‘Swarming Over the Walls’
At the end of May 1965, Seabee Team 1104, part of Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 11, was sent to a U.S. Special Forces camp near the village of Dong Xoai in Phuoc Long province, an area teeming with Viet Cong. Having just built a Special Forces camp at Ben Soi, near the Cambodian border, the 13-man Seabee team planned to reinforce the fortifications and work on other construction projects at Dong Xoai, near an important road junction about 55 miles north of Saigon.
A nine-man Seabee advance team reached Dong Xoai on June 4 and linked up with 11 Green Berets of Detachment A-342, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), who had been there since May 25. Also in the camp were about 200 South Vietnamese soldiers with a howitzer battery and 200 Montagnard tribesmen in Civilian Irregular Defense Groups—militias formed from local minorities ethnically distinct from the broader Vietnamese population.
Although the Montagnard CIDG troops were under the overall command of South Vietnam’s Special Forces, they showed only a nominal subordination to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam or the government in Saigon. In practice, U.S. Special Forces, who trained and led CIDG troops, often exercised control over them.
The Montagnards were in the main camp area, next to another compound with the South Vietnamese troops, the howitzer battery and the headquarters of the local district (a governmental organization similar to a U.S. county). The
