Phuoc Vinh was a Vietnamese district headquarters located in War Zone D. Stationed at Phuoc Vinh in late 1965 and in 1966 were the 1st Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division, some Special Forces and CIDG soldiers, and three batteries of the 6th Battalion 27th Artillery. The three batteries were Headquarters Battery and Batteries B and C.

Normally, Phuoc Vinh in 1966 was an island in the middle of hostile War Zone D, cut off from the big American and Vietnamese areas at Saigon and Bien Hoa. A single road ran most of the 35 kilometers north from the Bien Hoa area to Phuoc Vinh. Most of the road was 1 ½ lanes wide, and paved only with crushed laterite, a rusty red rock we all came to love.

Five kilometers south of Phuoc Vinh, the narrow road crossed the Song Be River on an old one-lane French concrete bridge. The center span had been destroyed sometime in the distant past - probably by the Viet Minh - and a military panel bridge spanned the gap.

Photographs of the bridge as it was in 1965-66 can be found on the Internet by simply Googling “Song Be bridge.”

Being too weak and narrow to carry our howitzers, the weapons were barged across the river by the engineers when the big guns were deployed to Phuoc Vinh. The bridge over the Song Be was a choke point and a critical transportation structure. It was guarded full time by an American infantry platoon in a defensive perimeter in a rubber plantation at the northern approaches to the bridge.  Vietnamese Army soldiers were stationed on the bridge itself. Recently, I used Google Earth to look at the Song Be bridge. The piers at either end are still there but the center portion is missing. Currently, two hundred meters west (upstream) of the old bridge is a new double set of bridges as part of a wide two-lane [sometimes four-lane] paved highway linking Phuoc Vinh and points north with the Bien Hoa area. Google Earth shows much commercial truck traffic on that road now. See a whole series of pictures of the abandoned bridge and of the new spans at http://tinyurl.com/l7npn69 (click on the thumbnails).  And Videographer Peter Scheid has posted on YouTube a whole video of  the abandoned bridge at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrR-jHXHeiY.

[If I am a bit fixated on the old bridge, it is because I came to know it well when I spent a few weeks at the bridge as a forward observer with the American infantry platoon who guarded it.]

In 1965-1966, approximately once a month, the road to Phuoc Vinh was reopened by the Infantry so that resupply convoys could be moved safely to Phuoc Vinh. The convoys normally lasted three days: one day up, one day of unloading and rest, and one day to return to Long Binh.

The 27th Artillery’s convoy was only a part of the large 1st Infantry Division convoy. The battalion's convoy left from the Service Battery compound at Long Binh. The battalion's vehicles, fully loaded with supplies and ammunition, lined up bumper to bumper and side by side in the motor pool area the evening before the convoy. At dawn the convoy moved out. Normally, Battalion Ammunition Officer 1LT Andy Andreeko was in charge of the battalion's portion of the overall convoy.

The convoy resupplied all the needs of the three batteries at Phuoc Vinh, but the ammunition resupply always took center stage. Because of the great weight of the artillery shells, a “full load” for each truck occupied only a small portion of the truck bed. Accomplishment of mission being paramount, the trucks were often overloaded in order to move as much ammunition as possible. I recall leaf springs straining under 12 tons of artillery shells on trucks rated to carry 5 tons. Those tough Army trucks always completed the mission.

The scanned images I have contributed show a typical convoy operation from Long Binh to Phuoc Vinh. Shorter convoys ran to A Battery.
 

Adrian Gravelle