Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
13:40 | The Tet Offensive was an extraordinary test for the American forces in Vietnam. Don Bowman's battalion had the difficult task of dislodging a strong NVA force holed up in a fortified hamlet next to the walls of Hue City.
Keywords : Don Bowman Vietnam Hue Phu Bai Camp Evans Dong Ha Tet Offensive Boeing CH-47 Chinook La Chu hamlet Bob Helvey Dick Swede dead bodies Hubert S. Bill Campbell North Vietnamese Army (NVA) USS Lofberg (DD-759) Creighton Abrams John J. Tolson twin 40mm anti aircraft gun Bill Scutter
In high school, Don Bowman saw a catalog from West Point sitting on another boy's desk. Can I look at that? Sure but you won't get in, came the reply. As it turned out, Don did but the other guy didn't.
After a stint in Germany, Don Bowman returned to Fort Benning where he ran the Pathfinder committee. He wound up back at West Point as the very first Protocol Officer, in charge of the constant flow of visitors.
Once Don Bowman realized the concepts of assault fire and final defensive fire were very similar, he developed a technique to train his men to master the necessary rapid reloading. He was also a big proponent of leading by example.
Air Mobile was the new thing and Don Bowman was excited to be a part of it when he arrived in Vietnam to join the 1st Cavalry Division. After getting to know his fellow staff officers, he became concerned about the slowness of the Medevac process and set about doing something about it.
While looking at a captured NVA map, Don Bowman realized he could overlay the markings with his own data and find the firing locations of the rocket launchers that had been plaguing Camp Evans.
Thanks to some captured NVA documents, Don Bowman knew an attack was coming but he didn't know when. This allowed him to prepare some surprises. When a platoon got cut off as they pursued the fleeing enemy, one of the pilots volunteered to try to drop them some supplies.
General Tolson and Colonel Campbell were old and good friends but, as they planned to approach Khe Sanh, they had some differences. Don Bowman recalls how the Colonel wanted to take some high ground first while the General wanted to power straight in.
It was a grim and filthy place. When Don Bowman's Cavalry unit got to Khe Sanh to relieve the besieged Marines, it was quickly determined that the place would be abandoned. It was too filthy to continue as a base. The next move was to the A Shau Valley for a hard fought battle.
Don Bowman was struck by the courage and resilience of the soldiers he knew in Vietnam and he recalls two men who rose to the occasion during the heat of battle.
Don Bowman noticed that the awards and decorations were going almost exclusively to officers. He began surveying the troops after a battle to find out which lower ranking soldiers had done something extraordinary. After the war, he did his part to correct the miserable general condition and morale problems that had developed.
