On the night of January 20th, A Troop was back in base camp for a little rest and relaxation, I was down at the NCO club getting pretty drunk when a call came in for the second platoon to react to an ARVN Outpost that was under attack by a VC force. We bid the 2nd platoon troopers goodbye and went back to drinking beer and blowing off steam. About 20 minutes later, all hell broke loose outside our front gate. We all emptied out of the NCO club and saw tracers flying everywhere just beyond the Cu Chi base camp front gate. Then came the bad news. They told us to mount up, the 2nd platoon had been ambushed just a few 100 yards outside of the Base Camp while they were going out as a reaction force.

 

     Our first and third platoon came out the gate in short order with our guns ready for a fight but the ambush was over. We saw the second platoon column in the roadway and every personnel carrier was on fire. We took up positions with our tanks and tracks on both flanks of the second platoon to secure the area. The personnel carriers in A Troop were gasoline driven rather than the diesel engines that the newer tracks in some other units had. The ambush was carried out by RPG teams who knew that the personnel carriers were gasoline and exactly where that gas tank was located in the track. They were also set up at just the right intervals on the flanks of the road to hit every track in the column. Every track was hit by RPGs in the exact spot of the armor where the gas tank was. The gasoline was volatile and it went up like a napalm bomb. All together 9 men were killed in the second platoon that night in the course of just a few short minutes. It had to be a NVA unit, it was so quick and precise.

 

      My tank was stationed directly downwind of the then burned out smoldering tracks. The smell of burning human flesh is the worst smell any man can smell. As the smoke drifted across us it was making us sick to our stomachs. I got down off of the tank and went to see if I could help in anyway. What I saw was the worst thing I ever saw in life. Charred bodies of dead GIs were still laying in the tracks. The men were burnt to a crisp, swollen and charred black. They were totally unrecognizable. One of our medics was attempting to remove the bodies to another track to take them back to base camp. He looked at me and asked me to help him. He said to grab the charred body by the feet and he would take him by the shoulders. It made me sick, but I tried to take his feet and it was still hot as hell and the flesh pulled away from the meat. It looked red and pink under the black crust. I thought one foot was going to come off in my hands and I just dropped the feet and felt like I was going to throw up. I told the medic I just could not do it. While I was walking away I could hear him calling someone else to come help him. I got back on my tank and stayed there the rest of the time we were providing security. We were still down wind and smelling the putrid, sweet smell of burned human flesh for hours. I tried to have my driver move the tank a little to escape the smell but there was no escape. It was the most sickening experience of my life. I still have nightmares about it.
 

Rick Avant

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