These volunteers were to defend their camp and actively patrol out to three kilometers to disrupt enemy activity. 4 American SF Operational Detachments-Alpha (ODAs) advised the South Vietnamese SF teams ‘supervising’ local Civilian Irregular Defense Group (CIDG) soldiers. 3 The camps were to become a nuisance to North Vietnamese personnel and supply infiltrations. The primary SF border camp mission was surveillance area pacification was secondary. The eastern geographical border of northern Laos, the thigh-deep Se Pone River, was less than two miles from Lang Vei along Highway 9. The principal NVA supply and infiltration route, the north-south Ho Chi Minh trail, was just inside country frontiers. 1 Early in that war, SF camps were established near highway border crossings into Laos and Cambodia. It addresses the first NVA tank employment in South Vietnam, and commemorates veterans of the Vietnam War. This operational analysis illustrates how a lack of preparedness for an enemy armor attack led to the loss of the Lang Vei SF camp on 7 February 1968.
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