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"God and the soldier, we adore,
In time of danger, not before.
The danger passed, and all things righted,
God is forgotten, and the soldier slighted."
- Rudyard Kipling, 1899
"Stolen valor typically refers to individuals who falsely claim military honors they have not earned; conversely, when a deserving individual is denied earned recognition, I believe that is also a form of stolen valor." - Clifford A. Gehrt (2025)
Deathtrap Village
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Introduction
When the 101st Airborne Division first arrived in the Hue area of Northern I-Corps, they were dealing primarily with North Vietnamese Army (NVA) units. Consequently, the experience of C/1/505, 82nd Airborne Division, the morning after their battle of Ap Nam Phu, was typical for engagements in the coastal plains around Hue. [Link to Part 1: The Battle] A unit would engage an NVA unit, and then, after the engagement, the enemy would appear to have vanished. We now know they remained in the contact area but were in underground bunkers with their dead and wounded. These were not the typical bunkers found in and around rural villages, but special-purpose bunkers constructed decades earlier for use by the Viet Minh and other French Resistance groups. They could function as both protected fighting positions and protected hiding spaces.
These bunkers were concealed in the hedgerows and wooded areas around villages throughout the coastal plains. They played a major role in both the land and sea infiltration routes between North and South Vietnam. In the Hue area, the area between the mountains and the South China Sea was no more than 15 miles. This meant those bunkers could support both land and coastal infiltrators. Prior to the Tet Offensive, they were used to hide units of the NVA 324-B Division and 4th NVA Regiment.
After the NVA was forced out of Hue by the Marines during the Tet Offensive, the NVA returned to the bunkers in anticipation of eventually retaking Hue, according to the commander of the 101st Airborne Division.* However, the pressure from the 101st eventually forced the NVA to evacuate the area. Once the NVA departed, the local Vietcong caretakers and guides reconnected the booby traps protecting the bunker locations. The villagers were unaware of the exact locations of the booby traps; all they knew was that certain areas needed to be avoided.
The effectiveness of the Vietcong booby-trapped bunker system is demonstrated by the comments of Sergeant Charles Gadd, a squad leader in Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 501st Airborne Infantry, 101st Airborne Division (A/1/501), who served with the 101st in the Hue area from March to December 1968 and later wrote a book about his service in Vietnam.** Gadd’s quote below demonstrates that while his unit was engaging the NVA and moving south after the Battle of Phuoc Yen, booby traps were not a problem. But they would soon become a problem.
Following the battle of Phuoc Yen [April 27 to May 1, 1968], several days were spent searching and clearing the many small villages in the deltas south of Hue. We were told we would soon reach a new area of operations (AO), a Vietcong-controlled area near the coast. Because of its size, our new AO was dubbed “Eight-Klick Ville.” We would soon learn to hate the Eight-Klick Ville passionately and curse its name with vulgar adjectives. It was an area full of booby traps, snipers, VC patrols, and civilians sympathetic to the enemy. It would drain our morale, inflict heavy casualties, and instill in all of us a hatred for guerilla warfare. Most of us had maintained a certain degree of sympathy for the natives and tried to help them whenever possible, but the torment, death, suffering, and harassment that “Eight-Klick Ville” dealt out to us soon changed our attitudes to distrust and hatred. We were becoming so paranoid about booby traps that we were afraid to leave the trails and perform our search-and-clear duties as they needed to be done. Each passing day brought more casualties to Alpha Company: troopers stepped on land mines, triggered explosive devices concealed in lush vegetation, and impaled their feet and legs on treacherous punji stakes that seemed to be everywhere.​
--Sgt. Charles Gadd
Two months after Charles Gadd departed Vietnam, his old company (A/1/501) was again sent in to clear the Eight-Klick Ville. The story of that effort is presented below in the form of three reports: one is an updated article that appeared in The Army Reporter magazine on April 21, 1969, the second is the March 11, 1969, issue of a weekly journal published by the 1/501. At the bottom of the weekly report is a link to the 2nd Brigade Combat Report #20. Paragraph 3 of that combat report contains a report on Alpha Company 1/501 activities in the Eight-Klick Ville. Pictures and comments have also been added.
*Distant Challenge: The US Infantryman In Vietnam 1967-1972, by LTC. Albert N. Garland, USA (Ret.); published by The Battery Press Nashville in 1983, pp. 19-30.
**Line Doggie: Foot Soldier in Vietnam, by Charles Gadd; published by Presidio Press in 1987, pp. 107-119.
Vol. 5, No. 16 U.S. Army, Vietnam April 21, 1969
The 101st Slowly Defuses
Deathtrap Village
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Then Major General Ngo Quan Truong, commander of the 1st ARVN Division, visited the area just after the operation’s end and said that without the new tactic of clearing with Bangalore torpedoes, the operation might have cost his unit 150 lives.
Lt. Gen. Ngo Quan Truong
8-Klick Ville
Three companies of the 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry were deployed to the village with two companies of the 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry, and a company of the 1st Division, Army of the Republic of Vietnam, acting as a blocking force around the village, with Alpha Company, 1/501 moving down the center attempting to clear the area.
“The nature of the recent enemy contacts in this area pointed to the likelihood of finding a heavily booby-trapped staging area,” said Cpt. Fry, Commanding Officer of Alpha Company, 1/501.
Early in the afternoon of the first day, the third platoon of the company encountered the first boobytrap, a grenade rigged with a tripwire in a hedgerow that slightly wounded three men.
“After that, we didn’t take any more chances,” said Fry. “We moved cautiously. Our progress was slow, but we cleared one inch at a time and lost no more men.”
“The first two days were experimental,” explained 1st Lt. James Judkins, the 1st Platoon leader, “In the evenings, we’d review the various methods used in the day’s clearing operations. The suggestion to use Bangalore torpedoes was the key to the success in the operation. We reconnoitered the virgin area with M-79 rounds like a miniature artillery prep. Then, the Bangalore torpedoes were carefully shoved into the suspect areas and detonated. This cleared areas for safe advancement, allowing our slow progress to continue." More than 300 cases of bangalores were used in the operation.
Cpt. Fry and Lt. Judkins are in the 8-Klick Ville company headquarters area. Cpt. Fry is monitoring the company and battalion radio nets while cleaning his M-16. As this is a position Alpha Company will be operating out of for a week, there are dug-in sleeping positions covered with ponchos. The covers are necessary to keep both the users and their equipment dry during nighttime inclement weather. Behind Lt. Judkins are four cases of C-rations with 12 individual meals in each. In the upper left corner of the picture is the frame for a covered headquarters area being constructed; its canvas cover was lying under the frame when the picture was taken. The structure will be used to keep future radio monitors out of the rain day and night. The air mattress seen between Fry and Judkins is one of the most important items carried by most infantrymen. In places where it can be used, it increases the probability one can get some restful sleep at night.
“The bangalores had the same effect as a defoliating agent,” said Spec. 4 Dennis B. Kramer. “The explosion would knock the leaves off the brush and either expose the boobytrap or blow it in place.”
“The bunkers were not the usual kind found in villages all over Vietnam,” said Lt. Judkins. “These were sleeping, fighting, and storage positions at least four feet underground. They had removable 'flower-pot’ entrances and several air holes made from illumination flare casings.” (See picture below.)
A pattern in the VC plan began to be evident. Sometimes a sock or rag, some shred of cloth tied to a tree, would mark the presence of a bunker. Punji stakes would be pointing outward from a heavily camouflaged bunker with only one entrance marked by a change in the pattern of stakes.
A captured VC had told how his comrades lived in these bunkers from two to seven months at a time. The first bunker discovered contained freshly cut melon and two American magazines, which were less than a week old.
South Vietnam Flag
Major General Ngo Quan Truong, commander of the 1st ARVN Division, visited the area just after the operation ended, and said that without the new tactic of clearing with Bangalore torpedoes, the operation might have cost his unit 150 lives.
At an impact awards ceremony at Eagle Beach following the operation, Maj. Gen. Melvin Zais, 101st Airborne Division commander, awarded two Bronze Stars and seven Army Commendation Medals with “V” devices for acts of valor by Screaming Eagles during this operation.
“At least 21 Viet Cong have been killed or captured directly because of this operation’s success,” Gen. Zais said. “Being forced out into new and unfamiliar territory throughout the area of operations, these enemies were eliminated by the blocking force around the village because their longtime haven was gone.”
FIREBASE SANDY – Outside this firebase, east of Hue, paratroopers of the 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry (Geronimo), cordoned a deserted village and removed its years-old Viet Cong death curse.
In what was likely a staging area for enemy battalion-size units that attacked Hue during the 1968 Tet Offensive, Troopers of Company A cleared and destroyed 112 bunkers and 176 booby traps (See pictures below). They captured 15 pounds of secret documents, 5,000 rounds of small arms ammunition, 10 Chicom grenades, assorted clothing and equipment, and 15 ready-to-fire rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). More recently, the village, starting just 200 meters from Firebase Sandy's perimeter, had been the daylight haven for local Viet Cong (VC) fighters and leadership. An increase in nighttime contacts with enemy elements using small arms and RPGs had brought the abandoned village to the attention of 2nd Brigade officers who planned the operation. [Link to Brigade Operation Order] [Link to information on the secret documents]
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1. A brave infantryman disarms a booby-trapped mortar round that was exposed by an exploding bangalore. This was one of 176 booby traps eliminated by the company during the operation.
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2. An unexploded American 105 howitzer round was the most feared booby trap found around Hue. It was not uncommon for one to take both legs of the man who tripped it and then kill or injure anyone within its "bursting radius," around 50 yards. Such unexploded artillery rounds were not uncommon in sandy areas near fire support bases, which was the situation in the Eight-Klick Ville. When a 105-round is fired using minimum propellant, it is possible for the round to either not arm or to enter the sand at such an angle that it does not explode. The Vietcong then recover these unexploded rounds, remove the fuse from the front, and convert them into booby traps.
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3. The wooden box/frame in the picture was referred to as a “flower-pot” by the troops. It was filled with soil and camouflaged to make it look like the ground around it. The only things visible were the two wire loops that can be seen in the center of the empty flower-pot in the picture. When the flower-pot was filled with dirt and made to look like the surrounding ground, it took someone who knew exactly where it was to grasp the two wires and lift the flower-pot out of the tunnel entrance. Alpha Company first discovered the bunkers when the low pressure created by a bangalore explosion popped a flower-pot out of a tunnel entranceway. Once they saw the first flower-pot next to a bunker entrance, they knew what to look for and found 111 more over the next week. In the bottom right of the picture is the entranceway of the bunker the flower-pot would have covered. These entranceways were also used as firing positions. The VC could stand in the entranceway and fire on his enemy, then quickly drop into the bunker and pull the flower-pot into the entranceway to close off the bunker to prevent his discovery. He could also drop down to protect himself from artillery fire and air strikes.
4. A picture of a small punji pit. By looking carefully, one can see the sharpened spikes sticking up from the ground inside the pit. In this picture, the ground litter has been scraped away. Before the bangalore exposed it, there would have been a thin weaved mat over the pit with ground litter spread over it so it could not be seen.
5. A brave infantryman exits a formerly hidden bunker after finding four rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), a mortar round, and belted machine gun ammunition inside the bunker. He has an Army .45 caliber pistol in his right hand and a flashlight in his left. This bunker was one of 112 found and destroyed.
Marines of the 3rd Combat Engineer Battalion Undergo Training with the Bangalore Torpedo.
6. Each Bangalore torpedo, which the troops referred to as just bangalores, measured 5 feet in length, had a diameter of 2.125 inches, and weighed 13 pounds. Both ends of the individual bangalore contained 4 inches of TNT booster, while the middle section contained 9 pounds of explosive material. One end of a single bangalore was attached to another, forming a chain of multiple bangalores. After a number of bangalores were attached together and pushed forward, a detonation cord was used to trigger the entire chain of bangalores. Alpha Company placed a wooden extension in front of the first bangalore to prevent an unseen booby trap from prematurely setting off the chain of bangalores. Other uses of the Bangalore torpedoes are: blowing up barriers, clearing large bunkers, and opening lanes through barbed wire entanglements.
7. The written descriptions of the Eight-Click Ville operation suggest that Alpha Company operated within the village. This photo demonstrates that they were not operating in a village; instead, they were operating in the overgrown, brushy, scrub-wooded area between the village and the rice paddy fields to the west of the village, an area about 100 yards wide. The white cord hanging from the trees marks the trails that have been cleared and are safe to walk along.
Eight-Klick Ville, Vietnam, March 1969
Command Group, A/1/501 Airborne Infantry, 101st Airmobile Division
8. Company Command Group: Back row, left to right: the radio operator (RTO) monitoring the battalion radio network; the company commander; the RTO on the company radio net; and the company senior medic. Kneeling in the front (L to R): the artillery forward observer's RTO on the artillery radio net; the artillery forward observer. The three individuals not in combat gear are the field first sergeant (wearing glasses) and his two RTOs. They are preparing to receive a helicopter-delivered hot meal and will soon set up a chow line for the company, so they are not wearing their combat gear. The field first sergeant and his RTOs serve as backups for the company commander and his two RTOs in case any of them or their radios become disabled. They handle field logistics, including resupply and medevacs, which frees the company commander to concentrate on tactical operations without being distracted by logistical and administrative matters.
9. Two of the finest platoon leaders to have served in Vietnam: Kneeling left, First Lieutenant (1LT.) Larry G. Gottschalk is holding several captured rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), and he has captured linked machine gun ammunition over his shoulders. Larry later commanded Alpha Company. On the right is 1LT. James C. Judkins Jr., holding an RPG and a captured carbine. Jim was wounded later during the Battle of Tam Ky and evacuated to the United States. He eventually retired from the Army as a Lieutenant Colonel. Standing, Cpt. Fry holds a mortar round in his right hand and a Chinese Chicom grenade in his left.
10. The man in the picture was found inside the battalion cordon, where no civilians should have been. After reporting his capture, a Military Intelligence (MI) captain was sent to interrogate him. However, when the MI officer began attempting a form of “waterboarding” on the man, Cpt. Fry made him stop, resulting in a heated argument between the two captains. Ultimately, the MI captain returned to Camp Eagle with the man instead of interrogating him in the Alpha Company area.
Sixth Edition
1st Bn., 501st Inf.
March 11, 1969
ALPHA COMPANY
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Alpha Company just completed an eight-day operation in the area south of Fire Support Base Sandy. The object of their mission was to sweep and clear the area of booby traps and Viet Cong.
The operation started with five companies, including two from the 502nd Infantry. Four companies acted as a blocking force while Alpha Company swept through the Village. As soon as they started sweeping, the first booby trap went off, and three men were wounded. The company commander, Cpt. Jerry Fry did not want to lose any more men, so he called in for TNT, detonation-cord, and Bangalore torpedoes. From that point on, they blew two trails all the way through the Village. It was slow and tedious moving, but no more men were lost to booby traps. Tunnel rats were used in each bunker they found before it was blown up with TNT. The results of the operation . . . found and destroyed 176 booby traps, and 112 bunkers. Captured: 12 weapons, 15 lbs. of secret documents, 5,000 rounds of small arms ammo, 10 Chicom grenades, 15 rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), and various types of clothing and equipment. The operation was a total success!
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BRAVO COMPANY
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​One platoon of Bravo company is providing security for the Pohl Bridge. The other two platoons are conducting joint operations with local Vietnamese defensive units (PFs and RFs).
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CHARLIE COMPANY
Charlie Company has been enjoying two weeks of providing security for the Navy refueling base at Cocoa Beach, but they are headed out today. Alpha Company will replace them.*
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​SPOTLIGHT
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The spotlight article this week is on Lady. Everyone has heard of, or seen Lady, Bravo company’s mascot, but very few of us know the whole story. Lady attached herself to Bravo Company on 7 Feb. 1968, while they were operating in the Quan Dion Province. Since then, she has been through a lot of action with the company. She has been on numerous chopper assaults, and she is the only dog in the division that is authorized to go into the field with a line company. When she is in the field, she pulls her share of guard. She goes out on ambush with the men, rather than stay at the CP. In fact, when Bravo was operating along the Song Bo, she sprang an ambush that netted three NVA soldiers.
All the chopper pilots in the Brigade Aviation Section know her, and they all give her a ride when she wants to go someplace. She usually spends 4 or 5 days in the field, then comes back to Sally to see her boyfriend, Quang Tri. Her favorite game is playing with a volleyball at Cocoa Beach, and her favorite C-ration is boned chicken.
She has had one litter of puppies, of which six died. The pup that lived, named Geronimo, was presented to General Zais, the division commander.
So, if you happen to see a black and gray dog running around the battalion area, stop and give her a pat on the head —she deserves it!
Lady
*The troopers of the 101st referred to Cocoa Beach as Eagle Beach. It was a place where infantry companies had an opportunity to stand down for a few days under the protection of another infantry company that was also providing security for the Navy refueling facility at that location.
See Combat Note #20, 2nd Brigade, dated 10 March 1969 (Paragraph 3), for a report on the Eight-Klick Ville operation by clicking the link below.
After Alpha Company's sweep of the 8-Klick Ville, the members of the chain of command came in to learn firsthand the details of the company’s success. In the picture below, on the left is the back side of Col. John Hoefling, commander of the 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division. Next to him is Lt. Col. John E. Rogers, commander of the 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry, talking to Lt. Gen. Richard G. Stilwell, the commander of XXIV Corps. Cpt. Fry is standing between the two of them. Maj. Gen. Melvin Zais, commander of the 101st Air Mobile Division, also visited, as did Maj. Gen. Ngo Quan Truong, commander of the 1st ARVN Division, who was quoted as having said he could have lost 150 men trying to clear the village without the system developed by A/1/501.
Two Books written by Geronimo 1/501 veterans mentioning the Eight-Klick Ville:
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1. Line Doggie: Foot Soldier in Vietnam, by Charles Gadd
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--A view of the daily, unending fears of battle, terror, and suffering faced by the infantrymen in Vietnam.
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2. Courage Under Fire: The 101st Airborne’s Hidden Battle at Tam Ky, by LTC Ed Sherwood.
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--“If I could choose one book about infantry fighting in Vietnam to recommend to others, this would be it.”
--Cpt. (R) David Gibson, Former Commander of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion 501st Infantry (Geronimo), 101st Airborne Division in 1969 at Tam Ky.
Copyright 2025 by Col. Jerry R. Fry (U.S. Army, Retired)
