Battle of Nam Dong
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| Battle of Nam Dong | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Vietnam War | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
 South Vietnam United States Australia |
 Viet Cong |
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| Commanders | |||||||
| Captain Roger H. C. Donlon | Unknown commander | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 200+ | 1,000+ | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| South Vietnam: 115 dead and wounded US:9 dead and wounded Australia: 1 dead |
62+ bodies left | ||||||
The Battle of Nam Dong was fought on July 6, 1964, when the Viet Cong attacked the Nam Dong CIDG camp in an attempt to overrun it.
Nam Dong is situated 32 miles west of Da Nang in a valley near the Laotian border. It was manned by South Vietnamese personnel with American and Australian advisors.
The Viet Cong struck at the camp at 2:30AM to achieve the element of surprise, and reached the outer perimeter where South Vietnamese special forces managed to hold out. The battle lasted for five hours when the VC decided to abort the mission.
At 9:45AM six USMC helicopers arrived to extract the special forces.
A the end of the battle, a total of 372 allies (12 American Green Berets, 300 South Vietnamese, and 60 Nung soldiers) held of deadly attacks against 900 Viet Cong.
For his actions at Nam Dong, Captain R. C. Donlon was the first American to receive the Medal of Honor in Vietnam.[2]
Contents |
[edit] Popular Culture
A key battle scene in the 1968 film The Green Berets was based on this battle.
It was at this contact that the Australian member of the Australian Army Training Team (Vietnam) AATTV, Warrant Officer Kevin Conway, Military history of Australia during the Vietnam War, was cited by his commander, then Colonel Francis Philip (Ted) Serong for a Victoria Cross, the highest gallantry award for Australian service personnel. Kevin Conway was in a forward weapon pit with an American Master Sergeant Garbiel Alamo who was also killed in the North Vietnamese assault. Conway alone fired his mortar upon the assaulting enemy in ever decreasing range fire until he was forced to bring his mortar fire upon himself to save the perimeter of the base.
Warrant Officer Conway has never received the cited award for Valour. He was the first Australian to die in the Vietnam war. Serong stated that it was American Special Forces politics that denied Conway his Victoria Cross. M/Sgt Alamo was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
(Source: Brig. Francis Philip (Ted) Serong, 1994)
[edit] External links
[edit] Notes
- ^ Kelley, Michael P. (2002). Where We Were In Vietnam. Hellgate Press, p. 5-351. ISBN 1-55571-625-3.
- ^ "One Who Was Belligerent", TIME Magazine, 1964-12-11. Retrieved on 2007-04-22.
