Salute!
Yep, seven_g We were standing down for the Tet "truce", and over at the MACV club on the western part of the base, near the radar site CRC named Peacock. The ops area was all at the east edge of the base. There was a fairly small USAF "base" toward the west end that had barracks and a small dining hall, post office, etc.
About 1900 or so the Ops Officer came in and asked all of us how many drinks we had already consumed. Ollie ( from that article) and I were still working on our first one so he told us to get down to the ops building for an emergency mission. We went out to our normal Tigerhound area to hit trucks that a Covey FAC or Blindbat flareship would hopefully find. On the way, an American voice came over the VHF emergency frequency and said that attacks were occuring all over VietNam and the Tet truce had been broken. Very strange. Found no trucks and though we had plenty of playtime they ordered us to RTB.
Walking in from the plane an enormous mortar attack began on the U.S. Army base about 2 or 3 miles north that we called "Engineers' Hill" It did not house a lotta troops, just heavy equipment and their operators. Not 30 seconds later the first 122mm rocket zoomed in!!! Into our "bunker", and fast as we could run. For the next 20 minutes or so, between 40 and 50 of those things hit within 100 yeards of us, but they were targeted at the ramp it seemed. Outside the bunker, I picked up some of the "diamond" scored warhead casings and kept a small number with me for many years. Our jets came out fine, but seems we had a badly damaged Gooney Bird and AD of the 6th ACS. Army chopper gunships worked over the ravine between us and Engineers' Hill. They musta been early Cobras, as they had miniguns a rapid fire grenade turret.
No more Trail misions for our detachment, and we flew CAS plus helo insertion/extractio cover from then on. One day in early February only two flights of U.S. air got to hit near the Citadel in Hue due to poor weather - I was in one and the other was also from our A-37 detachment at Pleiku.
Gums recalls....