Bodies Still Being Recovered at Quinhon

Feb. 12, 1965 - The last American known to be alive in the wreckage of the bombed U.S. barracks in Quinhon, South Vietnam, was dragged free this morning after almost 36 hours in the rubble.

Army and Marine Corps engineers were preparing to sift through the ruins for the bodies of 20 American soldiers still missing.

The survivor, Specialist 4 Arthur Abendschein of Deptford Township, N.J., was brought out grinning and joking with his rescuers. “Don’t tell me I need a shave,” he said.

Barring the discovery, considered unlikely, that some of the buried men are still alive, the explosion will have taken 21 American lives — the largest number lost in a single incident in Vietnam.

By late yesterday, a day after Viet Cong terrorists blew up the building, the body of an American and 25 wounded servicemen had been pulled from the wreckage. A foot of one man was amputated so he could be freed.

Warrant Officer Bruce Mauldin, 22-year-old son of the cartoonist Bill Mauldin, crawled 25 feet through a tunnel in the roof to help one trapped man.

Mauldin, who is slight, writhed through the narrow passage and moved the victim closer to the opening. 

The man was delirious. “He kept talking in circles,” Mauldin said afterward, “asking whether I had brought him the new truck he wanted.”

A larger man followed Mauldin into the tunnel to try to pull the heavyset soldier free. The man was pulled from the roof five hours later.

At least eight Vietnamese civilians were killed by three explosions of TNT, now believed to have been carried in suitcases by Communist guerrillas who entered the building. The bodies of two women and five children were taken from a small house next door.

As exhausted rescue teams dug by hand through beams and plaster, they spoke most often of retaliation against North Vietnam.

“I hope we blast the hell out of them,” a sergeant said.

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