Dennis Ziebarth in the Suai Ca Valley

Wednesday, 19 November 1970

The platoon had just returned to LZ Uplift and was beginning to stand down after completing a fifteen-day mission in the Suai Ca Valley.

On this stand down, our platoon was first in rotation as the "ready reaction" platoon for the battalion. As usual, we were blowing off a little steam – probably relaxing at the steakhouse or standing under the shower, hot or cold, trying to rinse away the country.

Like always, we were scattered all over the LZ trying to make ourselves scarce – "out of sight" (the first sergeant's) and "out of mind" (his)! We were probably enjoying a typical day on stand down that Thursday afternoon when word came down to grab our weapons and gear and get over to the TOC.

By the time we got there, the Hueys were sitting on the pad next to the TOC with their rotors turning. We learned that a unit of the 17th Air Cavalry, had been running a mission near the southern end of the Suai Ca. During the mission, one of their Light Observation Helicopters had been shot down. The 17th Cav had their own small reaction force but they still needed assistance securing the area of the helicopter crash where, as it turned out, both crewmembers had been killed.

When we arrived in the area of the crash, there didn't appear to be a lot of commotion. We established a perimeter and set up security for the LZ. As the afternoon wore on, choppers continued to come in with additional troops or material and the Cav's gunships continued to fly close cover over the ground where the actual crash had occurred. It wasn't too long before we could see a small group of men coming in from the jungle to our west. It was the Cav's reaction force. Two or three of the guys were shirtless and carrying a single improvised stretcher with the badly burned remains of the two pilots. All of the guys coming in with that small group were visibly upset; some of them were in tears. Their unit was small and probably a pretty close-knit group. Losing the pilots was like losing two family members.

After the pilots' bodies were recovered the Cav withdrew their force, leaving our platoon in the area. It was too late in the day to get us back to Uplift so we set up a night defensive position and stayed in the area. We were pretty disappointed to be left in the field. We had just begun stand down before being called back out to support the Cav. We figured that being left out in the boonies instead of returning to the LZ probably meant that our stand down was over and our next fifteen-day mission in the field was commencing. As it turned out, that's pretty much what happened.

Our position that night was on the western edge of the valley floor, at the foot of the slopes that swept up into the mountains surrounding the valley. The floor of the valley in this area had previously been cultivated. Evidence of the old rice paddy dikes still existed. Near the edge of the valley the heavier jungle vegetation and steeper terrain began. We found what we felt was a pretty defensible position near the edge of the heavier jungle growth on the valley floor and set out trip flares and claymores. We had our backs turned to the rising terrain so that we could face out towards the valley floor. We set up the watch schedule and settled in for the night.

Thursday, 20 November, 1970

The next morning, the skies were gray and overcast. The Monsoon Season was nearing an end but the heavy clouds were still causing a gray overcast on most days and had done so since late September.

Platoon Sergeant Via chose our squad to run a quick recon of the area just outside of the defensive perimeter where we had spent the previous night. These recon patrols were usually a quick check of the area closest to the perimeter and generally only lasted 30 minutes or so.

Staff Sergeant Bill "Flea" Bishop was the Squad Leader and took the lead that morning, walking point for the squad. "Flea" was rather small in stature, hence the name, "Flea." I believe he was from Florida and had only recently arrived back in country for his second tour in Vietnam. I was a Fire Team Leader or Assistant Squad Leader and had been in country about eight months. Specialist 4(Spec. 4)Santos Marino was our Radio Telephone Operator (RTO). Santos was Hispanic with a real expressive face, a real affable guy, always ready to laugh. He'd been in Vietnam for almost a year and, I believe, was from Texas. Spec. 4 Williams, our M-79 Grenadier, was an Afro-American who had not been in country more than a few months. Dennis was our M-60 Machine Gunner. I considered Dennis a friend even though I didn't know him very well. We'd arrived in Vietnam at about the same time and even though we were in the same platoon, we were in different squads, so we weren't together every day and as a result didn't share the same closeness that we each shared with others. I remember Dennis' height and smile and the close friendships that he seemed to have with the other guys who made up his usual squad. There were two other riflemen who were members of our squad that day, but time has erased their names from my memory. I do remember, however, that both were pretty new in the field. One of them was Hispanic and the other had only been in Vietnam for about four days, a real new guy.

While most of us knew each other, having been in the same platoon for the greater part of our time in country, we were not all usually assigned to the same squad. The haste with which we had been deployed to the field on the previous afternoon had not allowed the entire platoon to be assembled before lift off. For this reason, we re-organized ourselves into roughly three squads, instead of the usual four.

We slipped out of the perimeter early, shortly after daylight and morning coffee, moving towards the west and the area of the previous day's crash site. We were not looking to engage the enemy on this patrol; we were just trying to make sure that he wasn't sneaking up on us as we prepared to move the short distance to an LZ for extraction, we hoped, back to LZ Uplift. We still held out hope that we could return to Uplift to continue our stand down before re-assignment to our next mission.

As we moved away from the main body of the platoon we discovered a trail that appeared to have been frequently used. Continuing up it for a short distance, we found that a significant amount of underbrush had been removed from a gentle slope leading up to a low ridge running along the right side of the trail. We took our time crossing this cleared area but chose not to investigate it too closely.

The events of the previous day and the evidence that we were finding near the trail were making us pretty cautious and a little nervous as well. I think our hope that day was that whatever enemy had shot down the helicopter on the previous day had already left the area when they saw how quickly we had been airlifted into the area.

One of the guys, it may well have been Sergeant Bishop, had his rifle safety off, and at some point during this part of the patrol, accidentally fired his weapon into the air. We had been attempting to be as quiet and careful as possible so as not to alert the enemy to our presence. This accidental rifle shot startled all of us and, I'm sure, anyone else in the area as well. As we proceeded up the trail, we came to a tree that had been chopped down parallel to it. Walking past the tree, we had to push its branches out of the way to pass. We were taking a lot of time to move up the trail and staying in constant contact with the platoon back at the night defensive perimeter. We continued to move in this manner until we reached a point were the trail turned towards the right, entered the brush, crossed a stream and started winding up the hillside.

We stopped, called in a situation report and decided to return to the perimeter. The seven of us were stretched out in a column, back down the trail, for about thirty to fifty meters. To one side of the trail was the low ridge covered in dense vegetation. On the other side, dense scrub brush with a shallow stream running through it. To our front, the trail disappeared into the brush and the face of the mountain defining the west wall of the valley. Our position at this point was probably two to three hundred meters away from our starting point at the night defensive perimeter.

As I turned to signal the rest of the guys in our column to reverse direction so we could head back to the perimeter, I watched, in seeming slow motion, as a small, grayish-black explosion occurred directly under William's feet. The flash and blast blew him up into the air and dropped him flat on the ground. I was stunned. My first thought was that Williams had stepped on a mine or tripped a booby trap. As I began running toward him to help with his injuries, I shouted to Marino to call for a dust-off (medical evacuation helicopter). Before I could reach him, however, we started receiving automatic weapons fire. All of us were in the open and pretty good targets. I remember shouting to Marino to call in an ambush and began firing on full auto as I ran for the edge of the clearing and some cover. Some of the other guys were firing by now and for a few minutes that's all you could hear. During this time I was using up ammo pretty quickly trying to sustain a high volume of outgoing fire. We were still receiving heavy fire and several rounds struck the ground in front of my position kicking quite a bit of dirt into my face. The thought then occurred to me that the enemy could see me and were aiming and shooting at me, not just in my general direction! I realized that I was still lying pretty much in the open. As I tried to ease further back into the brush, a couple more enemy grenades exploded very nearby. I remember thinking while this was happening, that I was probably not going to live through this or at best I might be wounded or captured. The surprising thing was the calmness that I felt while having these thoughts, even while I was frantically changing magazines and trying to find a target to shoot at. Amazingly, even though we were firing back with everything we had, I don't believe that any of us ever saw a single enemy soldier that we could place an aimed shot at. The firing began to taper off and soon died down to almost nothing. Then it became pretty quiet.

I called softly to Marino the RTO. I wanted him to call for the dust-off and gun-ships. Marino called back that he was hit in the shoulder and losing a lot of blood. I then called to Williams, the first guy hit, he was semi-conscious but not rational. He complained of being hot and wanting to take off his clothes. I told him to lie still and stay quiet until we were sure the enemy was gone. When I called out to others, Bishop, Dennis and the new guys, I got no answer. As it turned out, Bishop was OK but had not wanted to make any noise, he believed he still had enemy in front of him. The two new guys had run back down the trail a short distance and managed to get out of the ambush kill zone so they didn't hear when I called out to them. When the rest of the platoon came up to pull us out a little later, the new guys were found taking cover under some of the heavy brush that lined the stream paralleling the trail.

I was still not sure whether the enemy had pulled out or not, but all of the Incoming fire had stopped. I tried to get Marino to call our position in to the platoon but he was either losing or had lost consciousness. When I crawled to his position, I found that he had managed to find an old foxhole or pit and was lying in the bottom of it, unconscious. The enemy bullet that had torn through his right shoulder had heavily damaged his rifle, which was lying nearby. I quickly bandaged his shoulder and started calling in our position to Roger Fike for the dust-off and gunships. Roger was Platoon Sergeant Via's RTO. Sergeant Via instructed us to toss out a smoke grenade to indicate our position. We didn't have any smoke with us so I began to fire periodic, three-round bursts from my rifle instead.

The rest of the platoon was moving toward our location, using the sound of these three round bursts for guidance as they came to reinforce us. They were moving slowly, concerned about being drawn into a larger ambush. When they finally appeared, the first face I saw come through the brush belonged to Sgt. Tim Blanton from Tennessee. Tim and I had been friends before coming to Vietnam. We had gone through NCO School, Jump School and had been in the 82nd Airborne Division together before being sent over to Nam. I quickly briefed him on our tactical situation, then we began to provide covering fire for each other as we climbed out of Marino's foxhole and crossed the ambush kill zone once again. We continued to provide covering fire for the rest of the platoon as they came up.

As the rest of the platoon was getting into position to secure the area, the medic was checking Marino's dressing. He then ran over to check on Williams and found what appeared to be only a few small caliber shrapnel wounds. But Williams was still in a pretty severe state of shock from the blast and concussion of the explosion that had occurred under his feet.

By now the gunships were overhead, working over the surrounding area with rockets, grenades and mini-guns (.30 caliber electric Gattling gun). As I glanced around at the guys now securing the ambush site I noticed Sergeant Via. He was pointing into the jungle, directing the platoon as he sought to gain control of the situation. My warmest memory of him is the tear that was running down his cheek and his shaking hand as he stood in the middle of the kill zone directing our fire. The rest of us had always looked upon him as the real "old man", kind of a "Sergeant Rock". We thought he looked and acted like it. Sergeant Via was thirty-one years old at the time. Looking back, after thirty years, I'm amazed at how young all of us were, including the old "sarge".

The medic and I found Dennis a few moments later, face down over his gun. When we rolled him over we could see that he had been badly hit in the forehead. In our youth and inexperience we thought that he was still breathing. In retrospect, I know now that the rattle in his chest and the fixed stare in his eyes was telling us that he was already gone. I had never seen one of our guys die.

The dust-off came in and picked up Marino and Williams. The LZ was very small and the chopper couldn't land so it hovered five or six feet above ground while we loaded them on. Then it left. We were worried about losing another chopper to ground fire so we didn't want him hovering too long in this part of the valley. We still considered Dennis wounded, however, so we brought the dust-off back around for a second pass to pick him up. Dennis was a big man. We were very near the screaming tail rotor of the helicopter as it hovered over the LZ but we managed to get him forward to the doorway and up to the waiting hands of the door gunner and medic.

The gunships continued to come in over our heads, getting closer, it seemed, with each pass. The noise of the incoming fire was so intense it sounded like it was right on top of us. On one of their last runs, as they came in firing rockets, I found myself face down behind a rice paddy dike screaming. No one could hear me over the racket of the incoming rocket fire. I guess I was beginning to feel some of the stress and shock of the ambush at this point and just wished to God I was anywhere but there.

We began to move back to the perimeter that we had occupied the previous night. As we returned, more choppers were arriving from the rear with the rest of our platoon and company along with the Battalion Commander.

Marino, Williams, and Dennis had already gone out on the dust-off. As some of the other choppers headed back to Uplift after dumping their load, they checked to see if anyone else needed to return to the rear. I think we all wanted to go but just couldn't come up with a good reason. Sergeant Bishop, however, returned to the rear claiming a wrenched back from the ambush. As I was collecting ammo from Marino's, William's and Dennis' field gear to replace what I had used earlier, I also took most of Bishop's ammo including the magazine in his rifle. The magazine in his rifle was full of tracers. It was the same magazine that I had given him that morning before going out on the patrol. I had given him the tracers so that if he fired at anything while walking point I could easily see what he was shooting at and could also more easily engage the same target. I was surprised to find most of the tracers still in his magazine, unfired.

Later in the morning, I recapped the events for Sergeants King and Via and our Platoon Leader. They indicated that they had heard the firefight develop just as I had described it, first hearing the grenade blast that wounded Williams and the automatic weapons fire that wounded Marino and killed Dennis. They said that they could hear Dennis' M-60 firing over the noise of the other shooting (the M-60 makes a very distinctive sound), then they heard it stop firing. Later in the day, as I talked with the two new guys that had been with us, I learned that one of them had been near Dennis early in the firefight and that Dennis had turned and signaled for him to bring up more machine gun ammo. It was probably shortly after this that Dennis was hit.

What I remember most about Dennis that day is that he provided covering fire from the kill zone for the rest of us during the firefight.

He was in the open, with no cover.

He was hit in the forehead by either an enemy bullet or a grenade fragment.

He died fighting.

When we wrote up the after-action report for the Company Commander, we estimated that we had been ambushed by a platoon of North Vietnamese Army Regulars. As a result of the size of the ambushing force, the rest of our company was airlifted from LZ Uplift to our location and ordered to set up a blocking position near the base of the mountain. The other three companies of our battalion were brought in to conduct a sweep from the mountain ridge down to our position.

The Air Force had come in with F-4 Phantoms shortly after our initial engagement that morning, and had strafed and dropped napalm on likely routes of enemy escape.

The remainder of the day was spent positioning our company for the upcoming sweep by the battalion. As the day wore on, choppers continued to ferry in more of our guys. We could see them off in the distance, settling down on the tops of the surrounding mountains, unloading more of the battalion.

I stayed in the field with the two new guys; we were re-assigned to another squad for the remainder of the mission. The young Hispanic guy was given Dennis' M-60 and was made the new machine gunner. He was still pretty shook up, all of us were, but we were still in the field and had to be ready for the next enemy contact. He was pretty unfamiliar with the gun and we spent an hour or so trying to get him comfortable with it. I don't really remember whether we left him assigned to the gun or assigned it to someone else. Today, looking back, I know that the gun needed to be in experienced hands.

Later in the day, Sergeant Via confirmed that the Battalion Aid Station had not been able to save Dennis.

Williams and Marino were both wounded seriously enough to be sent home.

The rest of the platoon had stayed in the valley for another week or so and then returned to Uplift. Within the next month LZ Uplift was closed and the two battalions that had called it home were re-assigned to LZ English and LZ North English near the village of Bong Son about fifteen to twenty kilometers further north, along Route One.

Dennis Leroy Ziebarth