First-Person Accounts

A Tribute: Alpha Company - June-August 1968

The following information is taken from a first-person account of the action related by Don Casteel, 1st Platoon, Alpha Company. Thanks also to Larry Weist and Reed Bryant for their additions. This narrative is written as a memorial to the five men who were killed in this action.

SSG George Richard Proctor (1st Platoon Sergeant)
SP4 Donald Edward Arnold (M-60 Machine Gunner)
PFC Jack Wayne Calfee (Platoon RTO - radio-telephone operator)
SP4 Michael Joseph Conrady (Medic)
SP4 Donald David Meis (Medic)

Location of 'Hot LZ' using Google Earth,
Thanks to Greg Boyle for setting up the map...

   I've never forgotten Proctor and the other guys that were killed on June 1st. SSG George Proctor was the 1st Platoon sergeant. I also will always remember that Proctor's wife was expecting a baby in August of '68 because that was all he talked about. His son was born in August, 1968, and later joined the Marine Corps.
   On June 1, 1968 we flew out from the 25th ARVN Division airfield in Duc Hoa. We traveled about thirteen klicks and landed in Long An Province, on the west side of the Song Vam Co Dong river. Scott Murphy and I figured a Longitude of 54, and a Latitude of 85 according to the maps he had. We figured we were about eight miles south, and 15 miles west of Saigon when we landed.
    SSG George Proctor was on his second tour in Vietnam. He had gone over in 1965-66 as a helicopter door gunner, part of the "Shotgunner" program with the 121st Aviation Company at Soc Trang., moving ARVIN troops.
    He had joined Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment for his second tour about a month before Charlie Watkins, Stuart Mulhane and I arrived. We three made up an M-60 crew, and Proctor "took us under his wing" and taught us the ropes. We were all usually near one another during sweeps and ambushes. When we went on heliborne operations, it was usually Proctor, his RTO Calfee, me, Mulhane, Watkins, and someone else who rode in the same chopper. Proctor taught us from the "get go" that as soon as you hit the ground, you ran for the woodline, and that's what we always did.
    On this operation things happened differently - those "strange things" that always stayed in your head, and I have never been able to get rid of them!  When the choppers landed to pick us up we all ran out together to get on board. Proctor and Calfee got on the right side, and me, Mulhane, and Watkins ran around to the left side to get on. But when we got there, another M-60 crew was already boarding (Don Arnold, the gunner, and two other guys whose names I don't remember). Since the chopper was full, we ran to the next one behind it, and boarded. I still remember this so well, like it happened yesterday - I will probably still be thinking about it when I myself die. It is one of those "impossible" things for which there is no answer.
    As we approached the landing zone and got closer to the ground, one of the guys sitting on the floor in front of me slapped my leg and said he saw an enemy soldier at the edge of the woodline, holding a pistol and aiming at the choppers. Since I was sitting right beside the doorgunner I hit him on the back and pointed down. He stuck his head further outside the ship, looked around and waved to me as if to say, "can't see nothing".
    We landed in the middle of an old pineapple field (I can see it in my mind just as if I was looking right at a picture). The enemy waited until the first couple ships landed before they opened fire. I turned and motioned for the guys to get out on the right side, away from the woodline and we jumped off the chopper about six feet to the ground. I knew right away what was going to happen - Proctor and his guys would run straight for the woodline. The noise of the choppers was so loud that you couldn't yell and warn them.
    When the firefight was finally over, we found Proctor, Calfee and Arnold close together. They had run almost right up on a hidden enemy bunker. If my gun crew had been aboard that chopper that day, we would have been laying right beside them. Conrady was apparently hit aboard the chopper, which may be why he is listed as "Air Casualty" on the Internet "virtual wall" websites. Another member of the platoon, PFC James E. Green, was hit in the wrist by rifle fire and survived.
    The other strange thing I remember about that day was that the landing zone had not been "prepped" by artillery fire ahead of our landing, as we usually did. The next day, when we were conducting a sweep through the area, and we found a nearby area that had been hit by artillery. I have always wondered if the choppers "put us down" at the wrong spot - or if the artillery "prepped" the wrong spot.
    Proctor was a good guy and would have been proud to know his son later joined the Marines. [Don Casteel]

    I remember flying over a prepped area that was still black. When we hit the Landing Zone I jumped from the chopper on the left side and hit the ground on the high side of a pineapple terrace, slightly below the crest. I could hear rounds going off but could not be sure of where they were coming from. It looked like Charlie had built bunkers looking down each valley row in that one plantation. I crawled forward almost to the woodline and couldn't see anything. I rolled to my right over two terraces and then crawled back toward the middle of the plantation. "Pull back!" was ordered and that's when we knew some of us were missing.
    When the shooting stopped we found Proctor, Calfee and Arnold. I did not know that Doc had been hit getting off the chopper and I believe that it knocked him back onto the chopper and the chopper left with him on the floor of the chopper.
    We could not find Murphy and started looking for him. We found him hunkered down between two terraces heating up hot chocolate with a damn flower stuck behind his ear. He had not heard the pull back order. [Reed Bryant]

    Not a June 1st goes by that I don't think of the guys who died. I was on the second lift (of choppers) which didn't make it that day (called off because of the ambush), but went out early the next morning. One of the Medevac choppers coming back with wounded dropped them off and then when they took off the pilot snagged the front skids on some power lines and flipped the chopper, and I think the crew was mostly killed. [Larry Weist]

George Proctor, the son of George Proctor killed in action on June 1, 1968, leaves a plaque in memory of the five "Golden Dragons" who died that day as they participated in an air assault into a hot landing zone.

The following information is taken from first-person accounts of the action related by Greg Boyle and Reed Bryant, both of 1st Platoon, Alpha Company. This narrative is written as a memorial to the men who were killed in these actions.

    We were conducting a 3-day Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP) in Duc Hoa district. Early in the morning of August 14th, 1968, we were in a schoolhouse building preparing for our patrol that day when we were hit by enemy fire around 1 AM, and Harold White was killed.
    That evening we left the area and patrolled all night, and then set up our position for the day around a nearby hootch. The evening of the 15th we were planning to leave our position and continue our patrol when we were hit by enemy fire again. Sergeant First Class Williams was hit by enemy AK-47 rifle fire, and then a rocket-propelled grenade hit the outside of the hootch just above our heads, killing Williams and wounding Glover and Reed Bryant. [Greg Boyle]

    Our entire company had been split into "Tiger" teams (small groups) and were sent to fan out across a very large area. We had been under sporadic gunfire for most of the night when we came through a woodline and saw this hootch in the middle of a large rice paddy. SFC Williams it would be a good place to hide for the day. Just before dark a woman and her child showed up to claim the hootch for the night. We were supposed to move again after dark and Williams wanted someone to plant a claymore on the rice paddy dike that the woman had walked in on. We were still there waiting to move out when a heliborne landing began in the woodline behind us (a Long Range Recon Patrol was being picked up). This apparently flushed out Charlie from every direction and right on top of us. A flare went off and Williams saw the Viet Cong coming down the rice paddy dike. He yelled "Charlie" and opened fire with him M-16. Doug Elias opened up with his M-60 machine gun and had fired about 10 rounds when it jammed. There was gunfire everywhere. I couldn't see out the front of the hootch and had my M-79 in my hand and was crawling out the back to get a line of fire when the RPG hit. Williams was killed and Glover and I were wounded. I believe it was about 9:30 P.M. and the Medevac choppers couldn't get to us right away because the area was still under fire and the choppers weren't sure of our exact location. [Reed Bryant]