The FReeper Foxhole Remembers LZ Albany (11/17/1965) - Apr. 6th, 2005

Vietnam Magazine | October 1999 | Brent Swager

[SAMWolf]

Lord,

Keep our Troops forever in Your care

Give them victory over the enemy...

Grant them a safe and swift return...

Bless those who mourn the lost.
.

FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer
for all those serving their country at this time.

.................................................................. .................... ...........................................

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Rescue at LZ Albany

Chaos prevailed over the battle zone, but the helicopter crews never wavered. They had to save the troopers of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, who were dying in the tall grass.

The Ia Drang campaign provided the U.S. Army a remarkable--if dangerous--opportunity to demonstrate the merits of its newly developed airmobile tactics. The infantry, no longer restricted to the slow pace of marching into battle, could be inserted by helicopter at a moment's notice wherever they were needed.

Bell UH-1D Huey

An extensive training period ostensibly prepares pilots for combat flying. But flying in and out of Vietnam's hot LZs, where dust, heat and the enemy worked in concert to bring down the fragile aluminum birds, it took a good pilot with nerves of steel and a special sense of duty. Major Willard Bennett, commander of Charlie, or C, Company, 229th Aviation Battalion (Assault Helicopter), 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), was just such a pilot, with the ability to think and react adeptly in the most intense combat situations. On a November 1965 night, while flying over the hell that the Ia Drang Valley had become, Bennett put on an airmobile show that the grunts on the ground would never forget. No portion of the Army's airmobile training taught guts--pilots like Bennett provided that.

"I never worried about getting shot and killed--whether that was because I was young or we were so well-trained I couldn't say," Bennett recalled. "Getting shot in combat was just not something I really worried about. Flying in and out of hot LZs just came with the job." What Charlie Company's commander worried about instead were the underpowered and occasionally unreliable engines of the Bell UH-1D Hueys and the equatorial heat that could sap the strength of American flying machines.

"The Huey I flew on my first tour couldn't carry a very big payload," Bennett said. "Generally with a crew of four, we could only lift five or six guys. You had to get a running start most of the time to get airborne, and so they required a larger landing zone. By my second tour all that had changed--the engines were much more powerful and much more reliable."



Bennett's Charlie Company was normally attached to the 2nd Battalion of the 7th Cavalry, ferrying the infantry to and from combat zones, supplying water and rations and, when it became too hot for the medevacs, ducking in for the wounded. Months before the Ia Drang campaign, Bennett was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for making an emergency night flight to an American forward artillery base on the mountain of Dak To, where a shell had cooked off and exploded in the barrel of a howitzer, critically wounding 17 men. When medevacs were turned back by dense fog that night, Bennett not only led his flight but also refused to turn back as long as U.S. troops remained in the field crying for help. Improvising in the air, Bennett called for troops on the ground to shoot flares from LZs along the way. Using this ingenious method, he navigated his way safely through the mountainous terrain to evacuate the wounded.

Many historians claim that the 230 American lives lost during the fighting at LZs Albany and X-ray versus the loss of more than 1,000 NVA soldiers by body count and 1,000 more estimated killed was a decided victory. Other scholars, however, claim the lessons taught were largely ignored and America was lured deeper into a war it could not win. If the fighting and its results proved to be a historical and military paradox, so did the enigmatic, 34-year-old major commanding Charlie Company.



As a student at Colorado A&M (now Colorado State University), Bennett had enrolled in the the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) to avoid the Vietnam draft. After graduation, having earned an artillery commission, he was sent to Fort Sill in Oklahoma, where he ran into a fraternity brother stationed there for Army aviation training. "He was really sold on the program," Bennett said, "and it sounded good to me too.

"The program required an additional year's commitment, but I was young and wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my life just yet. Besides, I had just gotten married, and the extra $100 a month the Army was paying aviators looked awfully good just then."

Bennett received his fixed-wing rating and soon was sent on temporary duty back to helicopter school. After qualifying in helicopters, he was assigned to Korea and, later, Japan. Much to his surprise, both Bennett and his wife, Vonnie, fell in love with military life.



After he returned from the Far East, Bennett's talents as a helicopter pilot were tapped to try out the Army's new concept of air mobility. He was assigned to the 11th Air Assault Test Division at Fort Benning, Ga., in 1964 for 18 months of crucial trials. The purpose was to examine and test theories in helicopter warfare. Satisfied with the evaluations of the 11th Air Assault Division, renamed the 1st Air Cavalry Division (Airmobile), the Army mobilized the unit for war. Major Willard Bennett was assigned command of the 229th's Charlie Company and deployed with the division to Vietnam.

Although Charlie Company had been thoroughly trained in the Army's brand-new airmobile tactics, no training could completely prepare a pilot for the murderous skies over Vietnam. Bennett's role over the Ia Drang Valley may be considered a minor one in the grand scheme of the campaign, but to the severely wounded who were desperate for medical attention, and to the beleaguered troops surrounded and running low on ammo, a fearless chopper pilot was the answer to many prayers. The genesis of Bennett's mission occurred when Lt. Col. Harold Moore brazenly took his understrength battalion and confronted the enemy deep in his own territory.


Lt Col Hal Moore

The ball began rolling on November 14, 1965, when Moore, a hard-charging Kentuckian and West Point graduate (class of '45), mobilized the 1st Battalion of the 7th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), and moved them to a position at the foot of Chu Pong, a 2,400-foot mountain in the Ia Drang Valley, deep in NVA-held territory. There, dense tropical forests gave way to tall grass and red clay. Intelligence reports of a large enemy base camp in that area had Moore and his boss, 3rd Brigade Commander Colonel Thomas Brown, eager to seek out the enemy.

[colorado tanker]

I've never checked it out, but have heard that although Saladin was from Tikrit, he was Kurdish, not Arab.

[Valin]

Facinating person. And well thought of, even by his enemies. Unlike the other son of Tikrit.

http://historymedren.about.com/library/who/blwwsaladin.htm

Salah Ad-din Yusuf Ibn Ayyub (westernized to "Saladin"), also known as Al-malik An-nasir Salah Ad-din Yusuf I, was sultan of Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Yemen, founded the Ayyubid dynasty, and captured Jerusalem from the Christians. He was the most famous Muslim hero and a consummate military tactician.

Saladin was born to a well-off Kurdish family in Tikrit and grew up in Ba'lbek and Damascus. He began his military career by joining the staff of his uncle Asad ad-Din Shirkuh, an important commander. By 1169, at the age of 31, he had been appointed vizier of the Fatimid caliphate in Egypt as well as commander of the Syrian troops there.

In 1171, Saladin abolished the Shi'ite caliphate and proclaimed a return to Sunni Islam in Egypt, whereupon he became that country's sole ruler. In 1187 he took on the Latin Crusader Kingdoms, and on July 4 of that year he scored a resounding victory at the battle of Hattin. On October 2, Jerusalem surrendered. In retaking the city, Saladin and his troops behaved with great civility that contrasted sharply with the bloody actions of the western conquerors eight decades earlier.

However, though Saladin managed to reduce the number of cities held by the Crusaders to three, he failed to capture the coastal fortress of Tyre. Many Christian survivors of the recent battles took refuge there, and it would serve as a rallying point for future Crusader attacks. The recapture of Jerusalem had stunned Christendom, and the result was the launch of a third Crusade.

Over the course of the Third Crusade, Saladin managed to keep the greatest fighters of the West from making any significant advances (including the notable Crusader, Richard the Lionheart). By the time fighting was finished in 1192, the Crusaders held relatively little territory in the Levantine.

But the years of fighting had taken their toll, and Saladin died in 1193. Throughout his life he had displayed a total lack of pretension and was generous with his personal wealth; upon his death his friends discovered he'd left no funds to pay for his burial. Saladin's family would rule as the Ayyubid dynasty until it succumbed to the Mamluks in 1250.

[colorado tanker]

Interesting. Here we are, nearly a thousand years later, and Kurds and Arabs, Sunnis and Shiites are still trying to sort out who has the say in Mesopotamia.

[astounded]

Lt Rick Rescorla was also a hero of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center Towers. He saved a couple thousand lives before perishing in the tower's collapse. A true American Hero who was not an American.

[Valin]

BUMP!