Below you will find links to some videos on YouTube, put together from Super 8 film shot while with the 20th PMU, and including some battle footage.
One bit of history coming out of the Tet attack on Bien Hoa base was a military first; U.S. Air Force pilots taking off directly into the main battle area on the base – and bombing their own base to repel enemy troops who had overrun it.
One of the PMU troops carried around one of those 3 1/2-inch, battery powered tape recorders throughout the day, capturing moments during the battle. The audio below was edited down from nearly three hours of tape to 16 minutes. There are some inaccuracies in the narrative, such as when a major blast at Long Binh was mistaken for something much closer, but it is a unique piece of PMU history.
VC sappers managed to get at the ammo dump at Long Binh during Tet, setting off a spectacular blast that some briefly thought indicated Charlie had obtained nuclear weapons. The view is south from our compound at Bien Hoa toward Long Binh. The blast, for some perspective was four miles away! I happened to notice a concussion wave hit the low-lying cloud cover and turned my camera in that direction, capturing the only live video of the event. The brief clip appears on disk 6 of Burns’ Vietnam documentary.
20th PMU, VIETNAM 
20th PMU and Tet, 1968
Posted on
Below you will find links to some videos on YouTube, put together from Super 8 film shot while with the 20th PMU, and including some battle footage.
One bit of history coming out of the Tet attack on Bien Hoa base was a military first; U.S. Air Force pilots taking off directly into the main battle area on the base – and bombing their own base to repel enemy troops who had overrun it.
One of the PMU troops carried around one of those 3 1/2-inch, battery powered tape recorders throughout the day, capturing moments during the battle. The audio below was edited down from nearly three hours of tape to 16 minutes. There are some inaccuracies in the narrative, such as when a major blast at Long Binh was mistaken for something much closer, but it is a unique piece of PMU history.
VC sappers managed to get at the ammo dump at Long Binh during Tet, setting off a spectacular blast that some briefly thought indicated Charlie had obtained nuclear weapons. The view is south from our compound at Bien Hoa toward Long Binh. The blast, for some perspective was four miles away! I happened to notice a concussion wave hit the low-lying cloud cover and turned my camera in that direction, capturing the only live video of the event. The brief clip appears on disk 6 of Burns’ Vietnam documentary.
This entry was posted in COMMENTS.