Official blog
TWS Website
TWS Website
U

MENU

Battlefield Chronicles

Vietnam War – LZ Hereford (1966)

Vietnam War – LZ Hereford (1966)

,

Twenty-three Montagnard mercenaries led by Special Forces Sergeants Burton Adams and David Freeman moved quietly through the front gate of the Vinh Thanh Special Forces camp on May 15, 1966, and slipped into the early morning darkness and light fog. Like other patrols sent out over the past week, they were hoping to find anything that would confirm a captured Viet Cong's claim that a combined North Vietnamese Army/Viet Cong force would soon attack their camp. The patrol members moved to the shores of the Song Con River, climbed into small boats and paddled across the deep river making as little noise as possible. On the other side, they picked up a trail heading northeast toward the high, green mountains shrouded in thick morning clouds. Within several hundred yards, the trail narrowed and became steeper and more heavily vegetated. The night slowly gave way to daylight. The men drew their machetes to cut through the tangle of vines and matted foliage. After three hours of struggling...

read more
Korean War – Sacrifice And Survival at Chosin Reservoir (1950)

Korean War – Sacrifice And Survival at Chosin Reservoir (1950)

,

For 19-year-old Pat Finn, a Minnesota Marine with Item Co, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, the night seemed colder and darker than any of the others he'd experienced since landing in Korea. His Battalion had just arrived at a desolate, frozen lake he would remember for the rest of his life: the Chosin Reservoir. As the sun went down on November 27, 1950, and temperatures sank to 20 degrees below zero, Marines at Yudam-ni, a small village on the west side of the Chosin Reservoir, hunkered down for what they hoped would be a quiet, uneventful night. "The war was all but over," Finn recalled in his diary written weeks later from a hospital bed in Japan. "You'll be home by Christmas," he'd been told. But his buddy, Eddie Reilly, wasn't buying it. In his usual pessimistic tone, he told Finn, "Pat, I don't like the look of all this, it sounds too good." For the next four hours, the two Marines scraped and dug into the frozen, rocky ground, Reilly constantly reminding his friend that if...

read more
WW2 – Behind Enemy Lines – The 82nd and 101st Airborne on D-Day (1944)

WW2 – Behind Enemy Lines – The 82nd and 101st Airborne on D-Day (1944)

,

The amphibious landings of D-Day were hours away when the first combat missions by the US Army started in France. The invasion of Normandy began with a large-scale parachute drop that included 13,100 Soldiers of the 82nd and the 101st Airborne Divisions. The attack occurred during the night in the early hours of June 6th, 1944, and was the vanguard of the Allied operations in Normandy. The troops were all part of the US VII Corps assigned to capture Cherbourg, the coastal city in Normandy, that would serve as a supply port for the Allied troops after the landing. They were also tasked with a specific mission: to block approaches into the vicinity of the amphibious landing at Utah Beach, to capture causeway exits off the beaches, and to establish crossings over the Douve River at Carentan to assist the US V Corps in joining up the two American beachheads. Once the paratroopers landed, all hell broke loose. The heavy fighting marked the beginning of the end of the Second World War in...

read more
Korean War – Night Fighter Team

Korean War – Night Fighter Team

,

On January 21, 1953, during Korea’s Winter War. Night fighter team "George" of composite squadron three (VC-3) was operating from USS Oriskany (CVA-34) in the Sea of Japan. Excerpt from combat report: Saw 75-100 trucks on G-3, seven trucks seen damaged. Meager to intense AA, much rifle fire was seen. The plane hit by 30 cal. Item - Lt. James L. Brown, USNR assigned F4U-5N #124713. One-night landing aboard without incident. 2.6 combat hours. Combat strike report comments, like that above, were distilled from the intelligence officers debriefing of pilots from returning strikes and later filed with higher command. They, in turn, used these reports from the pilots who flew the combat missions, and reported what happened, to plan later strikes, select subsequent targets, and subject to political considerations, the overall conduct of the war. Seldom did they tell what happened. It was just as well. Here is what really happened that night. Two-night fighters of team "George" were on the...

read more