~ 720th Military Police Battalion Reunion Association Vietnam History Project ~
Operation EMPORIA Ambush
21 July 1967

        On 20 July 1967 a squad of MPs from the 1st Platoon of the 615th arrived at Xuan Loc. We slept in a hooch provided by MPs from Company B. That night we were told that we would be "going out" with members of the 3rd Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment.

        Nine of the MPs volunteered to go and man 2 armored gun jeeps, 3 MPs per jeep and 3 MPs for the V-100. This was the very first time that any members of the 615th had ever seen or had anything to do with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment.

        We were told that we would open an old dirt logging road that had been used by one of the rubber tree plantations. The column consisted of one armored jeep, the V-100 and then the other armored jeep. We were followed by the Cav's M-48 tank about 6 Armored Personnel Carrier's (APC’s) and then one more M-48 tank. There was a flame thrower vehicle in the column as I recall. There were two Huey Cobra gunships that provided air cover.
SP/4 Jorgensen

        We left Xuan Loc about 0800 hours (8:00 AM) and after about 45 minutes turned on to an old dirt road. All of the MP vehicles as I indicated were the lead vehicles. We were to scout ahead of the armored track vehicles by about 100 yards.

        We passed through a very small village where everything seemed routine. About 1 mile past the village the dirt road was barricaded by logs, branches and other junk. We could not get through with the jeep so one of the M-48 tanks crashed through for us. We continued with one armored jeep in the lead, V-100 and the other armored jeep all spaced about 25 yards apart.

        We were instructed to recon by fire from this point on if we felt it was needed. The column proceeded for about another 10 minutes, elephant grass on the left and rubber trees on the right. We were moving very slow as we had no idea what we... in 1/4 inch plated armor jeeps... were doing in front of tanks with 8+ inches of armor.

        The village we passed through we were later told was named Xa Gia Tan. Small arms fire started to rake the column and the tank behind us hit a land mine, APC's were repeatedly hit by Rocket Propelled Grenade's (RPG’s), one of the Cobra gun ships was damaged and smoking and you could hear the pilot calling mayday and giving grid coordinates as he was coming down.

        It was very confusing and I had no real idea what to do, go forward, stay where we were or go backwards, so we stayed where we were at the very front of the column. It looked like the column had been broken because all I could see behind me was the smoking tank and a burning APC.

        The jeep tires and radiators were hit by small arms fire but we kept the guns going. We were told over the radio to shoot high in the rubber trees as Viet Cong (VC) were tied up in the trees. We put several wounded Cavalry troopers in the V-100. I looked up the road to see our lead armored jeep coming back down with no radiator in it, but it wasn't being driven by any of the MPs but by several Cavalry troopers.

        We ran out of ammo for our M-14 rifles (we were not issued M-16's until about two months later) and the M-60 machine-gun was also low on ammo. I had a box of 50 .45 cal rounds that for some reason I had taken along. All of our hand grenades were gone and most of our M-79 Grenade Launcher ammo was gone.

        An APC came up the road at what seemed like 100 miles an hour. They stopped and threw us about a dozen cans of M-60 machine-gun ammo. I remember how scared I was and how long it seemed to take to break the M-60 ammo down from its links so I could reload my M-14 rifle magazines.

        At some point in time during the fire fight a flight of Navy jets was diverted and bombed the hell out of the main force of Viet Cong & North Vietnamese Army (NVA). I remember the radio saying how the main force was moving away towards the north.

        After about 2 hours it was all over. We found our 3 MPs who were in the lead vehicle which went down the road. They had pulled the M-60 machine-gun out of the jeep when they felt the jeep was all but gone and charged a bunker killing 4 of the enemy. These guys were later awarded Silver Stars, the other 6 MPs were awarded Bronze Stars for Valor. But best of all we all survived with the help of each other and the great troopers of the 11th Armored Cavalry.

        In the months that followed we ran convoy's with the Cavalry during daylight hours from Long Binh to Xuan Loc and to their forward bases. We were then told that we were going to take the night away from Charlie and started running these convoys during the day and night.

        There is nothing like being right in front of a tanker truck pulling a trailer of 5,000 gallons of gasoline with his head lights shining on the back of your head 50 feet away, and hearing on the radio that there is contact with the enemy ahead.

        We would use an armored jeep to lead the convoy followed by the V-100. We would have another armored jeep or the opened version with no armor, no doors or roof and the M-60 machine-gun mounted on a post in the jeep, somewhere in the middle of the convoy and then have the last MP jeep at the rear of the convoy.

        As more V-100's became available we would try to use 2 of them during the night time convoys along with as many jeeps as we could man.

SP/4 Lynn Jorgensen, 615th MP Company, 720th MP Battalion, 89th MP Group, 18th MP Brigade, February 1967 to March 1968.
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