Vietnam 1967: 450 Men Held Firebase Gold Against 2,500 Viet Cong

At 6:31 on the morning of 21 March 1967, mortar shells began to fall on Fire Support Base Gold, a clearing in War Zone C that American helicopters had landed on only two days earlier. Within minutes a Viet Cong regiment came out of the tree line in daylight. Artillerymen left their guns and fought in the foxholes, the gunners lowered their barrels until they were level with the ground and fired straight into the attackers, and the base held for nearly three hours, until tanks and armored carriers broke out of the jungle at 9:12. This film tells the whole story, from the Fourth Infantry Division's brigade that was supposed to be somewhere else, through Cedar Falls, Junction City and the fights at Prek Klok, to the helicopter landing on a mined clearing and the night before the attack. Then it follows the morning of 21 March minute by minute: the ambush patrol, the overrun platoon, the spotter plane Cider Five, the Beehive rounds, the stream that kept the armor away, and what Captain Walt Shugart said to his colonel two weeks later. It is told from the Army's own histories (Vietnam Studies, the Center of Military History, the field artillery volume) and from accounts by the men who were there. How many men were there, and how many attacked? The Army counts about 450 defenders. The number 2,500 for the Viet Cong is the estimate the defenders gave; the official histories count battalions, not men, and the film says where the sources disagree. It uses real photographs and film of the same units, places and years. Where no picture of the exact place or hour survives, it shows the same units and period. No picture in it is computer-generated. Were you at Gold, or in War Zone C with the 4th or the 25th Division in 1967? Do you think the brigade was set up as bait? The comments are where it gets fixed if we got a name, a date or a number wrong. Chapters 0:00 450 Men on a Two-Day-Old Firebase 4:06 The Brigade Sent Somewhere Else 9:52 The Viet Cong 9th Division 16:01 Cedar Falls: The Iron Triangle and Ben Suc 23:24 Junction City: The Horseshoe 30:13 Prek Klok I: A Company in the Deadfall 34:43 Prek Klok II: The Diversion 39:03 Palm Sunday: The Flight Without Armor 43:54 The Clearing Explodes 50:08 Monday: About 450 Men Dig In 56:45 How a Firebase Worked, and Who Ran Gold 1:02:10 Beehive 1:05:59 The Night at Ap Bau Bang 1:12:26 06:31 1:17:42 The Reaction Force 1:21:52 Cider Five 1:26:54 The Men in the Wood Line 1:31:57 The Stream 1:37:22 Beehive at 07:50, and the Quad Fifty 1:42:44 Lower the Tubes 1:45:23 09:12: The Tanks Come Out of the Trees 1:50:13 The Count 1:53:13 "You Set Us Up" Sources LTG Bernard W. Rogers, Cedar Falls-Junction City: A Turning Point, Vietnam Studies, Department of the Army, 1974. https://archive.org/details/CMHPub90-7 George L. MacGarrigle, Combat Operations: Taking the Offensive, October 1966 to October 1967, U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1998. https://archive.org/details/CMHPub91-4 MG David Ewing Ott, Field Artillery, 1954-1973, Vietnam Studies, Department of the Army, 1975. https://archive.org/details/CMHPub90-12 GEN Donn A. Starry, Mounted Combat in Vietnam, Vietnam Studies, Department of the Army, 1978. https://archive.org/details/CMHPub90-... Walter Shugart (B/3-22 Infantry), "The Battle of Soui Tre" (memoir). https://thebattleofkontum.com/memorie... Robert L. Hemphill, "VC Onslaught at Fire Support Base Gold," Vietnam magazine, December 1998. https://www.vhpa.org/KIA/panel/battle... Dave Gehr (C/3-22 Infantry), account published by the 22nd Infantry Regiment Society. https://www.virtualwall.org/units/FSB... Photo and film credits Most film and photographs are from the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. National Archives (NARA) and the Department of Defense (public domain, works of the U.S. government). Some archival film and TV footage is used under license. More from the same war: Grunt's Field Notes:    / @viet_vet_nam   Crew Chief's Notebook:    / @crewchiefsnotes   #VietnamWar #Vietnam1967 #SuoiTre