In April 1967 Life Magazine sent renowned photographer Co Rentmeester on assignment to cover the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in South Vietnam. He accompanied 3rd Squadron during what Life described as a search and destroy mission along Route 13, the notorious Thunder Road, between Saigon and An Loc.
During the time he spent with the Blackhorse in 1967, Mr. Rentmeester shot some of the best images of the war. Many of his subjects were clearly identifiable. In fact, one photo of Pfc Kerry Nelson (below) earned the World Press Photo of the Year Award for 1967. All of the photos were very evocative and accurately depicted the lives of armored force Soldiers in combat.
Twelve of Mr. Rentmeester’s photos appeared on pages 69-74 in the 2 June 1967 issue of Life Magazine. Several years ago Life Magazine’s photo archives were posted to Google, and among the countless images were those of 3rd Squadron. They can be found under the search phrase “The cavalry moves out in Vietnam.”
When I first checked out these pictures, I was blown away. So many showed Blackhorse Soldiers in crystal clarity. Naturally, I wondered who they were. I bought a copy of the Life issue they appeared in and started trying to figure out their identities. How hard could it be, right? It turns out that the task was harder than I thought.
I wasn’t just interested in the photos from a historical perspective. As a young Soldier, I served in the 11th ACR from 1985-89. Many of our leaders wore Blackhorse combat patches. They were our teachers, mentors, and examples. I also knew from personal experience how difficult it is to take pictures in a war zone. Many of the subjects and their families might not even know that these images exist. So I thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool if I could figure out who these guys were?”
Dozens of pictures are included in this collection, many of them close-ups that clearly show troopers going about their daily lives under the harshest conditions. Unfortunately, besides the few Soldiers identified in original captions, no information was included to determine who they were.
The bumper numbers for vehicles appear clearly in some of the photographs Mr. Rentmeester took. Many of them depicted tracks belonging to Lima Troop. Above is a great photo of Lima 33, one of the troop’s M113 Armored Cavalry Assault Vehicles. The track commander’s and driver’s faces are clearly identifiable. Who are they?
The 11th Armored Cavalry’s Veterans of Vietnam & Cambodia has an active and engaged group of veterans who served with the regiment in that era. So I posted some photos on the forum hoping someone would remember the troopers, but without much luck. After all, the events in these photos over fifty years ago. Here’s one of the photos I posted.
Fortunately, the association has a set of rosters that have helped me to tentatively identify the trooper pouring milk in the above picture. On his name tag, the first two letters are D and A, followed by what looks like W. I checked the 3/11 ACR rosters for April 1967 and learned there were two Dawsons serving in the squadron then. One was Sp4 Charles L. Dawson, who served with Headquarters Troop. Besides his name, I couldn’t find any further information about him.
The second trooper who served at that time with 3rd Squadron was Sp4 Lawrence M. Dawson, who was in Lima Troop from 1966 until he was killed in action on 21 July 1967. You can click on the link in the preceding sentence and judge for yourself, but after close examination of both photos, I feel confident that the trooper pouring milk was Lawrence Dawson. He was 21 years old at the time of this photo, and only had a few months to live, making this seemingly simple photo extremely poignant. It makes sense to me that he was in this night laager. Can you help with a definitive identification?
Here’s another of Mr. Rentmeester’s excellent photos. This one took a little more detective work to determine who this trooper was. I started with an assumption; that this trooper was an officer belonging to Lima Troop. He was wearing a combat vehicle crew helmet, which only drivers, track commanders, and unit leaders typically wore.
Commanders frequently rode in the troop hatch of their command tracks where they had unrestricted visibility, and could quickly dismount if needed. This was another clue that he was an officer. You can also see the spaghetti cable for a radio handset hanging over the buttstock of the M60 machine gun. Command tracks always carried at least three vehicular radios. Somewhere between a guess and a hunch, I figured this might be the Lima Troop commander.
From the association’s unit rosters, I learned that Capt Larry L. Mengel served as the CO of Lima Troop from 1-18 April 1967, the exact period this photo was taken. I made an educated guess that this was him. So I did a google search with his name and found him on the website for the Hardin County History Museum in Kentucky. You can find him on the museum’s We Were There page. You’ll have to scroll down the alphabetical index, but it’s definitely the same person as the above trooper, retired Col Larry L. Mengel. Bingo!
Here’s another photo that was fairly easy. You see this officer’s last name clearly, and also his rank insignia. A quick search verified this as retired Lt Gen David K. Doyle, who served two combat tours with the Blackhorse in Vietnam.
Some of the photos are very clear and show troopers during actual combat. Below is one example that would make this tanker’s family and friends very thankful if we can identify him. In addition to this photo, he appears in several others. I can tell you with near certainty that he served with Mike Company, 3rd Squadron’s tank company. This tanker, who I believe to be an NCO, was one of the company’s seventeen tank commanders. This makes identification from the squadron rosters very difficult. If you recognize him, please post a comment.
As an amateur (my wife might say obsessive) historian, the Blackhorse Regiment’s history is one of my mail areas of interest. So I really wanted to place these photos into a tactical perspective. The original article explained that 3rd Squadron was to:
secure Route 13, and to locate a five-mile-square “secret zone”of the 101st North Vietnamese army regiment. At Chon Duanh, near the target zone, the squadron sets up a command post, and from it the armored troops probed the jungle trails in search of the enemy. 1
That was a pretty decent start in trying to figure the situation out. But with a war going on in 1967, the folks at Life couldn’t get too specific about what the squadron was up to. One problem arose immediately when I googled Chon Duanh. No such place existed in South Vietnam, but there was (and is) a spot called Chon Thanh, which sits near the road junction of Route’s 13 and 239.
By this point, I was in deep, so I reached out to my Blackhorse buddy Don Snedeker, who probably knows more specifics about our regiment’s history than anyone. He wrote the classic book The Blackhorse in Vietnam and serves as the historian for the regimental association. Don was kind enough to send me the 3rd Squadron yearly summary for 1967, which provided the exact situational information I had hoped to find. Here it is.
Just from the handful of photos I’ve posted here, you can see that this photo collection is a treasure trove for the history of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. I’m making a pledge to identify as many Blackhorse troopers in the Life photo archive as possible. This is partly because I love and respect our regiment. But it’s also because of my personal history. Let me tell you a bit about it.
Awesome, Brother! Allons!
Great article!!! Thank you.