My swamp chicken war story is full of miss spellings and typos and I posted in haste. Now I can't remember my password.
Here is the corrected version.
The attack on 7 Jan 1967
I have a couple of problems with that story.
I was the 119th Officer of the guard that night. My sergeant was Sp5 Lawson. Either I took a bust in rank or there were two Robert Taylor's (one WO and one sp4). Lawson's name is also missing. WO-1 John Grow (155th) was the very first gunship off the ground that night and his name is also missing. (Later I found a bomb made of a hand flare canister and C-4 lying in a puddle of water where his aircraft had been parked, the fuze had failed.
WO Jimmy West had the only helicopter mini-guns in the AO. (we were converting them). When the mortars started, the first man into the bunker was a major from Battalion. I almost shot him. He started yelling at me and I told him that I did not have time to argue with him and that I’d "lost commo with the whole damned bunker line". Sp5 Lawson and I left the bunker and started across the runway and a machine gun opened up on us. About 3 feet high and straight down the runway from the 604th end. I laid down and low crawled to a revetment yelling at Lawson. He got down on the other side of the runway. There was a break in the fire and I crawled to him and we went to the bunkers. Crawling and whistling (yes it was stupid) and we found the reason for the lost commo. The troops were in the bunkers and the phones and radios were on top, (at least the wires were.) To save time looking for them at guard change, the wires had been tied around posts on top of the bunkers. We checked each bunker, got commo going and went back to the 119th CP bunker. The mortar fire had shifted toward the 604th end of Holloway but some was still coming into other areas. Lawson and I got back to the bunker and the CO was there along with several other officers. He said "Mr Taylor, you and the First Sergeant go through the area and see if you can find any casualties." I looked straight at an Infantry LT. sitting against the bunker wall and wondered, “Its been 15 minutes, why the hell hasn't he sent you", but I said nothing. I just went back out. I am still pissed about that to this day.
Recently I was talking to Allen Lambert, a flight school classmate, and he said that he was still sleeping in the hootch area and I found him and yelled at him to get to cover. Anyway the 1st Sgt and I went through the area and found no injured. We did see the VC forward observers on the water tower. By the time we realized the valves to turn on water were UNDER the tower and went back to check, the VC were gone.
Anyway, that is a nice article, but like so much at BN was a bit short on the real story.
Thanks for posting it.
Bob Taylor