Miracle at Ben Suc

Miracle at Ben Suc

In January of 1967 our Battalion of the First Infantry Division (Red One) was on a Search and Destroy mission in what was known as the Iron Triangle. This was part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail which was filled with booby traps and enemy tunnels.

 The plan was to send out three sets of cloverleaf patrol to the front and sides of the jungle to lessen the chance of an ambush. Each patrol consisted of three men. As our cloverleaf patrol moved forward, ahead of our Battalion, we encountered what looked like an abandoned enemy base camp. This was common in the jungles. I told the other two men to go check out the trail straight in front of them and I would walk down the trail to my right. As I traveled down this trail, I noticed enemy bunkers with fresh dirt on them. The trail then made a ninety-degree turn to the left where I saw a large kitchen bunker with seven chickens walking in front of it. This was common because their food was kept alive until butchered.

 As I walked toward the bunker, suddenly five, of what I later learned were seven, enemy men in the bunker stood in front of me. The man at the entrance smiled at me, likely seeing the horror on my face. I remembered a termite hill I had just walked by, maybe four feet tall. Reacting swiftly, I jumped behind it and began to fire my M-16 rifle which quickly jammed. We each carried four hand grenades which I began to throw as I tried to un-jam my rifle until the next malfunction. My other teammates were able to get close enough to throw their grenades to me, so I pulled those pins and threw them as fast as I could. The termite hill I was fighting from was quickly disintegrating behind a barrage of bullets.

 When I was no longer receiving fire and our main unit had joined me, we moved forward. We found that the five men did not survive the fight and the other two enemy soldiers had escaped into a nearby tunnel. We captured both of them. Both had shrapnel wounds and one had been shot through his left arm.

 A few days after this experience, we entered a nearby village named Ben Suc. It had only women, children, and very old men which was a sign it was an enemy village. We relocated all the occupants and burned the village down. I thought I would never see that place again, but the Lord had plans for me.

 I came out of war full of hate and revenge, bound by alcohol and cigarettes, but at thirty years old, Jesus set me free, called me to preach and showed me I would one day preach in Vietnam.

Each of my early trips back to Vietnam doing mission work were very painful. I soon realized that I was not free from the many horrible memories of war. I had forgiven my enemies years before, but something was lacking.

 Just before my fourth trip back to Vietnam I saw a photo of the "Burning of Ben Suc" in a bookstore and was overcome with the desire to visit during my upcoming trip. My wife, Nolia, and I visited Ben Suc with a translator. We were able to meet with the assistant village chief who arranged for a man, a former Viet Cong, to meet with us. I quickly found out that he wasn’t just any Viet Cong, but one of the enemy soldiers my team had fought against so many years ago. He had only been about fifty yards from the kitchen bunker while I was fighting his friends. After I left the bunker area that day, he had retrieved their bodies and buried them. Four were Viet Cong and one was a North Vietnamese soldier. We were all the same age, nineteen years old.

 Nolia and I were then taken to the gravesite. Having Nolia with me made it even more painful; there was still so much about combat I could not talk about.

 As I stood over their graves, I began to grieve over their deaths as if they were my sons, yet I had put them there. Suddenly, the Spirit of the Lord came over me as if a gentle wind had blown through the jungle. Jesus spoke to me and said, "David, you forgave your enemies years’ ago but you never loved them like I love my enemies."  My life was instantly changed as I experienced the love Jesus had for those who nailed Him to the cross.

 Afterward, my former enemy who had buried his friends took me to the kitchen bunker. It was partially caved in and the termite hill was overgrown with weeds and vines from the jungle. I measured fifteen feet from the bunker to the termite hill and retrieved a sprout from the hill which I still have. I found that the government had prohibited the rubber tree plantation companies from bulldozing that few acres of land to honor those five men who died there. I visited several times before the plantation companies were finally allowed to clear that land. I know that the Lord had saved it all those years for me to experience something beyond forgiveness. I have returned to Vietnam twenty-two times since the war.

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