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Firebase Diamond

In February 1969, Delta Company built firebase Diamond, near the Cambodian border in the area called the Angel’s Wing. On a map, the contour of the borders between Cambodia and South Vietnam look like an angel’s wing, giving the area its name.

The purpose of the firebase was to interfere with the NVA’s supply line from Cambodia into South Vietnam. To keep their supply line from being bombed by the US military the NVA brought their supplies south through Cambodia into South Vietnam through the Angel’s Wing. The NVA didn’t like the US Army interfering with their supply line.

On February 23rd and 24, the NVA attacked Firebase Diamond with a ground attack, attempting to breach the perimeter and overrun the firebase. The NVA blew a hole through the concertina razor wire on the perimeter and destroyed a few bunkers. They killed thirty-three NVA, the perimeter held, and they drove the NVA back.

In April 1969, Delta and Alpha companies moved from Diamond I to build Diamond II. Headquarters decided the NVA had shifted their supply line to avoid Diamond I. The two companies built Diamond II on April 5. The NVA attacked Diamond II with another ground attack the first night.

The NVA overran one of Delta’s listening posts. A hundred yards outside the firebase’s perimeter. Four men from First Platoon manned the LP. The LP was overrun before they could retreat back into the firebase, the NVA killed all of them.

The morning of April 14, both companies dismantled Diamond II, moving it again by choppers to their new location still along the border. Late that night the companies completed Diamond III Headquarters sent word to the commanders of Delta and Alpha companies. They received information from the eight NVA prisoners captured during the attack on Diamond II. The NVA’s 272 Regiment was the unit that attacked Diamond I & II and were planning another attack.

By 1:00 a.m., the morning of April 15, they finished Diamond III. It was ready and manned with two infantry companies supported by two 105 howitzer artillery pieces from the Eighth Artillery.

They manned the lookout tower inside the firebase with two men watching the perimeter through starlight scopes.

A handheld device that uses starlight from the night sky to illuminate the ground as though it were daylight, except the viewing images appear as light-green images. The scope allows the viewer to see the entire field of view around the perimeter as though the area was lit with a green light.

At 2:30 a.m., the two operators had plenty of activity to watch. Several hundred NVA soldiers with various weapons outside their perimeter were setting up mortar tubes for an attack. Others were placing 51-caliber anti-aircraft guns in holes being dug in the ground around the perimeter.

The men in the tower, radioed the command post updating the CP. The CP sent men around the perimeter waking men up, advising them to get ready for the attack.

The CP contacted supporting firebases telling them to stand by for artillery support for Diamond III. Delta’s CO contacted Division HQ at Cu Chi requesting they dispatch cobra gunships to Diamond III. At 3:00 a.m. on April 15, the men were bone tired from dismantling Diamond II and building Diamond III. Some men tried to sleep while others kept watch.

When the NVA started their attack on Diamond III, they fired mortars, landing them on one edge of the firebase. They walked their mortars across the perimeter from one end to the other.

This tactic kept the soldiers inside their bunkers to avoid flying shrapnel from the exploding mortars. As they walked, the mortars across the perimeter from the original impact site to the opposite side of the perimeter. The NVA approached the wire with explosive charges to blow holes in the perimeter wire allowing the NVA to breach the perimeter.

After several ground attacks on Diamond I and II, the men knew the NVA’s tactics and what to expect. What the two hundred defenders of Alpha and Delta companies at Diamond III didn’t know was the 272nd Regiment of NVA were attacking them with two battalions of NVA soldiers, one thousand men.

The NVA blew the wire on the Alpha company side and stormed the perimeter. At the time, it was unknown how many NVA got through the wire; they overran and destroyed four bunkers, killing the men inside.

Delta’s CO, Captain Kotrc, was on the radio when the mortar attack started. He ordered artillery support to fire firecracker rounds over Diamond III. Firecracker rounds are delivered from an eight-inch 155 mm artillery shell that carried high explosive rounds inside, the size of golf balls. Small bomb-lets eject from the eight-inch shell at an altitude over the target, Falling like little umbrellas to the ground. On impact, they spring back into the air about six feet above the ground, exploding in the air like hundreds of M-26 frag-grenades. Delta’s CO contacted Cu Chi, advising them Diamond III was under attack and needed cobra gunships to respond.

The Twenty-Fifth Aviation Battalion in Cu Chi had crews on standby. The phone in the scramble shack rang. The two crews were told the ground attack on Diamond III had begun, and they were being overrun. The pilots ran to their cobras and started the engines while the copilots remained behind in the shack to receive coordinates and radio frequencies of Delta Company’s CO.

After a quick briefing on the phone, the copilots ran to their ships, as they closed the cobra’s cockpit doors the pilots already lifted off heading down the runway. Heading to Diamond III, the cobra pilots contacted Delta’s CO, asking where he wanted the cobra’s ordinance placed.

Captain Kotrc advised the gunships all their men were inside the wire. Everything outside the wire was unfriendly and all theirs. Captain Kotrc passed the word down the bunker line, the cobra gunships were coming in.

Diamond III was receiving artillery support from other firebases. Artillery high explosive rounds were exploding everywhere outside the perimeter. When the cobra gunships arrive overhead, one of the pilots told the men later, the display of firepower stunned them at as they approached Diamond III.

It was clear from the amount of red and green tracers streaming through the air, Diamond was under siege. The cobra’s pilot told the men later, they wondered how anyone could survive what they were watching on the ground. The scene shocked them.

The pilot of the first gunship overhead tilted the nose of his cobra forward into a dive to make his first run at the enemy. The pilot seated in the front squeezed the trigger on his electric mini gun mounted on the nose of the cobra.

The tracers spewed a beam of red light from the nose of the cobra, blanketing the NVA on the ground. One has to realize tracer rounds on a belt of machine gun ammo are every fifth round. You only see 20 percent of what the weapon fires.

They leveled the two 105 howitzer artillery pieces inside Diamond III at the perimeter.

Firing beehive rounds point blank across the perimeter at the enemy. Beehive rounds contain six thousand one-inch steel darts stamped with four metal fins on one end of each dart.

There were hundreds of NVA approaching the perimeter. Men were fighting the enemy inside the wire at the breach point. The NVA were using the bunkers they destroyed along the perimeter to fight from. Captain Kotrc ordered jet air strikes to drop napalm outside the perimeter wire.

Artillery rounds were still exploding nonstop outside Diamond III’s perimeter from supporting firebases. A few minutes passed; you could hear the sound of jet aircraft inbound toward the firebase.

Seconds later, outside, the perimeter exploded in flames with a wall of burning napalm.

Men could feel the intense heat from the napalm on their faces. The NVA caught in the napalm outside the wire were screaming as they burned to death. Three men from first squad manned Ed’s bunker. Corky, his ammo bearer, a rifleman named Cecil and Bruce, who was issued Robert’s M-79 grenade launcher.

Bruce was firing grenades at the approaching enemy. Ed’s M-60 was getting hot, just as Sergeant Johnson told him it would. The barrel of the gun was glowing red. He could see the piston under the barrel traveling back and forth in the glowing red metal as he fired. Ed yelled at Corky above the noise of the gunfire to grab his spare barrel on the bunker.

Bruce was launching grenades at the approaching NVA while Cecil was killing any strays getting close to the perimeter wire. Ed grabbed the spare barrel from Corky and changed it. Word came down the bunker line ordering one man from each bunker to move to the breach point on Alpha Company’s side of the perimeter to help drive the NVA out of the perimeter.

Without hesitating, Cecil grabbed a bandoleer of M16 ammo and hung it over one shoulder across his bare chest. For the next hour, Cecil remained at the perimeter breech supporting the men from Alpha Company. Ed, Corky, and Bruce held off the NVA, trying to breech their side of the perimeter.

Flares were lighting the sky as bright as daylight over the firebase. Targets were easy to see.

The enemy kept trying to move forward toward the perimeter with what seemed like an endless supply of soldiers. Some were shoulder to shoulder in places. Trying to find openings through the burning napalm.

Eight cobra gunships were traveling back and forth from Diamond III to Cu Chi, reloading and refueling. While overhead, the mini guns would stream their solid red beam of light from the nose of their cobras while the pilot would fire rockets from the pods mounted on the side of their gunships. Ed wondered why the gunship Spooky was not overhead to help them.

Spooky was the army’s name for one of several Douglas AC-47 cargo aircraft that were converted into gunships with three electric mini guns mounted on the aircraft’s left side. Three guns could deliver eighteen thousand rounds a minute to their target. The aircraft could blanket an entire football field with bullets in one minute.

Troops called the gunship Puff the Magic Dragon. The NVA called the aircraft Dragon Ship because of the red streaming phosphorus light coming from the tracer rounds as the ship circled, firing its mini guns at their target below.

The first time, Ed watched Puff in action was a few nights after Christmas in 1968 about 2:00 a.m.

A firebase was getting overrun. You could not hear the battle or Puff’s mini guns. But you could see the red beam of light streaming from the sky toward the ground as Puff circled above.

It was a sight straight out of a science fiction movie. It must have been hell on earth for anyone on the receiving end of the Dragon’s wrath.

At 6:00 a.m., Cecil returned to the bunker. The men regained control at the breach. The fighting was subsiding. The Cobras were taking a toll on the NVA.

When Cecil returned to his bunker. Three hours of adrenaline pumping through their bodies put all of them on a wired high. Ed always carried a small camera or an 8mm video camera in the leg pocket of his fatigues.

Experiencing the horror of combat, Ed realized pictures or video was the only way to explain what war looked like. Cecil asked Ed if he had his camera with him.

“Yeah.”

“I’m going to stand up. I want you to take a picture of me standing during this ground attack!”

“If you’re crazy enough to stand up in this shit, I’ll take your picture!” Cecil stood up, and Ed flashed the picture. Cecil was wearing his helmet and his ammo bandoleer hanging across his bare chest, with a big grin on his face.

Cecil crouched back down behind the bunker. Ed handed the camera to Cecil telling him to get a picture of Corky, Bruce, and him behind the bunker. “We’re not standing up!” The three looked at Cecil; the camera flashed.

A few seconds later, a rocket-propelled grenade exploded in the dirt in front of their bunker. An NVA soldier fired an RPG at them. Everyone scanned the area, searching for the soldier with the RPG rocket launcher. Cecil yelled at Bruce to throw him his M-79 launcher.

Bruce tossed the launcher over to Cecil. The NVA was reloading his launcher. Cecil fired his M-79, striking the NVA in the middle of his chest right below his neck, blowing the upper part of his body into pieces. The soldier flew backward, slamming the ground on his back. Still holding the RPG launcher in his hand.

No one else attempted to reach the wire at their section of the perimeter.

It was getting light outside. You could see the NVA pulling back to the trees in the distance on the Cambodian side of the border. There were two Cobra gunships in the air over Diamond III.

They were killing the NVA stragglers still in the open. It was still dangerous outside the perimeter. Wounded NVA were laying on the battlefield taking shots at the perimeter.

A new RTO from Alpha Company, eager to find himself a hammock, ventured outside the perimeter. The men manning the destroyed bunkers at the breach told him not to go outside it was too dangerous. A wounded NVA laying in an artillery crater raised up and fired his AK-47 at the RTO; he fell dead twenty feet outside the perimeter.

The NVA dropped below the rim of the crater out of sight. A half-dozen men tossed grenades into the crater. In seconds, six grenades exploded. Blasting the enemy’s body out of the crater into small pieces littering the ground.

Soldiers went out to recover the RTO’s body. The NVA’s face was ripped off his head; it was lying face up in the dirt intact. It looked like a face mask someone had dropped on the ground.

At 6:30 a.m., the sun was up. The air was full of dust from the exploding artillery. An eagle flight consisting of nine choppers landed outside the perimeter bringing in supplies and replacement troops.

Soldiers started loading the dead and wounded for transport back to Cu Chi. The ground attack was over. The NVA had retreated back across the Cambodian border.

The men inside the perimeter checked the damage to the firebase. Everyone wanted to know who was killed during the attack. The new medic, Doc Duncan, arrived on the eagle flight; he was the replacement medic for the one killed during a firefight with Charlie a few days earlier.

Ed introduced himself to Doc, welcoming him to the party. That morning, Doc told Ed, “At 3:30 a.m., the lieutenant in Cu Chi came in and woke me up. He told me get dressed. Grab some body bags we’re going to Diamond, it’s under attack. A few minutes passed the lieutenant returned telling me to stand by. Diamond had been overrun. The NVA were inside the wire and they couldn’t land right now. At 6:15 a.m., the lieutenant returned to the barracks. The lieutenant said, ‘Let’s go.’”

Doc told Ed, “When he stepped off the chopper and got inside the wire he saw the dead GI’s laying in a row on the ground. He thought how would he survive in a place like this for a year!”

Diamond III was beat up but still under the control of the Twenty-Fifth Infantry Division. The NVA retreated to the border. During the battle, Alpha Company lost thirteen men, Eighth Artillery lost two men.

There were wounded men in Delta but nobody was killed. 428 NVA were killed during the attack.

In April 1969 the Stars and Stripes Military Newspaper, printed a front-page story about the battles at Firebase Diamond. It was titled “Diamonds Are Forever.”

At noon, the bodies had only been dead for a few hours but lying in the sun’s heat and the humidity they were already ripe. The stench was almost unbearable. A bulldozer was brought in from Cu Chi by helicopter. It dug a hole so the men could bury the dead NVA. Everyone dragged the bodies to the pit. The bulldozer covered them up.

Ed and Cecil both grabbed the legs of a dead soldier by his calves to drag him to the open pit for burial. The flesh from the soldier’s legs separated from the bones, coming off in their hands. Much like the meat being pulled from the leg of a fried chicken.

To their surprise, Ed and Cecil both dropped the soldier’s legs while standing there in disbelief at what just happened. Still holding the bloody goo in their hands that was once the man’s legs.

Sergeant Waters was walking toward the command bunker as he passed by both men trying to wipe the bloody mess off their hands. He looked over at them, without missing a step in the direction he was heading, told the men, “If you wrap their ankles with empty sandbags and grab them that way you won’t get that shit and smell on you. You will have a hell of a time getting that odor off your hands. You need to get some diesel fuel from the guy operating that bulldozer. Use it to clean your hands.”

The sergeant was nearing his bunker, Ed hollered to Sergeant Waters, “Thanks for the advice Sergeant!” Without looking back, Sergeant Waters raised his right hand above his shoulder waving to acknowledge them.

Tuesday, July 29, 1969, was almost a year since Ed Bowes stepped off the plane in Vietnam.

They promoted him to sergeant, his tour in Vietnam was almost over. Scheduled to depart Vietnam on the first of August to return to the real world.

Ed Bowes survived ground attacks, ambushes, firefights, and those damn mosquitoes! He lived in places with names like Crockett, Reid, Diamond, and Jackson, in places called the Hobo Woods, Tay Ninh City, Angel’s Wing, the Michelin Plantation, and Hell’s Half Acre.

On Tuesday morning, Captain Kotrc, Delta Company’s commanding officer called Sergeant Ed Bowes to the command bunker at Jackson. He ordered Bowes to get his gear together. Telling him, he was going to Cu Chi on the morning chopper. “You’ll have a couple days to relax before returning to the States. Good luck, Sergeant.”

Sergeant Bowes shook Captain Kotrc’s hand, telling him, “Thanks.”

Late Tuesday afternoon, Ed was in Cu Chi relaxing on a cot in the barracks. He was watching TV in the barracks, the first television he’d seen in seventeen months. The moon landing in July was being talked about on the TV.

A guy from the communication building ran in the barracks, Ed arrived that morning from Jackson. He advised Ed Delta Company’s CO took a platoon out to support a unit of special forces pinned down by the NVA at a place called the BoBo Canal.

The dead soldiers from Delta Company were on a chopper headed to Cu Chi. The man didn’t know the platoon involved. Ed jumped out of his cot, ran to the chopper pad searching for inbound choppers.

The choppers had already landed; men were removing the bodies from the choppers. It was second platoon. Ed recognized some faces but didn’t know their names. A platoon is your close family.

They live, fight, eat, and sleep together twenty-four hours a day. You don’t always learn the names of men in another platoon.

They pulled the last soldier off the chopper floor. Ed recognized his face and knew his name. It was Delta’s commanding officer Captain Kotrc. After they killed Robert in December 1968, Ed lost another friend in 1969, Jerry Martin was one of the four men killed on the listing post during the ground attack at Diamond II on April 5.

The four men dug a shallow fox hole to watch and listen for the enemy. Their plan was to alert the firebase and retreat inside the perimeter. The men couldn’t warn the firebase or retreat to safety. NVA overran the four soldiers, killing them.

After three hours of fierce fighting the NVA retreated into Cambodia. Delta Company recovered the bodies of the four men. They transported them back to Cu Chi by chopper.

After they killed Robert and Jerry, Ed stopped learning the names of the new people coming into the company. Ed’s other friends, Everett, Arlie, Bruce, and Cecil all returned home. Doc Duncan survived his tour in Vietnam; he was wounded at Bobo canal. He returned home to his wife.

The men lived and shared their experience of the Vietnam war together and would always remain more than friends. They were brothers born in combat and would remain brothers the rest of their lives.

Now Ed realized why Sergeant Johnson was callus and seemed so matter of fact when he assigned the dead man’s machine gun and equipment to him his first day at Crockett. Like Sergeant Johnson, Ed knew what it was like to lose friends in combat.

Sergeant Johnson’s lack of emotion that day wasn’t because he didn’t care or had no feelings for his fellow soldiers. It came from dealing with the continuous deaths of friends and men around him, witnessing the lives of men he called friends snuffed out in an instant in that hell called Vietnam.

Although wounded by mortar shrapnel during the ground attack on Diamond I, Ed Bowes was lucky; he was going home alive and in one piece.

Freddie was Captain Kotrc’s RTO in Delta Company. The twenty-ninth of July 1969, Kotrc lead the men of second platoon to a location called BoBo Canal, to assist and rescue men of the fifth special forces. The eagle flight carrying second platoon, and Captain Kotrc landed near the canal. A sergeant from the Fifth Special Forces Group who survived the ambush met Captain Kotrc and Second Platoon. He explained the situation. The fifth special forces made contact with a group of NVA and sustained heavy casualties almost wiping out his unit.

The mission changed. It became a rescue and recovery mission of the dead and wounded soldiers. They started searching. Second platoon came in contact with the NVA. They were fighting for their lives at the canal. Captain Kotrc along with his RTO Freddie Ballard, Doc Duncan, and a second RTO Tim Brown shared the same bomb crater during the fight.

During contact with the NVA their crater acted as the command post for Second Platoon. After the fighting started, an NVA soldier threw a grenade into their crater. The explosion killed Captain Kotrc and wounded the other three.

Freddie used his radio to contact headquarters. He requested artillery, gunships and medivac support for their dead and wounded. Freddie Ballard received the Silver Star for his part in the battle of BoBo Canal for coordinating the battle at the canal with supporting units.

Sergeant Waters after the battles at Diamond received a battlefield promotion to lieutenant.

He was transferred out of Delta Company and reassigned. Lieutenant Waters fought in a ground attack with his new unit.

Shrapnel from an incoming RPG round wounded Lieutenant Waters in his arm during the battle. Lieutenant Waters returned to the United States for treatment. He recovered from his wound and remained in the army for several years. He never returned to Vietnam.

During the Vietnam war, over fifty-eight thousand men died. The two years with the highest number of casualties were 1968 with 16,589 men and 1969 with 11,614 men killed. The 28,203 men killed during those two years represented almost half of all the men killed during the entire Vietnam war from 1956 to 1975.

During Sergeant Bowes tour in Vietnam, Delta company lost sixty-three men, killed in action. Ed Bowes started his army training at Fort Ord, in Monterey, California. After completing his advanced infantry training at Fort Lewis. He remembered that night standing on the tarmac in Washington, waiting to board his plane for Vietnam.

The lieutenant in charge ordered the formation to attention and to count off by four. After everyone identified themselves as one through four, he ordered all number ones to step forward to the front of the formation. A quarter of the men moved forward.

The lieutenant instructed everyone, “Look at these men. This is how many of you won’t come back alive.”

There was complete silence among the men standing on the tarmac. A year later as Ed boarded his plane returning home, he turned a final time to look at a country that showed him war and the death of friends.

He remembered the lieutenant’s comments on the tarmac that night. He thought to himself, The lieutenant’s estimate was low.

On August 1, 1969, Sergeant Bowes returned to where it all began, Fort Ord, to finish his last six months of active duty. Compared to Vietnam, Bowes thought army life in Monterey, California, was a vacation. Clean sheets, hot showers, and clean clothes every day. No more eating in the jungle with the snakes, leeches, and those damn mosquitoes!