Timeline, October 13th

[David]

HISTORICAL:
October 13, 1775: Birth of the US Navy.

FIRST INDOCHINA WAR:
October 1950 (Year of the Tiger [Canh Dan]): The French 3rd Foreign Infantry Regiment (Regiment Etrangere d'Infanterie, or REI), some 3000 strong, is ordered to abandon Cao Bang and to fall back along Route 4 to link up with a supporting column, which is moving westwards to meet it. However, General Giap has prepared an 30,000-man ambush in the steep jungle-covered hills along the road and the battalion advances into a massacre. The relief column of another 3000 men has already been attacked from all sides and is encircled at the bottom of a wooded gorge at Coc Xa, in spite of emergency support from the 1st Foreign Parachute Battalion (Battalion Etrangere de Parachutistes, or BEP). After a seven-day fight, almost the entire French force is dead, missing or captured. As a result, local French commanders evacuate the important border garrison of Lang Son without a fight, leaving behind 1300 tons of food and military equipment for the Communists.

SECOND INDOCHINA WAR:
October 1963 (Year of the Hare [Quy Mao]) (US Advisory): The border surveillance program is incorporated into the CIDG program as responsibility for it passes from the U.S. Mission to MACV. The border sites are now considered as CIDG projects, with surveillance being a subsidiary mission.

October 1965 (Year of the Snake [At Ti]) (US Defense): Some 6000 North Vietnamese troops begin to concentrate against a South Vietnamese outpost near the border at Plei Me, the first of three outposts in the region that stand between the enemy and the provincial capital of Pleiku, and a push on along Highway 19 to the sea that would cut South Vietnam in half.

October 13, 1965 (Year of the Snake [At Ti]) (US Defense): A Company, 1st Aviation Battalion performs two more lifts with the 47th ARVN Regiment in the Tuy Hoa region during the morning and then is released to return to Ban Me Thuot.

October 13, 1965 1965 (Year of the Snake [At Ti]) (US Defense): The rescue of a US pilot who was forced to eject after making two bombing runs on a bridge in North Vietnam.

October 13, 1966 (Year of the Horse [Binh Ngo]) (US Counteroffensive Phase III): Operation Blackjack 21, a pilot mobile guerrilla mission for a specially trained force consisting of a Special Forces A Detachment and a 34-man combat reconnaissance team, begins in the Plei Trap Valley.

October 1966 (Year of the Horse [Binh Ngo]) (US Counteroffensive Phase III): Some 2000 noncombatant Filipino troops arrive in South Vietnam. Other troops from the Philippines will quietly seize and occupy three of South Vietnam's Spratly Islands in 1968, denying South Vietnam's claim that the three islands are part of the Spratlys and saying that the remaining islands are subject to the disposition of the World War II allies.