The tragedy of Con Thien

Con Thien, Vietnam; in the fall of 1967, it is a tree-topped hill just south of the demilitarized zone.

It was a small area, the troops were getting pounded by North Vietnam artillery only two miles away. Then they were overrun. Everybody was getting killed. One kid was on the radio, begging for help. He was saying "Please help, everybody's dead."

Finally, he let go of the transmission switch, he had been killed. The remaining troops cleared a helicopter landing pad to get the wounded out. They weren't even trying to get the dead out, there were too many of them. When it was all over, they had evacuated 166 wounded and 51 dead, but left behind another 34 dead Marines, many had been executed at close range, shot in the face or the back of the head. 

Time and Newsweek magazines later ran articles with photos from that fight. Dead Marines from Bravo Company were stacked up like cordwood. No one could get to them soon enough to save them. One platoon leader was wounded and evacuated, his sergeant, then in command, was killed, then a 152-millimeter artillery round landed right on top of Captain Richard Sasek, the company's commander and First Sergeant Rivers, killing them both. Rivers was an African American, was well respected by all the troops; he had turned down a battlefield commission.

Two days later more artillery rounds hit the battalion command post. The battalion was decimated; if you had put the survivors of Alpha, Delta, and Charlie company together, you wouldn't have had one rifle company.

The shelling lasted several days, with more than two hundred artillery and mortar rounds coming each day. A wounded and killed action count was not provided for the rest of the battalion.

Roger Gregory served as a captain in the First Infantry Division in Vietnam. He is a native of Sandpoint. He is now a business owner in Priest River.