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It's also National Yellow Bat Day

donmdonm Posts: 10,241 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

Didn't want to intrude on Omaha's Easter thread. What's Yellow Bat Day, you might ask. Here's some background:

April 21st honors National Yellow Bat Day. On this day in 1967, the 265th Army Security Agency Company (Airborne) with the 101st Airborne Division was activated at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

The official insignia of the 265th is a bat with outstretched wings on a full moon rising with the motto Through the Night below. Symbolically the bat represents mystery and secrecy due to its nocturnal nature, which well describes the intelligence support provided by the Army Security Agency Battalion.

Before deploying, all the military vehicles and equipment were painted with a yellow bat symbol which was clearly visible from a distance and aided in the identification of all unit equipment.

On November 19th of the same year, they were deployed to Vietnam with the designation 265th Radio Research Company (Airborne) to provide intelligence support to the 101st Airborne Division. Arriving a few weeks ahead of the Viet Cong Tet Offensive, they soon learned of the North Vietnamese campaign, but few commanders would believe the intelligence.

January 31st on the Vietnamese calendar, Tet, is the celebration of the lunar new year and is considered a most important holiday. During the conflict between North and South Vietnam, there had been a long-standing, informal truce on this day.

General Vo Nguyen Giap, commander of the North Vietnamese, was prepared to ring in the lunar new year with a series of coordinated attacks, to break the informal truce.

Doug Bonnot, who was assigned to the 265th RRC (ABN) Operations NCOIC in the spring of 1970 and author of The Sentinel and the Shooter says,”The offensive would come as a surprise to many but personnel of the 265th RRC (ABN) were manning their sector defensive perimeter of Bien Hoa Air Base, along with the very few small units that believed their intelligence reports, some 12 hours before the Tet Offensive was launched.”

The Viet Cong never breached these positions, and the Battle Flag of D: 275th Viet Cong Battalion hangs in the Sentinel Museum today.

Hats off to these guys...who apprear to be another well kept secret from the Viet Nam War.

Comments

  • JRT812JRT812 Posts: 4,697 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    Interesting stuff. Never knew that

  • CatfishCatfish Posts: 1,703 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    Typically that's how it works out. The "leaders", sitting in a windowless room somewhere far away from the action send the real world troops out into harm's way to collect intelligence or run a mission. When the reports come in and it doesn't match the "battle plan", they ignore it and try to push things to save face. Tet and Hamburger Hill are perfect examples of both. When it blows up in their face they will quickly claim that they had "bad intelligence". It's still the same today and will probably never change as long as there are "superior officers" that need good fitness reports to advance.

  • BankwalkerBankwalker Posts: 5,348 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    So whiffle ball bats are all yellow as a tribute to the 265th?

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