LZ Carolyn

[Bill Farnie]

Welcome Home and to the PF Ken

[kenzel]

Yankees think we're Southerners, Southerners think we're Yankees, Cincinnatians think we're hillbillies and the rest of Kentucky thinks Louisville is from a different planet.

At this point in my life I have been completely corrupted and so feel at home here.

[MORTARDUDE]

http://www.patriotfiles.com/article.php?&sid=241


6 May 1969
Posted by: The Patriot

In the early morning darkness of 6 May, the NVA retaliated with an intensive rocket and mortar barrage, followed by a massive 95th Regiment pincer grand assault against 2 sides of the base an hour later. LZ Carolyn's garrison was reduced by the absence of several line companies on patrol, and the withering defensive fires of the battalion's COMPANY C and E were unable to prevent the onrushing battalions from storming through the wire and into the LZ from both directions.

Six perimeter bunkers were overrun, one of the medium howitzers was captured, and the enemy threatened to slice through the center of the base.

The Americans counterattacked with all available personnel, the officers involved being killed at the head of their troops. Artillerymen, supply and signal personnel, and engineers fought and died as emergency infantry reserves. The counterattacks were hurled against both enemy penetrations, but the most violent fighting occurred on the northern side, where a seesaw battle raged for possession of the 155mm howitzer position. During the course of the battle, this weapon exchanged hands 3 times in hand-to-hand fighting deceded at close range with rifles and E-tools.

Overhead, rocket-firing AH1G Cobra helicopters rolled in, ignoring heavy flak, and blasted the NVA with rockets and miniguns. Air Force AC47 SPOOKY and AC119 SHADOW aircraft, supported by fighter-bombers, were employed against the numerous enemy antiaircraft weapons ringing the perimeter.

Controlled and uncontrolled fires were raging everywhere, and it seemed that the LZ was ablaze throughout its entire length. Waves of NVA infantry charging into the southern lines were met by defending troops who took advantage of the aviation gasoline storage area. They shot holes in the fuel drums and ignited them to create a flaming barrier, which effectively blocked further enemy penetration. In the LZ's opposite sector, a medium howitzer gun pit received 3 direct hits which touched off a fire in its powder bunker, yet the crew calmly stood by its weapon and employed it throughout the night.

Both 105's ammunition points were exploded by enemy fire around 0330, and shrapnel from more than 600 disintegrating rounds in the 2 dumps sprayed the entire LZ for more than 4 hours. LZ Carolyn appeared threatened with total destruction as the thundering conflagration tossed detonating arty projectiles to shower men and equipment with flying rounds and burning shell fragments.

The defending artillerymen and mortar crews fought in desperation heightened by the loss of commo between most weapons and their fire direction centers. The initial enemy barrage destroyed commo from the 155 gun sections to their FDC, forcing crews to individually engage targets on their own volition by leveling tubes full of BEE HIVE or HE charges. When telephone lines from the mortar tubes to their FDC were severed, the direction personnel switched to a bullhorn to relay fire commands across the deafening noise of the battlefield. The battalion mortar platoon's four tubes fired 1500 rounds, ranging from critical illumination to searing WP. In all cases effective fire support was maintained.

Ammunition shortages quickly developed. As on-hand mortar ammunition beside the weapons was exhausted, volunteers dashed through fire-swept open areas to retrieve more rounds from storage bunkers. The destruction of the 105 ammo points caused an immediate crisis in the light howitzer pits. The cannon cockers were fored to redistribute ammo by crawling from one gun section to another under a hail of enemy direct fire and spinning shrapnel from the exploding dump. The crews continued rendering direct fire, even though they were often embroiled in defending their own weapons. One light howitzer section caught in an enemy cross fire between a heavy machine gun and rifles, until the artillerymen managed to turn their lowered muzzle and pump BEE HIVE flechettes into the enemy. All automatic weapons fire against the howitzer was instantly silenced. Cavalry counterattacks reestablished the perimeter, and the enemy force began withdrawing, breaking contact at 0600.

It was the longest night of my life. Thanks Doc Fred, many of us ended up with you. Thanks Air Force and thanks Red Team for the Cobras.




This all happened during operation MONTANA SCOUT/MONTANA RAIDER series. We lost 567 troopers KIA and 3,555 wounded. This was from November of 68' to June 23rd of 69.

C CO AND E WERE BOTH AWARDED THE VALOUS UNIT AWARD for that night.

Packo

C Co. 2nd Bn. 8th Cav (Airborne)
1st Air Cav Division (Airmobile)

In Memory of all those brave Troopers that night!
Never Prouder to be a Paratrooper and a Sky Trooper!



Note: by Tom Lane

[MORTARDUDE]

From the Amarillo Globe-News


Web posted Monday, May 31, 1999
6:17 a.m. CT

Horsley: So many reasons to say thank you on this day




It occurs to me that I forgot to thank my friend Jim for something.


HORSLEY
We grew up together, Jim and I. We were tent-mates in Boy Scouts, taught ourselves about snakes and girls and life. We were inseparable in those early years; then we grew up and grew apart and finally left home. I went to college and he went to Vietnam.

Sitting in my dorm room, looking out across a manicured lawn, on clean paper I typed letters that circled the Earth before reaching Jim in Vietnam. I was intensely curious about the war; I hated it but had half a mind to join up when I graduated from college.

Jim was equally curious about my world. He planned to enroll in college when he got home. On whatever paper he could scrounge - no two of his letters were on the same type paper - he wrote:

" . . . I'm sitting in a cramped battered bunker, a cell block of scarred lumber and eroding sandbags, encircled by rifles, grenades, mines, detonators, machine guns and enough ammo for the king's army (maybe enough if the occasion arises for it to be used), enveloped with the acrid aroma of expended ammo, repugnant mire, and the dry sour odor of marijuana, smoking a cheap Hav-a-Tampa cigar, thinking of peace and enjoying the rare moment of meditative solitude in the early dawn of a truly beautiful morning . . ."

" . . . You can't begin to realize how bad it is here. The jungle is extremely hot and humid all the time. Humping a heavy pack, eating the same food continuously, and all time surrounded by the deadly VC. It's enough to drive a person insane - especially since it's for one year, 12 long months. Being hot and humid and constantly perspiring, you can imagine the germs, filth, and repulsiveness of not being able to shave, bathe, etc. . ."

". . . I have enclosed several articles on the onslaught at LZ Carolyn. . . . Our company really had the devil to contend with that night - a 12-hour span that made a lot of men and broke just as many. Six hundred VC made a ground assault on the base and tried to take it - and they nearly had the upper hand. The next morning looked like a grave diggers' festival. Words can't describe it. . . .

". . . The methods employed by both the VC and us for the taking of lives are so very unreal that I haven't fully come to realize I am participating in them. . . . ''

". . . The monsoons have set in and naturally it's burdensome: high humidity, rains each night, extreme temperatures during the afternoon. . . Everything is moldy or rotting. . . . (I)f all goes well, next April should be my big day - out of Nam, out of the Army. . . .

". . . Shrapnel imbedded in the back of your head is no fun. The only signal you have that mortars are coming is when you hear them in the distance being dropped in the tubes. So you are constantly at least half alert to mortar tubes. . . .

". . . The sunsets here are beautiful but there are certain types which shouldn't be seen, like: The sun is a deep throbbing red, giving everything a strange orange-red glow. . . . You begin to mellow and appreciate the beauty, until you look across the open field in front of you and see bodies of dead VC. Hands reaching up, fingers gnarled, grasping for. . ., stiff with rigor mortis, a knee angled at the oblique, unsupported, black dried blood capping it. . . . ''

". . . Or when it's just gotten dark, you're in the jungle, lying back, enjoying a refreshing breeze, looking at the moon and at how the light plays a game of silhouette with the plants, everything with a silvery tinge. You're full of water, not hungry, not thirsty, just feeling good and appreciative of life when a gust of wind brings the stench of dead bodies to your nose and you cringe. The offensive bitter repugnancy envelops you and there's no way out. . . .

" . . . Let me know how life is where you're at and any feelings you have of college, i.e., demonstrations, peace movements, etc. Just your opinions and philosophies of anything - I'd like to hear some intelligent viewpoints on something noteworthy. . . . (P)eople really revert to illiterates and ignoramuses here . . .'

Jim made it home and enjoys a successful career as an operatic baritone.

On this day when we honor those who served, I want to say "thank you" to him. Thank you for going through an unimaginable hell. Thank you for putting your life on the line in an unpopular war, probably a wrong war, for no other reason than your country asked you to. Thank you for your service, for bearing the scars visible and invisible.

For all the Jims out there, some living and some with names chiseled in black granite in Washington, D.C., some buried under American soil and some whose bones are covered only by jungle vines, we salute you this day. A grateful country stands in silence, remembering your sacrifice.

David Horsley's column appears in the Monday Globe-Times. "Into the Wind," a collection of his columns from the past decade, will be published this fall by Winedale Press.

[catman]

Ken...just a Desert Vet myself, but wanted to say "Welcome Home".

Trav

[39mto39g]

http://www.jimrowell.com/makegallery...ryname=vietnam

[kenzel]

HHC also was awarded the VUA for actions on LZ Carolyn 6 May 1969.

[39mto39g]

Ken Z
Stick around, Talk to us. We wont bite/

[Packo]

Ken,

Sorry I didn't put up HHC, I didn't know...I only knew about C & E Companies. Y'all sure deserved it as all those brave troopers. Did you notice that LZ Carolyn is on the 1st Cav Assoc. calendar now, on 6 May?

Ron, thanks for posting the guy from Georgia. Got to show Deb our living conditions on the LZ from those pics. She just shook her head. Thanks!

Ken....anniversary is coming soon. Honor and Courage my friend.

Pack

[lcpd24]

Wellcome to the site Ken, an a big Wellcome Home