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While soldiers from Battery A, 1st Battalion, 77th Artillery Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division
rested in their bunkers after participating in one of the Vietnam War's largest offensives,
the brunt force of North Vietnamese troops attacking them woke them up.
The men were protecting a hill known as Landing Zone Peanuts
in support of troops that had just regained control of the nearby Khe Sanh base.
As dozens of American cavalrymen and their respective artillery units scrambled to find
refuge amidst the relentless fire coming from all flanks, the battle quickly turned vicious.
The confrontation between the outnumbered American
force and the specialized North Vietnamese unit known as sappers
ultimately resulted in some of the most brutal fighting that air cavalry troops would ever see...
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Protecting The Base
In April of 1968, the skies over the northwestern corner of South Vietnam
filled with hundreds of UH-1 Huey, CH-54 Skycrane, and CH-47 Chinook helicopters,
C-7A Caribou airplanes, and other aircraft from the 1st Cavalry combined arms division,
one of the most decorated combat divisions of the United States Army.
As the aircraft fluttered around, their crews directed manpower,
equipment, and firepower to several landing zones that were part of Operation Pegasus,
one of the Vietnam War's largest offensives.
On April 8, the relief force reached a Marine base at Khe Sanh in the Quảng Trị Province
that had been taken over by the North Vietnamese Army since June.
Most of the 1st Cavalry Division troops then began their trek back south to the A Shau Valley, except
for soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, and their associated artillery units.
The forces had been helicoptered to a T-shaped hill known as Landing Zone Peanuts
to support Marine regiments that had begun reestablishing control of the Khe Sanh base
and facing the westward approaches from the vicious North Vietnamese Army.
If the NVA wanted to attack Khe Sanh again, they would have to go through the landing zone first.
The 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry then established defensive positions around the perimeter,
and the men laid coiled barbed wire and cut down grass around their bunkers
to provide clear fields of fire.
Stretching out from Landing Zone Peanuts was a narrow rectangle of land dotted with howitzer
large range weapons, where the bunkers of artillerymen from Battery A, 1st Battalion,
77th Artillery Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division were set.
The troops were now ready to face the enemy and protect the base at all costs.
First Attack
On the afternoon of May 4, 1968, three enemy artillery rounds suddenly landed in the perimeter,
hitting the weapons dump containing over 2,000 rounds of howitzer ammunition.
The subsequent blast forced the Americans to climb and take cover.
By sundown, Landing Zone Peanuts had been hit with 21 rounds, taking the lives of two soldiers
and injuring 10 more, including the Battery A's Captain, Ron Weiss.
Without the commanding officer, the diminished ranks of artillerymen had
no choice but to leave their positions and run for cover inside foxholes on the main hilltop,
abandoning their battery's six Howitzers.
As the night fell, 1st Battalion 5th Cavalry Lieutenant Colonel Zeke Jordan realized that
the base was now a top priority for the North Vietnamese soldiers approaching from Laos.
Only 150 men were defending Peanuts, while over 300 North Vietnamese men
from the 304 NVA Division's 66th Regiment had spread out and hidden in the area.
There were also no manned howitzers on the hilltop and only one
understrength infantry company providing perimeter security.
Jordan knew that the situation would turn sour very quickly.
The Fighting Intensifies
By midnight, the initial attackers began to crawl uphill from multiple sides.
They were known as sappers and wore only small drab loincloths and were smeared with soot.
Hauling satchels filled with explosives and carrying folding-stock AK-47 assault rifles,
the attackers were on a mission to blast wide gaps in the Landing Zone's perimeter
for regular troops to run behind them and perform a close-quarters attack.
This kind of surprise attack was the Sapper force's specialty,
as they were members of the Bo Doi Dac Cong, a highly organized, well-trained,
and well-equipped organization carrying out special operations.
Around 2:00am, two men from the Alpha Company securing the perimeter were
sitting at the bottom of an underground bunker
about 200 miles away from the landing zone when two trip flares were set off nearby.
The men then grabbed their grenades, pulled the pins, and tossed the explosive
devices in their direction, hearing the screams of enemy troops as they exploded.
Realizing how close the enemy was to the perimeter,
Private Britton Kaur grabbed the radio inside his bunker to contact Captain George Kish
at the Alpha Company's hootch, only 350 yards away from the landing zone.
While Kaur talked into the headset, the other men inside the bunker
began tearing down parts of the walls in order to create better observation points.
Both sides exchanged damaging grenades and satchel charges for several minutes, and as the Americans
began to hear small-arms fire and explosions intensifying on the higher ridge behind them,
it was clear that Landing Zone Peanuts was under attack from sappers approaching from the east,
northeast, and southwest perimeters.
The attacks continued for a few more hours,
as waves of vicious sappers and North Vietnamese soldiers continued to assault the perimeter.
Meanwhile, 1st Lieutenant Mike Maynard, who became the acting commander after Weiss was injured,
gave the order to shoot illumination flares over
the landing zone to allow the base's defenders to identify the enemies.
The soldiers continued to perform all sorts of frenzied actions to stop the
enemy's advance all across the landing zone’s fronts.
On the southern perimeter, Private Scott Thompson of Alpha Company
was inside his bunker when the first flares exploded in the sky,
lighting up countless NVA locations at the bottom of the hills.
To his left, the sound of gunfire around the howitzers intensified,
while on his right, an M60 machine gun fired its bullets with red tracer tails over the hill.
As Thompson took a peek outside the slit of his bunker, a burst of light
revealed a nearly naked man running up the hill, bypassing his position.
Incredulous, Thompson aimed his rifle at the passing sapper, but before he could fire,
a small explosive landed right at his feet.
Leaping into a slit trench filled with human waste, Thompson escaped at the last second
and witnessed the blast explode above him as he lay on the ground.
Then, after escaping two more charges landing near his body,
Thompson had no choice but to remain in the relative safety of the stinking trench.
North Vietnamese men and sappers were now moving freely through the battery,
throwing their ammunition directly at the unmanned howitzers.
Around 4:00am, with sunlight still an hour away and the soldiers still running for
their lives while struggling to defend the base, the already heavy arms fire
intensified as the enemy attempted one final push against Landing Zone Peanuts.
1st Lieutenant Ed Cattron, who carried the last functioning radio in the area,
then spotted dozens of enemy soldiers hiding only 50 yards away from them,
and he and another soldier charged their rifles and grenades at the vehicles.
After several minutes of close-quarters fighting and the lighting flares running low,
Cattron shouted at the fighting soldiers around the base to pull back into the bunker.
Lighting Up The Sky
With no time to waste, Lieutenant Cattron radioed the fire support liaison officer
and told him that they needed Blue Max support in their area.
Blue Max was the rocket-armed aircraft of the 20th Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division.
At about 4:30am and still in the dark, the Americans used
their last illumination rounds and watched them drift across the Valley.
The soldiers were terrified of even a second of darkness, and they hung their heads in despair.
But just when they had lost hope, the distant hum of aircraft engines was heard in the distance.
The twin-engine Air Force Douglas AC-47 Spooky was now flying overhead and radioed: [QUOTE]
"Peanuts Control, Peanuts Control, this is Spooky. We are coming on station. Where do you need us?"
Spooky lit up the sky within seconds,
dropping powerful MK-24 flares and lethal mini-guns to attack the invaders.
With the sky now as bright as a summer afternoon,
the soldiers in the area erupted in screams of joy and continued to fight off the attackers.
The Sun then began to rise, and the terrifying sounds of war diminished. The exhausted soldiers
then began to appear from behind the blast walls and foxholes to survey the damage.
Aftermath
At around 7:00am, the soldiers found 30 North Vietnamese bodies in and
around the base's perimeter. All of them carried AK-47 rifles, rocket launchers,
radio, and dozens of charges and grenades.
It was clear that the attack on Landing Zone Peanuts was deliberate and well-coordinated.
As a stream of medical evacuation helicopters helped remove the wounded and perished from the
area, infantrymen with minor wounds chose to remain at the base to support their comrades.
Then, on May 6, the Americans destroyed their base at Peanuts and headed into the jungle.
Two days later, most of the remaining infantrymen were helicoptered five miles
south of the Demilitarized Zone for a joint operation with the Marines.
Although the defense of Landing Zone Peanuts had been successful,
it was only the beginning for the 1st Cavalry Division...
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