I sent Ron Corbin an emial showing him the post I put here earlier about our recon.
He sent me this today.

Hi Bob,

Yeah, Nov 11, 1966 was a day that I'll always remember. I had been
in-country only about 30 days and was actually taking my AC checkride
with the Plt Capt that day. If you saw the movie "We Were Soldiers,"
then you can compare the 119th's Nov 11 battle to that one in the Ia
Drang which occurred almost exactly one year before. In fact, we
referred to our's as the "Ia Drang Anniversary Battle." It basically
happened in the same area, too, only a few klicks north.

Instead of the 1st Cav, we were staging this big operation with parts
of the 4th Inf and 25th Inf Divs. There's a book written about it
titled, "West to Cambodia." Although it's mostly from a grunt's
perspective, our air operation and this LZ is described in one of the
chapters called Pali Wali Doodle (I think...I read it many years ago).

Flying with the first Plt (Yellow Tails) Capt, I was in the lead
aircraft for the initial assault. We came from the east and had planned
to land to the north in an oblong shaped LZ. However, that morning we
hit the RP and the C&C said there was a slight breeze from the south,
so
we quickly altered our flight route and turned north...almost like a
downwind traffic pattern. Then we turned left base and left onto final
into the LZ ...landing south.

Later we found out that the NVA had set up automatic weapons facing to
the south, on the south end of the LZ, in order to take down the
slicks.
But since we had changed to an approach from the north, that put us
behind Charlie and caught them by surprise. Before they could get
repositioned, the first wave of slicks were in and out.

On the west side was a tree line. Charlie had several AA weapons in a
zig-zag pattern that had been hidden in bunkers. All during the arty
prep and air strikes, they kept the weapons inside the bunkers. Of
course, when the last round impacted and being a Willie Peter type,
Charlie was smart enough to know that now all they had to contend with
was the Crocs. They wheeled the AA out into the open and started taking
down our Crocs on the west side.

I can remember seeing the first one hit and the tail boom burning and
basically melting-off as the pilots tried to gain altitude. The 2nd
Croc
rolled-in and was hit. He rolled inverted and dove into the trees. In
both cases, at least one of the pilots were alive because we could hear
the yelling and screaming on the radio. My mouth dropped wide open, and
interestingly, being a product of the late 40s / early 50s patriotic
movies...I can recall thinking, "My God, this is just like John Wayne
and the 'Flying Tigers' movie."

The remainder of the day and well into the night, just like "We Were
Soldiers," we kept going back in and out for wounded and ammo resupply.
And more arty and air strikes were called in (still just like in the
movie). I think it was that night that another bird got into a
"dustout"
landing on one of the nearby SF camp runways. Probably set-up mast
bumping or something and the blade came through the cockpit and one or
both pilots were killed.

The basic difference between this battle and the 1st Cav's Ia Drang
Valley one is that I guess the brass had learned their lesson from a
year before. We were ordered to extract everyone the following day. I
can remember seeing a pile of dead gooks (just like in the movie, too).
And my Capt and I flew together again. After several sorties of taking
our troops out, the timing was such that we happened to be the last
ship
in for the last five GIs. I was almost more scared on this than the
insertion, because I kept staring at the tree line to my right thinking
that I was going to see hundreds of NVA come charging at us.

Say, enough reminiscing...when you going to come out to Vegas? Would
love to see you again.

Gotta get back to work. Good hearing from you, buddy. Have a great
Thanksgiving.

Ron
"Calif Dreamer" (Gator 373)