Some marines dismantled their heavy machine guns rather than let them fall into enemy hands. As the communists closed, the outnumbered South Koreans fought hand to hand, refusing to surrender their positions. The South Koreans delivered devastating return fire from their bunkers with machine guns and mortar rounds dropped at point-blank range. Two Vietcong regiments, the 1st and 21st, came out of the hills under cover of heavy mortar fire and hit the base from all directions. The communists regularly harassed the South Koreans, but did not attack them directly until that night. Rather than go into the hills after the communists, the marines set a trap-the tough, hardened South Koreans in Vietnam planned to use themselves as bait. In front of the South Korean marines lay a line of hills from which the communists attacked Highway 19 and coastal Highway 1. Its oval-shaped base was dotted by bunkers and trenches the lines of thick barbed wire to the front were laced claymore mines. On the night of February 13, 1967, the 11th Company of the 2nd South Korean Marine Brigade was occupying a position near the village of Trah Bin Dong in Quang Ngai province, South Vietnam.
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