D Company Losses — Binh Dinh Province, January 28, 1967
January 28, 1967 — D Company loses two men
Research page — in progress. Confirmed: two men of D Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry were killed on 28 January 1967 in Binh Dinh Province during Operation Thayer II. The specific action — the landing zone, the nature of the contact, and the enemy unit — is not yet confirmed against a unit after-action report.
On 28 January 1967, D Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry lost two men:
- CPL Peter Joseph Keller Jr., 21, of Detroit, Michigan — Wall Panel 14E, Line 91
- CPL Donald Francis Yates, 20, of Round Lake, New York — Wall Panel 14E, Line 94
Both died of multiple fragmentation wounds, their names sit three lines apart on Panel 14E, and they had arrived in-country within two days of each other in July 1966 — together the signature of a single shared action. Keller died three days before his 22nd birthday.
Operation Thayer II
By late January 1967 the 1st Cavalry Division was in the final weeks of Operation Thayer II (24 October 1966 – 12 February 1967), the division's pacification campaign in Binh Dinh Province on the central coast, soon to be followed by Operation Pershing. 2/8 Cavalry was a 1st Brigade battalion, commanded by LTC Thomas H. Tackaberry, and the division's report for the quarter confirms the 1st Brigade held the Central and Southern Kim Son Valley from 3 January 1967 — the setting for the 28 January contact. The battalion's firebase records narrow it further: in January 1967 D Company held LZ Minh (BR707760) in the central Kim Son Valley, with B Company at LZ Ho and C Company at LZ Chi nearby. As D Company men, Keller and Yates were most likely at or operating from LZ Minh — the leading candidate for the site of their deaths, pending day-level confirmation.
The specific action that killed the two men has not yet been matched to a unit after-action report. The 1st Cav Division's report for the quarter does not separately narrate it — the 28 January 2/8 contact falls below the division's significant-contact threshold. (The division's named 27 January fight was a different action: 2/12 Cavalry against the 22d NVA Regiment northeast of Bong Son, not this Kim Son cluster.) The day-level record — the landing zone, the nature of the contact, and the enemy unit — awaits the 2/8 Cav daily staff journal (NARA RG 472).
Help us complete the record
If you served with D Company, 2/8 Cavalry during Operation Thayer II, or knew Peter Keller or Donald Yates, please reach us through the contribute form.
If you served with D Company, 2/8 Cav during Operation Thayer II, or knew CPL Peter Keller or CPL Donald Yates, we'd like to hear from you. We're trying to reconstruct the action that took both men on 28 January 1967 in Binh Dinh Province.
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