Direct support · 1st Brigade · 105mm howitzer, towed
Twelve Campaigns
The 7th Battalion, 11th Field Artillery landed in Vietnam on 29 April 1966 and left on 8 December 1970. It fired for the 1st Brigade from Cu Chi, then from Tay Ninh, across War Zone C and up to the Cambodian border. This is its record, and the record of the men who served in it.
Most of these men have died. If you are looking for a father or grandfather, start here.
The firing batteries
Four Batteries
Where to Start
Quarter totals, February to April 1969
Forty-seven artillery moves. 71,005 rounds fired by the battalion's own guns and 61,864 by supporting batteries whose fire it planned. February alone accounted for 32,709.
Lineage and honors
The Dragon Regiment
On Time
The 11th Field Artillery was constituted on 1 July 1916 and organized the following June at Camp Harry J. Jones, Douglas, Arizona, from men transferred out of the 6th Field Artillery. It reached France in August 1918 and fired its first rounds east of the Argonne on 26 October.
On 6 November, Battery E went into position near Laneuville and put interdicting fire on the Metz–Sedan railway, a critical German supply line, under heavy counter-battery fire. On the morning of 11 November word came that a cease fire would take effect at eleven o'clock. In recognition of what Battery E had done to that railway, the battery was given the honor of firing the last officially recorded American shot of the war, at 10:59:59. The howitzer was named Calamity Jane.
The regimental motto alludes to that. On Time.
Heraldry
The shield carries three alerions on a red bend against gold — the arms of Lorraine, where the regiment fought. The six-pointed star in the lower corner is the insignia of the 6th Division, which the regiment served under in France. On the canton rides a winged centaur drawing a bow, the crest of the 6th Field Artillery, from which the 11th was formed by transfer of personnel.
Above the shield stands a black lion rampant, taken from the arms of Stenay, commemorating the regiment's support of the 89th Division crossing the Meuse. The lion holds the 6th Division's star in his paw. Below, a red scroll: ON TIME.
Blazoned by the Institute of Heraldry as: Or, on a bend Gules, three alerions of the field, in dexter base a six-pointed mullet of the second. On a sinister canton of the like a winged centaur courant with bow and arrow Argent. Approved 7 November 1922.
Distinctive unit insignia, 11th Field ArtilleryTropic Lightning — 25th Infantry Division
Hawaii, and the Road to Vietnam
The regiment went to Schofield Barracks with the Hawaiian Division in 1921 and was strafed there on 7 December 1941. As the 11th Field Artillery Battalion it fought across New Guinea and the Philippines with the 24th Infantry Division, then through eight campaigns in Korea.
The 7th Battalion was activated as a 105mm howitzer battalion and assigned to the 25th Infantry Division on 1 April 1960, bringing the 11th back to Hawaii after seventeen years away. It supported the 1st Battle Group, 14th Infantry until 1963, then became the 1st Brigade's direct support battalion when the division reorganised into three brigades.
Vietnam
The battalion arrived on 29 April 1966 and was based initially at Cu Chi. In the March–April 1968 realignment it moved to Tay Ninh, which remained its base camp for the rest of the war. It served through all twelve of the division's Vietnam campaigns and departed for Schofield Barracks on 8 December 1970. It was inactivated on 13 September 1972.
Unit Awards
Unit
Award
For
7th Battalion
Valorous Unit Award
Tay Ninh Province, 27 Aug – 31 Oct 1968
Battery B
Presidential Unit Citation
Tay Ninh Province, 24–26 Apr 1969 — Frontier City
Battery A
Presidential Unit Citation
Ben Cui rubber plantation, 18 Aug – 20 Sep 1969
7th Battalion
RVN Cross of Gallantry with Palm
Two awards
7th Battalion
RVN Civil Actions Honor Medal
First Class
A correction
Several veteran-built pages state that A Battery's Presidential Unit Citation was for Fire Support Base Crook. It was not. The regiment's official history places it at the Ben Cui rubber plantation, August to September 1969, for fires that contributed to the destruction of an attacking enemy regiment. B Battery's citation is the one for the April fighting at Frontier City.
The Four Batteries
Three firing batteries of six 105mm towed howitzers each, and a headquarters battery that made them work.
A Battery
In the ring of artillery drawn around Saigon in May 1968, at Fire Support Base Bishop and then Danford. North through Hull and Tay Ninh in July, then working out of Dau Tieng into the autumn, detached from its own battalion. Rejoined at Tay Ninh on 4 October 1968. Held FSB Washington from December through the winter, detached a gun section to Fire Patrol Base Dallas on the Cambodian border in April, and on 14 April 1969 moved west to establish Fire Support Base Crook. In May it built the second Washington. In June it fought at Crook. In August and September it earned the Presidential Unit Citation at the Ben Cui rubber plantation.
Commanders recorded in period: Captain Kenneth Coy, January 1969. Captain Dickson A. "Dick" Neal, by May 1969.
The base it built
At 0145 on 19 June 1969, five weeks after A Battery built it, the second Fire Support Base Washington was attacked. The defenders lit the flat marshland and saw sapper squads crawling toward the perimeter. A mortar barrage lasting over half an hour followed, and the enemy penetrated the first two rows of wire before being stopped. Thirty-five dead from the 3rd Battalion, 88th NVA Regiment; six prisoners.
At Katum during Operation Yellowstone at the start of 1968. At Maury I in May. At Buell II through the August fighting, where Captain Robert A. Snyder's crews fired killer junior into human wave assaults through a four-hour battle. At Hines in December, where the battery fired more than a thousand preparation rounds over six days and then cleared the base by helicopter in about four hours. Two of its guns went to Patrol Base Frontier City in April 1969 and earned the battery a Presidential Unit Citation. On 10 June 1969 at 0503 it fired the 750,000th round the battalion fired in Vietnam.
Commanders recorded in period: Captain Robert A. Snyder, 1968. Captain John Ricca, May 1969.
C Battery
At Maury I in May 1968, where Captain Kendall Jowers reached the exec post bunker in time to hear the first mortar round land, and Lieutenant Robert McLaughlin moved two howitzers by hand to the southwestern perimeter to fire beehive. Supported the first Cu Chi to Tay Ninh night convoy in July. At Scofield on 24 August when an estimated battalion of the 33rd Regiment attacked. Moved from Mitchell to Stoneman in February 1969. Between 9 and 14 March a platoon went into Tay Ninh Base Camp every night as direct-fire defense and rejoined the battery by day. Supported Operation Rough Rider and put six guns into FSB Ord in May.
Commanders recorded in period: Captain Harry K. Jowers, October 1968 — recorded as Kendall Jowers in the artillery's own account of Maury I. Captain Dennis Salz, May 1969.
Bozzell
A week before Thanksgiving 1968, SFC Edwin Borrero of Guayanilla, Puerto Rico, C Battery’s mess sergeant, found himself with a live turkey and a problem. The bird was never eaten. It became the battery mascot and was still with them at Fire Support Base Ord the following May, by which time the newspaper reckoned C Battery had the only mascot in the Army that was a Thanksgiving leftover.
Fire direction, survey, communications and ammunition — the reason the firing batteries could move as often as they did. In three months of 1969 the battalion made forty-seven artillery moves while coordinating fire across a half-dozen fire support bases; in the quarter after that it made fifty-nine. On 27 March 1969 it took over Tay Ninh's counter-rocket and counter-mortar mission and had it running by nightfall. Its ammunition section moved thousands of rounds by truck, CH-47 and CH-54, and five countermortar radars under its control located forty-two hostile mortar and rocket sites in a single quarter.
A CH-54 Sky Crane lifting artillery ammunition from the Viking resupply pad — how the guns were kept fed.
What the battalion actually controlled
By the summer of 1969 the battalion was controlling the fires of as many as eleven organic or supporting batteries in support of six infantry maneuver battalions — its own guns plus general support reinforcing batteries, the 105mm battery of the Philippine Civic Action Group, and fires for ARVN Airborne and Vietnamese Marine units. It also supported US Navy patrol boats on the Vam Co Dong, for which it posted a permanent liaison officer at Ben Keo on 20 June 1969.
Battalion commanders recovered so far: LTC Alvin C. Hutchins, to 3 November 1967. LTC Billy J. Leathers, 3 November 1967 to 8 May 1968. LTC Forest E. Pierce, from 9 May 1968 — the day of Maury I. LTC Walter A. Wood III, to 5 March 1969. LTC Carl M. Mott Jr., from 5 March 1969. LTC Robert A. Robinson, by February 1970.
A fire mission, as the newspaper printed it
“Hermit India this is Scull Zero 2, Fire Mission! … Over. Grid 279619 … Nature of target — estimated NVA company in open … Method of fire — Battery One Round, HE … Over.”
The grid is charted at the battery fire direction center, and seconds later six 105mm howitzers answer. Hermit India and Scull Zero 2 are the battalion’s own radio call signs, printed in a feature headlined Uptight 7/11 Arty Is Ready To Blast Charlie Anytime.
The 105mm Howitzer M101A1. The battalion reported that the authorized lubricating oil, mixed with Vietnamese dust, formed an extremely abrasive paste on the elevation arcs, and asked for something lighter. An earlier report noted that age and dust were wearing out bushings, seats and gears, and that the weapon needed constant scrutiny so a worn mount or bearing could be caught before it did further damage.
Each battery also cross-trained every man in ammunition handling and the senior cannoneer jobs, on the plain grounds that a firing battery under attack takes its casualties in the gun sections.
Every documented action, with the batteries marked. A highlighted tag means that battery is named in the source; an unmarked tag means it is not — which is not the same as saying it was elsewhere.
Division-level reports track infantry battalions, so an artillery battery appears in them only when something happens to it. The gaps below are gaps in the record, not in the battalion's war.
1966
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29 April 1966
Arrival
The battalion lands in Vietnam and is based at Cu Chi as direct support artillery for the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division. Six 105mm howitzers to a battery.
11th Field Artillery Regiment history
1967
BATTALIONA BTRYB BTRYC BTRYHHB
3 November 1967
LTC Billy J. Leathers takes command
Relieving LTC Alvin C. Hutchins, who transferred to MACV.
Two batteries of the battalion were airlifted in with 4/9 Infantry during Operation Yellowstone. At 0140 on the 20th the base took some 250 rounds of 60mm and 82mm mortar fire and small arms. Return fire came from small arms, artillery, light fire teams and air strikes. Captured documents identified the 2nd and 3rd Battalions, 141st NVA Regiment. Six Americans killed, twenty-two wounded; forty enemy dead.
The New Year truce ended with a coordinated mortar attack on Beauregard and Fire Support Base Burt. Burt then took a massive ground assault by two NVA regiments. Beauregard, with the battalion's guns on it, was hit the same night.
B Battery at Katum in the northern part of War Zone C.
B Battery at Katum base camp during Operation Yellowstone, January 1968.
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11 March – 7 April 1968
The move to Tay Ninh
During Operations Quyet Thang and Wilderness the division artillery carried out a major realignment. In the report's own words, 7/11 Artillery moved to their base camp location at Tay Ninh with the mission of direct support to the 1st Brigade. The 2/77 went to Dau Tieng, and 3/13 came from the Saigon area to Cu Chi.
Tay Ninh remained the battalion's base camp for the rest of the war.
Intelligence indicated that main force units would attempt a major attack on Saigon and the Capital Military District on or about 1 May. The division artillery realigned again to meet it. By 30 April, seven artillery batteries were within range of the Capital Military District, and only two of the division's batteries lay outside a twenty-kilometer radius of it.
This is the concentration A Battery joined on 23 May when it moved from Cu Chi to Fire Support Base Bishop.
221 battery displacements — most by convoy, several by air. One battery moved over fifty kilometers by Air Force fixed wing and a further fifteen by CH-47 to support a Special Forces extraction in northern War Zone C. The division artillery fired 288,470 rounds: 230,370 of 105mm, 36,174 of 155mm and 11,920 of 8-inch.
The report records that fire support bases were frequently mortared, many on a nightly basis, but that there were no significant ground attacks against artillery fire support bases during the quarter.
Nine days after it was signed, two of the battalion's batteries were overrun at Maury I.
B and C Batteries shared the base with Battery A, 3rd Battalion, 13th Artillery — a different battalion — whose 155mm self-propelled howitzers held the western point of a triangle. The battalion's own fire direction center was controlling the fires, with two 40mm Dusters of 5/2 Artillery attached. Mortars and rocket-propelled grenades opened the attack, feinted at the northwestern and southwestern corners, then drove into the western point, where the mediums sat less than 200 meters from a treeline.
Captain Kendall Jowers, commanding C Battery, had left word to be woken at the 0200 guard change. His radio operator shook him awake and he reached the exec post bunker just in time to check his watch, verify the switchover, and hear the first mortar round explode outside the doorway. By 0330 1LT Robert McLaughlin, C Battery's fire direction officer, was moving two 105mm howitzers to the southwestern perimeter to relieve the pressure on the mediums with beehive. Captain Luis Ortiz of the 155 battery saw one ammunition carrier burning and the one beside it simply gone; not until daylight did he learn it had been spread across the position in minute particles.
Every beehive round in the base was fired. Fewer than ten rounds of 155mm got away before the guns were destroyed. The Dusters put out 1,100 rounds of 40mm from behind berms, took RPG wounds on four crewmen, and got two secondary explosions. Relief came at 0530 from LTC A. S. Fullerton's 4/23 Mechanized Infantry.
The cost. Ten Americans killed and sixty-six wounded, four of whom later died of wounds; those four, with seven others killed and thirty-nine wounded, were all artillerymen. Eighteen enemy dead confirmed. Five M109 howitzers destroyed — one serviceable piece was afterwards assembled from two wrecks — with two M548 ammunition carriers and a five-ton truck. Every gun lost belonged to A/3-13. The 7th Battalion, 11th Artillery lost no howitzers.
Note. The A Battery at Maury I was A Battery, 3rd Battalion, 13th Artillery. A Battery, 7th Battalion, 11th Field Artillery was not present. The division artillery gives the grid as XT6502; the division's own report gives XT618022 and states that two 105mm howitzers were destroyed — contradicted by both the artillery's report and the Army's history. An hour before the attack, Cu Chi base camp took about thirty rockets inside two minutes.
The change of command is dated to the day of Maury I. A battalion surgeon's oral history of that night describes a severely wounded commander he was asked to treat.
LTC Billy Leathers was awarded the Silver Star, published in the division newspaper on 29 July 1968. The citation is not printed with the list, so what he received it for is not recorded here. He commanded until 8 May and was relieved on the 9th; a surgeon of his battalion treated a badly wounded commander that night; and he was decorated for gallantry that summer. Three facts that point the same way and do not, together, amount to proof.
LTC Homer W. Kiefer Jr. of 3/13 Artillery moved three batteries into Pike VI on the 11th with the findings from Maury in hand. A bulldozer built berms at once, so that by nightfall only the turrets of the 155s were exposed. The light batteries were sited for maximum beehive coverage at occupation rather than during an attack, with one howitzer from each pushed out to a strategic point on the perimeter. The medium battery went in the center, between the two light batteries, able to support all round.
At 0130 on the 12th some four hundred mortar rounds fell within half an hour, and the same tactics followed. The attack ended two and a half hours after it began. 110 enemy dead. Five Americans killed and thirty wounded — of whom the artillery lost one and five. Equipment losses: one damaged Duster and minor damage to two vehicles.
Every man interviewed for the Army's account of these two battles had been decorated on the battleground with the Silver Star. The list of their names was withdrawn from the file by Department of the Army and is not in the surviving copy.
Part of that list is recoverable anyway. The division newspaper of 5 August 1968 prints Silver Stars to CPT Harry K. Jowers, 1LT Robert H. McLaughlin and CPL Stanley Wojciechowski of C Battery, and SSG Charley M. Fry of Headquarters Battery. Jowers and McLaughlin are the two men the Army's own narrative of Maury I names by name.
With a major attack on the capital expected on 1 June, artillery was concentrated around Saigon. A Battery moved from Cu Chi to Bishop, joining a battery of 2/40 Artillery that had arrived the day before. Between 3 and 5 May the division's guns had already put over ten thousand rounds into two enemy battalions trapped in the swamps southwest of Highway 1 near Duc Hoa, unable to press their attack on the city.
Reported by his sister in 2003, still seeking the circumstances. No operational report yet recovered records it.
Unconfirmed — 25th Infantry Division Association guestbook
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3 June 1968 · south of Cu Chi
All three batteries in action
A fire support base attacked after midnight. The division newspaper places all three firing batteries there with a 3/13 battery, tubes lowered for point-blank fire.
While A Battery held Fire Support Base Bishop in the ring around Saigon, one of its officers was out with the infantry. 2LT Paul J. Wilson, forward observer, attached from A Battery to B Company, 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry, went in on the second lift after A Company of that battalion landed on a hot landing zone and walked into a battalion base camp of the 101st NVA Regiment.
Two helicopters collided under fire on the landing zone. A medical evacuation ship was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade with the wounded already aboard and burned. A platoon leader and several of his men were killed within feet of a bunker and could not be recovered until the following morning. The company commander was wounded going in after them in the dark.
Wilson described the bunkers the next day — four feet by four, three feet of overhead cover, firing ports in three directions, most of them too well concealed to detect. He was clear about what it took to break them: light artillery would do it only with a direct hit, and an 8-inch howitzer had been brought into the area ten days earlier for that specific purpose.
Interviewed by SGT Dennis Smith of the 18th Military History Detachment on 25 June 1968. Seven other men were recorded with him. The transcript preserves the interviewer's notes on the tape itself — including one sergeant pausing to compose himself, and a power surge that rendered part of his answer inaudible.
B Battery, 2/77 Artillery replaced A Battery at Danford on 4 July. The report does not record when A Battery moved there from Bishop — one of several internal gaps in the quarter's account.
A heavy attack by fire and a moderate ground attack in the early hours. Artillery elements defending the western perimeter repulsed the attackers after they had reached the main bunker line. Four artillerymen killed and eight wounded. The follow-up caused a large number of artillery moves between the 4th and the 6th.
6 July. A Battery shifted from Cu Chi to FSPB Hull (XT2638). B Battery moved from Hull to Schofield II (XT3942), supporting reconnaissance in force by 4/23 Mechanized south and west of Dau Tieng. C Battery moved from Dau Tieng to FSPB Kearny (XT5152), returning on the 8th.
8 July A Battery moved into Tay Ninh from Hull. 13 July B Battery moved into Tay Ninh. 16 July A Battery moved from FSPB Thomas III (XT4052) to Dau Tieng, and C Battery from Dau Tieng to FSPB Wood (XT4434), keeping pace with 4/23 Mechanized as it shifted from the Crescent to the Bo Loi Woods.
C Battery shifted from Wood to Hull to support the first Cu Chi to Tay Ninh night convoy, then joined A/3-13 at FSPB Hampton (XT4420). On the 22nd and 23rd the two batteries supported 4/23 Mechanized as it destroyed a regimental-size base camp three kilometers north of Go Dau Ha, killing fourteen. On the 24th both convoyed to Tay Ninh against a growing threat there. On the 27th B Battery moved to FSPB Buell (XT2153) to support 3/22 Infantry, and C Battery occupied FSPB Rawlins III.
Division artillery made 133 moves in the quarter, some by air but most by convoy, and fired 256,006 rounds — 193,100 of 105mm, 52,575 of 155mm and 10,381 of 8-inch. Signed by Colonel Gordon Sumner Jr.
The quarter closed with the spotlight on Tay Ninh and the threatened enemy third-phase offensive still only a threat.
The battalion, under LTC Forest E. Pierce, furnished all direct artillery support for the 1st Brigade through the six-week battle. Its batteries were deployed at Fire Support Base Buell, Fire Support Base Rawlins, Tay Ninh Base Camp and Dau Tieng Base Camp — the arc of fire support bases the brigade built around the city so infantry could range out and meet the enemy before he reached it.
Two enemy divisions were committed: the 5th NVA with the 275th, 33rd and 88th Regiments, and the 9th VC with the 271st, 272nd and 273rd, alongside the 101st and 174th Regiments and two local force battalions.
Buell stood on Route 4 three kilometers northwest of Tay Ninh at XT213532. To break the pattern it was closed and rebuilt four kilometers north as Buell II, XT227568, on 10 August — a week before the attacks began.
Tay Ninh Base Camp was struck first at 0115, and its artillery fired the first of 508 counter-mortar rounds. Eight minutes later Buell II reported heavy mortar fire, and when the last of some hundred rounds had fallen, two enemy battalions charged the perimeter in human wave attacks.
About five hundred men held the base: headquarters and D Company of 3/22 Infantry, C Company of 4/23 Mechanized, a platoon of 2/34 Armor, B Battery, 7th Battalion, 11th Artillery, and A Battery of 3/13. They answered with small arms, automatic weapons, mortars and artillery killer junior. LTC Alexander Hunt concentrated the air strikes on the southern half of the perimeter and the artillery in the north.
The enemy broke contact about 0430 without reaching the wire. 105 enemy dead and thirteen wounded prisoners. One American killed, twenty-six wounded. The attackers were the 3rd Battalion, 273rd Regiment with elements of the 174th.
Identical patterns at both — heavy mortar and rocket-propelled grenade fire, then human wave assaults. At Buell the attacks ran until 0550 and each was turned back before it reached the wire: 60 enemy dead and eleven prisoners, against three Americans killed and eighteen wounded. At Rawlins, 25 dead and four prisoners, against one killed and ten wounded. Buell was attacked by the 174th Regiment, Rawlins by the 3rd Battalion of the 275th.
Over two thousand rounds fired in the base's defense accounted for most of a body count of sixty-two.
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24 August 1968, 0030 · FSB Scofield, XT407440
C Battery holds a new base
The 33rd Regiment threw an estimated battalion at a fire base established only days before, sited astride its own north-south supply line. Inside were three companies of 2/27 Infantry, elements of 3/4 Cavalry, A Battery of 1/8 Artillery and C Battery, 7th Battalion, 11th Artillery. Several human wave assaults were repulsed and the enemy withdrew at 0430.
103 enemy dead. American losses were nine killed and forty-one wounded, with four armored personnel carriers and two tanks destroyed. Seven of the defenders were interviewed afterwards for the Army's record.
The 88th Regiment staged a two-battalion attack behind roughly two hundred mortar rounds and fifty 107mm rockets. The infantry stopped it short of the wire and it broke off by 0300. Twenty-seven enemy dead; fifteen Americans wounded and none killed.
With this the first series of the Battle for Tay Ninh closed. The battalion's Valorous Unit Award period begins on this date and runs to 31 October.
C Battery and two companies of 4/23 Mechanized Infantry. Thirty-four enemy dead.
A C Battery crew at Rawlins III: SGT Leo Fox, SGT David King, PFC William Stapleton and PFC Frank J. Serio Jr.
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27 Aug – 31 Oct 1968 · Tay Ninh Province
Valorous Unit Award
Awarded to the battalion for operations with the 1st Brigade in which two enemy divisions moving on Saigon were engaged and destroyed.
BATTALIONA BTRYB BTRYC BTRYHHB
13 September 1968, 0200 · FSB Buell
The fourth assault
A bombardment of about a thousand mixed 60mm and 82mm mortar rounds, followed at once by human wave assaults from two battalions of the 272nd Regiment. The defenders of 3/22 Infantry, supported by artillery, gunships, an AC-47 and fighter-bombers, again stopped the attack short of the wire. Seventy-six enemy dead and one prisoner; seventeen Americans wounded, none killed.
Across six weeks: 2,489 enemy killed and 70 taken prisoner. Allied losses were 276 killed — 137 from the 25th Infantry Division, 138 Vietnamese and one American advisor — with 1,125 wounded and nine missing.
The Army recorded a taped interview with the commander of B Battery, 7/11 about the attacks on Buell II on 18 and 22 August, filed as Inclosure 82. A second tape holds seven men of the Buell garrison, a third seven officers and men from Scofield. All three are listed in the report's index and none has yet been located.
After roughly five months detached at Dau Tieng, A Battery exchanges positions with a 2/77 battery at Tay Ninh so each could rejoin its parent battalion. By the 7th the battalion is whole again.
John Clark's own caption. Vic Cooper and Rob Sterling photographed there; Lt. Doug Miller in the fire direction bunker.
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December 1968 · FSB Hines, XT0151
Extraction
More than a thousand preparation rounds over six days, then the battery cleared the base by helicopter in about four hours.
A BTRYB BTRYC BTRYHHB
12 December 1968 · FSB Washington, XT1456
Four months in one place
A Battery occupies Washington and holds it until April — the longest it sat still during John Clark's tour.
1969
A BTRYB BTRYC BTRYHHB
3 February 1969 · FSB Washington
Two and a half thousand rounds
Supporting 3/22 Infantry, A Battery fired about 1,500 rounds in three hours and passed 2,500 in seventeen. Four guns of B Battery then joined for a preparation of more than 500 rounds in fifteen minutes.
A Battery’s gun section at Fire Support Base Washington during the action of 3 February 1969.
A Battery's position came under heavy mortar fire. No operational report records this attack. The only surviving account of it is the Army Commendation Medal citation issued to a private first class of the battery —
C Battery moves from FSB Mitchell (XT1645) to FSB Stoneman (XT3037).
BATTALIONA BTRYB BTRYC BTRYHHB
5 March 1969
LTC Carl M. Mott Jr. takes command
Relieving LTC Walter A. Wood III.
A BTRYB BTRYC BTRYHHB
9–14 March 1969 · Tay Ninh Base Camp
Nightly direct-fire defense
A platoon of C Battery was sent from FSB Stoneman to Tay Ninh daily to serve as direct-fire weapons for the base camp defense. It rejoined its battery in the daytime and returned to Tay Ninh at night. On 14 March the platoon returned to C Battery permanently.
After sustained rocket attacks, the 1st Brigade commander hands 7/11 control of the base camp's entire defense against rocket and mortar attack. Communications and coordination were in place by nightfall the same day.
A and B each detach a complete howitzer section to Tay Ninh; the next day those two guns occupy Dallas under B Battery's executive officer, protecting local farmers from cross-border incursions. Flown back to their batteries on the 24th.
A BTRYB BTRYC BTRYHHB
14 April 1969 · XT055595
A Battery establishes FSB Crook
The battery moves west from Washington and builds Crook, fourteen kilometers northwest of Tay Ninh and nine and a half from the Cambodian border. B Battery covers the move.
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25–26 April 1969 · Patrol Base Frontier City
Presidential Unit Citation
Two howitzers of B Battery, flown in on the 24th. The attack opened at 0034 with rockets, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms. By daylight, 213 enemy dead and six prisoners — artillery credited with ninety-seven of them. The platoon fired over 400 rounds in direct fire and had four wounded, all returned to duty.
A CH-47 lifting one of B Battery’s two howitzers out of Frontier City on 15 May, three weeks after the battle.
The division's own account of the battle credits the infantry, three batteries of artillery and an AC-47 gunship, and does not mention B Battery's two guns at all. Only the artillery's report records them.
The newspaper has the two 7/11 guns lowered to fire more than 400 rounds, every one at a target inside a thousand meters. When a sapper squad reached the wire, the artillery led a surge of fire that filled the gap with flying metal. The paper headlined it NVA Recoil from Manchus, On Timers — Frontier City Stands, and called it the fifth time in four months that a set-piece attack on a Tropic Lightning base had been broken.
A Battery at FSB Crook (XT0559), direct support to 3/22 Infantry. B Battery split — four howitzers at FSB Rawlins III (XT2948) and two at Patrol Base Frontier City (XT2029). C Battery at FSB Buell III (XT2153), direct support to 4/23 Mechanized.
The battalion was also planning the fires of B/2/77 at Sedgwick, A/6/15 at Washington, B/1/27 at Stoneman, and the 105mm battery of the Philippine Civic Action Group at Tay Ninh Base Camp.
The two howitzers that had earned B Battery its Presidential Unit Citation flew back to Tay Ninh Base Camp and rejoined their battery at Buell III the following day, three weeks after the battle.
Under Captain Dickson A. Neal, the battery moves west with D/3-22 Infantry and A/65 Engineers to build a second Fire Support Base Washington closer to the Cambodian border, sited to block enemy supply routes.
A Battery firing a preparation before displacing, 19 May 1969. Photograph by SP4 Pete Freeman.
Building a gun position at the new base the same day.
Sensors gave five hours of warning. Two North Vietnamese regiments attacked on consecutive nights and neither reached the inner wire. 407 enemy dead, ten prisoners, one American killed and fifteen wounded. A Battery's six guns fired 1,764 rounds of 105mm.
·
Combat After Action Interview Report, FSB Crook, 18 June 1969
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5 June 1969 · Renegade Woods, XT2931
C Battery in support
Two companies of 4/9 Infantry held contact with an estimated enemy battalion through the day. C Battery fired 790 rounds of high explosive and 15 white phosphorus and was credited with ten of a total body count of 74.
On the 6th, 639 high explosive, 39 firecracker, 45 illumination — credited with fourteen of 76 enemy dead. On the 7th, 615 high explosive, 4 firecracker, 45 illumination, with the artillery credited with 108 of 323.
Firing alongside: C/1/27 with 155mm, A and B of 2/32 with 175mm and 8-inch, and ARVN 155s from Ben Soi on the second night.
B Battery fired the 750,000th round fired by the 7th Battalion, 11th Field Artillery in Vietnam. It went onto a suspected enemy location detected electronically.
At 0225 FSB Washington was attacked by an estimated enemy battalion; B Battery fired 195 high explosive, 46 firecracker and 110 illumination in its defense, and the sweep found 35 dead. At 0840 C Battery fired 399 rounds supporting 4/9 Infantry until enemy positions were overrun, credited with fourteen of 72. At 1020 the fighting reached Tay Ninh City itself, where C Battery added 312 more.
At 0145 the defenders lit the marshland and saw sapper squads crawling toward the wire. A mortar barrage lasting over half an hour followed; the enemy penetrated the first two rows of wire before being stopped. Thirty-five dead from the 3rd Battalion, 88th NVA Regiment, six prisoners.
Across the quarter the battalion controlled the fires of as many as eleven organic or supporting batteries in support of six infantry maneuver battalions, requiring 59 artillery moves. Beyond its direct support mission it also fired for ARVN Airborne and Vietnamese Marine units and for US Navy patrol boats on the Vam Co Dong river — for which it sent a permanent liaison officer to the Navy headquarters at Ben Keo on 20 June.
The span of control grew so wide that on 15 July the 2/32 Field Artillery took over planning the fires of four of the batteries. Five countermortar radars located 42 hostile mortar and rocket sites during the quarter.
An estimated Viet Cong battalion attacked the brigade base camp before dawn behind mortars, 122mm rockets and rocket-propelled grenades. A small element penetrated the perimeter and was driven back, leaving seven dead. The fight ran three hours. The defenders were supported by 2/32 Artillery, 7th Battalion, 11th Artillery, and 3/17 Air Cavalry.
Regional Force units were heavily engaged fourteen miles southeast of Tay Ninh City. C and D Companies of 3/22 Infantry lifted off from Fire Support Bases Washington and Buell to reinforce them, and B Battery moved to Fire Support Base Hull, five miles southeast of Tay Ninh, to train its guns south. Around a hundred enemy were killed.
Two vehicles, twelve men and their instruments, working the province from the summit of Nui Ba Den to within a mile of the Cambodian border. By the summer of 1969 they were in the field almost daily, surveying new positions for the growing number of batteries firing for the 1st Brigade — every one of which needed its guns tied to a known point before it could shoot accurately.
Headquarters Battery’s survey section, working alongside the division artillery team from Cu Chi.
For fires that contributed to the destruction of an attacking enemy regiment.
Several veteran-built pages place this citation at Fire Support Base Crook. The regiment's official history places it at Ben Cui.
1970
BATTALIONA BTRYB BTRYC BTRYHHB
February – April 1970
LTC Robert A. Robinson commanding
The battalion still in direct support of the 1st Brigade at Tay Ninh, four years on. Tay Ninh base camp is shelled repeatedly through the quarter — the enemy, the division reports, had been forced to resort to attacks by fire as his primary offensive tactic. On 26 February the division gave up its portion of War Zone C.
The battalion leaves Vietnam for Schofield Barracks after four years and seven months and twelve campaigns. It is inactivated on 13 September 1972.
Known gaps
May – July 1968 — now closed. The division artillery report for this quarter has been recovered and A Battery's movements are recorded above. It carries internal gaps of its own: it does not say when the battery moved from Bishop to Danford, nor when it reached Thomas III.
November 1968 – January 1969. The quarter covering Buell and the move to Washington is also unseen.
May 1969 — still open. Chris Woelk recalled A Battery losing men wounded about a month before Crook, fourteen in one account and seventeen in another. The division artillery report for May, June and July 1969 has now been recovered and does not mention it. Nothing in any report yet found does.
Tay Ninh Province · 5–8 June 1969
Fire Support Base Crook
Fourteen kilometers northwest of Tay Ninh and nine and a half from the Cambodian border, at , astride an infiltration route. Inside the wire: Company B, 3rd Battalion, 22nd Infantry, and A Battery, 7th Battalion, 11th Field Artillery, with six 105mm howitzers.
The base was commanded by Major Joseph E. Bacia — the surname appears as Hacia in two archival sources and the reading is not settled — executive officer of 3/22 Infantry, who moved between the observation tower and the operations bunker. Captain Larry B. Thomas held the bunker line with B Company at the point of the main attacks. Captain Dickson A. Neal commanded A Battery and stayed at the firing position.
Written down fifteen months earlier
In its report for the quarter ending 30 April 1968 the division artillery had already set out the principle: concealment yields few of its traditional advantages to a battery in Vietnam, and woods and hedgerows both limit a battery's all-round firing capability and give the enemy an unobserved approach. The one thing worth concealing, it argued, was undetected alternate gun positions along the key avenues of approach into a fire base, to be occupied during darkness or during an attack — with beehive and direct high explosive proven extremely effective in the defense.
Cleared fields of fire, guns sited in advance against the likely approaches, direct fire held ready. Crook is that paragraph built in earth.
Built as Bait — and Not the First
Crook was the sixth iteration of a method the division had spent four months perfecting. Patrol Base Diamond II was deliberately shifted along the border in the Angel's Wing as a lure; it was attacked on 5 April and eighty-one enemy were counted. Diamond III was hit on 15 April by an estimated two battalions behind some eight hundred mortar and rocket-propelled grenade rounds, and lost 198 dead and eight captured. On 26 April the enemy came at Frontier City and left more than two hundred behind.
The division wrote the lesson down after Diamond III: the enemy was induced to fight at a place of its own choosing, on flat cleared fields of fire, behind protected positions and wire, with pre-planned supporting fires and early warning. It then noted that the same fundamentals would produce an even greater success later that month at Frontier City. Six weeks after that, at Crook, A Battery.
Bulldozers cleared fields of fire but deliberately left isolated patches of cover, sited so that radar covered them exactly and direct 105mm fire could destroy anyone using them. Concentric circles were cut into the ground at 100–150 and 300 meters beyond the fighting positions, denying rocket-propelled grenade gunners a good firing spot and giving air observers a range scale. Sensors, radar, starlight scopes and a searchlight-equipped helicopter watched every approach.
A Battery established the base on 14 April 1969, with B Battery covering its move from Washington.
The plan was rehearsed
The battery commander, the rifle company commander, the artillery liaison officer, the brigade air liaison officer, the brigade aviation officer, the S3 Air, the platoon leaders and the forward observers had all been briefed in advance on exactly how the fires would be layered — so that in an attack there would be continuous fire in concentric rings around the base with every supporting arm firing at once. When the time came it went in rapidly and smoothly, the after-action report says, because everyone understood the plan.
Six of the eight M60 machine guns belonging to A Battery were put on the bunker line and manned by the rifle company, doubling the number of machine guns firing from the perimeter.
5 June — Five Hours' Warning
At 2000 hours the base monitored seismic sensor activations 950 meters east and 550 meters northwest. At the same time the radar on the observation tower began picking up groups of three and four men moving in the wood lines all around the base. Every one of those locations was engaged with time-fuzed and direct fire from the howitzers inside the wire.
From 2130 the battalion executive officer called interdicting fire onto the trails and likely assembly areas and put the base at one hundred percent alert. Between 0130 and 0255 the movement stopped, but the interdicting fire did not.
The defenders had indications of enemy movement around the base five hours before the attack began. In those five hours fire support was massed and preemptive fires were put down.
6 June — The First Attack
At 0255 the base was hit with 107mm and 122mm rockets, 75mm recoilless rifle fire, rocket-propelled grenades and 60mm and 82mm mortars, at eighty rounds a minute for the first five minutes and about fifty a minute for the next hour and a half. Most of the rockets went over the base and landed outside the wire to the east. One man was killed by a mortar round as a listening post withdrew from the west.
A battalion-sized ground assault came in from the south and east. The infantry laid down grazing fire while the howitzers fired killer junior to a depth of 150 to 200 meters all the way around the base. The supporting 155s hit the enemy attack positions in the treeline to the south, the 8-inch guns fired deeper into that same area, the base's own 81mm and 4.2-inch mortars worked the treeline east, and 175mm suppressed the firing positions to the north.
A sixteen-man element still blew through the outer wire to the south with bangalore torpedoes and was stopped with small arms and claymores. By 0400 gunships and tactical air were over the base, engaged by an estimated fifteen .51-calibre machine guns, heaviest to the west. By 0530 the enemy had withdrawn. The sweep found seventy-six dead. Infiltration passes on three bodies identified the 3rd Battalion, 272nd NVA Regiment.
7 June — The Second Attack
By 0100 most movement had ceased, but every approach was still being engaged with killer junior and indirect fire. At 0200 a Nighthawk helicopter caught large groups moving toward the base along the road from the east, and the artillery shifted onto them.
At 0255 the attack by fire opened with greater intensity than the night before — 150 rounds a minute of rocket, mortar and rocket-propelled grenade fire for the first five minutes, then about fifty a minute for the next hour and a half. Three Americans were wounded by the opening volley.
Two battalions assaulted at once, one out of the treeline to the northeast and the other from the northwest. The base met them with killer junior and automatic weapons. The Nighthawk strafed the force coming out of the jungle northeast while two helicopter fire teams hit the battalion to the northwest, followed by tactical air dropping napalm and fragmentation bombs. An AC-47 and gunships engaged the .51s to the west. 175mm went into the jungle northwest; mortars, 155mm and 8-inch suppressed east and south. An AC-119 kept the area lit and fired minigun outside the wire.
The northeastern attack was stopped before it reached the wire. The northwestern one reached the first barrier and got no further. The volume of fire was so great that most of the force was trapped and cut down in the open trying to withdraw; those who made the jungle had to move through mortar and artillery concentrations that shifted out in pursuit.
The sweep counted 323 dead and ten prisoners. The attackers were the 2nd and 3rd Battalions, 88th NVA Regiment.
8 June — Aborted by a Test Fire
At 2000 hours Major Bacia ordered a test firing of all weapons in case of another attack. Moments after it began the base drew scattered fire from the treelines through 360 degrees and answered with organic weapons, artillery, gunships, an AC-119, tactical air and a Nighthawk. Three more enemy dead were found the next morning. A third attack had been broken up by the act of test-firing.
SP4 Harry D. Mills at Fire Support Base Crook. Contemporary reporting describes him adjusting A Battery’s fire during the fighting.
Ammunition humpers unloading 105mm rounds into the position at Crook. Photograph by SP4 Pete Freeman.
The battery commander, a week later
“Throughout both attacks my men performed remarkably. Even during the height of the in-coming rounds, they got out of their bunkers and fired the guns. They knew they had to do it, so they stayed low and we came out like bandits, taking very few casualties.”
Captain Dick Neal of San Antonio, Texas, commanding A Battery, quoted in the division newspaper of 16 June 1969 under the headline “They Were All Heroes” — Regulars vs. NVA at Crook: 400 Enemy Die. The men he is describing getting out of their bunkers to work the guns are the men this page is about.
The division artillery's own quarterly report records each night's expenditure by battery.
6 June
7 June
A/7/11 — high explosive
639
615
A/7/11 — firecracker
39
4
A/7/11 — illumination
45
45
Credited to A/7/11
14 killed
—
Total body count
76
323
Credited to artillery
—
108 of 323
Also firing: C/1/27 with 155mm, A and B of 2/32 with 175mm and 8-inch, and on the second night ARVN 155s from Ben Soi. On the 7th the artillery was credited with a third of the enemy dead.
One man, four batteries
SP4 Harry D. Mills of A Battery was awarded the Silver Star for the fighting here. From the observation tower he adjusted fire for four batteries at once — A Battery’s own guns inside the wire, C/1/27 at Fire Support Base Washington, the 8-inch guns of B/2/32 at Tay Ninh, and A/2/32 firing out of French Fort.
Asked whether it ever got confusing, he said that when the fighting was heaviest it was hard to tell which splash came from which guns, but that he soon got used to it — and that the real credit belonged to the artillerymen.
Six howitzers, 1,764 rounds — roughly three hundred per gun.
On the dates and the units
A retrospective account in the division newspaper dates the first attack to shortly after 0300 on 5 June. The after-action report and the two Bronze Star general orders issued to a sergeant of A Battery both give 6 and 7 June, and this site follows them.
The same quarterly report that contains the after-action report also carries an intelligence annex crediting the 88th Regiment with both nights. The after-action report is the better source: infiltration passes taken from the bodies identify the 272nd on the first night and the 88th on the second.
What Crook Sent to Fort Sill
Defending a fire base meant competing for the airspace above it — artillery trajectories, gunships, light fire teams, Spooky and a forward air controller all wanting the same sky. The battalion's solution was to draw a line on the ground through or near the base, positioned so the bulk of the artillery trajectories fell on one side of it. When aircraft arrived, the guns shifted to their side of the line and any battery still firing across it was check-fired. Ground commanders, forward air controllers and aircraft commanders were all briefed on the line as soon as it was drawn.
The report states plainly that when this plan was executed, as in the defense of FSB Crook, the forward air controller took control of all aircraft, and the result was effective use of both artillery and air in a highly successful battle.
The division artillery then recommended it be adopted formally under a name — the Airspace Coordination Line — and U.S. Army Vietnam endorsed forwarding it to the Field Artillery School at Fort Sill for evaluation as a possible new control measure.
What A Battery and the 3/22 did over three nights at Crook went up the chain as a proposed addition to Army doctrine.
Whether the Field Artillery School acted on it is not recorded here. The evaluation file, if it survives, would be at Fort Sill.
Sources: Combat After Action Interview Report, Fire Support Base Crook, 18 June 1969 — Tab D to the 25th Infantry Division operational report for the quarter ending 31 July 1969; and the 25th Infantry Division Artillery operational report for the same quarter, DTIC AD0506350, signed 15 August 1969 by Colonel Dan D. Stedham.
Personnel index
The Men
Every man this site has found a record of, with the source that names him. This is not a roster — it is what survives. If your father or grandfather served with the battalion and is not here, please .
In memory · A Battery
John L. Clark, Jr.
Drafted out of Gloucester County, New Jersey at twenty years old. Fourteen months in Tay Ninh Province, where he ran a 105mm howitzer crew. Decorated three times for valor in three separate actions, twice on consecutive nights at Fire Support Base Crook.
Vietnam Service · silver campaign starNational DefenseRVN CampaignSharpshooter · Marksman
Three actions — read the record
13 Feb 1969
Fire Support Base Washington. A private first class. The base was mortared and he went out to his howitzer while the rounds were still landing. Army Commendation Medal with “V”. ·
6 Jun 1969
Fire Support Base Crook, first night. A sergeant of four weeks. He left his bunker during the opening barrage and crossed to his gun section. Bronze Star Medal with “V”. ·
7 Jun 1969
Fire Support Base Crook, second night. Rounds falling throughout the battery area. He crossed it again and stayed in the open working the gun. Bronze Star Medal with “V”, First Oak Leaf Cluster.
Two of the three came on consecutive nights, in the same place, for going back out to the same gun section.
A silver campaign star stands for five bronze. His tour covered five named campaigns: Counteroffensive Phases IV, V and VI, Tet 69/Counteroffensive, and Vietnam Summer–Fall 1969.
Inducted29 Nov 1967
Local board#20, Woodbury NJ
MOS13B40 · FA Crewman
In countryMay 1968 – Jul 1969
Foreign svc1 yr 2 mo 3 da
Final rankSergeant, E-5
Released5 Jul 1969 · Honorable
His Tour
Fourteen months. Where the record places him, where his own camera does, and where neither does.
29 November 1967 · Woodbury, New Jersey
Inducted
Drafted at twenty through Local Board #20, Gloucester County, and trained as a 13B field artillery crewman — the man on the gun. He would finish qualified at the 13B40 skill level, the senior crewman grade that carried a section.
5 May 1968
Appointed private first class
The promotion is dated to the same week he reached Vietnam. It was also the week the May Offensive opened across South Vietnam — the bloodiest month of the entire war for American forces, with 1,161 killed and 3,954 wounded between the 5th and the 30th.
May 1968 · Dau Tieng
Joins A Battery
The battery was at Cu Chi. Six 105mm howitzers.
Four days after he was promoted, B and C Batteries were overrun at Maury I. A Battery was not there.
23 May 1968 · FSPB Bishop, XT7590
Sent to defend Saigon
An all-out attack on the capital was expected on 1 June, and the division concentrated artillery in a ring around the city. A Battery moved from Cu Chi to Bishop, southeast of Saigon, joining a battery of 2/40 Artillery that had arrived the day before.
His first weeks on the gun were spent defending Saigon, not Tay Ninh.
6 July — Cu Chi to FSPB Hull (XT2638). 8 July — Hull into Tay Ninh. 16 July — from FSPB Thomas III (XT4052) to Dau Tieng, where the battery would work into the autumn.
Five fire bases in eight weeks, from the outskirts of Saigon to the Cambodian border country.
His own photographs are the only evidence of those months, and they place him plainly: a Cobra gunship at Cu Chi. The gun line at Dau Tieng. Chopping ammunition at Dau Tieng. A convoy on Highway 1. A fireball on the road to Dau Tieng. Clearing a tree with C-4. A care package from home. A joke about Army dentistry.
The reports give the grids. The photographs give the faces.
3 June 1968 · south of Cu Chi
First recorded action
A fire support base fourteen kilometers south of Cu Chi began taking heavy mortar fire shortly after midnight. Within thirty minutes trip flares were burning along the perimeter and it was clear a ground attack was coming. The newspaper credits the base being held to the combined efforts of the 4/23 Mechanized — the Tomahawks — three batteries of the 7th Battalion, 11th Artillery, and a battery of 3/13, the gunners staying on line with the mortars still falling.
24 August 1968
Chris Woelk joins A Battery
Same battery, same gun line. Thirty-three years later the two of them would find each other again through this website and sign themselves the 7/11 Locators.
4 October 1968
Back with the battalion
After roughly five months detached, A Battery exchanges positions with a battery of 2/77 Artillery at Tay Ninh so each could rejoin its parent unit. By the 7th the battalion is whole again and back to normal direct support of the 1st Brigade.
November 1968 · FSB Buell
His photographs begin in earnest
Fire Support Base Buell Nov '68. Vic Cooper and Rob Sterling at the guns. Lieutenant Doug Miller in the fire direction bunker. Ralph Thompson. Vince Stella, captioned Mr. Fixit. Chief of Smoke Martinez — the senior NCO over all six howitzers.
2 December 1968
On the move
A Battery photographed walking a howitzer across a hastily laid bridge.
A Battery moving a howitzer across a quickly laid span, 2 December 1968. Photograph by SP4 Herb Burdett.
12 December 1968 · FSB Washington, XT1456
Four months in one place
The longest the battery sat still during his tour. Four of his photographs are from this month:
Fire In The Hole! — the gun firing. A captured enemy propaganda banner twenty-four feet long. Left By Enemy Outside Of Wire. And Stick 'em Up! Jerry Gross and John Clark, Washington — December '68.
A Christmas tree went up at the base that month and was photographed for the division paper.
The battalion’s Christmas tree at Fire Support Base Washington, December 1968.
6 January 1969
Captain Kenneth Coy commanding
The battery firing nightly harassment and interdiction missions from Washington.
3 February 1969
The battery's heaviest documented shoot
Supporting 3/22 Infantry: about 1,500 rounds in three hours, past 2,500 in seventeen. Four guns of B Battery then came forward to join them for a preparation of more than 500 rounds in fifteen minutes.
Six guns. Roughly 420 rounds apiece in a day.
13 February 1969 · FSB Washington
Mortar attack — his first decoration
He had been in country nine months and was still a private first class. The base came under heavy mortar fire and he went out to his howitzer while the rounds were still landing.
"Private Clark exposed himself to the holocaust of exploding projectiles as he moved to his howitzer and prepared it for firing."
No operational report records this attack. The citation is the only surviving account of it.
He was decorated for it eight weeks later, on 10 April, and the paper back home ran the picture: “Army Specialist Four John L. Clark, Jr., 22 … received the Army Commendation Medal during ceremonies April 10. Congratulating him is Colonel Carl M. Mott, battalion commander.”
5 March 1969
A new battalion commander
LTC Carl M. Mott Jr. relieves LTC Walter A. Wood III.
10 April 1969
Decorated
Lieutenant Colonel Carl M. Mott Jr., his battalion commander, pins the Army Commendation Medal with "V" on him in a field ceremony, photographed for the paper back home in New Jersey. He is a specialist four in the picture; sergeant was four weeks away.
The medal in that photograph is for the mortar attack on Fire Support Base Washington on 13 February 1969. General Orders 3491 had been published three weeks earlier, on 19 March, and it is the only Army Commendation Medal he was awarded. The newspaper says only that he received it “for heroism in action against enemy forces in Vietnam”; the order says what he actually did.
11 April 1969 · Fire Patrol Base Dallas, XT294281
A section goes to the border
A Battery detaches a complete howitzer section to Tay Ninh; the next day that gun and one from B Battery occupy Dallas, two and a half kilometers from Cambodia, protecting local farmers from cross-border incursions. Flown back on the 24th.
14 April 1969 · XT055595
A Battery builds Crook
The battery leaves Washington and moves west to establish Fire Support Base Crook, fourteen kilometers northwest of Tay Ninh and nine and a half from the Cambodian border. B Battery covers the move.
He helped build the place he would be decorated twice for defending.
8 May 1969
Promoted Sergeant
Four weeks before Crook. From here the citations call it his howitzer section — the language the Army used for a chief of section, the NCO responsible for one gun and its crew of eight or nine men.
"I ran one of the howitzers."
May 1969
The month with no record
Jack and Pineapple, FSB Crook, May 1969 — one of his photographs. Chris Woelk also recalled the battery losing men wounded about a month before Crook, fourteen in one telling and seventeen in another. Nothing in any report yet recovered mentions it.
19 May 1969 · XT146568
Building Washington II
Under Captain Dickson A. Neal, the battery moves west with D/3-22 Infantry and A/65 Engineers to build a second Fire Support Base Washington, sited closer to the border to block enemy supply routes. Photographed firing a preparation before displacing, and building bunkers at the new position.
5 June 1969, 2000 hours · FSB Crook
Five hours of warning
Seismic sensors activated 950 meters east and 550 meters northwest. Radar on the observation tower picked up groups of three and four men in the wood lines all around the base. Every location was engaged with time-fuzed and direct fire from the howitzers inside the wire. From 2130 the base went to one hundred percent alert.
6 June 1969, 0255 · FSB Crook
The first night — his first Bronze Star
Rockets, recoilless rifle, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars at eighty rounds a minute for five minutes, then fifty a minute for an hour and a half. A battalion assaulted from south and east. A sixteen-man element blew the outer wire with bangalore torpedoes.
"Sergeant Clark left the relative security of his [bunker] and maneuvered to his howitzer section... with complete disregard for his own safety, remained in an exposed position throughout the battle."
Seventy-six dead at first light. The attackers were the 3rd Battalion, 272nd NVA Regiment.
His battery fired 639 rounds of high explosive, 39 firecracker and 45 illumination that night, and was credited with fourteen of the enemy dead.
7 June 1969, 0255 · FSB Crook
The second night — his second Bronze Star
Heavier than the first: 150 rounds a minute for the opening five minutes. Two battalions of the 88th NVA Regiment assaulted at once, from northeast and northwest.
"Although rounds impacted throughout the battery area, Sergeant Clark, with complete disregard for his own safety, remained in an exposed position as he helped to load the guns and make the necessary adjustments in the artillery fire."
323 dead and ten prisoners. Three Americans wounded.
His battery fired 615 rounds of high explosive, 4 firecracker and 45 illumination. Across the whole engagement the artillery was credited with 108 of the 323.
8 June 1969
A third attack, broken up
At 2000 hours the base commander ordered a test firing of all weapons in case the enemy came again. Moments after it began the base drew fire from the treelines through 360 degrees. Three more enemy dead. Across three nights: 407 killed, one American lost, and 1,764 rounds of 105mm fired by six guns.
5 July 1969 · Oakland, California
Released
Honorable. One year, two months and three days of foreign service. Twenty-two years old.
13 July and 5 August 1969
The orders catch up
Both Bronze Star general orders were published after he was already home.
28 July 1969
His name in the division paper
Tropic Lightning News prints the Bronze Star for heroism to SGT John L. Clark alongside five other men of A Battery: SGT Ronald P. Duran, SGT Roger E. Edmond, CPL Michael S. Cziska, SP4 Gregorio V. Lopez and SP4 Larry D. Mette. Ten more of the battery received the Army Commendation Medal for heroism the same day.
He had been a civilian for three weeks.
Three Actions
13 Feb 1969 · FSB Washington
Army Commendation Medal with "V"
He had been in country nine months and was still a private first class. A Battery held Fire Support Base Washington, and in the first days of February had fired more than 2,500 rounds in seventeen hours supporting the infantry. On the 13th the base came under heavy mortar fire.
A howitzer cannot answer a mortar from inside a bunker. Someone has to be standing at the gun. With rounds landing close to his position he went out to his piece, prepared it for firing, and put counter-mortar fire back onto the enemy. The citation credits him with contributing to the successful defense of the base.
The battalion's own quarterly report does not record this attack; the citation is the only surviving account of it. Context from the 25th Infantry Division Artillery operational report for the quarter ending 30 April 1969 and Tropic Lightning News, 3 February 1969.
"During the initial contact, Private Clark exposed himself to the holocaust of exploding projectiles as he moved to his howitzer and prepared it for firing. Although enemy rounds were impacting dangerously close to his position, Private Clark, with complete disregard for his own safety, remained exposed as he began placing a devastating barrage of counter-mortar fire on the insurgents."
He had made sergeant four weeks earlier. At 0255 the base was hit with 107mm and 122mm rockets, 75mm recoilless rifle fire, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars, and a North Vietnamese force of battalion size came at the wire from the south and west. A sapper element blew through the outer wire with bangalore torpedoes.
Six howitzers stood between that assault and the men in the bunkers, and the guns were in the open. He left his bunker while the barrage was still falling, crossed to his section, and began putting fire onto the attacking force — direct fire at the closest range artillery is ever asked to work, and time-fuzed rounds bursting about thirty feet above the ground barely a hundred and fifty meters out. At first light the sweep found seventy-six enemy dead.
Context from Tactical and Materiel Innovations, U.S. Army Center of Military History, chapter 8. Rank date from his discharge record. Note that the Center's artillery volume gives seventy-five enemy dead for this night rather than seventy-six.
"Sergeant Clark left the relative security of his [bunker] and maneuvered to his howitzer section. [After reaching his section,] Sergeant Clark began to direct devastating artillery [fi]re on the hostile positions. Although exposed to a heavy barra[ge of enemy] fire, Sergeant Clark, with complete disregard for his o[wn safety,] remained in an exposed position throughout the battle."
General Orders 9078, HQ 25th Infantry Division, 13 July 1969 — the only copy held is obscured by glare in several places; the words in brackets are reconstructed and await a clean scan
7 Jun 1969 · FSB Crook
Bronze Star Medal with "V", First Oak Leaf Cluster
At 0200 a helicopter with a searchlight caught large groups moving up the road from the east. Then two more battalion-sized assaults came in at once, from the northeast and the northwest, and the northwestern one breached the outer wire before it was stopped.
The citation records that rounds were impacting throughout the battery area. He crossed that ground to reach his section, and then stayed out in it, working the gun and correcting the fire, for as long as the attack lasted. The morning sweep counted 323 enemy dead and took ten prisoners. Three Americans were wounded.
Two Bronze Stars for valor on consecutive nights, in the same place, for going back out to the same gun section. Context from Tactical and Materiel Innovations, U.S. Army Center of Military History, chapter 8.
"Immediately, Sergeant Clark maneuvered through the perilous area to his section and began to direct devastating artillery fire on the hostile positions. Although rounds impacted throughout the battery area, Sergeant Clark, with complete disregard for his own safety, remained in an exposed position as he helped to load the guns and make the necessary adjustments in the artillery fire."
Every base his battery held is plotted on the map, from Bishop in the ring around Saigon to Crook on the Cambodian border. , or filter to A Battery to follow the whole tour.
Where He Served
He reached Vietnam in May 1968 and joined A Battery while it was working out of Dau Tieng. Photographs he kept place him at Cu Chi and Dau Tieng through that year, at Fire Support Base Buell in November, and at Washington in December. He was at Crook for the June attacks and went home the following month.
Men he photographed
Jerry Gross, at Washington in December 1968. Vic Cooper and Rob Sterling at Buell. Ralph Thompson. Vince Stella. Lieutenant Doug Miller in the fire direction bunker at Buell. Chief Martinez. Chris Woelk.
His photographs
He carried a camera and captioned what he shot. Twenty-five of those captions survive; the pictures do not.
Afterward
He came home to Gloucester County and stayed. Supervisor at the Eastern Knitting Mill in Blackwood, where he met his wife Madeline. Owner of Clark Brothers Towing. A member of the Hawg Riding Fools Motorcycle Club, and a lifelong Harley-Davidson man.
He died on 22 August 2021 and is buried at the Gloucester County Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Williamstown, New Jersey.
In 2001 his son put a website online so he could find the men he served with. That story is here →
Every position the battalion is recorded at
The Ground
Fifty-nine locations, each plotted from the grid reference in the operational reports. Drag to move, scroll or pinch to zoom. Tap any marker to open its record, then follow the link through to the account. Every position is also listed with its grid reference in the table below. Filter by battery to follow one at a time.
10 km
On accuracy. Four-figure grids such as XT1456 are accurate to one kilometer — the base sat somewhere in that square, not at the point drawn. Six-figure grids reach a hundred meters. Coordinates were recorded on the Indian 1960 datum used by U.S. Army maps of the period. War Zone C is traced from the Center of Military History's map of the III Corps Tactical Zone; rivers, roads and the province boundary are indicative. Four grids are marked doubtful or approximate in their own panels.
The Position Table
Tap any base name to open it on the map. Grid references are from the division artillery's own quarterly reports, on U.S. Army maps of the period.
Base
Grid
Battery
When
—
B
Jan 1968, Operation Yellowstone
—
B, C
Attacked 9 May 1968
Buell (original)
XT213532
B
To 10 Aug 1968
XT227568 / XT4256
B
From 10 Aug 1968; attacked 18 and 22 Aug
XT2153
B
Sept 1968 – Apr 1969
Rawlins
XT301502
7/11 batteries
Aug–Sep 1968
XT2948 / XT2848 / XT352445
C, later B
From 27 July 1968; attacked 27 Aug
Scofield / Schofield III
XT407440 / XT4144
C
Attacked 24 Aug 1968
XT2877
C
16–17 Aug 1968
XT2768
C
Oct 1968
XT3958
C
From 26 Oct 1968
XT0151
B
Oct and Dec 1968
XT3862
B
From 27 Oct 1968
Grant
—
B
Nov 1968, north of Dau Tieng
—
B
Dec 1968, SE of Tay Ninh
XT1456
A
Late 1968 – 14 Apr 1969
XT1645
C
To 18 Feb 1969
XT3037
C
From 18 Feb 1969
Sedgewick
XT2430
supported
Feb 1969
Patrol Base Dallas
XT294281
A and B sections
11–24 Apr 1969
XT0559
A
Established 14 Apr 1969
Frontier City
XT203292 / XT202242
B section
24 Apr – 15 May 1969
Ord / Thien Ngon
—
C
Apr–May 1969, Rough Rider
XT146568
A
Built 19 May 1969; attacked 19 Jun 1969
XT3885
two batteries
19–20 Dec 1967, Yellowstone
XT6502 / XT618022
B, C
Attacked 9 May 1968
XT7590
A
From 23 May 1968 — Saigon defense
XS7798
A
To 4 July 1968
XT2638
A, later C
6 July and 21 July 1968
XT4052
A
To 16 July 1968
XT3942
B
6–13 July 1968
XT5152
C
6–8 July 1968
XT4434
C
16–21 July 1968
XT4420
C
22–24 July 1968
XT2256
B, later C
15–17 Mar, 29 Apr 1969
XT0881
C
Apr 1969, Rough Rider
XT341156
1/8 Arty
Attacked 5 Apr 1969
XT327215
1/8 Arty
Attacked 15 Apr 1969
XT2432
C
From 3 May 1969
XT3742
2/77, under 7/11
June–July 1969
XT3558
1/27, under 7/11
From 8 July 1969
XT1651
Battalion
1968–1970
Sources. Operational Report – Lessons Learned, Headquarters, 25th Infantry Division Artillery, quarters ending 31 October 1968 (DTIC AD0395314) and 30 April 1969 (DTIC AD0504193, dated 15 May 1969, signed COL John S. Wieringa Jr.); Operational Reports of the 25th Infantry Division for the quarters ending 31 January 1968, 30 April 1968 (AD392127), 31 July 1969 and 30 April 1970; Combat After Action Interview Report, Fire Support Base Crook, 30 June 1969.
A note on the April 1969 report. The grids drawn from it here were read from a volunteer transcription rather than the original scan. That transcription carries visible slips — one fire base grid appears as XY where the surrounding text uses XT, one battery letter is plainly wrong in context, and the commander is named Wieringa Jr. with two different middle initials in the same document. The archival original is held by Texas Tech University in the Bud Harton Collection as item 168300010473 and should be consulted before any of these grids is treated as final.
Frontier City — resolved. The division artillery gives XT203292 in April 1969 and the four-figure XT2029 in the following quarter; the after-action narrative agrees. The division's own account of building the base gives XT202242, five kilometers away, and is the outlier. This site follows XT203292.
Bragg II. The October 1968 artillery report gives XT3958; the April 1969 report gives XT3358. These may be two positions or a transcription error, and both are recorded here. The Crook grid XT055595 and the Washington II grid XT146568 are each confirmed by two independent reports.
Twenty-five captions, no photographs
The Gallery
Twenty-seven photographs of the battalion, and twenty-five captions still waiting for theirs.
SGT John L. Clark, Jr. carried a camera through fourteen months with A Battery, and when he built this site in 2001 he captioned every picture himself — who was in it, where it was taken, what was happening.
In 2013 a redesign replaced the gallery with a photo widget. The widget is long gone and the images went with it. But a web crawler had saved the old index page ten years earlier, and the captions survived.
So further down you will find his gallery with the photographs still missing: twenty-five titles in his own words, each waiting for its picture. Above them are the photographs that have been recovered — his own, and the battalion’s as the division newspaper photographed it at the time.
If you hold any of these
Prints from A Battery are in shoeboxes and albums all over the country. If your father or grandfather served with the 7th Battalion, 11th Field Artillery, look for anything captioned or dated from Cu Chi, Dau Tieng, Buell, Washington or Crook between 1968 and 1969 — and please .
This gallery is not only for his pictures. Any photograph from the battalion, from any battery, any year of the war, belongs here.
What Survives
John Clark at his howitzer. The gun is a 105mm M101A1 — split trail, shield and recoil mechanism behind him, sandbagged revetment beyond. The 25th Infantry Division patch is on his sleeve.
Receiving the Army Commendation Medal with “V”, 10 April 1969. Congratulating him is his battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Carl M. Mott Jr. He is a specialist four here; he would make sergeant four weeks later. The award was for the mortar attack on Fire Support Base Washington on 13 February. Local newspaper, spring 1969, from the family’s clipping
The bunker line at Fire Support Base Crook, on the front page of the division newspaper a week after the fighting. A Battery’s guns were inside this perimeter. Tropic Lightning News, 16 June 1969
The Battalion, Photographed at the Time
Twenty-six photographs of the battalion published in Tropic Lightning News between January 1968 and July 1969, preserved by the 25th Infantry Division Association. Every one carries its date, its caption as published, and the issue it came from. They are U.S. Army photographs and carry no copyright restriction.
A Battery
Four photographs of John Clark’s battery, published in the division newspaper while he was serving in it.
A Battery artillery piece crossing a quickly laid bridge/span. Photo credit in Tropic Lightning News: SP4 Herb Burdett. 1968-12-02
A Battery gun section at FSB Washington during the action in which the battery fired 1,500 105mm rounds in three hours and more than 2,500 in 17 hours. 1969-02-03
"Prep Mission" image: A Battery firing before displacement to establish a new fire support base closer to the Cambodian border. Photo by SP4 Pete Freeman. 1969-05-19
A Battery artillerymen building a bunker/gun position at the new firebase. Photo by SP4 Pete Freeman. 1969-05-19
With John Clark’s Own Provenance
The one photograph in this archive tied directly to him. It was supplied by SGT John Clark and SP4 Chris Woelk, and Clark is the man standing in the center.
24-foot Viet Cong propaganda banner found just outside the wire at FSB Washington. The photograph was supplied by SGT John Clark and SP4 Chris Woelk. John Clark is the man in the center. 1968-12
B Battery
B Battery, 7th Battalion, 11th Artillery at Katum base camp during the Operation Yellowstone period. 1968-01-01
SGT Leonard W. Sears loading/chambering a 105mm round during B Battery photo feature. 1969-03-17
PFC Michael Garcia, PFC Dwayne Turner and CPL John Banks working on a 105mm howitzer. 1969-03-17
CPL John Banks preparing/fuzing 105mm ammunition. 1969-03-17
B Battery gun section laying a 105mm howitzer. 1969-03-17
"Battery...Fire!" B Battery 105mm howitzer firing during the March 17 photo feature. 1969-03-17
One of B Battery's two 105mm howitzers at Frontier City being hooked to a 25th Aviation Battalion CH-47 for extraction. 1969-06-02 (photo from 1969-05-15 withdrawal)
CH-47 carrying a B Battery 105mm howitzer out of Patrol Base Frontier City. 1969-06-02 (photo from 1969-05-15 withdrawal)
Tropic Lightning artillerymen loading 105mm rounds onto a Chinook before departing Frontier City. 1969-06-02 (photo from 1969-05-15 withdrawal)
C Battery
C Battery 105mm crew at FSB Rawlins III: SGT Leo Fox, SGT David King, PFC William Stapleton and PFC Frank J. Serio Jr. 1968-09-02
SFC Edwin Borrero, C Battery mess sergeant, holding battery mascot "Bozzell" at the time C Battery was at FSB Ord. 1969-05-05
C Battery 105mm howitzers at FSB Ord/Thien Ngon during Operation Rough Rider-related construction. 1969-05-26
Approximately 1,200 artillery rounds being unloaded at FSB Ord in the C Battery feature. 1969-05-26
Headquarters Battery, Forward Observers and the Battalion
Christmas tree at FSB Washington identified by Tropic Lightning News as belonging to the 7th Battalion, 11th Artillery. 1968 Christmas (published 1969-01-13)
Two boys at Long Thoi hamlet examining the 7/11 MEDCAP team's medical equipment during a break; story identifies CPT John W. Gaebler and SP4 Donald Johnson with the battalion team. Photo by SP4 Pete Freeman. 1969-01-27
7/11 executive officer MAJ Gerald D. Curbow (left) with LTC Leo L. Wilson and CPT Roosevelt Ludd checking plans for FSB Stoneman. Photo by SP4 H. J. Tschirner. 1969-02-10
Ammo humpers unload 105mm rounds after movement into the position for FSB Crook; published with feature on HHB ammo section/resupply. Photo by SP4 Pete Freeman. 1969-06-02
CH-54 Sky Crane lifting artillery ammunition from the Viking Resupply Pad, illustrating the air-resupply method described for the HHB ammo section. Photo by SP4 Pete Freeman. 1969-06-02
SP4 Harry D. Mills at FSB Crook; contemporary reporting describes him adjusting A Battery, 7/11 and other supporting artillery during the Crook fighting. 1969-07-07 publication; action June 1969
7/11 forward-observer team working with A/4/9 Infantry: SP4 Tom Belew, SGT Dale Clifton and LT Fisher, posing with a 12-foot boa. Photo by SP4 Pete Freeman. 1969-07-21
1LT Daniel L. Putman, 7/11 artillery forward observer, observing/adjusting artillery while working with Navy river operations on the Vam Co Dong. Photo feature by SP4 Pete Freeman. 1969-07-28
His Captions
Group Pic, FSB Washington II — “Where is Everybody?”
“Stick ’em Up!” Jerry Gross and John Clark, Washington, December ’68
Left by the enemy outside the wire, Washington, December ’68
FSB Washington, December ’68
FSB Washington, ’68
Fire Support Base Buell, November ’68
FSB Buell, ’68
Lt. Doug Miller in the FDC bunker, FSB Buell, ’68
Vic Cooper and Rob Sterling, Buell, ’68
Chief of Smoke Martinez
“Have You Seen This Guy?” FSB Crook — Chief Martinez
Jack and Pineapple, FSB Crook, May 1969
Chris Woelk
Ralph Thompson, ’68
Vince Stella — “Mr. Fixit”
John Clark and Granada
Cobra gunship, Cu Chi, ’68
Dau Tieng, ’68
Chopping ammo, Dau Tieng
Fireball on the road to Dau Tieng
Highway 1, ’68
Tree removal by C-4
A care package from home
On Army dentistry
John Clark, ’75
Recovered from an archived copy of 7thbn11thfa.com captured in 2003, two redesigns before the images were lost. The full gallery is coming soon — each frame fills as its photograph is found.
Also Wanted
Photographs of the guns and the men who worked them. Fire base construction. Gun crews at Washington, Buell, Rawlins, Stoneman, Crook. The howitzers themselves — M101A1s, and what Vietnamese dust did to them.
Documents too: general orders, orders assigning men to batteries, unit newsletters, letters home that name places or people. Anything with a name and a date on it adds to .
Personal information is removed before anything is published — service numbers, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, home addresses and signatures. Award citations and unit records go up in full.
About
This Website
In 2001 a son built his father a website so he could find the men he served with. It worked. This is that site, rebuilt.
John Clark came home from Vietnam in July 1969 and, like most of them, lost touch. Thirty-two years later the site went up under the name 7thbn11thfa.com, with a guestbook and an open invitation to anyone who had served with the battalion between 1966 and 1971.
They came. He and Chris Woelk of the same battery signed themselves the 7/11 Locators and put the word out wherever veterans gathered online. Woelk built his own site for A Battery. Between them they assembled rosters, traded photographs, and worked out the grid coordinates of fire support bases with Vic Cooper, another A Battery man.
Of everyone the site brought back, Woelk became the closest. Two men who had been in the same battery in the same year and had not spoken since 1969.
Welcome to the A Btry 7/11 website. I hope you enjoy your time on this site. Thanks for visiting — please sign the guestbook.
Status bar message, 7thbn11thfa.com, 2001
What This Site Adds
The original had no official records. This one does — every division and division artillery quarterly report covering the battalion's war, the after-action reports on Fire Support Base Crook and the Battle for Tay Ninh, sixty issues of the division newspaper, fire support base grid coordinates, campaign credits, and a documented chronology of the fighting. Several errors that circulated for years on veteran pages have been corrected against the Army's own history, and are noted where they occur.
Every claim here carries its source. Where sources disagree, both are shown.
Credit
Original research, photographs and captions by John L. Clark, Jr., A Battery. Rosters and fire support base coordinates by Chris Woelk and Vic Cooper, A Battery. Period photographs by the soldier-photographers of Tropic Lightning News, among them SP4 Pete Freeman, SP4 Herb Burdett and SP4 H. J. Tschirner.
Get in Touch
If you served with the battalion, or your father or grandfather did, this site wants to hear from you. Photographs, documents, corrections, a name we have wrong, or simply a memory — all of it belongs here.
Nothing you send is published without asking you first. Your email address is used to reply and for nothing else — it is never shown on the site, sold, or added to any list. There is no tracking on this site and no cookies.
Sources
Every document this site rests on is held here, on this server, and can be read in full. Nothing depends on another site staying online.
U.S. Army operational reports, after-action reports, general orders and the division newspaper are works of the federal government and carry no copyright restriction. Two collections are deliberately not reproduced: the Veterans History Project material at the Library of Congress, whose contributors keep their own copyright, and the Center of Military History's interview tapes, which have never been digitised. Both are identified precisely enough to be requested.
Documents marked NOT LOCATED have not been found yet. Where a document is known to exist, its accession number and the archive that should hold it are recorded, so anyone can continue the search.
Each claim on this site carries a source line, and every source line leads here. Where a document is online, the link goes to the scan. Where it is not, this page records the accession number and the archive that holds it.
Documents are marked as read in full, read only in part or in transcription, or not yet located. Nothing is cited here that has not been examined, and the gaps are listed as plainly as the holdings.
Division Artillery Quarterly Reports
Operational Report – Lessons Learned, Headquarters, 25th Infantry Division Artillery, report symbol RCS CSFOR-65. These are the battery-level record. The division's own reports track infantry battalions and mention an artillery battery only when something happens to it; the division files these separately, and says so in writing.
Quarter ending 30 April 1968
Covers 1 Feb – 30 Apr 1968 · DTIC AD392227 · Signed 18 May 1968, COL Gordon Sumner Jr. · Forwarded 22 Aug 1968 · Archive SB008 2.16 · 25 pages
Documents the battalion's relocation to Tay Ninh during Operations Quyet Thang and Wilderness, and the concentration of artillery around Saigon in April against an expected 1 May attack. Records 221 battery displacements and 288,470 rounds fired in the quarter, and states that no significant ground attack was made on any artillery fire support base during the period — nine days before Maury I.
Its lessons-learned section is unusually close to the gun line: cross-training every man in ammunition handling because gun sections take casualties, amplifying fire commands to each howitzer section, and the abrasive paste formed when the authorized lubricant for the M101A1 howitzer mixes with Vietnamese dust.
Covers 1 May – 31 Jul 1968 · DTIC AD394035 · Originator 683216 · Signed 15 Aug 1968, COL Gordon Sumner Jr. · Forwarded 18 Nov 1968 · Archive Texas Tech, Bud Harton Collection 168300010343
The only document placing A Battery through John Clark's first three months in country — Bishop, Danford, Hull, Tay Ninh and Thomas III. Its Inclosure 1 is the Army's narrative account of Maury I and Pike VI, naming Captain Jowers, Lieutenant McLaughlin and Captain Ortiz, and recording that the 7th Battalion lost no howitzers at Maury.
A correction. AD394035 was for a time thought to belong to a different document, because the copy carries a covering endorsement dated 18 November 1968. That is the Adjutant General’s forwarding date, not the report’s. The accession is correct: the report signed by Colonel Sumner on 15 August 1968, carrying A Battery’s moves through Bishop, Danford, Hull and Thomas III and the Maury I and Pike VI narrative, is AD394035.
Covers 1 Aug – 31 Oct 1968 · DTIC AD0395314 · Signed 16 Nov 1968 · Archive SB008 2.20
The Third Offensive and the Valorous Unit Award period. Contains the Army's own definition of killer junior — charge 1, fuze time, set for minimum range.
Covers 1 Nov 1968 – 31 Jan 1969 · accession unknown · not in the SB008 inventory
Would cover FSB Buell in November 1968 and A Battery's occupation of FSB Washington on 12 December — the months John Clark photographed most heavily. The last missing quarter of his tour.
What is known. The report exists: a surviving veterans-history citation identifies it exactly and gives its source as DTIC, which indicates a digitised copy was once held there rather than the report merely being mentioned elsewhere. Its date is probably 15 February 1969, from a transcription citation, but that has not been confirmed against the cover. It is conspicuously absent from the 1965–1970 inventory, which lists the artillery reports on either side of it.
Three recovery routes. DTIC itself, where a copy once sat. The Morris Swett Technical Library at Fort Sill, the Field Artillery School's own library, which retains Vietnam-era artillery lessons-learned material on microfiche from exactly this period — the right request asks them to search the old DS557 Vietnam ORLL microfiche collection rather than the online catalog. And the National Archives at College Park, Record Group 472.
Cautions. No accession number has been established and none should be guessed from the sequence. AD0502062 and similar numbers thrown up by searching belong to an Americal Division Artillery report, not this one. A DS557 call number circulating for January 1969 belongs to the 6th Battalion, 32nd Artillery.
Note also that these reports carry two dates — the unit’s signature and the Adjutant General’s forwarding endorsement, often months later. A report has been wrongly ruled out before on the strength of the second date.
NOT LOCATED
Quarter ending 30 April 1969
Covers 1 Feb – 30 Apr 1969 · DTIC AD0504193 · Signed 15 May 1969, COL John S. Wieringa Jr. · Archive SB008 2.23 · TTU 168300010473
Fire Patrol Base Dallas, the establishment of FSB Crook on 14 April, and Frontier City. Records A Battery at FSB Washington at the start of February — and contains no mention of the 13 February mortar attack, confirming that John Clark's citation is its only surviving account.
Read here in a volunteer transcription, not the original scan. That transcription carries visible slips — one grid given as XY where the region uses XT, one battery letter wrong in context, and the commander's middle initial inconsistent. Grids from it should be checked against the Texas Tech original before being treated as final.
Covers 1 May – 31 Jul 1969 · DTIC AD0506350 · Originator 693134 · Signed 15 Aug 1969, COL Dan D. Stedham · Forwarded 17 Dec 1969 · Archive SB008 2.25 · TTU 168300010476
The last major document of John Clark's tour. Records A Battery's exact ammunition expenditure on each night at Crook, the 750,000th round fired by the battalion, and the recommendation that the airspace technique proven at Crook be adopted as a named control measure and forwarded to the Field Artillery School at Fort Sill.
Two dates attach to this report and both are correct: 15 August 1969 is the unit's signature, 17 December 1969 the Adjutant General's forwarding endorsement. The archival inventory records forwarding dates throughout.
Filed by Headquarters, 25th Infantry Division. Useful for brigade operations, commanders and casualty figures; they track maneuver battalions rather than batteries.
Quarter ending 31 January 1968
Covers Nov 1967 – Jan 1968
Gives LTC Billy J. Leathers assuming command of the battalion on 3 November 1967, relieving LTC Alvin C. Hutchins, and the December 1967 fight at Fire Support Patrol Base Beauregard where two of the battalion's batteries were airlifted in.
States in writing that artillery support is reported separately by the division artillery — the paragraph that establishes the two document series. Note the division and division artillery reports for this quarter are numbered exactly 100 apart.
Gives the Maury I grid as XT618022 and the command change to LTC Forest E. Pierce dated 9 May 1968 — the day of the attack. Its claim that two 105mm howitzers were destroyed is contradicted by both the artillery's report and the Army's history.
The bait-base lineage behind Crook: Patrol Bases Diamond II and Diamond III, and the division's written conclusion that the enemy could be induced to fight at a place of its own choosing. Its account of Frontier City credits the infantry and three batteries of artillery and does not mention B Battery's two howitzers at all.
Gives LTC Robert A. Robinson commanding the battalion, and the grid for the second FSB Washington at XT146568 — confirmed independently by the Crook after-action report.
Places all three firing batteries during the Valorous Unit Award period: B Battery at Buell II through the 18 and 22 August attacks, C Battery at Scofield on 24 August, and A Battery at Dau Tieng. Gives LTC Forest E. Pierce commanding and the full sequence of assaults on the fire base arc around the city.
Its index lists three taped interviews — Inclosure 82 with the commander of B Battery, 7/11 on the Buell II attacks, Inclosure 83 with seven men of the Buell garrison, and Inclosure 87 with seven officers and men from Scofield. All are marked "copy 1 only" and none has been located.
Combat After Action Interview Report — Fire Support Base Crook
Covers 5–8 Jun 1969 · interview 18 Jun 1969, report 30 Jun 1969 · Archive SB008 2.28 · Tab D to the division report for the quarter ending 31 July 1969
The primary source for the action John Clark was twice decorated for. Names Major Joseph E. Bacia commanding the base, Captain Larry B. Thomas on the bunker line and Captain Dickson A. Neal commanding A Battery. Records the five hours of sensor warning, the rate of incoming fire, the rehearsed layering of fires, the six A Battery machine guns handed to the infantry, and the third attack broken up by a test firing.
On the spelling. This site first read the surname as Bacia from the after-action scan. Three further sources give Hacia — the archival inventory, a 1995 Fort Leavenworth monograph, and the division newspaper of 16 June 1969, which also gives his home town as Wethersfield, Connecticut. The report itself contains both spellings. Hacia is followed here.
18th Military History Detachment — combat interviews
25th Infantry Division · tapes and transcripts · Vietnam Interview Tape Collection, U.S. Army Center of Military History
Army military history detachments recorded interviews with participants within days or weeks of an action and sent the tapes and supporting papers to the Center of Military History for the preparation of the official histories. Most remain on open-reel tape. The complete collection is available for research on site in Washington, by appointment.
One of these directly concerns A Battery. On 25 June 1968 SGT Dennis Smith of the 18th Military History Detachment recorded eight men on the action of 6–7 June north of Saigon, among them 2LT Paul J. Wilson, forward observer, whose parent unit is given as A Battery, 7th Battalion, 11th Artillery. The transcript survives online and carries editorial notes referring to what can be heard on the tape itself.
The same detachment recorded the three interviews listed as Inclosures 82, 83 and 87 to the Battle for Tay Ninh report — one of them with the commander of B Battery, 7/11.
The tapes are not held here. The open-reel recordings remain with the U.S. Army Center of Military History in the Vietnam Interview Tape Collection, available for research on site by appointment. Only the transcript below is reproduced.
A caution. An inclosure number in a 1968 Army report and a later Center of Military History catalog number are separate numbering systems. Inclosures 82, 83 and 87 should not be assumed to correspond to VNIT-82, 83 and 87 until a crosswalk is found. The right request is for the index linking original detachment inclosure numbers to VNIT numbers.
GO 3491, 19 Mar 1969 · GO 9078, 13 Jul 1969 · GO 10087, 5 Aug 1969 · HQ 25th Infantry Division
The Army Commendation Medal with "V" for 13 February 1969 at FSB Washington, and the Bronze Star Medal with "V" and its Oak Leaf Cluster for 6 and 7 June 1969 at FSB Crook. Held by the family; quoted in full on his page.
The only surviving copy of GO 9078 is obscured by camera glare across several lines. Words shown in brackets on his page are reconstructed and await a clean scan. General orders are U.S. Government works and carry no copyright restriction.
Department of the Army General Orders · numbers not yet identified
The Valorous Unit Award to the battalion, and the Presidential Unit Citations to B Battery for Frontier City and to A Battery for Ben Cui, were each granted by a numbered general order carrying a written citation. None has been located. These are the primary sources for three claims this site currently rests on a regimental history.
NOT LOCATED
Published Histories
U.S. Army Center of Military History
Field Artillery 1954–1973 · Tactical and Materiel Innovations
Chapter 5 of the artillery volume covers Maury I and its effect on fire base doctrine. Chapter 8 of Tactical and Materiel Innovations gives the Army's published account of Fire Support Base Crook. The two volumes disagree on whether seventy-five or seventy-six enemy dead were found on the morning of 6 June.
Vockery, The Employment of Field Artillery in the Defense of Fire Bases
MAJ William Vockery · School of Advanced Military Studies, Fort Leavenworth, 1995
Uses Maury I and Pike VI as its central historical case — both this battalion's. Notes that an artillery battery carried eight machine guns, double an infantry company's, which is what makes the six handed over at Crook significant.
25th Infantry Division weekly newspaper, published at Cu Chi · 60 issues held, 6 May 1968 to 11 August 1969
The division newspaper is the only place most of the men on this site are named at all — award lists, photographs, battery features, and the small notices that never reached an operational report. Nearly every name in the personnel index came from these pages.
Sixty issues are held here, running from 6 May 1968 to 11 August 1969 — almost exactly the span of John Clark’s tour. Fifty-two of them name the battalion.
◆ quoted on this site· names the battalionunmarked — no mention found
Each issue was searched by machine for the battalion’s designation in its several forms. An issue marked as no mention may still carry a photograph or a name in a caption — the search reads text, not pictures. Anyone hunting a particular man should read the years either side of his tour rather than trust the marks.
60 ISSUES HELD ON THIS SITE
Archival Finding Aids
"List — After Action Reports and Lessons Learned Reports from 1965 to 1970"
Texas Tech item 23850709001 · 35th Infantry Regiment Association Collection · photocopied list with manuscript annotations
Catalogues quarterly and after-action reports by shelf mark and forwarding date, and is the source of the SB008 references given elsewhere on this page. Its dates are Department of the Army forwarding dates rather than unit signature dates — demonstrable from SB008 2.16, whose forwarding endorsement of 22 August 1968 matches the inventory exactly while the unit signed it on 18 May.
The repository the SB008 prefix refers to has not been established. The inventory sits in the 35th Infantry Regiment Association Collection but catalogs division-wide records, so the physical documents are likely held elsewhere. The 25th Infantry Division Association states that its own archive holds most combat action and after action reports for 1967 and 1968 — which would cover much of this list — and that archive is deposited at the Marshall Foundation. That is a hypothesis worth testing, not an established fact, and shelf marks cited on this page should be treated as recorded rather than verified.
#2 August 1968 — action in the vicinity of Tay Ninh · #4 2 October 1968 — preparations for an enemy attack on Tay Ninh · #3 15 October 1968 — action in the Saigon River area
Analytical reports, distinct from the routine quarterlies, produced during the months the battalion held the fire base arc around Tay Ninh and then took over the base camp's counter-rocket defense. The October report on preparations for an attack on Tay Ninh would bear directly on the mission 7/11 assumed the following March.
Confirmed to exist in the 1965–1970 inventory, which does not assign them shelf numbers. No digitised copies and no DTIC accessions have been found. Enquiries should quote Texas Tech item 23850709001 and ask both what repository the SB008 prefix denotes and whether the underlying reports can be reproduced.
NOT LOCATED
25th Infantry Division Association Archives
Association archive · deposited at the George C. Marshall Foundation, Lexington, Virginia
The Association states that its collection holds most combat action and after action reports for 1967 and 1968, and lacks them for earlier and later years — alongside maps, letters, rosters, orders, photographs and newspapers. The three Combat Analysis reports, the Battle for Tay Ninh report and its three taped interviews all fall inside that window.
This is the most promising unexplored route for the documents still missing from this site.
NOT YET APPROACHED
George C. Marshall Foundation — 25th Infantry Division Association records
Lexington, Virginia · accession 150-0 · ten boxes, donated 2006
Holds four binders of Association member rosters recorded by era and unit of assignment, a database of American dead identified to company level, and maps of the Battle for Tay Ninh used by the division commander for a 2002 lecture. Consultable on site; removal requires written permission from the Association president.
Larry Schwab Collection — Veterans History Project
Library of Congress · CPT Larry Schwab, medical officer, 7th Bn 11th FA
A 134-minute video interview, twenty-six photographs, a 1988 letter, and the general orders for his Bronze Star — General Orders 4788. He describes the night of 8–9 May 1968 in detail, including treating a severely wounded commander. Whether that night was Maury I, and whether the commander was LTC Leathers, would be settled by the location named in the general orders.
Not held on this site. Veterans History Project contributors keep the copyright in their own material, so this collection is not reproduced here. It is held by the Library of Congress under the Veterans History Project as the Larry Schwab Collection, and includes General Orders 4788 among its official documents. Ask the Library for a copy.
PARTIAL
Still being sought
The division artillery quarterly for November 1968 to January 1969. The general orders granting the three unit awards. The three 1968 Combat Analysis reports. The taped interviews from the Battle for Tay Ninh. The Association member rosters at Lexington. Morning reports for A Battery from the National Archives.
If you hold any of these, or know where they are, please .
