Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
actually a sort of slackening of the pace of enemy operations. They suffered so heavily during
that period. Could you see the impact of Tet, or the aftermath, while you were there?
A:
No, not really where we were. I think the thing you're referring to is in areas like Hue, Phan
Rang, Saigon, the others where there were big engagements. Up in our area we were never
mainstream with large, hard-core units.
Tet happened before I got there. Phu Hiep came under fire attack during Tet, and the 577th
and others on the perimeter had fought them off. The Vietcong had occupied a school just
outside the perimeter, and we had basically destroyed the school with fire. While I was there,
we came back in and rebuilt that school for the Vietnamese.
The Vietcong didn't take a huge toll in the Phu Yen, Tuy Hoa area. Nor did the
counterattacks take a big toll of the Vietcong, so they really weren't destroyed in the
province. They were around and they kept things going, like those incidents I talked about.
There were not large numbers of Vietcong or incidents.
The Korean regiment was very aggressive. They were always taking operations to the
periphery areas around Tuy Hoa and really kept the Vietcong on the move. The Vietcong
incidents we'd have would be planned skirmishes, planned firefights, basically by very small
units.
Q:
Did you have much contact with Korean engineers?
A:
No, very little. I visited the Korean regiment early on to try to make contact with the
commander. He really wanted to be autonomous, and he didn't want anybody messing with
his engineers. We would invite them over in the evenings, and we would have some contact,
but not a really professional kind of contact.
Q:
Well, maybe we can turn to the activities in the Dalat area, if there isn't any more about the
early period that you'd like to cover.
A:
Well, I talked to you a lot about Dalat already. We continued our echelonment and moved
into the new area. Either the USARV engineers or the brigade had come up with a study that
said, for all of Vietnam, that building revetments and base camps out of sand bags was not
smart nor cost effective because they wore out and a lot of effort was spent rebuilding them.
There was a design to use plywood for revetments. You could build one very quickly, put on
plywood, brace it, and put the sand in between, as opposed to stacking individual sandbags.
When we went into Don Duong, we decided to move in with Delta Company of the 589th,
now our Delta Company. We built the base camp at the base of a large dam. The dam had
been built there for hydroelectric purposes. There were large penstocks that ran down the
hillside toward Phan Rang. The penstocks had been destroyed.
We built our compound right at the base of the dam. It was a nice flat area, away from the
village, where we could immediately start down the switchbacks towards Phan Rang or run
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