Part 1: The Battle

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Courage Shines at Ap Nam Phu

For one 82nd Airborne Division company, April 4, 1968, was unforgettable. For the 3rd Brigade as a whole, it was the single deadliest action during its entire 22 months in-country.

A memorial service for the C/1/505 Airborne Infantry paratroopers KIA on April 4, 1968, and others.

Courtesy Ron Yoriovich, 82nd Abn. Div. Assoc., Golden Brigade Chapter

The 3rd Brigade, known as the “Golden Brigade,” of the famed 82nd Airborne Division was deployed to Vietnam as an emergency response to the Tet Offensive of 1968 and was attached to the 101st Airborne Division. Arriving at what became Camp Eagle on 3 March 1968, their original mission was to help protect the ancient capital of Hue, in Northern I Corp, which had been captured by the the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) at the start of the Tet Offensive.

Part of that mission was participating in Operation Carentan II, which started on April 1, 1968, and involved search and destroy sweeps of the lowlands of Quang Tri and Thua Thien provinces. The NVA 324-B Division and 4th NVA Regiment were known to operate in this region. The exact identification and size of the force encountered on this particular day are unknown.

But the combat experienced by this infantry company symbolizes

the type of firefight infantry often faced in Vietnam.

On April 4, 1968, Charley Company, 1st Battalion, 505th Airborne Infantry (C/1/505) 3rd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, commanded by Cpt. Paul H. Davin was deployed by helicopter assault to establish a blocking position north of the village of Ap Nam Phu. The company had been pulled from its parent battalion south of Hue and placed under the operational control of the 1st Battalion, 501st Airborne Infantry (1/501) “Geronimo,” 101st Airborne Division, north of Hue, with a mission of blocking an NVA force being pushed in their direction by elements of the 1/501.

Photo of 2nd Lt. Paul H. Davin, taken in August 1966, during his first tour of duty in Vietnam. At that time, he was a platoon leader in Company A, 1st Battalion, 327th Airborne Infantry, 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division. After returning to the States, he quickly volunteered to return to Vietnam, where he was eventually assigned to the newly arrived 82nd Airborne Division.

Cpt. Paul H. Davin during his second tour in Vietnam.

As soon as Charley Company landed, they started toward the village with the 1st Platoon on point. As the 1st Platoon approached the tree line in front of the village, they started receiving sniper fire, and several men were wounded. As the rest of the platoon moved forward to assist in recovering the wounded, the sniper fire turned into automatic weapons fire; the platoon leader was seriously wounded, his radio operator (RTO) was killed, and their radio was disabled.

Sgt. Richard Davidson, a squad leader in 1st Platoon, remembered the following.

We jumped off the chopper into a rice paddy. The lieutenant and his RTO in front of me were shot, and I crawled by them. The NVA were in underground firing positions and well protected. I was pulling soldiers back to safety when I got hit. One guy was shot in the head and died over me. I was on a rice paddy dike when an NVA threw a hand grenade, spraying me with shrapnel. I was also shot in the rear end, had a testicle shot off, and was hit in the penis.

Specialist 4th Class (Sp/4) Salome Beltran, another 1st Platoon member, reported:

We landed in a rice paddy at about 5 p.m. and were hit immediately with AK-47 sniper fire and then machine guns; the NVA were even in the tops of the trees. Most of our casualties were sustained in the opening burst of fire. We had to recover the casualties, so everyone worked together to gather them up. There was great companionship and love among the men. At one point, I crawled into a bomb crater and ended up on top of a wounded guy. He told me to stay there. I did, and it probably saved my life. We remained pinned down until dark. April 4, 1968, was the most difficult day of my time in Vietnam and one of the hardest days of my life.

The Charley Company command group set up on an earthen berm overlooking the fighting. Sp/4 Thomas Locastro, the RTO for Captain Davin, later reported:

I was initially located at a gravesite some 80 feet from the battle site. I was sent down to restore communications with the 1st and 2nd platoons, as no radios were operating from their positions. As I ran across an open field to return to Cpt. Davin, I was wounded by a B-40 rocket explosion. In the opening crossfire, Sgt. Jerry Shain was captured. We could hear him holler before he was executed. The NVA also kept shooting the dead American bodies. During the night, about 40 of us were back to back with fixed bayonets and ready to fight the anticipated assault that never came.

2/Lt. Richard Underwood, the 2nd Platoon leader, reported the following.

There was no artillery prep on the landing zone before we arrived. The 1st Platoon was already approaching the village when we landed. We were headed for the village on the 1st Platoon’s right flank when members of the 1st Platoon started taking fire just short of the village tree line. Then we began taking fire. An earthen berm that ran along the village’s perimeter provided cover. The NVA had killed or wounded members of the 1st Platoon as close as possible to their own fighting positions to limit how close we could fire at them, especially with artillery and gunships. A machine gun team reported that the enemy on the left was trying to flank us. They had stopped them for now, but they were out of ammo. I directed them to the LZ and told them to get my RTO to call for ammo.

The platoon sergeant, SFC Tabor, organized a group to defend the flank, and I headed back to find Cpt. Davin. When I reached him, I reported the status of the first platoon and our ammo problem on the left flank; as I was about to leave, Cpt. Davin, while talking to the returning gunship, tried to hand his flashlight to his RTO, telling him to go out and land the chopper. The eighteen-year-old freckled-nosed RTO from Mississippi looked at the flashlight as if being handed a rattlesnake. I grabbed the flashlight and said I would do it. I had been shot at all day, and maybe I figured my luck was good, but we needed to get our wounded out. I held the flashlight as high above me as possible and moved it back and forth. Cpt. Jerry Fry, the gunship fire team leader, landed for the second time that night, surrounded by the green tracer rounds of the NVA. After his crew chief and gunner had loaded the wounded, they gave us their remaining mini-gun ammunition for our machine guns before departing with the second load of wounded.

The following morning, a sweep of the area showed the enemy had left and took all their dead and wounded but one.* Later in the day, the battalion reconnaissance platoon found fresh graves with twenty-five bodies. Twenty-one of them were in NVA uniforms.

Charley Company’s dead [KIA] numbered nine, and another 23 men were wounded. [Due to the fog of war, casualty totals reported vary, Cpt. Davin at one time reported ten killed and seventeen wounded.] One common denominator, however, among both the dead and the living was courage. Seven KIAs were posthumously awarded the Silver Star; Sp/4 Salome Beltran, SFC Jesse Tabor, and Cpt. Davin were also awarded the Silver Star.

* 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. 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. For the story detailing the discovery of these bunkers and the booby traps that protected them from discovery, click the link below.

Deathtrap Village

For the story of the gunship support provided by the Black Angel gunships, see Part 2, which is derived from Chapter 13 of the book, Saving Infantry and SOG Souls: A Crew Chief’s View, by Roger Lockshier.

Part 2

Note: The information above is a composite of four documents detailing what Charley Company went through on 4 April 1968. Special thanks go to all whose writings were used to prepare the above presentation, namely Richard K. Korb, Editor of Brutal Battles of the Vietnam War; Ralph Alvarez and Christopher M. Ruff, Museum Technicians, 82nd Airborne Division Museum; and Colonel Richard Underwood (USA, Ret), formerly 2nd platoon leader, C/1/505 Airborne Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division, Republic of Vietnam on 4 April 1968.

Go to Part 2