The Battle for Lang Vei: Green Berets vs. North Vietnamese Tanks

Описание: On January 31, 1968, North Vietnam violates a truce during “Tet”, the Vietnamese New Year. The NVA, or North Vietnamese Army, launches shock attacks on several key cities and provinces in South Vietnam. With 24 hours, the US embassy in Saigon falls to enemy invaders. Caught in the crosshairs of the invasion is Lang Vei, a small special forces camp, located a half mile from the enemy border. The 24 Green Berets stationed at Lang Vei act as “force multipliers”–their mission is to train allied indigenous troops and lead them on covert reconnaissance patrols. Operating deep within enemy territory, the risk of death or capture is extremely high.

Shortly after midnight on February 6th, a deep rumbling alerts the Green Berets to trouble. Rather than launching an infantry attack as expected, the NVA attacks with tanks for the first time in the war. As the noise grows louder and closer, the Green Berets are able to make out eleven tanks moving on the camp’s barbed-wire perimeter. The tanks are monsters—modern Soviet PT-76s with a 76-millimeter gun mount. They smash through the camp’s perimeter, inflicting massive casualties. Sgt. Richard Allen, a combat medic at Lang Vei, likens the scene to Dante’s Inferno.

One of the tanks rumbles onto the roof of the underground Tactical Operations Center or TOC. Eight Green Berets, including Lt. Paul Longrear and SP4 Franklin Dooms, are trapped inside the bunker with a group of indigenous soldiers. During the long hours that follow, the Green Berets and their South Vietnamese allies wage a desperate underground fight for survival. Enemy soldiers drop hand grenades and tear gas into the bunker’s ventilation shaft. The trapped men are lacerated by white-hot shrapnel from the explosions. After two hours of noise and chaos, the indigenous soldiers surrender, only to be cut down by the enemy as they exit the bunker. There is an unspoken agreement between the eight Green Berets who remain inside: there will be no surrender. Above ground, Sgt. Dennis Thompson rallies his men for a counter assault. But they just don’t have the firepower to rescue the men in the TOC.

NVA soldiers pack the ventilation shaft of the TOC with plastic explosives. The explosion nearly rips the bunker apart, wounding six. Confident that the bunker will hold, Lt. Miles Wilkins helps coordinate a series of air strikes. U.S. jets descend from the sky, unleashing their fury on the remaining NVA tanks. As predicted, the enemy scrambles for cover. The U.S. jets make three bombing passes. The fourth pass is a pre-arranged dry run—no ordinance is dropped. For the men trapped inside, this is their only chance…

The surviving Americans stagger up the stairs of the bunker and limp to the jungle. They make it as far as a nearby clearing where a helicopter evacuates them to Khe Sanh. Sgt. Thompson, who was operating outside the bunker, misses the helicopter by seconds. He is taken prisoner by the NVA and spends five years in a POW camp. Even now, Thompson remembers Lang Vei as a defining moment: “I saw some of the finest soldiers I’ve ever seen in my life up there.”

The courage of the Green Berets in holding their position under such extreme circumstances makes the battle of Lang Vei the Special Forces’ finest hour. According to Lt. Wilkins, “there’s a Special Forces saying that you’ve never lived until you’ve almost died. Life has an excitement that the protected will never know.”