Operation Yellowstone
From early December 1967 to late February 1968, Tropic Lightning troopers faced some of their sternest tests at the hands of the Viet Cong and paid them back four fold in operation Yellowstone.
The Viet Cong were decisively defeated in each of the more than 60 engagements fought during Operation Yellowstone. One of the Yellowstone's engagements, the Battle of Soui Cut at Fire Support Base Burt, went into the books as the biggest single action of the year 1967 for a 25th Division unit.
Yellowstone was on a large scale from the beginning. The 3rd battalion, 22nd Infantry Regulars found 15,000 Viet Cong grenades buried in 50 gallon oil drums in the dense jungle west of Dau Tieng during the first week.
On 19 December the enemy launched a furious night assault on the night location of the 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Manchus south of Katum Base Camp.
At dusk the Viet Cong began bombarding the 1st Brigade soldiers. Shortly after midnight two reinforced battalions of Viet Cong hurled themselves on the perimeter. Typical of the hand-to-hand combat which occurred that night was the GI who attacked an enemy with his empty M-16, battered him to the ground and killed him with a blast from the Viet Cong's own AK-47. At dawn the enemy force fled, leaving 40 dead comrades.
The Viet Cong paid most dearly for violating their own truce to attack Fire Support Base Burt 1 January 1968. Secured by elements of the 2nd and 3rd Battalions, 22nd Infantry Regulars, the fire support base was only three days old when it became the setting for the Battle of Soui Cut.
At 1:30 a.m. the main enemy force made its move. Second Regulars Charlie Company absorbed the main thrust of their attack. As the fanatical human wave surged closer to the perimeter, the bases cannoneers from 3rd Battalion, 13th Artillery fired round after round of beehive ammunition into the attackers.
After a brief lull, the Viet Cong renewed their assault all along the perimeter. Again the artilleryman fired over open sights. Air strikes pounded the enemy within 100 meters of the embattled Tropic Lightning troops as the volume of fire reached a crescendo. Suddenly all remaining Viet Cong were going the other way.
As dawn broke, the weary, tested and alert defenders of Burt gazed over blasted landscape to a tree line that had been all but leveled by their fire. Strewn around the base were 382 Viet Cong bodies.
Though battered and beaten, the enemy was still not close to paying the bill Yellowstone presented him. Slashing through jungle north of Tay Ninh, 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Manchus killed 70 Viet Cong as they overran and destroyed several large base camps.
Back at Fire Support Base Burt, 3rd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regulars came upon an ammunition cache just 1,500 meters from the perimeter, liberating 156 60mm mortar rounds, 13,000 rounds of AK-47 ammunition, 41 cases of TNT, 24 cases of C-4 and 14,000 non-electric blasting caps.
Having lost much ammunition, Charlie could look forward to shorter rations also. The 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry White Warriors uncovered a 231-ton rice cache four kilometers from the Cambodian border in Tay Ninh Province.
The biggest find of the operation came when PFC Donald Wadlington literally stumbled over the door of another Viet Cong cache. The tunnel yielded 220 82mm mortar rounds, 75 fuses, 101 75mm recoilless rounds and 11,000 small arms rounds.
Operation Yellowstone still had almost a month to run when another first occurred. During 30-31 January 1968, Camp Rainier, temporary home of the 3rd Brigade, was hit by eight 107mm rockets, one of the first times these munitions had been used in South Vietnam.
February continued action in Operation Yellowstone, but the engagements were on a gradually smaller scale. By the time Yellowstone closed, the units of the Tropic Lightning had reasserted their mastery over the Viet Cong in even the most desperate situations.
More than 1,400 Viet Cong had been killed and 400 tons of rice captured from their stunned and shattered units.