Delmer Virgil Ashbrook

At about midnight on March 17, 1969 a team of 12 9TH Infantry soldiers boarded 2 Hueys for a Night Raid in the Mekong Delta region of South Vietnam. They had been doing these raids since early January. Most of the time the Night Raids caught the Viet Cong asleep and were able to capture prisoners giving tremendous intelligence. On this night though intelligence didn’t reveal that the selected landing zone was in the middle of a Viet Cong stronghold. Upon landing the 12 man team was pinned down by hostile machine gun fire which immediately killed Captain Joseph Hudson and his RTO (Radio Telephone Operator) Delmer Ashbrook.