What It Was Like For A NVA Soldier To Attack An American Firebase

You're lying in wet grass in Quang Tin province, twenty meters from an American bunker, wearing khaki shorts and a coat of soot. There's a strip of bamboo between your teeth and a satchel charge strapped to your chest. Above you is Firebase Mary Ann. It's the early morning of 28 March 1971. This is that attack from the other side of the wire. Who the sappers really were, a week of reconnaissance and sand tables, seven hours on their bellies cutting through three belts of wire, the mortars that drove the Americans into their bunkers, thirty minutes inside, and the way out the legends skip. Then the count. Their army later claimed 350 Americans killed and no losses. There were 231 Americans on that hill, and fifteen sappers never left it. Every claim sourced. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📕 THE BOOKS FROM TRUE VIETNAM DOCS First-time readers: the first-reader price applies itself at checkout ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ BOOK ONE · The Documented History of MACV-SOG in Vietnam The book mentioned in the video as The SOG Files, now published under this title. Less than three years before Mary Ann, sappers broke into MACV-SOG's own compound at Da Nang. This is the most secret American unit of the war: the missions, the arsenal, the men and the myths, in six chapters. 👉 First-reader price, $4.99 instead of $7.99: https://buy.stripe.com/3cI14q7PY8su0Pg3vu6kg00?prefilled_promo_code=FIRSTREAD2 Look inside first: https://www.truevietnamdocs.com/sog BOOK TWO · The Documented History of the Gear of the Vietnam War Mary Ann's trip flares were never reset and its starlight scopes were away for maintenance. This book is the gear the war ran on, and the paper trail behind every piece of it: the rifle, the ruck, the radio, the rations, the armor and the boots. Nine chapters, 193 pages. 👉 First-reader price, $5.99 instead of $8.99: https://buy.stripe.com/bJe14q0nweQScxY6HG6kg01?prefilled_promo_code=FIRSTREAD2 Look inside first: https://www.truevietnamdocs.com/gear ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎙 INTERVIEW CLIP Steve Avgerinos, squad leader, D Co, 1/506th Infantry, Firebase Maureen 1970. Full interview, GVSU Veterans History Project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u7WhdRNr_I 📚 FULL SOURCE LIST • Keith William Nolan, Sappers in the Wire: The Life and Death of Firebase Mary Ann (1995) • James M. Cloninger Jr, Naval Postgraduate School thesis (2005): https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA435487.pdf • Arnold Blumberg, Sapper Attack: The Elite North Vietnamese Units, Vietnam magazine (2015): https://historynet.com/sapper-attack-the-elite-north-vietnamese-units/ • Kelly Bell, Deadly Sapper Attack on Fire Support Base Mary Ann, Vietnam magazine (2006) • The Virtual Wall, Mary Ann casualty list: https://www.virtualwall.org/dk/KnightRV01a.htm • Shelby L. Stanton, The Rise and Fall of an American Army (1985) • Medal of Honor citation, PFC Kenneth M. Kays: https://www.cmohs.org/recipients/kenneth-m-kays • Do Thi Ngoc Diep, Quân Đội Nhân Dân, republished by Giao duc Viet Nam (2011) Archival footage: Texas Tech Vietnam Center, NARA, Australian War Memorial, DVIDS. Independent work of history, not affiliated with or endorsed by the U.S. Department of Defense or any veterans' organization. #VietnamWar #FirebaseMaryAnn #Sappers #Americal #MilitaryHistory #VietnamVeterans #Documentary