili-tary Academy in 1956. Commissioned in the Infantry, he servedtwo tours in Vietnam, being awarded decorations for valor onboth. On his first tour, he was awarded the Distinguished ServiceCross for the action described in this article and was alsoawarded three Bronze Star Medals, a Vietnamese Cross of Valorand a Legion of Merit. He is the author of a series of articles pub-lished in ARMY about Soviet tactics and weapons in the 1980sand is the author of the book Soviet Airland Battle Tactics. Hewas assigned to the U.S. Military Liaison Mission to the Groupof Soviet Forces in Germany. LTC Baxter told his story to COLFrancis R. Stevens, USA Ret., who graduated from the U.S.Military Academy in 1957. While at the Academy, he was as-signed to the same cadet company as William Baxter. Commis-sioned in the Artillery, COL Stevens served one tour in Vietnam.

U.S. Army/SP4 Richard Dixon

U.S. Army

46 ARMY � April 2012

The firing rapidly intensified. We saw dull red muzzleflashes about 50 meters away, and tracers thudded into arubber tree just above our heads. Volleys of fire from 75 mmrecoilless rifles whooshed between the rows of rubber treesand crashed into our position, showering us with hot metalfragments. The holding attack had escalated into a majorassault.I realized we were all going to be killed if we did not get

to a more covered position, so we crawled to a stream 30meters away, dragging our wounded with us. The RTO gotshot in the arm, so I took the radio.We flopped into the stream. The bed was about 8 feet

deep: Light, tan-colored, muddy water, streaked with red-dish mahogany-brown blood, was up to my chest. It waschoked with dead and dying soldiers, and I could see wa-ter geysers from enemy fire splashing toward us. We sawenemy soldiers wearing black pajamas and pith helmetsmoving along the stream and firing into groups of our sol-diers in the water. I grabbed a panicked soldier carrying amachine gun and situated him on the stream bank to fire atthe enemy. He grinned as he fired but suddenly turned to-ward me, half his face gone, and fell into the stream.The noise of the battle was so loud that it was impossible

to talk. Tracers flew everywhere, and the air smelled ofburnt cordite mixed with the stench of raw blood and tornflesh. I was reminded of the smell of dressing wild deer orgeese in hunting season.

The stream had become a death trap.I found a drainage ditch, 18 inchesdeep, feeding into the stream. I liftedthe lieutenant into the ditch and thenthe sergeant, but he shuddered, slippedout of my arms and disappeared under-water. His blood spattered my glasses. Ipulled his head above water and staredinto the whites of his eyes. I screamedinto his ear, “Stand up, damn you!”Much to my amazement, he blinked hiseyes, focused on me and stood on hisown feet. He had a new wound in hisneck. I got him and the rest of my teaminto the ditch and told them to crawl asfar from the stream as they could.I radioed for fire support. A spotter

plane that had been deployed to sup-port me asked that I mark my positionwith a smoke grenade. I started topull a purple smoke grenade from myharness, but bullets were splashingaround me and I had to get into thedrainage ditch fast.I crawled to my team, about 20 yards

away, over bodies of dead and dyingVietnamese soldiers. One pointed tothe area of his buttocks, which hadbeen shot away, exposing his intestines.His eyes were already glazing over

with impending death, and I could not help him.

We engaged in our own firefight with the enemyin the streambed. I was lying on my backshooting between my legs, while team mem-

bers fired to my left and right, as enemy soldiers poppedup and fired at us, then ducked back down.Aircraft thundered overhead, and the spotter said he

saw my purple smoke. I had not thrown the grenade, but Iapparently lost it while climbing into the ditch. I guess thatenemy soldiers in the stream threw it, hoping they wouldnot be bombed.I told the spotter to strike the smoke. He replied that it

was too close to us for a 500-pound bomb. I responded thatthe enemy was closer than the smoke, so my choice wasthe bomb. Moments later the bomb burst, and the noiseand shock of the explosion were paralyzing. The spotterasked, “You OK?” I mumbled, “I think so.”As I peered around the base of a rubber tree to assess the

situation, enemy automatic weapons fire shot the long an-tenna off of my radio. Pieces of it rained down on us. I re-placed the stump with the short whip antenna and laid iton the ground. The whip antenna would transmit only ashort distance, and my only contact was with the spotteroverhead until an advisor with an ARVN artillery battal-ion, which had deployed close enough to support us,called in with the offer of much-needed fire support.

U.S. Army/SP4 Dennis Kurpius

My team shot at enemy troops in the trees only 30meters away. I know that I shot at least two.Hostile fire intensified, and 82 mm mortar shells

exploded around our position. I had to admire the skill ofthe enemy mortar crew as it systematically marched mortarfire in a rectangular pattern through our position. Volleysfrom 75 mm recoilless rifles firing down the rows of treesexploded around us. The thump and crack of fire from AK-47s added to the cacophony. Dull red muzzle flashes rip-pled among the trees. I directed air strikes and artillery fireon the nearest enemy.The noise of the battle was overwhelming. Adrenaline

sharpened my senses. I was sensitive to the smells ofcordite, high explosives, blood and flesh all at once. My vi-sion was sharpened, colors were brighter than normal, andit seemed that I could see everything all at once. I forcedmyself to ignore all but themost immediate events relevantto survival to avoid being para-lyzed by sensory overload.My weapons sergeant was

rolling back and forth from leftto right. Each time, he took aimwith his carbine but never fired,before rolling back in the otherdirection. He had “buck fever”because he had too many tar-gets to shoot at. I beat on hisback and yelled into his ear toshoot only in one direction, andhe was OK after that.I saw an enemy soldier crawl-

ing towards me up the ditchwith his AK-47 cradled in hisarms. He wasn’t looking wherehe was going and was up to myfeet before I could get my car-bine untangled from the radio.He looked at my boots just as Ifired a burst into his face.An aircraft dropped a “daisy

cutter” bomb directly in front of us. The ground shockwave bounced me out of the ditch; the air shock waveslammed me down again. My ears rang from the noise.We heard bugle calls, and hostile small-arms fire ex-

ploded in intensity. The enemy started his final assault. Icalled all available fires on our position, only to be toldthat none would be available for 30 minutes. I respondedthat we all would be dead by then.My team was looking at me with wide eyes, waiting for

orders. I told them to fix bayonets. My plan was to rushinto the enemy assault line as it closed on our positionwith the faint hope that some of us might break throughinto their rear before being killed.The enemy skirmish line swarmed over the ditch, but ar-

tillery fire had disorganized it, and it went around us to ourleft and right. We fired at them on all sides and to our rear.

An enemy soldier, his AK-47 slung across his chest, sud-denly appeared on the parapet of the drainage ditch. Hestood, gawking at us with an expression of total surprise onhis face, which changed to recognition and then resignationas he saw the muzzle of my carbine swing up at him. Hewas wearing gold-rimmed spectacles and a little gold crosson a chain around his neck. After one burst from myweapon, he fell backward with his Ho Chi Minh sandals inmy face.Once again, enemy bugles sounded, signaling a second

assault. We all were about to be killed when an aircraftflew over, dropping hundreds of cluster bomb units(CBUs) containing grapefruit-sized bomblets that ex-ploded on contact with the trees or ground, showering thearea with marble-sized projectiles. This broke the enemyassault and left the battlefield in an eerie silence for a few

moments. The sound of battlethen resumed, but at a lowerintensity. Another aircraft re-peated the CBU drop. (I nevercould find out where those air-craft came from.)The battle gradually faded

away. I heard birds chirping andmoans and soft crying of thewounded. I cautiously stood tosurvey the scene. The landscapewas littered with broken rub-ber trees and twisted, broken,and bleeding dead as well aswounded ARVN and NVA sol-diers, some writhing in pain.The air had an odor of raw fleshand acrid smoke. I looked at mywatch. It was 1400: exactly eighthours since the battle had be-gun.I was astounded to still be

alive, and even more astoundedto be uninjured. I could not un-derstand how my team had sur-

vived the day. I was physically unscathed, but it would takeyears before I would understand how this day had impactedme in other ways.I rounded up the remaining 45 effective troops of the 3rd

Battalion, organized them into a platoon and deployed itin a diamond formation. We moved south toward TayNinh, carrying some of the wounded, and secured a clear-ing one-half kilometer away for evacuation of casualties. Ahelicopter landed, and we loaded my wounded teammembers on board. I was such a mess that the crew chiefthought I was wounded too and tried to pull me on board,but I refused. We moved some of the most seriouslywounded Vietnamese to the clearing and evacuated thembefore dark.My uniform was in tatters, soaked in blood and reeking

of gore. I was a veteran.

48 ARMY � April 2012

U.S. Army/SP4 Dennis Kurpius

50 ARMY � April 2012

The Day AfterThe supply sergeant and I stayed in the Michelin with

the battered remainder of the regiment. We occupied aperimeter-defensive position with the remains of the 2ndand 3rd Battalions. The subsequent three days were spentpolicing the battlefield. Our soldiers picked up the dead ofboth sides and loaded them into 5-ton dump trucks com-mandeered from the Michelin Plantation. This was grimand dirty work. By the end of the second day, the stench ofdecaying flesh was becoming unbearable.I was told later that all the wounded members of my

team had been medically evacuated to the United States. Ihad known them less than 24 hours.I was ordered to determine the

status of the missing advisors. Theyall were dead. The bodies of theregimental senior advisor and hisradio operator were about a milefrom the site of the regimental head-quarters. Apparently the regimentaladvisor’s legs had been wounded.He had been gaffed with a bailinghook through his jaw and draggedalong the ground until his captorstired of dragging him and shot himto death. His RTO was found nearby.He had been bound, stripped andshot to death.The bodies of the 1st and 2nd

Battalion advisors were mixed withthe Vietnamese dead where theywere killed. The 4th Battalion hadbeen sliced in half; the half that hadbeen overrun were all dead. Mostof the rest were wounded.

PostscriptI had written my wife, Janet, from

Saigon telling her of my assignmentjust prior to the helicopter ride toTay Ninh. She received the lettertwo days later—just in time to reada headline article in the BaltimoreSun titled ‘The Death of a Regi-ment.’ The first paragraph read, “The ARVN 7th Regimentdied today in the Michelin Rubber Plantation north of TayNinh in Vietnam. All of the U.S. advisors also were killed.”Of course, this news shattered her, and she lived dread-

ing the arrival of Army survivor assistance officers at herdoor. Unfortunately, I was out in the jungle and had noway to contact her. A reporter and cameraman from NBCinterviewed me, however, and the interview was broadcaston the 7:00 P.M. news a few days later. Janet happened to bewatching and was so excited to discover that I survivedthe battle that she did not hear the interview.What had happened in the Michelin Rubber Plantation

that day? The 1st and 2nd Battalions and the headquarters

of the 7th ARVN Regiment were destroyed, and all of theU.S. advisors were killed. Two of the three companies ofthe 4th Battalion were annihilated, and all U.S. advisorswere wounded. They composed the regiment’s main battleposition. My battalion was reduced to 45 effective troops;the rest were killed or wounded. All of my advisors sur-vived, although three of them were wounded. There wereabout 200 enemy dead.Apparently, the ARVN commander had had some ink-

ling of a possible hostile attack on his regiment and haddeployed my battalion to be bait for the enemy so that hismain force could then attack them from the rear. The en-

emy instead attacked his main force,destroyed it and then turned its at-tention to the bait.I later learned that the hostile

force was a reinforced North Viet-namese regiment that had freshlyarrived in South Vietnam throughCambodia only days before the bat-tle. It was well-armed and equippedwith the newest Soviet squad ma-chine guns and AK-47 assault rifles,82 mm mortars and 75 mm recoil-less rifles.The ARVN 7th Regiment was

trained and equipped to fight onlypoorly armed irregular forces, beingarmed with U.S. surplus weap onsfrom World War II. It was nottrained or equipped to fight regularforces. Our largest weapons were 60mm mortars. When I pointed thisout a few days later to a visitingcolonel from MACV (Military Assis-tance Command, Vietnam) Head-quarters, sent to find out what hadhappened, he informed me that“our weapons were good enough todefeat the Japanese on Guadalcanalin 1942 and certainly were goodenough for this war.” On a largescale, this battle marked the transi-tion of the Vietnam War from a low-

intensity conflict between small units to a more intensewar on a greater scale. It was the day that introduced me tohell. My regimental senior advisor found it was a real warafter all.Several weeks later I had reason to visit the G-2 office for

U.S. Army Vietnam and was talking with an acquaintancewho remarked, “Gee, that’s too bad. We knew that battlewas about to happen, but you did not have the securityclearance to receive the information.” I lost my temper,started a fist fight and was unceremoniously thrown out ofthe headquarters by a group of MPs. A colonel escorted meto the helipad and ensured that I went back to the jungle,where he thought I belonged. �