D Co / 2-19 Arty Loss — Wounding of 1LT Harrison Woehnker Jr, May 24, 1968 (Died of Wounds July 18)
May 24, 1968 — 1LT Harrison Woehnker Jr, wounded
Research stub. This page does not describe a confirmed action — it records an open question about which unit 1LT Harrison Woehnker Jr was actually with when he was wounded. His own casualty-record sources disagree on this point.
1LT Harrison E Woehnker Jr was wounded on May 24, 1968, in Quang Tri Province, by gun or small arms fire. He died of his wounds 55 days later, on July 18, 1968, at age 25. He is inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Panel 51W, Line 9. See his full profile at Harrison Woehnker.
A conflict in the sources
Honor States lists Woehnker's Unit/Group as "1st Cav Division, 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry, D Company" — the same D Co, 2/8 Cav designation used for the well-documented May 1972 Chinook crash batch. But Virtual Wall gives his actual unit as C Battery, 2nd Battalion, 19th Artillery, which matches his rank (1LT) and MOS (1193, Field Artillery Unit Commander) — an artillery officer's billet, not an infantryman's.
The working theory is that Woehnker was serving as a forward observer or liaison officer attached to D Company at the moment he was wounded. This is a plausible, well-precedented arrangement — artillery officers routinely rode with the infantry companies their batteries supported — and the timing fits: DTIC record AD393815 (1st Cav Division Artillery's operational report for this quarter) confirms that 2/19 Artillery was in direct support of 1st Brigade, which included 2/8 Cav, for the entire period surrounding this wounding. But no source reviewed so far names him with D Company directly, and no primary unit journal for 24 May 1968 has been located.
What corroborates the location
Three other D Company, 2/8 Cav losses already documented in this archive help place the company in the same area during this stretch:
- SGT Robert Ross was killed July 1, 1968, in Quang Tri Province, at grid YD293319 — inside Woehnker's own wounding-to-death window, in the same province.
- PFC Roger Fast and SP4 Ronald Golden were killed August 19–20, 1968, near LZ Carol in Thua Thien Province — a month later and a different province, showing the company had moved on by then.
Separately, the Skipper Journal — a veteran's day-by-day transcription of the D/2-8 Cav company log — places the company at LZ Anne on June 3, 1968. LZ Anne (grid YD298394) is independently listed in AD393815 as C Battery, 2/19 Artillery's position that same quarter — Woehnker's own battery. It's the closest geographic link found so far between his parent unit and the company Honor States credits him to, though it doesn't cover May 24 itself.
Next source needed
A NARA RG 472 daily staff journal — for 2/8 Cav or 2/19 Arty, 24 May 1968, Quang Tri Province — would supply a grid and could name-confirm which unit Woehnker was actually with. Until then, this remains an open question, not a finding.
Help us complete the record
If you served with C Battery, 2/19 Artillery, or with D Company, 2/8 Cavalry, in Quang Tri Province in the spring or summer of 1968, we would be grateful for anything you can share — including whether an artillery officer was riding with D Company as a forward observer around this time. Please reach us through the contribute form.
If you served with C Battery, 2nd Battalion, 19th Artillery, or with D Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry, in Quang Tri Province in the spring or summer of 1968, we'd like to hear from you. 1LT Harrison Woehnker Jr was wounded on May 24, 1968, and died of his wounds that July. Any memory of him, of an artillery officer riding with D Company as a forward observer around that time, or of the action itself, helps complete the record.
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