D Company Losses — Hill 732, November 4, 1965

November 4, 1965 — D Company's first recorded losses

Research page — in progress. Confirmed: three men of D Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry were killed on November 4, 1965. The Hill 732 / Pleiku setting, the 33rd Regiment as the enemy, and the battalion-action framing are strongly supported by two corroborating accounts, and the division's own after-action report (now linked under Documents) supplies the battalion's 4 November scheme of maneuver. The company attribution of the three KIA is the one remaining open thread (see below).

On November 4, 1965, D Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry lost three men on the same day:

• SGT Richard Arthur Coffey, 24, of Los Angeles, California — Wall Panel 3E, Line 17
• PFC Wright Bartwyn Hamill, 19, of Albany, Oregon — Wall Panel 3E, Line 17
• CPL Eddie Lee Hill, Jr., 25, of Mobile, Alabama — Wall Panel 3E, Line 18

These are among the earliest combat deaths in the company's history. The 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) had only arrived in Vietnam in mid-September 1965, making this action roughly seven weeks into the unit's deployment.

A battalion action, not just D Company

The Wall placement points to a single shared engagement. The Memorial is inscribed in order of casualty date, and four men of the 2/8 Cavalry sit on consecutive lines for November 4, 1965:

• 3E, Line 16 — PFC Alan Lynn Barnett, A Company, 2/8 Cav (Astoria, Oregon; age 17)
• 3E, Line 17 — SGT Coffey and PFC Hamill, D Company
• 3E, Line 18 — CPL Hill, D Company

Two companies of the same battalion, four men, one day, adjacent on the Wall. A memorial account for Barnett places his death "at LZ Juliet on Hill 732."

A first-person account: SP4 David "Doc" Wilson, D Co medic

A member account published in the 1st Cavalry Division Association's newsletter The Saber (March/April 2023) describes this action directly. SP4 David "Doc" Wilson, a senior medic with D Company, wrote:

"I was in a battle in the Ia Drang Valley with a Recon platoon from Delta Co, 2/8 Cav that eventually involved several more companies from the battalion as the battle progressed during the day of 4 November 1965. We evacuated many WIAs and had multiple KIAs that day and into the evening."

Wilson, himself the last of his element to be wounded, was carried back to LZ Cavalier and evacuated that evening. He places the origin of the fight at Plei Me — "We originally flew into Plei Me after the Special Forces camp was nearly overrun by the 33rd NVA Regiment" — and notes that the same regiment moved on into the Ia Drang, where it met COL Moore's battalion at LZ X-Ray on November 14.

His account corroborates the key elements independently: a D Company fight on 4 November 1965, opening with a reconnaissance element and drawing in several companies of the battalion (matching the A Co + D Co casualties on the Wall), multiple KIA, against the 33rd Regiment, in the Plei Me / Ia Drang area of Pleiku Province. (Full transcript linked under the Documents tab.)

The division after-action report — the 2/8 Cavalry's 4 November action

The 1st Cavalry Division's own Combat Operations After Action Report for the Pleiku Campaign supplies the unit-level scheme of maneuver this page had been missing. Its operations summary for 4 November 1965 records that at 1130 the 2/8 Cavalry's Reconnaissance platoon, operating out of Position "Cavalair," made contact with an estimated two North Vietnamese companies near grid ZA978050. Two platoons of A Company were committed at 1210; artillery and tactical air were called in; and the enemy, "after taking punishing blows," broke contact, leaving 12 captured and 14 dead on the field, with more carried away. C Company was recalled to relieve A Company, and the elements closed back into Position "Cavalair" for the night.

That position is almost certainly the "LZ Cavalier" to which Doc Wilson says he was evacuated — the report's spelling and the medic's account independently describe the same ground. The report also fixes Hill 732 at grid YA885106 as the 33rd Regiment's command post, which the regiment was ordered to abandon that same day for the eastern slopes of Chu Pong — so Hill 732 is the enemy's position, distinct from the 2/8 contact site at ZA978050.

A note on the company attribution. The after-action report names the engaged 2/8 elements as the battalion Reconnaissance platoon, A Company, and C Company; it does not separately name D Company in the 4 November entry, and gives the friendly casualty figure only in aggregate. The three men commemorated here are recorded on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial as D Company, 2/8 Cav, and the D Co medic Doc Wilson describes the fight as opening with "a Recon platoon from Delta Co." We retain their D Company attribution; what is certain is that they were present, engaged, and killed on 4 November 1965. The difference between the report's company-level naming and the casualty records is noted, not resolved.

The full report is linked under the Documents tab: Pleiku Campaign After Action Report.

Operational context: Operation All the Way / Long Reach

November 4, 1965 falls inside the 1st Cav's pursuit of the North Vietnamese after the relief of the Plei Me camp — Operation Long Reach, and specifically its first phase, Operation All the Way (27 October – 9 November 1965), conducted by the 1st Brigade (which included the 2/8 Cavalry). The brigade had overrun a 33rd Regiment aid station on November 1 and was pressing the retreating PAVN regiments back toward the Chu Pong–Ia Drang massif near the Cambodian border. This pursuit set the stage for the better-known LZ X-Ray and LZ Albany battles of November 14–18.

The enemy and the ground

Hill 732 was the base area of the PAVN 33rd Regiment, which on November 4 was displacing off the hill onto the eastern slopes of Chu Pong. Both the Barnett record (Hill 732 / LZ Juliet) and the Doc Wilson account (33rd Regiment, Plei Me / Ia Drang) point to the same ground and the same enemy. This should not be confused with the 66th Regiment, whose 8th Battalion was ambushed separately by a 1st Cavalry reconnaissance patrol on November 3 — a different event a day earlier.

The location records are wrong — and that's instructive

The individual casualty records disagree with each other and with the geography:

• Coffey's record lists Tay Ninh Province (III Corps).
• Hamill's record lists Binh Duong Province (III Corps).
• Hill's record lists Long Khanh Province (III Corps).
• Barnett's record lists Thua Thien Province (I Corps).
• The Virtual Wall lists no province for any of them.

These provinces lie far from one another and far from where the 1st Cavalry Division was operating in November 1965 — the Central Highlands (II Corps). Four men killed in one action carrying four different, impossible provinces shows how unreliable the early casualty location records can be. Hill 732, Pleiku Province is the correct setting.

Help us complete the record

If you served with D Company, 2/8 Cavalry during the Pleiku Campaign, or knew Richard Coffey, Wright Hamill, or Eddie Hill, we would be grateful for anything you can share. Please reach us through the contribute form.