Tet. Fox 2/5 in Hue.

The Vietnamese New Year
Cpl. Cyide Dillenberg and I sit on the edge of our foxhole taking our turn at watch. Clyde, My friend and mentor says the VC and NVA don’t fight during Tet.
Then we hear Puff the Magic Dragon overhead a few miles to our front.
Suddenly a red SiFi ray gun like stream of tracers come from the blackness of the night sky with a long moaning droning sound.
Why are they firing Says Clyde. They(The NVA & VC) don’t fight on Tet?
Something isn’t right here.
Daybreak, It has been raining most of the night and we are wet and cold even though it is in the upper 70’s. We mount up with the rest of Fox Company 2nd. Battalion 5th. Marine Regiment to do a sweep 13 clicks(Kilometers) west. Very hilly and we are carrying full gear and demo (Demolition supplies, C-4, det cord, fuse, blasting caps, fuse lighters.) about 65 lbs of gear not counting rifle, amo, canteens etc. We force march (Fast walk) 13 clicks west.up and down steep hills through dense jungle.
Mid day, No enemy encounter we, get a call form Battalion HQ. “Get back to LZ (cleared Landing zone) to be flown to a hot situation”. We force march double time. 13 clicks back at a slow to medium run.
The Chinooks are waiting when we reach the LZ. Pile in we can rest a few moments before making sure our battle gear is ready.
“:HOT LZ AHEAD!”
“We are going in Hot. ” We fly over the City, it is a big modern City with multi story structures. Hue! The provincial Capital The 2nd. largest and most modern City in South Viet Nam. We fly down the Perfume River and over the bridges. Heavy gunfire form the ground and from our Choppers.
Hue City is divided in two by the Perfume River. The Modern City holds all the Government buildings and a Branch campus of Ohio University. The other side holds the Citadel ( An ancient Castle built in the pre colonial days).
We land a small park. The Gate drops, Everybody starts running out.
Machine guns fire on us as we run. We hit the ground and do squad rushes until we make it to the MacV compound. Safe inside after dragging and carrying our wounded and dead brothers to safety. We collapse for a few minuets while the skipper (Captain Mike Downs) Checks in with Battalion and the other company CO’s and we check on and treat our wounded.
Hotel company, Echo company and Gulf company will join up from 3 directions and try to capture the modern side of the City. Fox will cross the bridge and try to help units if 3/5 who are fighting at the Citadel.
We start across the Bridge and all is quiet. As we approach the other side of the Bridge the NVA open up with machine gun fire. No where to go but back.
We drag our wounded and dead back off the Bridge and Back to the MacV. The Battalion CP orders us to go down the street along the river to the provincial Capital HQ.
As we were to find out much later several NVA Divisions have overrun the City overnight and now control everything They have killed anyone associated with the South Viet Nam Government or the US thousands of bodies were recovered later from mass graves. The streets are littered with rubble, blown up vehicles and body’s.An NVA flag is flying on the flag pole just 6 blocks away at the Provincial Capital office Building.
This section of the modern side of the City has several important Government buildings now held by the NVA. Our objective is to find a way to recapture the Capatal buildings. Every where we attempt to go we are met with overwhelming fire. We finally start down the back yards of some Government officials mansions. Ahead we see several NVA run into a bomb shelter in a back yard. (A grass covered mound covering a concrete bunker with doors at both ends.
Engineers up!”
Cpt. Downs wants us to blow the door off one end of this bunker. We sneak up under cover fire and throw a satchel of C-4 against the door and run. Kaboom! the doors blow off both ends and a huge fire ball comes out of the bunker on both ends. When the fire goes out we go in to find 5 charred NVA officers bodies. The bunker had held something explosive and our explosion detonated what ever was inside.
Across the street the 106MM recoilless rifle mounted on a mule ( A small flatbed one man vehicle) is blasting away at the buildings where we are receiving fire from. He fires and the enemy is dead! We finally make it to the medical college. Imagine my surprise, an Ohio boy finding an Ohio University medical school in Viet Nam in the middle of the largest single battle of the entire War.
Working building to building we clear them and kill, capture or run them out.
Nightfall. The NVA have retreated back into their buildings as have we.
One on and one off watch all night 2 hour watches. Clide and I are in a Dental school building. I’m on watch. I sit in a dental chair swiveling 360 degrees and watch all the windows while Cyde sleeps. This is so surreal siting in a dentists chair in the middle of Hue in the middle of a War.
Morning.
The word is passed. Gas masks! We are going to gas (CS Gas, a form of tear gas) the NVA across the street and then rush the building. The grunts rush in and kill all the NVA in the building. Cpt. Downs and his radioman head for the door to cross the street. Mike, the Skippers radioman goes through the door first right in front of the Skipper, Clyde and I. Kaboom! We are all hurled to the floor. Looking up, Skipper is covered with blood and flesh as are Clyde and I. Mike?A P40 rocket right in his face. The whole top half of his body is missing.
Late morning.
A government building of some kind across the street contains a large vault of some kind. We are told to blow it up and recover whatever important documents are contained inside. We were unsure how much C-4 to use. We don’t want to have to do this again.
Baloom!
The explosion blows the vault door completely off and halfway destroys the vault itself.Piasters (South Vietnamese Currency) are flying everywhere. It is a Bank! We just blew up a bank vault and money is flying everywhere. The Skipper looks through the rubble and we find very few documents.
The Capital compound is surrounded by a 8′ high concrete wall we cannot climb over it because they just pick us off one by one as we attempt to climb over. “Engineers up!” Cpt. Downs wants us to blow a large hole in this wall so we can rush the NVA in the compound. More C-4. A UPI news reporter is asking us if he can film us blowing up this wall. We said sure but you need to be way back. He takes a position 50 yards back where he can still see the wall but has some cover. Kaboom! The reporter is on his back, unhurt but a bit shell shocked. Our guys rush the buildings inside the compound and in minuets we have regained control of the buildings in the Capital compound.
“Who has an American Flag?” says Captain Ron Christmas of Gulf company. “I do sir says one of his men.” Bring down that Garbage(NVA Flag) and run up our colors.” as the NVA Flag comes down and Old Glory is raised,You can see it all over the City, fighting Marines all over the City see the flag going up and Cheers go up form everywhere. We suddenly are over come with emotion and patriotism as we realize the similarity with Iwo Jima.
The Canal Bridge.
Snipers!
They killed one of our guys from a building across the canal bridge. We killed them and the next morning more took their place. The Skipper said to clear that house ( a 3 story concrete house.) and get those snipers! We cleared the house but each night they come back in.Cpt. Downs asks us to set up a Command detonation form the other side of the canal from a office building where we had our battalion command CP. We hid 6- 20 lb satchels of C-4 in the rubble at key structural spots in the building that would bring the building down with an electronic remote device controlled from the room on the other side of the canal.
Nightfall,
We watch the house with a twilight scope form our window. NVA start coming in, we can see them moving past windows. We watch for several hours while more and more move into the house. Once we see no new occupants we hit the switch and blow the building up. It heaves up a bit and then collapses into a pile.
Next morning we search the rubble to find how many bodies. 6 NVA soldiers and one woman and one small child. The horror of finding the child was overwhelming and devastating for me for ten years.
“Blow the bridge!” says Cpt. Downs. The Lt and 2 other engineers from our Battalion are handling some of the demolition load. They bring shape charges to set on the bridge to blow it.
As they are setting the charges, gunfire, the LT goes down. The other men scramble for cover.
The Lt is down in the middle of the bridge and no way to get him without exposing ourselves to heavy enemy fire. Clide says “Lets push a jeep out there and we can have some cover from behind while we recover the LT. Clyde and I push the Mighty Might (A Small Jeep) out to the center of the bridge right over top of the LT and pull him up into the back of the jeep. Then pull the jeep backwards to safety. The LT is hurt bad, several abdominal wounds. he is medicvac’d out and survives. The Grunts finally kill all the NVA in the area and we blow the bridge late that day.
Nuns!
We are searching for enemy soldiers all over the city when we come to a Monastery of some kind. Every one seems to be gone. We go inside a building with a long corridor and walk down
3 Nuns come out of a door at the end of the corridor and walk towards us with their hands crossed in their selves and their heads down. As we pass they bow and say nothing continuing past 20 feet they suddenly turn and pull AK 47’s from their robes and raise them to fire. we are quicker and cut them down. G-2 tells us sometime later that the NVA have found several Female’s disguised in other places in the City as well.
The Perfume River.
We could no longer cross to help 3rd Battalion on the other side of the river since we blew up the bridge so we took boats across from west of the city and crossed to meet up with 3rd. Bn. 5th. Marines and we took back the Citadel after heavy fighting in the next 2 days. We spent the next several weeks chasing the rest of the NVA all over the country side.
After 42 days and nights we were relieved by units from 101st. Army Airborne and units of the Americal division.
We had killed and wounded More enemy in that 42 days than in any battle in the entire war. We sustained a couple hundred dead and wounded from that campaign and inflicted several thousand enemy casualties.
One of the greatest battles in Marine Corps history and in US Military history.
Our skipper Captain Mike Downs, Clyde and I survived without a scratch. Cpt. Downs finished his career as a Brigadier General and is retired, Clyde survived his tour and lives in Minisota. :usmc:

DOUG.....that was EXCELLENT!!!!! It's a KEEPER!! Thank-you for your service, and I hope all the men, who served and survived, know how much we appreciate them.....DOC

Hi Doug. My name is Tim Lund. I work with a Marine named Clyde Dillenberg. We both live in Minnesota. I showed him a copy of your post and he would like to get in touch with you. I do not think he has a computer or internet access but he would like to contact you. What is the best way for him to reach you? How could I help?

My e-mail is: tidacolu@gmail.com

Thank you,

Tim Lund

The Capt Christmas referenced here was a Col and my Regimental Commander when I first joined the 3rd Marines in 1984.

Doug - your story brought back a lot of memories. I was with the 3/5 across the river. Thanks again.

my Uncle was in 2/5 in Nam