Bill "Wendy" Wendover - 67/68 - Stateside & Docs
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BW-61: CPT Francis X. Brennan receives his first Silver Star in the summer of 1967 at Fort Hood, Texas. Brennan came to Ft. Hood after serving as a Recon Platoon Leader for 12 months in Vietnam with the 2nd Battalion 35th Infantry, 3rd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division. He had trained with the recon platoon in Hawaii and than deployed with them to Vietnam just prior to Christmas in 1965. Brennan noted that TET of 1966 was as bloody as TET of 1968, but the worst engagement came in August 1966 in the Ia Drang Valley. Brennan tells about a “pitched battle, hand-to-hand at times, formed a tight perimeter and fighting for three days until the North Vietnamese broke contact as 1/7th Cavalry of the 1st Cavalry Division broke through to us”. Larry Swank remembers being grateful on 8 Feb 68 at Lo Giang that our CO was an experienced combat veteran. He can remember Brennan stopping the advance on Lo Giang just before the tree line and ordering the 2nd and 3rd platoons to lay down a base-of-fire. Within a few seconds the incoming automatic weapons fire seemed louder than the outgoing fire and mortars started landing along the front line of Company A. Brennan forced the NVA to launch their attack before all of Company A had entered the kill zone. Swank thinks Brennan’s action saved the rest of the company from the fate of the 2nd platoon, which had entered the trap and had over 90% of its men killed or wounded. When Brennan left the 1st Bn 6th Infantry he went to 5th Special Forces and served there for another year as a Mike Force Battalion Commander. That unit was the immediate reaction force that went into the Special Forces A Team camps strung along the boarders that were under attack by NVA main force units. He worked with montengnard, nung, Cambodian and Laotian soldiers.
