My Memories Of Firebase Illingworth On April 1, 1970

Via Reborn

 

We then went out to look at some of the dead gooks.  I looked at one that had his left arm blown off.  You could see the socket where the ball joint had been.  Surprisingly, the guy had about three rounds of gauze wrapped around his shoulder.  He had been wounded when we fired on them for an hour.  They put a bandage on him and sent him on the attack.  I never knew any of our guys who would have done that.  (Because one of ours would not have been asked to do so and the commie knew he would have been shot in the head if he had refused)

We moved in to build Illingworth during March.  The site was a grassy clearing. We arrived late in the day and started building gun pits for our mortars, hooches for sleeping, and storage for our ammo.  We had our mortars, 105’s, our radar unit, a line company, and our battalion headquarters (TOC).  We were told that we could not go to sleep until we had 3 layers of sandbags on our sleeping hooches.  It started raining about sundown.  Filling sand bags became very difficult. Around 11:00 pm we gave up on the sandbags.  I laid down on a cot and placed a sheet of plastic over me.  I woke up at first light the next morning and thought I had lost my hearing. Then I realized the cot was holding water which was up over my ears.

Fire Support Base Illingworth was named for John Illingworth who died on or about March 14, 1970. Dan Boettcher sent a picture of Jack Illingworth, Dan, and Pat Coode. Jack Illingworth was in Co. A of 2/8 1st Cav. In the book “Incursion” Jack was described as an exceptional soldier.