As the tropical winter months of 1966 continued, the Braves soon found out that enemy grenades could be just as deadly as friendly ones. On December 1st, in the northwest corner of Phu Yen Province, Charlie Company established a night defensive position (NDP) near Hill 268. A group of dwellings and rice fields roughly a kilometer west of their location was labeled as Phu Long (3) on the mapsheet. This small “village’ lay sandwiched between the Song Cai river to it’s south and west and the highlands to its east and north.
Specialist Fourth Class Forrest Dickey, a redheaded Midwesterner from Orrick, Missouri, led his shorthanded squad out to the perimeter and set them in position, where they battled the pouring rain as they pitched shovel full after shovel full of mud out of their homes for the night. Back in Ft. Lewis, Dickeyand the other men frequently enjoyed impromtu games of football. In one, the large 200 lb
The Missourian found himself brought to the turf by Private Hisao Nishimura, a wiryJapanese-American private from California, who weighed no more than 120lbs. Instead of being angry at being brought down by someone half his size, Dickey looked at his unlikely foe, smilingly stated “Why, you little shit”, and offered Nish a hand up of the ground.
“Nish” Nishimura remembers the night of December 1st, 1966 like this “one late afternoon after humping through the jungles all day, we had to set up on a hill and dug in for the night. This was practically a nightly occurrence because we very rarely stayed in one location more than one night. We had to set up a defensive perimeter but our company was shorthanded. Our squad had to split up into two groups, one to go with the squad leader, Dickey and the other to remain with fire team leader, Helling. I did not care for the fire team leader and I was hoping to go with Dickey. We drew straws to see who would go and who would stay. I drew the short straw and got stuck with the Helling. However, my best friend, Mike went with Dickey. That night we were attacked by the Viet Cong with small arms fire and grenades. All hell broke loose and there were explosions near the foxhole where Mike & Dickey were. We returned fire, set off claymore mines and tossed our own grenades in the dark. The Artillery Forward Observer that was assigned to our company, called in for artillery support and flares to light up the night skies. After what seemed like hours, but was probably a lot less, it was over. Our platoon sergeant came around to check out the rest of the perimeter and told us that Dickey had a massive chest wound from a grenade and probably wasn’t going to make it. Mike also got hit by another grenade, shattering his leg. They called for a “dustoff” medevac helicopter to fly the injured out. It was raining very hard that night. The choppers came and left with the wounded. Preparing for a possible second attack, we re-dug our foxholes deeper than normal. With the heavy monsoon rains pouring down, our foxholes quickly became filled with nearly a foot of water. I remember very vividly standing in that watery foxhole. No one could see the tears because of the rain, but I cried for Dickey, I cried for Mike and I cried because I was scared.”
Lester Hoag from Tomah, Wisconsin, trained as an artillery forward observer, grabbed the radio and called in illumination rounds so the medevac helicopter, or Dustoff, could land. Nish, in the confines of his own rain filled mud hole, cried in the darkness as the Dustoff helicopter swooped in and took Dickey away. Just one month shy of his 23d birthday, SP4 Dickey would not survive the trip back to the aid station and became the third Brave to die in Vietnam.
The Operational Report Lessons Learned, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division covering Nov-Dec ‘66 and Jan ‘67 states the following brief and inadequate description of the engagement.
“At 011215H December, C Company was probed by a small enemy force and received small arms fire and six hand grenades in the vicinity of CQ044766.”
Undaunted by the casualties caused by the Viet Cong probe, the battalion continued search and destroy operations in the Song Cai valley and surrounding highlands. On the 5th of December, Alpha and Bravo Companies were airlifted to the Brigade base camp at Tuy Hoa for a period of refit and retraining. Charlie Company stayed out for an additional two days, before moving overland back to Tuy Hoa on December 7th.