First Battle of Loc Ninh

The first battle of Lộc Ninh was a battle during the Vietnam War that occurred between 29 October and 10 December 1967, fought by the Việt Cộng and the Civilian Irregular Defense Group (CIDG), and ended when Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and United States forces came to the camp. On October 27, a North Vietnamese regiment engaged the command post of a largely outnumbered ARVN battalion in Sông Bé in Phước Long Province, but were forced to retreat from well dug-in South Vietnamese defenses. Two days later, in the South Vietnamese-Cambodian border town of Lộc Ninh, a Việt Cộng force of uncertain numbers of the 273rd Division launched an offensive on the American camp at this town. Opposing them were members of the First Infantry Division composed of two combat battalions and a pair of field artillery batteries by the morning of October 30. Several days later, two more American battalions entered the heat of battle at Lộc Ninh and eventually overwhelmed the NVA and VC. In spite of their rugged Soviet-manufactured equipment consisting of flamethrowers, heavy machine guns, and mortars, the Vietcong and North Vietnamese sustained heavy casualties in which hundreds of their men were killed. Although the communists claimed they had lost 852 casualties, most American commanders believed that the genuine numbers of communist casualties sustained were well over 1,000 dead or wounded. Either way, the first battle of Lộc Ninh resulted in perhaps the most lopsided–and clearly definable–U.S. victory of the Vietnam War.