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TAY NINH, Vietnam - The big fight hit suddenly on the morning of May 30, and Sgt. Robert Davie and Troop D, 3rd Squadron, 17th Cavalry were right in the middle of it.
Sgt. Davie was manning his gun jeep with its 106 mm recoilless rifle like a PT boat skipper, his driver sending it bounding and bouncing over the rough ground into the edge of the rubber plantation on the east of Highway 28.
Big anti-tank rockets -- RPG's -- and AK47 automatic rifles were blasting into the jeep and dirt was kicking around the gun jeep as it and its two occupants charged toward the enemy bunker complex. A soldier covered when Capt. Mengell's troop was outnumbered in an ambush south of Tay Ninh.
The jeep got into firing position and opened up, the 106 knocking out bunkers with tremendously devastating direct fire. But the enemy fire wasn't subsiding.
Davie was hit in the leg from shrapnel from the ear shattering burst of the antitank rockets from enemy RPGs. Fire was coming at the jeep from three directions, the enemy main force having arrived at Delta Troop's flank now. The fighting had a complex pattern. Mengell had maneuvered and cut off an enemy force on the east of the road -- the first element in an ambush and enemy in bunkers hidden in huts on the edge of a village on the west of the road.
Mengell was moving down the east side from the north, flanking the two positions nicely. He was then flanked by a big force, a third enemy force, the assault element, which ran in from the rubber groves. This meant his south and east sides were being shot at, and that, although he had the enemy to his south at his mercy, the enemy on his east was too much to handle without regrouping.
"I got my flank platoon pulled up to fight the side where the new firing came from and consolidated without plenty of support, gun ships and air, and I still had those guys in the positions by the road where I wanted them. They had a strip of cleared ground to cross to get to their buddies in the rubber grove and I was looking right down it. They had to move or die and if they moved I'd kill them anyway. Davie got me the time to do it with his shooting, " Mengell said.
Then Davie's driver was hit hard. His gunner fell from the 106 recoilless, wounded. Davie did it by himself, ignoring the shrapnel in his leg, loading, aiming, and shooting, knocking out the bunkers.
The enemy on Mengell's south became frantic, the fire slackened from there. They started moving out of their holes and bunkers. I saw men wearing gray-green khaki with the trousers too baggy, and sleeves rolled down, despite the heat of the morning, feet bare or in "Ho Chi Minh" sandals cut from truck tires -- running fast, dodging and ducking, scrambling for cover. Mengell's rifles and machine guns methodically cut them down. They killed 17, counting the ones Davie blasted in his foray.
Davie saw the platoon was in position and fighting its fight. He limped out in the open, and pulled his two wounded crew back. Then went back out to his jeep and shot some more rounds so that two other of Delta's wounded could be pulled under cover.
Davie then got behind the wheel of the jeep; it had four flat tires. Bullets and shrapnel had made a sieve of it.The frame of the jeep, for example, was shattered and broken into five pieces. The engine shouldn't have started. When it started, it shouldn't have run. Even when it did run, it was impossible for the battered hulk of the jeep driven by a wounded sergeant to be moved.
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Davie moved it. All of the fire seemed to come at him while he did it. His companions shot as fast and straight as they could to help him, but it looked hopeless. He drove it neatly into line with his platoon, got a good shooting position for the 106 recoilless rifle, and asked a medic take a look at his shrapnel slashed leg.
Spec. 4 Melvin F. Berninger, said that Davie " in my mind saved the lives of everybody that was involved in this contact."
"Risking his life he drove the 106 mm recoilless rifle on line and fired after his crew and the driver got hit, before getting hit himself. He kept the enemy down so we could get firepower and pull back to get a good position. After this, the jeep had already been hit with an RPG round and the rest of that fire; he drove the gun back a ways and still fired that gun again. He not only saved everyone's lives, he also saved the recoil-less rifle from getting into the enemy's hands, he was up front all the time, right with Charlie." Berninger said.
Berninger's view was that of another gunner. He was caught over on the flank, when the main enemy force got into the fight from the rubber grove's back reaches. He was with the men that took the full force of that flanking fire. Davie staying out there and shooting saved them, he was emphatic on that point, and when they got under cover and
took up the fight, Mengell was right back in good position when again with the big chunk of the enemy still at his mercy.
S. Sgt. Robert F. Brown with the scout section was taking part in the flanking maneuver against the bunkers in the village and in the fringe of trees by the road. He said the fire from the village was heavy and Sgt. Davie had moved out and was shooting it out with them.
"A gun ship from our Squadron -- from B Troop -- was immediately adjusted on those positions. At the same time this was taking place, two scout jeeps were pinned down by heavy automatic weapons, including RPG rounds.
"Davie's crew was hit quickly by the new fire. He got on his rifle and fired the weapon numerous times. Even though wounded, hit in the leg when the jeep got a direct hit from an RPG, he kept the enemy down while the other jeeps were pulled back behind a berm and three wounded crewman crawled to safety.
"I saw all of that, then it got busy with the gunships and the maneuvering, but I heard he kept on going like that the rest of the fight," Brown said.
Spec. 4 John Dungan and Spec 4 Sager said the three crewmen caught in the open were "as good as dead" if Davie hadn't kept shooting.
"They were in the open, they didn't have a chance. We were in fast, deep trouble there when that flank fire hit us from beyond the strip of clearing on our left, on back in the grove.
He put fire on Charlie and our boys got back, then he got his own two boys back, and then brought his jeep back. After that, it was too bad for Charlie. The gun ships from Bravo Troop worked them over and shot them up bad, " Sager said.
"When that convoy came through, they didn't even know there'd been a fight going on, we were in position and it was all over in less than a hour. We couldn't sweep out after them, we'd busted the ambush and we had to get the convoy on, but there were 17 of them dead where we'd cut them off. We killed 4 or 5 times that many, I'm certain of it." Brown said.
Hot, dusty truck drivers got to Tay Ninh, unloaded, picked up empty trailers and headed for Long Binh.
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