My best friend recently shared an e-mail with me containing an account of an interview with the NVA officer they were up against at the battle of Illingsworth. (This battle was writtten up in the November 2008 issue of VFW magazine.) I received his permission to post the text of the e-mail for all the good people here.
Date: September 19, 2012 3:02:34 PM CDT
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: Interview with Colonel Nguyen Tuong Lai, North Vietnamese Commander Opposing Alpha Troop, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, during the Anonymous Battle, March, 1970
Veterans of Alpha Troop, 1970:
This note briefly summarizes a genuinely extraordinary interview with the senior North Vietnamese officer opposing Alpha Troop, 1/11 ACR, and other American combat units during the Anonymous Battle. Reading it will produce both exhilaratingly favorable and paralyzingly negative reactions among the old veterans of that battle. The addressees are the men who participated in it and a number of our friends who have shown some interest in Alpha Troop over the years.
On September 15, I met with Phil Keith, the author of Blackhorse Riders, the story of Alpha Troop (plus others) and the rescue of Charlie Company (2/8, 1st Cav. Div.) from the clutches of the 272nd NVA Regiment. (This is the 1970 combat action for which Alpha Troop received the Presidential Unit Citation at the White House in 2009.) Phil reports thatBlackhorse Riders has nearly sold out its first printing, the paperback edition will be released on February 1 and that he is beginning to work on a movie screenplay. He is scheduled to speak at West Point soon.
Phil is completing a second book describing closely related Vietnam combat events, and in the process of researching it he located and interviewed Colonel Nguyen Tuong Lai, the NVA commander who opposed us during the Anonymous Battle in War Zone C. This officer commanded the 272nd NVA Regiment in 1970, fled Vietnam in 1977 (anticipating incarceration in a ‘re-education camp’) and eventually found seclusion and asylum in Switzerland. Phil describes the colonel as a psychopath who, by his own admission, tortured American prisoners and who murdered two POWs with a pistol shot to the head. He is intensely bitter after suffering demotion following the war in favor of better connected North Vietnamese Army rivals. The carefully staged interview with an intermediary yielded a fascinating and frightful array of facts about our desperate 1970 battle.
The broad picture narrated by Colonel Nguyen is that the First Cavalry Division had blundered badly in leaving two remote base camps, Illingworth and Jay, exposed and vulnerable amidst a large concentration of NVA forces. The enemy high command’s goal was to overrun both base camps and use the surviving Americans as “pawns in the Paris Peace Talks”. A large NVA force of hard-core, long-serving regulars was assembled to assault the Americans under the command of Col. Nguyen. At his disposal was his own 272nd NVA Regiment and some or all of the 93rd NVA Regiment.
The NVA bunker complex which Charlie Troop penetrated on March 26, 1970 was the headquarters of the 272nd Regiment and it contained the startling total of 700 regulars who were massed for the attack on the 220 Americans at Illingworth. The headquarters complex also was a major supply and support base for infiltration of the Saigon region. (700 hard core opponents is a greater number than ever I had believed present on that exceptional day.)
Charlie Company was lured into the NVA complex by the artful salting of trails with sections of communications wire, footprints and other clues. The NVA knew exactly where Charlie Company was because they could “smell Americans” (due mainly to our different diet) and our tobacco smoke, as well as hear us. The tactic that day was to “lead them (Charlie Company) down the throat of the bottle and stick in the cork.” Charlie Company’s 80 + men were to be annihilated with any survivors taken across the border that night as POWs.
Colonel Nguyen recalls that the NVA hated the armored cavalry in general and our Sheridan tanks in particular. The large bore tank guns and the anti-personnel fleshette rounds were lethal and the Sheridans were more agile in the jungle than the M-48 Patton tanks used elsewhere. Our M-113 ACAV’s were called “Green Dragons”, but the NVA “lived in fear” of the Sheridans.
During the battle, we killed a stunning 200 of the 700 regulars in the 272nd Regiment (the First Cavalry Division reported 88 bodies abandoned on the ground, presumably left behind in haste). The NVA, he said, had to stand and fight us because they knew we and the tactical air and artillery would destroy them if they fled their bunkers. (I suppose that I now feel better about leaving the field as darkness descended rather than continuing the assault. I don’t think we had enough bullets or time for the other 500!) The NVA decamped across the nearby border during the night rather than pursue us.
But, here is the most gratifying revelation: Colonel Nguyen reports that, after our battle, he could only commit 400 effectives to the attack on Illingworth a few days later. The Colonel blames his devastating losses during the Anonymous Battle for his failure to overrun the Illingworth garrison of 220 men, killing or capturing all of them. Adding those 220 to Charlie Company’s 80 means that Alpha Troop had a pivotal role, together with the contributions of many other units, in saving 300 American lives.
Unwittingly, Alpha Troop rendered one other lifesaving service. After our battle, three of our damaged vehicles were towed or limped into Illingworth for repair. LTC Conrad (the battalion commander to whom Alpha Troop reported) placed them on the perimeter – by chance or by design – just at the weakest point and where Colonel Nguyen planned to attack. Fearing to charge headlong into the cavalry vehicles, Colonel Nguyen shifted his point of attack to a less advantageous site elsewhere on the perimeter. In addition to his losses to us on March 26, he attributes his failure to overrun Illingworth to the menacing presence on line of our Sheridans and ACAVs. The derelict vehicles were, of course, nearly useless (although their crews were not).
At the battle site on March 26, 1970, Alpha Troop mustered about 100 men after giving effect to our recent casualties, administrative personal assigned to the rear and those left at our night defensive position. Alpha Troop was the principal assault element during the Anonymous Battle, with Charlie Company helpfully securing the rear of the battle site and the valiant Alpha Company (2/8, 1st Cav. Div.) following our cavalry tracks toward the withering incoming. With 700 enemy regulars sheltered in bunkers in front and maneuvering on our flanks as we advanced, our odds of victory, indeed of survival, were far less promising than I then imagined.
All in all, an astonishing interview 42 years after the fact. You, the men of Alpha Troop, seem to have accomplished considerably more than you were praised for at the White House and at the Pentagon in 2009. You and your families now have much that is new to reflect upon regarding the heroic achievements of your youth.
