The Battle of Vin Drin Dop (1969) was a minor medium of the Vietnam War that occurred when the 1st Squadron, 9th Air Cavalry Regiment under Lieutenant-Colonel William Kilgore stormed a Viet Cong-held village along the Nung River in Vietnam in order to escort MACV-SOG Captain Benjamin Willard and his team into Cambodia. The Americans came in on helicopters, playing Wagner's "Flight of the Valkyries" to scare the Vietnamese guerillas (though scaring civilians too), and their helicopters bombarded the Viet Cong with missiles, machine gun fire, minigun fire, and cavalrymen as they ran to take up defensive positions. The 1/9th Cavalry Hueys then landed, with the troops disembarking, one memorable helicopter being destroyed by a vietcong who hid a grenade in a Non La, who was then killed by the gunner of a scout helicopter while Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore exclaimed “F*cking savages.”
Kilgore then ordered a napalm strike along the tree-line on the opposite side of the beach. During the battle, Kilgore was concerned mostly with the availability of the tide for surfing, and two surfers-turned-soldiers surfed in the water as explosions occurred all around them. After the battle, Kilgore invited surfer Lance B. Johnson to wait 20 minutes until the tide came in so that he could surf, but the napalm blasts ruined the winds, and the Americans were ultimately unable to surf, as Lance and Willard stole his board..