November 17 marks 60 years since five soldiers from Maryland were killed — probably within a few yards of each other, probably within a few minutes of each other — on one of the deadliest days for U.S. troops in the Vietnam War.
I first discovered this fact 10 years ago while working on my column in The Baltimore Sun, and it jarred me enough that I’ve forgotten neither date nor circumstance.
I feel compelled to note the anniversary, or else see those lost lives disappear deeper into the folds of time and our collective ambivalence about the long war in Vietnam. Many Americans of a certain age would just as soon forget about it. But it’s hard to look past the Vietnam War, nor should we.
I don’t recall how I first learned about the five Marylanders, but remember getting important research help from students at Stevenson University in establishing when and how the five men died.
“We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young,” a gripping book by the late war correspondent Joseph Galloway, provided key details. I interviewed Galloway when his book, later made into a movie, was first published.
The years fly by. Fewer of us remain to remember those lost in the severely divisive war that left more than 58,000 Americans memorialized on a wall in Washington.
Because the names in the polished black granite of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial appear in chronological order, based on the date of death, you will find the names of the five Maryland men carved into the same panel, 3E.
Two of them were from Baltimore, both sergeants in the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division — Richard D. Ott, 34, and James O. Vaughan, 32. Another sergeant died that day: Neopolis Wigfall, 32, of Fruitland, in Wicomico County on the Eastern Shore; he was a 16-year Army veteran, a survivor of the Korean War.
The other two Marylanders were Spec. 5 Charles T. Steiner, 21, from Harford County, and Spec. 4 Wayne T. Lundell, 24, from Montgomery County.
Four of the men were in the same battalion, and three of them in the same company. One of the two Baltimoreans, Sgt. Vaughan, was in a separate group.
They were ambushed during a march through tall grass on the way to helicopter landing zones on the afternoon of Nov. 17, 1965, the deadliest day in the fierce battles of the Ia Drang Valley, one of the earliest confrontations between U.S. Army forces and the People’s Army of North Vietnam.
Sgt. Ott’s unit, with Steiner and Lundell, was quickly decimated in the ambush, according to the Galloway book. Wigfall, in a separate company of the same battalion, also died in the attack.
Sgt. Vaughan was at the rear with the 1st Battalion of the 5th Cavalry, commanded by a captain from Southern Maryland, George C. Forrest. Vaughan’s company sustained heavy casualties within 20 minutes — 17 dead, 43 wounded. Forrest’s two radio operators died at his side.
“I blamed myself for all those soldiers in my company who were killed in just a matter of minutes,” Forrest said in an interview with The Sun in 2003. “Perhaps one of the toughest things about that battle was sitting down to write letters to 17 parents. The army had a form you could follow, but I expressed to those families in my own words exactly how wonderful their sons were and how I loved every one of them.”
The Americans had been badly outnumbered when the shooting and dying started on Nov. 14, 1965. Those ambushed on the two-mile march were weary from the initial battle, famously described in Galloway’s 1992 book and depicted in the 2002 movie.
During the month-long campaign in the Drang river valley and across the central highlands of what was then South Vietnam, 305 Americans were killed and more than 500 wounded. The U.S. estimates of North Vietnamese deaths ranged from 1,000 to more than 1,700.
If this column is to serve as a memorial — and I suppose you could see it that way — then we should also remember two other Maryland men who died during that first campaign in the Vietnam highlands. They were Sgt. Charles W. Rose, 29, of Talbot County (killed 10/27/65) and Spec. 4 Oscar E. Cooper, 25, of Harford County (killed 11/21/65). At the time of his death, Cooper was just a week away from ending his tour and heading home.
Dan Rodricks’ column appears weekly in the Fishbowl. He can be reached at djrodricks@gmail.com or via danrodricks.com
Thank you for remembering. So many of these young men are forgotten.