FSB Becky

Overview

FSB Becky (also recorded as FB Beckie) was a 1st Cavalry Division fire support base in Tay Ninh Province, War Zone C (Military Region 3, III Corps), opened by the 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry on 9 July 1969. The FSB-locations gazetteer credits the base with A Battery, 2nd Battalion, 19th Artillery (Airborne) (105mm, towed) on opening, replaced by A Battery (-), 1st Battalion, 30th Artillery (155mm, towed) from 8 August 1969.

Research stub. Everything here is drawn from the FSB-locations gazetteer and the division's own operational reports, plus two event pages already built from those reports, and a single contributed photo.

What's documented

Two dated actions at or near the base are already built out as full event pages:

• 11 August 1969, 0300-0345 hrs — Companies D and E, 2/8 Cav, providing perimeter security for FSB Becky, took a mortar/RPG/sapper ground attack: 17 NVA KIA, 4 US KIA (PVT Daniel Zuniga among them), 14 US WIA. See D Company Base Attack — FSB Becky.
• 16 August 1969, 0845-1000 hrs — Companies A and D, 2/8 Cav, swept west of the base and made contact with the 95th Regiment, 1st NVA Division: 25 enemy KIA, 1 US KIA (CPL Michael Muse), 3 US WIA. See D Company Sweep West of FSB Becky.

A secondary account — quoted within a 2005 Board of Veterans' Appeals decision, itself citing unidentified "online research" — describes a second, separate wave of the attack the following night: 0340 hrs, 12 August, hitting an artillery unit specifically hard. This isn't yet reconciled with the primary sources on file; see Open Questions.

A November 1969 photo, and a dating problem

A single photo, courtesy of Glenn Beasley, is captioned "Soldiers performing service for fallen comrades at Fire Support Base Becky in November 1969" — a memorial formation with helmets, rifles, and boots set out for the dead, in front of what looks like a semi-permanent building rather than typical field-firebase construction.

Nothing else on file places 2/8 Cav at Becky as late as November — the two documented actions are in August, and no closing date has ever been established, so the base could still have been standing. The only Nov 1969 D Co losses currently on record, Carlucci and Matthei (20 Nov 69), haven't been tied to any location in this archive's own operational tracker, so there's no confirmed set of "fallen comrades" this ceremony can yet be matched to — an initial guess that they belonged to FSB Rita instead turned out to be an unsourced default ("last known D Co location"), not a documented connection, and it doesn't hold up well against this archive's own timeline anyway: Rita was a Nov 1968–Jan 1969 posting, while Becky (Jul–Aug 1969) is chronologically the more recent known D Co location heading into November 1969. That actually weakens, rather than supports, the case for the photo being mislabeled. Two readings remain open: the photo's caption is simply wrong about the base (a mislabeling at the source, possibly for a different firebase or a different date), or Becky — or a successor command post on the same ground — was still occupied in November and hosted a memorial service for losses that actually happened somewhere else. The building visible in the frame leans toward the second reading, but that's circumstantial, not confirmed.

An overview photo from David Spingath

A second photo, courtesy of David Spingath, shows a wider view of the base: its welcome sign (1st Cavalry Division patch and unit crest), bunker line, artillery pieces, and vehicles. Undated, and no soldiers are identified in frame, but it's an independent data point placing Spingath in-country during the Becky period — extending his only other confirmed window (D Company, ~November 1968, per CPT Colavita's memoir) later into 1969.

Sources

Open Questions

• [ ] Pin down which gazetteer grid value is correct — two rows are listed (XT372810, XT373810), ~90m apart, and a third value ("372210") is noted in one row as an alternate listing; none has been checked against a rendered map.
• [ ] Establish a closed date — no source yet gives one, and the November 1969 photo (if accurately captioned) would push the base's active life four months past its last documented action.
• [ ] Confirm whether the 12 August second-wave attack in the BVA citation is a real, separate action, and if so which unit — the citation names "A/1/30," but a KIA-by-date cross-check placed the 12 Aug losses under "C Company and HQ," not A Battery. The numbers and unit attribution don't yet reconcile.
• [ ] Confirm base name origin (not yet established).
• [ ] Resolve the Nov 1969 photo: is the "FSB Becky" caption accurate, and if so, who is being memorialized? Carlucci and Matthei (20 Nov 69) are the only D Co losses on record for that month, but neither has been tied to a location yet — an earlier guess of FSB Rita was just an unsourced "last known location" default, and Rita (a Nov 68–Jan 69 posting) is actually further back in time than Becky (Jul–Aug 69), so it doesn't outrank Becky as a candidate. If the caption is right, this could be Carlucci/Matthei's memorial service and would newly confirm Becky as their site; if it's a mislabeling, the real location and correct KIAs are still open. Worth checking whether Becky ever served as the battalion CP (the semi-permanent building in the photo would fit that reading) — no source currently on file establishes this either way.
• [ ] The 2/8 Cav daily staff journal (NARA RG 472) would settle the grid, the closed date, the second-wave question, and the November photo all at once.