Bee Incident — Medevac at FB Mace
Summary
On March 22, 1971, Range Platoon — humping toward a night location in the mountains roughly 90 km east-northeast of Bien Hoa — disturbed a large and aggressive colony of ground bees. Panic and chaos followed: men ran, some without their weapons, smoke grenades were popped in a failed attempt to calm the swarm, and the platoon scattered before regrouping about an hour later. Five soldiers were medevaced that evening, per Jack Fink's diary — four now identified with reasonable confidence: Howard McGrew, Kirk Davis, Joe Hall, and (less certainly) Bill Marr. Kirk Davis was hit worst, his breathing nearly paralyzed by the volume of stings; he was hauled out on a rigid litter rather than a standard jungle penetrator because he kept fading in and out of consciousness. A second, partial medevac was needed the next morning for delayed reactions among men who hadn't been evacuated the first night, though it was initially grounded by weather. Separately, company commander Capt. Jim Bedsole is remembered as having been stung severely enough that he could not continue in command — though none of the six soldiers who discussed the incident in a recovered 2026 Facebook thread mention him, so it isn't yet clear this is the same incident (see open questions).
The exact trigger is still disputed, though one of the two long-standing accounts now has a name attached. Howard McGrew's own written narrative describes a soldier collapsing from exhaustion against a stump that turned out to be a camouflaged bee nest — matching this record's earlier "accidental contact with a rotted tree trunk" account, now attributable to him. Doug Hilts instead recalls a soldier setting his backpack down over the nest, then deliberately pulling it back off once the platoon leader gave the OK to move — closer to the record's other long-standing account of a deliberate disturbance. Whatever the exact sequence, the reaction was immediate and overwhelming: men ran without their weapons, an unusual breakdown of weapons discipline that measures how severe the assault was.
Context and Contested Details
Command consequence: Capt. Bedsole's reaction — possibly anaphylactic — was severe enough that he could not continue in command. Capt. Bill Neal arrived as replacement CO approximately April 13, roughly three weeks later. The bee incident is believed to be the primary cause of this command change, though not yet formally confirmed in a recorded account from Neal, and — per the open question above — not yet reconciled with the eyewitness thread, none of whom mention him.
Two trigger accounts, one now attributed: McGrew's stump account (matching this record's earlier "rotted tree trunk" account) and Hilts's backpack-over-the-nest account are preserved here without adjudication. They aren't necessarily incompatible — they may describe the same moment from different vantage points, or separate contacts during the same swarm.
McGrew as primary source: McGrew's calendar entry — "Medevac — Bee Stings — to FB Mace" — anchors the date and location. He was himself one of the soldiers medevaced, making it a contemporaneous first-person record, and his 2008 written essay (see Sources below) is the fullest narrative account on file: the swarm, the failed smoke-grenade countermeasure, the hovering medevac extraction under enemy-fire risk, and the door-gunner's confusion when told the casualties were bee stings and not gunfire.
Eyewitness Accounts
A Facebook comment thread on McGrew's own photo post ("Recuperating at FSB Mace after being stung by bees") brought together six men's recollections of the day: Doug Hilts, Norm McDonald, Jack Fink, Kirk Davis, and Jim Garvin, alongside McGrew himself. Between them they establish the "5 medevaced" figure (from Fink's diary), name three of the five with confidence (McGrew, Davis, Hall) and a fourth tentatively (Marr), and add the backpack detail to the trigger question. Kirk Davis's own account of his ordeal — nearly unable to breathe, taken out first on a rigid litter, reassigned to Company Clerk about four months later — is substantial enough to also stand as its own anecdote (see anecdotes/davis-kirk/bee-incident-medevac). The full thread is preserved at documents/mcgrew-howard/mcgrew-howard-bee-incident-fb-thread.
Sources
- Howard McGrew's 2008 written account, "Medevac!" — documents/mcgrew-howard/mcgrew-howard-medevac-19710322
- Facebook thread, "Bees 22Mar 1971" (D Co. Range Book) — documents/mcgrew-howard/mcgrew-howard-bee-incident-fb-thread
- Kirk Davis's anecdote — anecdotes/davis-kirk/bee-incident-medevac
Two trigger accounts are on file, and one now has a name attached: McGrew's own 2008 written account describes a soldier collapsing from exhaustion against a stump that turned out to be a camouflaged nest — matching this record's earlier, previously unattributed "accidental contact with a rotted tree trunk" account. Doug Hilts instead recalls a soldier setting his backpack down over the nest, then deliberately pulling it back off once the platoon leader gave the OK — implying some awareness of the nest before contact, closer to this record's "deliberately disturbing a nest" account. These may describe the same moment from different vantage points, or two different soldiers. If you were there, we want your account of exactly what happened and who was involved.
Share what you know →Jack Fink's diary confirms 5 men were medevaced on March 22, 1971. Four are identified with reasonable confidence: Howard McGrew, Kirk Davis, Joe Hall, and (less certainly) Bill Marr. Who was the fifth? Kirk Davis suggested Stan Dillon might know. If you were medevaced, or know who the fifth man was, please contact us. We'd also like confirmation on Bill Marr and on the identity of the platoon leader referenced throughout ("Stan?" per Jim Garvin) and the squad leader who judged McGrew unfit for the field.
Share what you know →A 2026-recovered Facebook thread has six men (McGrew, Hilts, McDonald, Fink, Davis, Garvin) discussing this incident in detail — trigger, casualties, aftermath — and none of them mention Capt. Bedsole being stung, in distress, or evacuated. Is the account of Bedsole's reaction and relief from command actually part of this same March 22 incident, or does it belong to a separate event that's gotten conflated with it? If you have direct knowledge, please contact us.
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