this intel, as usual, is highly suspect and I
wonder if the S2 people made it up. I’m sure that
between Spooky and us we killed a bunch but in our
experience the NVA at Tam Ky never surrendered,
even when wounded or trapped.

Talking with us,
6 decides it was a 360’ attack; the classic NVA
tactic in which they start with mortar fire in
hopes of getting us to put our heads down/take
cover, then switch to RPGs and hand grenades while
their assault force goes through the perimeter. We
discuss what we saw in our sections of the
perimeter and conclude that the NVA ran into three
unexpected problems when conducting this
attack.

First, they overshot with the mortars
and hit their own men on the other side of the
hill, throwing off their timing and coordination.
Second, they assumed we’d take the lazy way out
and man positions already dug on the hilltop by
the ARVNs months earlier. But it was too large a
perimeter for us to man, so we dug our positions