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Jack Day's Worlds

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Vietnam Chaplain
Central Highlands Diary
March 1969 -- Operation "Wayne Gray" -- The Plei Trap Valley Campaign



0039 Entrance to the 71st Evacuation Hospital in Pleiku, a frequent destination


0141 Between the wards at 71st Evac


0006 Vendors at Chopper Pad

Near Firebase McNerney we had a large helicopter landing area. Because it was so close to the road, it always had a full complement of vendors. One recognizable item being shipped was red nylon bags containing mail. But that mail didn't always bring good news, as I wrote in An Khe on March 30, 1969, in "Dear John"


From other sources come accounts of events at the time: "Operation Wayne Gray" -- Plei Trap Valley Campaign

For members of the First Brigade who were in-country in March 1969, we have formed an email discussion group on yahoogroups to share accounts of the Plei Trap Valley Campaign and other events of the period. Click here to join the group. Membership in the group is by invitation only, so you will be asked to introduce yourself before joining the group.



From Jack Leninger, Time Heals No Wounds
28 February, 1969

On 28 February 1969, 1st Brigade terminated operations in the vicinty of Plei Mrong and moved the Tactical CP, maneuver elements, and artillery to the vicinity of Polei Kleng and subsequent deployment into the Plei Trap Valley area. The 1st Brigade's mission at its new location was to block and destroy NVA transportation routes in the Plei Trap Valley. The 6th Battalion 29th Field Artillery, as the direct support battalion to the 1st Brigade, moved its operations center, with the Brigade TOC, from Plei Mrong to Polei Kleng to facilitate control of the operation. From the 1969 unit records, 6/29 Artillery as reported by Don Gray in: 30 Years Later: A Vietnam War Mystery:

1 March 1969

The operation began on 1 March 1969 with the CA of A/3/12 Infantry into LZ Swinger. The LZ was considered of primary importance for artillery when the 155mm howitzers of C/6/29 Artillery were emplaced at that location the majority of the Brigade could be supported by their fires. A/6/29 Artillery began its move from Polei Kleng to FSB 20 of the same day. C/6/29 Artillery moved to LZ Pause on 1 March 1969, and B/6/29 Artillery left Plei Mrong, spending the night at FSB Mary Lou. All artillery moves were completed by 3 March 1969. From the 1969 unit records, 6/29 Artillery as reported by Don Gray in: 30 Years Later: A Vietnam War Mystery:

Note from James Roberts: Website states C/6/29 FA when in reality it was C/1/92 FA 155. I know I was there, with 3/8th and 3/12th inf. as our security. The 1/92 FA was GS to the 4th inf. and was with the 1st field forces out of Artillery Hill, Plieku. Additional information can be found website. www.bravecannons.org, the 1/92 website

3 March 1969

Letter to Home (Kontum)

• Am writing a letter while waiting for a med evac helicopter to get back – one of the companies ran into beaucoup dinks west of here and the dustoff is having a hell of a time trying to get the wounded out. Is no LZ, the company's surrounded and the birds draw a bunch of fire. One plus, we've got Spooky out there, who's specially equipped to see at night, an airplane, who brings down much pee. I'm staying around 4th Med to be here if they get the guys in.
  
• Presently am at Kontum, got up yesterday by convoy. Left my hooch, just brought a cot and sleeping bag.
  
• Woke up in the middle of the night with much firing going on. Discovered this morning that 6 GI's had absented themselves to visit the local boom-boom girls and later were attempting to sneak back in the perimeter. I can't believe anyone could be so idiotic. Maybe my instincts for self-preservation are just abnormal.
  
• Drove into Kontum town today, visited the Montagnard Hospital run by Dr. Pat Smith who I may have mentioned spoke at the Service Club last fall. She's got a bunch of guts --- runs the hospital on a shoestring and whatever supplies she can finagle from the Army doctors. Widely respected, she does a lot of good. Been here many years. Place was fairly crowded.
  
• This location is hot and dusty but on a hill with a lot of foliage on it.

Late in the afternoon 3 March, A/3/8 Infantry made contact with an estimated enemy company. Initial contact was heavy and the RTO in the Artillery Forward Observer Party was killed in the first few minutes. Elements of 3/8 Infantry remained in contact with the NVA forces through 6 March. B/6/29 and C/6/29 Artillery fired a total of 4478 rounds HE, 58 FC rounds, and 8 CS rounds, primarily in support of the contacts and as preparations for the combat assault of reinforcements. From the 1969 unit records, 6/29 Artillery as reported by Don Gray in: 30 Years Later: A Vietnam War Mystery

Research has shown that over 20 men of the 4th Infantry Division were killed in action in Kontum Province on 3 March 1969.

Letter to home, 1 AM. Very bad news, a lot of men killed. Birds lifted out 3 wounded in a basket. I was glad I could be at 4th Med when they came in.

4 March, 1969

At 0850 hours on 4 March, the air strip at Polei Kleng received 14 rounds of 122mm rocket fire, which destroyed the artillery resupply Class V waiting on the helicopter pad to be airlifted to the firebases. The resulting fires and explosions not only destroyed approximately 900 rounds of 105mm HE ammunition but also the five remaining sorties to complete the move of B/6/29 Artillery. During the rocket attack the Executive Officer of B/6/29 Artillery was critically wounded."

5 March, 1969

"I was with D Co., 3/8th when we were hit hard on March 5th,1969. It was at Polei Kleng near Kontum on Hill 947. Sometime ago, I located a sgt who was with the 3/12th in 81 mortars and another who was an 11-b with the 3/12th. They too were involved on Hill 947 following the 3/8th being hit so hard. This may have had a name of "Operation Wayne Grey".

"I was with D Co. 3/12 I think we were the Co that replaced your co on hill 947 I have a copy of a map of the area if it was the hill I was on you were right you guys went through hell on that one were you guys getting ready to blow an lz and Charley set off the charges with a rocket that was the story we heard after replacing your co IF this is the same incident ("Doc")

"A lot of Det Cord was being used that blew. Everthing happened so quick, I am not sure of the sequence. I believe it was a mortar round that had not gone off, was hit someway and blew the det cord.

"I have been putting some pieces together and 947 involved the 3/8th, 3/12th and 1/8th Infantry, 6/29th artillery and portions of a Cav unit. We paid on 947 but we were going to A Co's aid. A Co was all KIA except for 18 men. I have located an exit interview of one of A Company but will have to go to DC to hear.

"I read a lot of translated NVA documents dealing with late 68 and into the summer of 69. They had a major offensive for the first 6 months of 69. A TIME magazine article(p 20,14 March 69) indicated that this could have been greater than TET 68. The TIME article indicated the US took 453 KIA's during the week of 947....The 2nd phase of the NVA push was 30 DEC 68 to 30 April 69. Wayne Grey falls within this as perhaps a reaction to the NVA campaign(my guess).The NVA documents indicated "the regimental battles lasted 7 to 14 days". Between 02-26-69 to 03-10-69, there were heavy battles in the Thuan Ninh Valley and Binh Khe.

"An MI with the 3/8th said "all hell broke loose in the rear" over 947. He would not say why.

Byron Adams Byron Adams is seeking contact with anyone who may have been present, or who has additional details about, events on Hill 947.


Hill 947, as seen on Google Earth, September 2006. Research by James Lehmann.


6 March 1969

Letter to Home. (LZ Pause).

• Our battalion has set up its TOC (tactical operations center) on a mountain among many other mountains west of Kontum. Charlie apparently is here in force. On another mountain near here we lost half a company. The rest are back here now and other three companies are over there. To the north, another battalion is working on a similar mountain. Came out yesterday to hold a memorial service for the company that is here. Since I can't get to the others, and there ‘s no work in the rear – think I'll stay out here and be whatever help I can.
  
• A hook just dropped some supplies off to the artillery and stirred up large swirls of red dirt pervading everything.
  
• Artillery doesn't seem to bother me anymore; I sleep through it all.
  
• Artillery chaplains flew up this morning – spit shined shoes, new green fatigues, clean and pressed. I look at myself and feel like a grunt.
  
• Another set of jets bombing that hill. Really tearing it up. See the flash, start counting. 20. Boom. Divide by 2, must be about 10 kilometers away.
  
• One of the guys that got out the other day left his pack behind. Yesterday a buddy in another company, checking the body of a dead NVA, found a set of the first guy's R&R photos. Poor guy, he thought. Then the second guy was wounded. We got the second guy and some other wounded out to here late yesterday afternoon, and there was the first guy, a medic, to patch him up. The medic got his pictures back and the second guy was very glad to see him.
  
• Now the helicopters are clustered over the other hill like flies. Think we took a high ranking NVA officer prisoner yesterday. This operation should make a huge difference in the safety of civilians in Kontum, which is where the NVA force here eventually would have hit.

9 March 1969.

Letter to Home. (On a mountaintop firebase.)

• Am presently very comfortable, reclining on my back in a casket shaped hole under a fallen tree.
  
• Bruce says he doesn't know why I'd want to go on R&R after all this comfort. He's beside me watching the ants go back and forth on the tree. Say's it's like the Dayton 500 in slow motion.
  
• Got here day before yesterday from TOC [Battalion field headquarters -- Tactical Operation Center], the day after they took this hill, which Charlie was using for a regimental base camp. Air Force is here in strength, there are always jets and propeller bombers flying around, strafing and bombing nearby ridges. We lost quite a few men before they called in the Air Force – without the 700 lb and 1000 lb bombs they dropped we'd never have gotten this place from Charles.
  
• I've gotten to 3/4 of the battalion now, have one more company to get to when they get an LZ cleared for helicopters. The I'll head back for my rounds in the rear.
  
• It's amazing after this hill had had enough bombs, artillery, napalm, etc to destroy any human life around, there are still all kinds of birds making their calls. It sounds very placid. Sunrise is very beautiful and the first morning hours cool and pleasant. Then it warms up and the afternoons are stifling hot.
  
• It's 9:30 and getting fairly warm already. The hole is cool, which is why I'm here. D Co. still doesn't have their LZ. I feel an ant on my collarbone.
  
• I was in the middle of a communion service yesterday with everybody reading the general prayer of confession [we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws...] All through the prayer they're bombing the next ridge, jets screaming down and all these explosions. I wish I could have had a tape recording to send back.
  
• A patrol just spotted one of the enemy. They think his purpose is to lead them into an ambush. What I hope and think they'll do instead is to call artillery all around them.
  
• I'll give this letter to the door gunner of the next helicopter that comes through and it'll be on its way tonight.

11 March 1969.

Approximately 25 miles west of Kontum City, Kontum Province, at about 2:30 PM a platoon of C Company, 3/12 is "engaged in assessing the results of a friendly air strike when they are attacked with grenades, small arms and rockets by an enemy force of unknown size." A sergeant, Milfred Dingman, is fatally wounded by fragments from an exploding rocket. Within the next two weeks, I conducted a Memorial Service for him, according to the notification letter sent to Dingman's mother.


Contributed by Sgt Dingman's daughter Gisela Dingman Ryan-Bunger, who was 11 years old, the oldest of four children, at the time of her father's death. She is seeking contact with others who may have known her father.

12 March 1969

A Company, 1/8 is in a life and death struggle surrounded by a NVA regiment in the Plei Trap Valley. "Company A had walked into an ambush about noon that day and fought the enemy for two days of intense, close-in fighting. At the end, we lost a number of good men and many were wounded; but through some heroic actions, many lives were saved...By the end of March, Company A had lost over half its men who were either killed or wounded." (Jerry Horton, "A 1/8 March 1969 Reunion," 4th Infantry Division Association, The Ivy Leaves, December 1999, p. 27)

15 March 1969

Letter to Home. (3/12, FB Mary Lou)

• I'm at Mary Lou outside Kontum again, having come up in the convoy from Camp Enari this morning.
  
• Participated in a memorial service for one of our top NCOs killed in a helicopter a couple of days ago. Also visited the hospital, recorded the seven sermonettes for radio, checked out transportation for this morning, picked up equipment and testified at an accident hearing. Our Red Cross man was hit by shrapnel at a rifle range – he's here as a civilian noncombatant and conscientious objector – now how's he going to explain it all?
  
• Awakened at 5:30 AM by a practice alert which had us sitting in bunkers cursing bureaucracy until breakfast time which I celebrated back in bed... had a Pepsi and a ham and cheese sandwich for breakfast at 8:30 instead at the convoy marshaling point.
  
• We had the first rain since September the day before yesterday. From now until the end of July, it will convince itself gradually to rain all the tiem.
  
  

16 March 1969

Letter to Home.(I Bde, FB McNerney)

• Still sitting here waiting for a bird.
  
• Don Little put a wood floor in his tent. Policed up a truck load of ammo crates from the dump. You learn a lot here. Did you know ammo crates from Iowa make the best floors?
  

18 March 1969

The historical record shows that this date was not only my 27th birthday, but the day the U. S. began secret bombings of Cambodia

Letter to Home. (I Bde, FB McNerney)

• I'm borrowing a cot in Don Little's tent (1/8 chaplain).
  
• Discovered last night in a bunker on a hill west of here that the company commander spoke Chinese.
  
• The wife of another of my company commanders is a nurse at 71st evac. He's seen her twice on the sly in the past few months when things were quieter. He got the helicopter pilots in Brigade to pick him up at the company at the end of the day, drop him at 71st evac, then pick him up in the early morning and drop him off at the company before the pilot checked in with Brigade. In return, his wife gets dates with the single nurses for the pilots.

25 March, 1969

After Action Report: In II CORP yesterday afternoon, a mechanized infantry convoy from an element of the 2nd Brigade, US 4th Infantry Division, was ambushed by an unknown size enemy force in an area two miles northwest of Plei Mrong, in Pleiku - Kontum Province... See this site for another report of this action.

In Memoriam, March 1969 3 March, 1969 SP4 Melvin Lynn Applebury, Eugene OR; A Co, 3/8 PFC Philip Lou Baker, Correctionville, IA; HHC, 3/8 SP4 Paul Joseph Buczolich, River Rouge, MI; A Co, 3/8 SP4 Fred Douglas Burton, Chase City, VA; A Co, 3/8 SP4 Dennis Joseph Coll, Springfield, NJ; A Co, 3/8 PFC Michael England, Athens, GA; A Co, 3/8 SP4 Charlie Fields, Winter Garden, FL; A Co, 3/8 SP4 Roger Dennis Force, Millport, NY; A Co, 3/8 SP4 Rupert Watson Goebel, Jr, Gastonia, NC; HHC 3/8 1LT Robert Elwin Griffith, Big Spring, TX; A Co, 3/8 SP4 Barry Devere Horton, Airway Heights, WA; A Co, 3/8 SP4 Willie Junior Hudson, Lovingston, VA; A Co, 3/8 CPT Dennis Ross Paul Isom, Drexell Hill, PA; A Co, 3/8 SP4 Vernon Eugene Lail, Jr, Conover, NC; A Co, 3/8 PFC William Thomas Rector, Jr, Front Royal, VA; A Co, 3/8 SGT George Ray Robinson, New York, NY; A Co, 3/8 PFC Layne Michael Santos, Los Angeles, CA; A Co, 3/8 SP4 William John Schaaf, Baltimore, MD; A Co, 3/8 SP4 Joseph Schmich, Jr, St. Louis, MO; A Co, 3/8 PFC David Andrew Seiber, Waynesboro, TN; A Co, 3/8 PFC William Mark Smith, Middleboro, MA; B Co, 3/8 PFC Willard Alvon Wimmer, Baltimore, MD; A Co, 3/8 5 March, 1969 SP4 Juan Ayala-Mercado, Bayamon, PR; D Co, 3/8 SP4 Wayne Gary Bernoska, Gary, IN; D Co, 3/8 SP4 Steven William Dundas, Prescott, AZ; D Co, 3/8 SSG Efrain Fogiera-Melendez, Catano, PR; D Co, 3/8 SGT Carlton Jerry Johnson, Talahassee, FL; D Co, 3/8 SP4 Alfred Lallave, New York, NY; D Co, 3/8 SP4 Kenneth Martin, Kalamazoo, MI; E Co, 3/8 SGT Gary Fay Rolfe, Wichita, KS: D Co, 3/8 6 March, 1969 1LT William Dennis McAlester, Vincennes, IN; B Co, 3/8 PFC Wilfred Perez, New York, NY; A Co, 3/8 SP5 James Edwad Ramsby, Milford, MI; B Co, 3/8 7 March, 1969 PSG Orange Gooding, Norfolk, VA; HHC, 3/8 11 March, 1969 SGT Milfred Dingman, Hemlock, MI; C Co, 3/12 John F. Morris, B Co 3/12 20 March, 1969 SP4 Karl Joseph Taschak, Jr, Darlington, WI; B Co, 3/8 24 March, 1969 SP4 Philip Harry Fleming, Raleigh, NC; B Co, 3/8 SGT Arthur James McIntyre, Allston, MA; B Co, 3/8 SGT Michael Valunas, Philadelphia, PA; B Co,3/8 SP4 Gart Lee Weekley, Canton, OH; B Co, 3/8

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©1999-2006 Jackson H. Day. All photos taken by Jackson Day or Chaplain Assistant Bruce Chaffee unless otherwise noted. All Rights Reserved. "Letter to Home" contains actual excerpts from letters written at the time. Updated September 14, 2006

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