Operation Junction City launched in February 1967 as a massive search and destroy campaign across War Zone C, a Viet Cong stronghold in Tay Ninh Province northwest of Saigon. The 1st Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment -- the 1/16th Infantry -- arrived on February 23, airlifted from Lai Khe to Suoi Da, where they took over reserve duties for the 3rd Brigade. Their commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Rufus C. Lazzell, had returned from the United States only months earlier after being evacuated with a bullet wound to the elbow the previous July. General William DePuy restored him to his old battalion upon his return. The first days near Prek Klok were marked by friendly fire incidents: a short mortar round wounded two soldiers, and .50-caliber rounds from an allied mechanized unit struck their position at dusk. Then two quiet days passed, an uneasy calm before a confrontation nobody in Company B anticipated.

At 08:00 on February 28, Company B stepped out in two columns, the 3rd Platoon leading, followed by the 2nd and 1st. Cloverleaf patrol patterns fanned out ahead and to the flanks as they advanced. By 10:30, with a little over a kilometer behind them, the lead element took small arms and automatic weapons fire from the east. Captain Ulm heard reports of three enemy machine guns and immediately understood this was no chance encounter -- the Viet Cong force facing him was far larger than a company. Within twenty minutes the VC attacked from the northeast as well, severing radio contact between the 3rd Platoon and the company command post. Rifle grenades, rockets, and 60-millimeter mortar rounds hammered the entire company area. Ulm directed his 1st Platoon to swing left and his 2nd Platoon to swing right, forming a defensive arc while calling for everything the sky could deliver.

Artillery from the 105-millimeter guns of the 2nd Battalion, 33rd Artillery at Prek Klok had been walking ahead of the company as marching fire -- standard division policy for units moving through hostile terrain. When contact came, the forward observer shifted those shells onto the VC positions within minutes. A command-and-control Huey arrived overhead, bridging communication between Captain Ulm on the ground and the division tactical operations center. Airstrikes began arriving every fifteen minutes. Because the enemy was not dug in, the ordnance of choice was cluster bombs, each with a bursting radius of 30 meters, dropped at nearly treetop level. Ulm marked his positions with colored smoke grenades, and each flight adjusted its run relative to the smoke. By early afternoon, 155-millimeter howitzers had joined the barrage. Fifty-four sorties of Tactical Air Command aircraft pounded the jungle canopy. Ulm directed strikes to within 30 meters of his own soldiers -- a razor-thin margin that reflected both desperation and trust in the aircrews above.

When the 3rd Platoon's leader fell wounded at the start of the fight, Platoon Sergeant Matthew Leonard took command. He organized the defensive position, redistributed ammunition among his soldiers, and directed fire against the VC. While helping a wounded man to safety, a sniper round tore through Leonard's hand. He kept fighting. Under cover of the main attack from the northeast, a VC crew maneuvered a machine gun into a position that could sweep Leonard's entire platoon. What happened next would earn him the Medal of Honor, awarded posthumously. Leonard charged the machine gun. Enemy rounds struck him multiple times as he advanced, but he reached the crew and destroyed it. He died in the act. His platoon survived because he did not stop. That single charge against a fortified position, carried out by a man already wounded and under relentless fire, became the defining human moment of the battle.

By 14:00 the fighting had faded to sporadic sniper fire. An hour later it was over. Colonel Marks, the brigade commander, had already begun landing reinforcement companies at a zone 600 meters northeast of the contact point. At 21:30, Captain Ulm and his soldiers, assisted by the relieving company, reached the landing zone carrying their 25 dead and 28 wounded. Sweeps that evening and the following morning counted 167 Viet Cong dead and yielded 40 captured or destroyed weapons. Among the prisoners taken nearby was the assistant commander of a company in the 2nd Battalion, 101st Regiment of the VC 9th Division -- the unit that had attacked Company B. Intelligence suggested they had been heading toward Route 4 to ambush American convoys between Suoi Da and Katum Camp, and stumbled into the same jungle as Ulm's men. The next morning, Company B was helicoptered back to Suoi Da for refitting. Five days later, they were in battle again.