Vietnam war: 1st Cantho overun

Cantho overrun,1st attack......

Cantho had no protection at all for an airbase so important, just small sandbags piled up, next to a small tower, And I think only four, for that huge area, to be protected. It was so far south that, that commanders felt no one would ever be able to attack it. So the feelings were,  there could never be an attack on it. When I arrived, transferred from the 11th Cav, confused there was just a few SP's there. We often wondered why we were sent there in mass to become SP's after combat with the Blackhorse. But to keep us from being to alarmed was the fact, they never added bunkers or towers, so this remained the same. Yet we questioned why they never brought in the engineers and build enough bunkers closer together, to protect us on the line. We were setting ducks, awaiting a disaster.

January 29 on my birthday a prisoner of war camp next to our one side of the airbase was hit with three mortars, and we could see huge flashes as mortars and rockets took out I think three ammo dumps on the same side but a few miles away. I must not have worried anyone, because nothing happened, kinda like today, no one does anything until a disaster.

The first wave came on the Chinese new year, called the TET. We were completely overrun, and Choppers and aircraft were damaged. Of course we had to leave our tower and get behind our sandbags as they ran past, not really stopping to fight us, because there mail objective was to overrun us and damage our base, airfield, and runway. And we would never have survived, as we had all we could do, to fight them off, as they ran past us shooting our sandbags, to pin us down, as they ran by and we only had m16's to do battle with. As our sandbags became a sand pile, rockets were bouncing off the huge tanks full of gas, next to us and why none of them exploded, as we were so worried about.  Green (enemy's), and red (Ours) flash's of lights, called tracers going everywhere, from so many of there and our bullets, making it looked like the forth of July fireworks all around us. As quickly as it began it ended. They blew everything up, they wanted blown up and disappeared out the other side of the airbase not protected by anything.