Soldier of Fortune Magazine The Journal of Professional Adventurers
by Susan Katz Keating
America’s fight in Southeast Asia began before our country knew that a war was unfolding, on a single night when two men were the first to die by enemy fire in Vietnam.
It happened on July 8, 1959, in Bien Hoa, some 20 miles outside Saigon. Eight Americans from Military Assistance Advisory Group 7 were based there as advisers and trainers. On the surface, their compound seemed calm enough for a man to play tennis, watch a movie, or write a letter home.
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But beneath the quiet, a communist insurgency was underway. The guerrillas operated under the banner of the North Vietnamese Communist Party. They were focused on ousting the government in South Vietnam. The insurgency was growing fast; units that once consisted of 3-12 men had swelled to squads of 30-100.
In Laos and Cambodia, the guerrillas hacked out the Ho Chi Minh Trail – a shadow highway feeding the war against the South. It became the lifeline of the insurgency, carrying weapons, food, and fighters under the canopy of green.
By 1959, the pipeline was already running hot: 1,600 small arms, 50 tons of supplies, and 500 trained party cadre slipped south. The cadre soon were joined by an additional 3,000 fighters. In the southern villages and hamlets, young men were pulled into guerrilla bands or main-force units. The locals were shaken down for food and taxes. In the shadows, a rival government took root – one that answered not to Saigon, but to Hanoi.
All that year, one civilian a day was dying at the hands of communist guerrillas. The Viet Cong targeted government officials, but they also went after teachers, elders, priests, and landlords. Anyone suspected of loyalty to Saigon was marked for death.
The killings were ruthless, public, and calculated to send a message. Targets were shot, or sometimes strangled, or hammered to death, and strung up in trees under a red flag. Americans mostly seemed safe, though – until July 8.
That night, Inside the grey stucco mess hall, Master Sergeant Chester Ovnand finished a letter to his wife in Texas. Major Dale Buis, fresh from California, showed off pictures of his three sons. Two officers left for tennis; the remaining six watched a murder mystery, The Tattered Dress, as it flickered across the screen.
Outside, six Viet Cong crept through the barbed wire fence, sneaking past inattentive South Vietnamese guards. The guerrillas chose their positions outside the hall. Two stood at the rear, with a French MAT submachine gun at the ready. Two slid their muzzles through the pantry screen. Another two kept cover on the South Vietnamese guard. Shadows moved with deadly precision.
As the first movie reel ended, Ovnand flipped on the lights to change to a second reel.
The first bullets immediately tore through the room.
Ovnand was hit multiple times. He staggered to the stairs, switching on the exterior floodlights before collapsing. Buis crawled toward the kitchen doors, saw an attacker, and leapt up. Buis charged 15 feet toward the enemy before he collapsed and died.
An attacker began to throw a live satchel charge into the mess hall. He hesitated just long enough to detonate his own bomb, killing himself in the process.
The room was a battlefield. Ovnand and Buis were dead. Captain Howard Boston was seriously wounded. Two South Vietnamese guards were killed, and the cook’s eight-year-old son was wounded. Major Jack Hellet risked everything to throw the lights, buying time, buying lives.
Vietnamese reinforcements rushed in, but they arrived too late. By the time they reached the mess hall, the killers had vanished into the darkness.
In that one night of violence, Master Sergeant Chester Ovnand and Maj Dale Buis became the first Americans to die by enemy fire in Vietnam. They eventually would be joined by more than 58,000 of their countrymen, in a war that no one could ignore.
Susan Katz Keating is the publisher and editor in chief at Soldier of Fortune.
