1. A fertile or green spot in a desert or wasteland, made so by the presence of water.
2. A situation or place preserved from the surrounding unpleasantness; a refuge: an oasis of serenity amid chaos.
The 366 was setup in a corner of LZ Oasis that had been overrun in a previous VC attack. In addition to being put in harm's way, the 366 was now required to pull perimeter guard at night in their little corner of the war. Needless to say, it didn't take too long for Charlie to attack that corner, & one night, 11 May 69, all hell broke loose.
The start of the attack, as related to me by survivors, was an RPG fired at the bunker manned by Ed Barlow & Malcolm Frank Bell (I believe). The RPG hit the .50 cal they were manning (does anybody remember the .50 cal being TO&E for an ASD? I certainly don't), killing Bell (again, I believe). Barlow took shrapnel in his abdomen. Charlie breached the wire & was engaged by the 366. During the fight, the NCOIC, SFC Mills Beale (he took over the 366 while we were still in Dak To & was on his second tour) was killed & another guy (Joe Szobonya, I believe) was wounded by a hand grenade between his legs.
I was told that the counter-mortar radar unit next to the 366 hid in their bunker & wouldn't come out to help fight the attackers. The 366 got no backup until a combat engineer unit, from somewhere else in the compound, arrived to help the 366 beat back the attack. However, the attack was contained by the 366 in their unit area & did not spread further.
By the next morning, Barlow had died of his injuries while waiting for a Medevac. The toll in the attack was 3 Americans dead, (according to the account given me by Patrick Lewis & others a day or 2 after the attack), just about everyone else in the 366 wounded by at least shrapnel, & an unknown number of VC dead. (Mike Harunaga [The Mad Jap] has a slightly different account, including the number of KIA. He claims more of the 366 were killed than I have accounted for & that resulted in the 366 being disbanded. I cannot verify his account, but I have seen orders from Group & Brigade HQs that have no references to the 366 after the date of that incident.)
As it turns out, The Mad Jap was correct. The 366th sustained 4 KIA's that night: Ed Barlow, Mills Beale, Malcolm Bell & Thomas Bumgarner (officially, Bumgarner died on the 14th from the wounds he received on the 11th). If the operational report (link below) is accurate, the 366th had almost 50% of the incident's U.S. casualties.
Three weeks later, I DEROSed.
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