VICTOR VANCE ULLBERG

Birth 13OCT40 Rank SP4 Date of Death 24FEB67 P. of birth   Service Army (Draft) Place Tay Ninh S. Vietnam Town of Record Portland Unit 1st Inf Div B Co 1st Bn 28th Inf Death Code Hostile, Died; Guns, Small Arms Fire; Ground Casualty Hometown   service # 56410082 Panel 15EAST - 87 Married Single In Service   Medals Purple Heart  Tour Date 14SEP66 Comment   Cemetery

    GERD FRANZ SEELIG

Birth 16MAR41 Rank SP4 Date of Death 26FEB67 P. of birth   Service Army Place Gia Dinh S. Vietnam Town of Record Beaverton Unit 199th LIB B Co 3rd Bn 7th Inf Death Code Hostile, Died; Multiple Fragmentation Wounds Ground Casualty Hometown   service # 19881382 Panel 15EAST - 100 Married Single In Service 1 yr Medals Purple Heart  Tour Date 20DEC66 Comment   Cemetery

Birth 29MAR32 Rank 1SG Date of Death 26FEB67 P. of birth   Service Army Place Binh Duong S. Vietnam Town of Record Oakridge Unit 25th Inf Div A Co 4th Bn 9th Inf Death Code Hostile, Died; Guns, Small Arms Fire; Ground Casualty Hometown   service # 19406251 Panel 15EAST - 102 Married Married In Service 14 yrs Medals Medal of Honor Purple Heart   Tour Date 16APR66 Comment Hispanics in America's Defense Cemetery Fort Logan National Cem., Denver CO

Battered GIs Wonder" Did South Viets Turn On Them?
    By Hugh A. Mulligan, Cu Chi, Vietnam
    Maybe Alpha Company will never really know that happened the night a week ago when a Viet Cong battalion overran its position. But the horror of it and the mystery of it will be with the men all of their days.
    Some of them say they saw friendly South Vietnamese troops open fire on them when Viet Cong mortars began to fall. Others say it wasn't that way at all -- that it may have appeared that way to some in the confusion, smoke and moonlight.
    The men of the 4th Battalion, 9th Regiment of the U.S. 25th Infantry Division sit around their base camp here waiting for trucks to haul off the personal effects of buddies who died last Sunday night -- and the same haunting question keep coming up:
    -- Did the friendly Vietnamese troops open fire on American positions?
    -- Did the Vietnamese interpreter assigned to the company kill a U.S. platoon sergeant who was risking his life to bring ammunition to a besieged bunker or was the interpreter himself needlessly gunned down by an overly suspicious American private who may have been mistaken in what he saw on that battle-confused, smoky moonlight night?
    --Did the friendly government troops assigned to hold the west side of the American line fight bravely, as some men in Alpha Company swear, or did they cower in their bunkers, anxious to show the Viet Cong that they had not fired their weapons in case all was lost?
    -- And why did American advisers have to be called in to stop the Vietnamese troops from looting the bodies of the American dead, taking cigarette lighters, cameras and transistor radios from them as their buddies concentrated on trying to evacuate the wounded?
    Nearly half of the friendly forces -- both Americans and Vietnamese -- who met the enemy in that harrowing encounter were killed or wounded. Casualties were officially listed as heavy, but the enemy paid a heavy price: A confirmed body count of 92 -- of which 47 were found inside the barbed wire perimeters -- and at least 30 to 40 more unconfirmed kills.
    Medals Attest to Heroism
    There were instances of personal heroism that night, judging from the six silver stars, even bronze stars, and the many purple hearts bestowed by Maj. Gen. Fred Weyand, the division commander.
    But when it was over there were also lingering doubts, bitter accusations and starkly stated suspicions about our Vietnamese allies that have split Alpha Company into two rival and highly vocal camps
    "We all have out opinions, but we are going to have to forget them and get back to the job at hand," said the company commander, Capt. Ted Yamashita of Caldwell, Idaho, from his hospital bed were he is recovering from grenade wounds.
    On the Sunday before the attack, Alpha Company moved into the outskirts of Phu Hoa Dong, a village of 9,000 people almost completely surround by an abandoned rubber plantation about 20 miles northwest of Saigon. The area south of the Saigon River was along the main Viet Cong infiltration and supply route from Cambodia and had been the scene of numerous ambushes and sniper activity.
    Alpha Company's job was to protect a squad of Army engineers assigned to bulldoze a swath between the village and the plantation and thereby deny the ambushers and snipers the protective cover of the lush jungles. Helping them were elements from a company of the 5th Division of Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN).
    Hardly a day went by without some minor contact with the Viet Cong 165th Regiment, one of the best of the enemy main force units, but on Sunday night, 26 Feb (1967), the men of Alpha Company detected an unusual amount of activity in the woods.
    The defense was more or less drawn up in an arc facing north, with Alpha Company's 1st Platoon at the top or the north side, the 2nd Platoon on the right or the east, and the ARVN unit on the left, western side of the line. Within the protective semicircle were the engineers with their bulldozers and gasoline supplies and the company command post.

    Night of Horror, Mystery Lives in Memory of GIs Overrun By Viet Cong Ch Chi, Vietnam
    The horror and mystery of a night a week ago when a Viet Cong battalion overran Alpha Company, 4th Battalion, 9th Regiment, 25th Division of the U. S. Army, will remain with the American GIs to the end of their days.
    It was warm and a full moon bathed the long files of scarred rubber trees with a eerie glow. At 12:55 a.m., just as Lt. Jess Pearce of Channelview TX, the leader of the 1st Platoon, was getting ready to climb into the hammock he had slung between a tree and a bunker, mortar rounds began pouring into the area. Pearce immediately ran about, hurrying his men into the bunker.
    "As I did," he said. "I saw an ARVN soldier run by and fire his carbine into the hammock where I should have been sleeping. The minute the mortars began falling, an ARVN position on the left opened fire on our 50-caliber machine gun crew. I also saw an ARVN soldier run by tossing grenades into the company command post."
    Waves of Viet Cong, blowing whistles and laying down deadly automatic weapons fire, were inside the barbed wire perimeter within 15 minutes.
    Action Heavy
    Mortars, rifle grenades, re-coilless rifles, hand grenades rained down on the besieged company. "A hell of a lot of it." according to Col. Frank Conaty, commander of the 1st Brigade, who helicoptered into the area at first light. "In my experience I've never seen as many rifle and hand grenades, just judging from the number of duds."
    Conaty waited an agonizing hour before sending a reserve unit to the rescue, fearing the attack on Alpha Company might only be a decoy for a major attack on division headquarters at Cu Chi, only a few miles away, and then only lightly protected since many of the units were engaged further north in the huge Junction City Operation.
    The fight went on, sometimes at a range of 10 feet, until nearly 5 a.m. First Sgt. Maximo Yabes ventured out and silenced a Communist machine gun that had been tearing up the command post, and was killed trying to get back.
    Capt. Yamashita, who had taken over the company less than a month ago, was hit by grenade fragments in the right arm and knee. He was bleeding badly but managed to keep control of the company, even when it mean crawling in and out of the bunker.
    Helping him call in the helicopter gun ships, air strikes and artillery support that saved the day was W-O John Lowe of Homestead FA, a helicopter pilot who had been in Vietnam only two weeks. He had decided to spend a few days with a rifle company to "find out just what kind of support I was supposed to give them." Lowe won a Silver Star for his bravery and accurate shooting with a borrowed M14 rifle.
    Sergeant Accused.
    Pfc. Johnny Hodges of Trenton NJ, a rifleman with the 2nd Platoon who was watching from a distance of 60 feet, says he saw a man "strongly resembling" Sgt. Le Minh Tri, the Vietnamese interpreter assigned to Alpha Company, "raise his M16 rifle and shoot down Sgt. Nixon at a range of about 10 feet as he tried to lug that ammo toward the bunker."
    Hodges raised his rifle and fired.
    "I don't know whether I killed Sgt. Tri or not, but he tumbled into a ditch and I shot a whole magazine into that hole."
    Hodges, who wound up with two shrapnel wounds and a bullet in the leg, said he had no previous suspicion of Sgt. Tri. "All I know is I saw what I saw -- It was bright moonlight and there were flares ligting up the area all the time.:
    S. Sgt. Clifton Mathis of Pensacola FL was in the bunker next to the one that Sgt. Nixon was running for with the ammunition box.
    Yell Heard
    "I heard him yell, 'Don't shoot, it's me,' Nixon (sic) related. "Then a grenade went off and he fell forward But the grenade didn't kill Sgt. Nixon. He was killed by a rifle. I couldn't say for sure that Sgt. Tri killed him. There were lots of people running around shooting inARVN uniforms. Later when we policed up the area, we opened up the Viet Cong packs and found they all had ARVN uniforms in them."
    Sgt. Mathis said he was in the bunker when a Viet Cong shoved a Chinese made rifle through the opening.
    "I grabbed it before he had a chance to fire and began using it. It had a full clip," he said. "There was a Vietnamese soldier in the bunker with me and he wouldn't shoot. He was cowered there. Later I took off from that bunkers, as the V. C. began overrunning us, but the Vietnamese wouldn't leave. Afterward we found him dead. It's too bad. He wasn't a traitor. He kept pointing out V. C. to me to shoot at but he just wouldn't fire himself. Lots of them think that if they are captured with a weapon that hasn't been fired that the V. C. wouldn't hurt them."
    Opinions Differ
    Spec. 5 Kim McCoy of Chicago, a senior medic with the company up for his second Silver Star, is convinced that Sgt. Tri had nothing to do with the killing of Sgt. Nixon.
    McCoy, who had known Tri for more than a month and had been on many operations with him, said he is "an eyewitness to seeing Sgt. Tri do his duty on the battlefield that night. I saw him several times firing his M16 rifile at Viet Cong, fully engaged. I never saw Sgt. Nixon. I wasn't an eyewitness to that, but I did see Tri often conducting himself like a soldier."
    Hit by a grenade, McCoy treated his own wound and continued to move around the battlefield until 9 a.m. when he himself was finally evacuated to a hospital. Like others, he said he saw ARVN troops looting the pockets and packs of dead Americans.
    Heroism Noted
    "This is the way with Orientals. They do it to their own dead." said Lt. Col. Robert A. Hyatt of Fairfax VA, the battalion commander who herded the Vietnamese officers together and got them to halt the looting by their soldiers.
    There were Americans who witnessed many examples of heroism by ARVN troops, whose casualties were as high as the Americans in the engagement.
    Lt. Pearce, who said he saw ARVN troops firing on Americans recalled, "The lieutenant who commanded the ARVN platton, killed at least eight V.C. before he himself was killed. "Many remembered another interpreter, a Sgt. Phuoc, who won the Bronze Star, for saving Americans when a prisoner attempted to lead them into a mine field.
    A medical report showed that Sgt. Nixon died from rifle wounds, as Mathis insisted. The formal investigation of the episode, which Hyatt conducted, concluded there was no irrefutable evidence to show that Tri had killed Nixon or how Tri himself died.
    "To my mind there's just no proof and there, never will be," said Col. Conaty. "Anytime a unit is overrun it's a debacle."
    "In the noise," Conaty continued, "and the dust and the shock, people just don't know what they saw or heard. I don't doubt for a minute that the Vietnamese and we too, were shooting at everything that moved. There's bound to be some panic when you're being fired on from all sides.
    "There's no indication of how Tri was killed, and I can't find any eyewitness to the allegation that he may have directed the mortar fire. Incoming mortars are pretty unselective about their targets. If I'm going to give away any positions I'd damned sure spend my time digging instead of moving around in the 2nd Platoon area. There have been a lot of unprovable allegations that it's best for us all to forget."
    Trust Endures
    Alpha Company, proud of having beaten off a Viet Cong battalion, mourning its dead, looks back on the episode from two separate viewpoints.
    There are those who would agree with Sgt. McCoy, who served a previous tour working mainly with Vietnamese troops.
    "I still trust them, I have sufficient faith in their competency and loyalty. This will all blow over," McCoy says.
    There are those, like Lt. Pearce and Pfc. Hodges, who for a long time will look over at the nearby government bunkers with a remembered suspicion.
    "I know we got to go back working with them," said Pearce. "That's what the war is all about. But you can't help thinking of all those who didn't come back that night."
    Capt. Yamashita is confident that Alpha Company can forget and forge ahead.
    "They got to," he said. "They got to." (The Oregonian, Portland OR, 6 Mar 1967)

OAK RIDGE HONORS FALLEN HERO
Tribute: Max Yabes is one of only, 11 Oregonians to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor
By Eric Mortenson
The Register-Guard
    Oakridge - The 1st sergeant is home.
    Maximo Yabes, the hero Oakridge nearly forgot, was honored on Veterans Day as 200 townspeople and military dignitaries dedicated a memorial to him in Greenwaters Park, just outside town along the Middle Fork of the Willamette River.
    A brand new American flag snapped in the breeze, two jets from the Oregon Air National Guard streaked overhead, the Oakridge High School band played "God Bless America" and video cameras sprouted from a dozen shoulders as a bronze bust of one of only 11 Oregonians to win the Congressional Medal of Honor was unveiled.
    The only thing missing was a can of Olympia beer, the official drink of Oakridge's Java Joes, as the group of high school friends to which Max Yabes belonged called themselves. Ray Agee, also one of the old JJs, joked that he'd have to bring a can out to the park.
    Of course, Yabes was missing, too, because he was killed in Vietnam on 26 Feb 1967, at age 34. In a way, it was like Yabes disappeared when he dropped out of Oakridge High School in 1950, and he didn't make it back home until Friday.
    "It's like it was all meant to be," said his son, Greg Filter, who traveled from Dayton TN for the ceremony
    "It means a lot to me," said Yabes' daughter, Kayla Papaylannis of San Francisco. "It's sure nice to see his face."
    "This is where he belongs," said Sharon Carlisle of Eugene, their mother and Yabes' first wife. "This river's his, and this community's his."
    It took a community wide effort to bring Yabes home.
    After a story about Yabes appeared in the Register-Guard in February, a group of American Legion members, state veterans services workers and Yabes' Java Joe friends go together and decided, in effect" We've got a Medal of Honor winner from this town and nothing to show for it. We've got to do something.
    So they did. Headed by Robert Anderson and Don Crist, dozens of individuals, businesses and organizations donated time, money, labor and supplies to build the memorial, which features a fountain and flag pole and the bronze bust set on a handsome granite pedestal. Engraved on the base are the details of Yabes' Medal of Honor exploits:
    He was a 1st sergeant in the U.S. Army when his company was attacked at night by a Viet Cong force that outnumbered them by perhaps 4-to-1. When enemy grenades landed within the command post bunker, Yabes shielded others with his body and painfully wounded. He remained in the bunker, providing covering fire as the command group evacuated.
    He picked up a grenade launcher from a fallen comrade and fired point-blank into the attack Viet Cong, temporarily stopping the assault. Noting two wounded men in an exposed area, he dragged them to safety, then continued his deadly fire. When an enemy machine gun crew threatened the U.S. position, he dashed across exposed ground, killed the crew, destroyed the weapon and fell mortally wounded.
    "He sacrificed himself to save his men." said Stanley Adams of Bend, who won the Medal of Honor during the Korean War and was one of several speakers during the ceremony Friday.
    Col. Norman Hoffman, assistant adjutant general of the Oregon National Guard, noted that the United States has only 2,642 Medal of Honor recipients among the millions who have served in the armed forces since the medal was created 130 years ago.
    "No one wins the Medal of Honor, it is not a competition," Hoffman said. "It is awarded by a grateful nation. Max Yabes is one of America's greatest heroes."
    The sculptor who created the memorial, Tim Outman of McKenzie Bridge, said he felt he came to know Yabes as the work progressed. "It really was an honor to do this," Outman said.
    Greg Filter told the crowd that his father's time in Oakridge was probably the happiest of his life. He expressed the family's heartfelt thanks for the work involved in building the memorial in the park.
    "It's peaceful here," he said. (The Register-Guard, Eugene OR, unknown date)