William Albracht; Abandoned in Hell
I know I’ve been AWOL a little this weekend, but some friends of Bill Albracht sent me a mountain of documentation for his book “Abandoned in Hell: The Fight For Vietnam’s Firebase Kate” that is due out next month. I had the privilege of listening to the radio traffic between Captain Albracht, the new commander of Firebase Kate, as he guided Spooky gunships over the firebase on October 31st, 1969 and as the 27 American soldiers and 150 Montagnards made their way to safety from the overrun base on November 2d after the 5-day seige. I wish that there was someway that I could share it with you. I’ll work on that.
I also read the supporting statements from eye witnesses for Albracht’s Medal of Honor nomination, and it’s clear to me that the people who had served only briefly under Captain Albracht’s command were in awe of his battlefield skills as he juggled combat aircraft over his battle space, the ground combat as well as the resupply and, finally, the successful 7 mile evacuation from the firebase to relative safety. As the Montagnards threatened to abandon the Americans and as the generals prepared to throw the base and it’s occupants away, Captain Albracht held it all together with nothing but the force of his will and war-fighting skills.
Albracht earned three Silver Star Medals in the space of a few months, the last one caught up with him in 2012. His Congresswoman has asked the Army to consider him for the Medal of Honor and here is the four-page narrative;
And the suggested citation;
Like I said, the book is due on February 3rd, you might want to consider pre-ordering it.
Category: Real Soldiers
Sounds like what the John Wayne movie “Green Berets” was based on. “Peterson, where’s my Peterson?”
The movie came out a year before this happened and three years after the book.
I failed to google it before commenting. Amazing coincidence then. Just saw the movie a few weeks ago on TNT.
Last year I read Shelby Stanton’s “Green Berets at War” and what astonished me was how common the “Remote SF Camp overrun but NVA” situation was. I don’t know the exact number of SF camps that were overrun (I’m sure some statistician has the figures somewhere) but it was a lot.
To me this is relevant as an answer to Jonn’s inquiry from last year (I think it was Jonn’s) about why there have been, relatively speaking, so few MoH’s awarded for the GWOT since 2001. I think the truth is that the intensity of combat actions has been steadily diminishing since WWII.
I mean, the biggest battles we fought in Afghanistan involved an enemy force of what, a couple hundred fighers, so maybe a battalion equivalent? And that’s happened once or twice in the 13 years of conflict.
Ditto for Iraq where Fallujah or Ramadi were probably the biggest battles and involved the equivalent of an enemy brigade (and that’s being generous.)
In Vietnam such battles happened on a weekly or monthly basis, and in Korea, particularly after the Chinese swept in late in 1950, there were periods were battles bigger than this were happening daily.
I’m not saying this is a bad thing, I’m just saying that the kinds of combat actions that constitute “war” have changed dramatically over the last 70 years. Most of the combat actions that our troops are involved in today wouldn’t have warranted much more than a single paragraph on a daily report during WWII.
I remember Ban Me Thuot being cold, and that you could get a decent cup of coffee apparently because some of the old French plantations nearby were still active. Never worked with the montagnards, but sometimes you would see them in a local farmers market. It was like a primitive aborigine had arrived via time warp.
One day, I also remember driving in a jeep up to a remote firebase where somebody was doing some sort of Heart of Darkness gig, and hearing random and sporadic gunfire. There was a brief moment of increased pucker factor until somebody mentioned that the montagnards were hunting monkeys for food.
While it’s true that the fall of Ban Me Thuot would have taken the rest of Dar Lac Province with it, the NVA longer-term goal, at least as it was explained to me by brighter minds than my own, was to establish a branch of the Ho Chi Minh Trail stretching from Cambodia all the way to the coast at either Nha Trang or Cam Ranh Bay. An intel theory which actually proved true when South Viet Nam finally circled the drain.
John, upload it to soundcloud.com
Its on a CD.
For some stories from the 48th Assault Helicopter Company vets click here. Greatness.
http://www.48ahc.org/html/stories.htm
Wow…I will be buying this book ASAP in thanks to Mr.Albracht for his service, sacrifice, and efforts to complete this work honoring his fellow soldier’s valor. THANK YOU.
Since when did leading a retreat become the stuff of Medal of Honor? If you want to read a real citation worthy of honor read John Baker’s.