SP4 Raymond Ahern Killed — Rocket Attack on LZ Rita, November 26, 1968
The night of November 26, 1968
D Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry had occupied LZ Rita since 7 November 1968, relieving the 1st Infantry Division six days after that division's costly defense of the base. Per Larry Hackett, a D Company soldier who was there, the relief itself came on 9 November: "We had taken over from the 1st Infantry Division (Big Red One) on November 9th. They had been overrun the night before we got there." The company spent several days rebuilding bunkers and securing the base under near-constant mortar and rocket fire and probing attacks, then swept the surrounding jungle in a wide arc for about ten days before returning to defend Rita's perimeter.
It was in that second stint on the base that SP4 Raymond Ahern, the RTO for D Company's supporting artillery Forward Observer, was killed. Per Hackett's own account: "Ray was killed in the middle of the night on November 26, 1968 on Landing Zone Rita. His bunker took a direct hit from a rocket and he was killed instantly." The company moved out again the next morning, back into the field. CPT Henry Colavita, D Company's commander at the time, names Ahern in his own memoir among the losses that came early in his own tenure commanding the company, which had begun the previous month — counting him as one of his own men, not an outside attachment.
Ahern had served with D Company as the RTO for the artillery FO supporting it for most of his tour, and had been reassigned to his post on Rita only one day before he was killed. See SP4 Raymond Ahern, Jr., Larry Hackett's full tribute, and CPT Henry Colavita.
Why this took so long to document
Ahern's casualty record lists his administrative unit — C Battery, 2nd Battalion, 19th Artillery — which was in direct support of the 1st Brigade in Tay Ninh Province, not the 2nd Brigade unit (D Co, 2/8 Cav) he actually served with in the field. That mismatch, plus the absence of any itemized 26 November action in the division-level Operational Reports–Lessons Learned, led this archive to treat his D Company connection as an unconfirmed "roster artifact" for some time. Two firsthand accounts — Colavita's memoir and Hackett's tribute — independently resolve it, and Colavita's own accounting settles the editorial question too: his company commander counted Ahern as one of D Company's men and one of D Company's losses, and this archive now does the same.
Help us complete the record
If you served with D Company, 2/8 Cavalry, or the 19th Artillery, at LZ Rita in November 1968, please reach us through the contribute form.
If you served with D Company, 2/8 Cav, or the 19th Artillery, at LZ Rita in November 1968 and remember the night SP4 Ahern was killed, we'd like to hear from you.
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