Why 10,000 NVA Feared This Point Man — The Unbelievable Story of Lynne Black Jr.

Discover the story of Specialist Four Lynne "Blackjack" Black Jr., who on his very first MACV-SOG mission took command when his team leader was killed and led eight men against 10,000 North Vietnamese soldiers for an entire day—inflicting casualty rates so catastrophic that the NVA general commanding the division confirmed decades later his unit suffered 90% losses. On October 5, 1968, Recon Team Alabama inserted near the Laotian border to track a 3,000-man NVA regiment. Instead, they landed directly on top of General Vo Bam's 559th Transportation Group headquarters—a 10,000-man division. Black saw the NVA flag during insertion and screamed "ABORT!" but Team Leader Staff Sergeant Jim Stride ignored the warning. Seconds after hitting the ground, an L-shaped ambush killed Stride and point man Hoa instantly.
What happened next defied belief. Staff Sergeant Steve Engelke—senior to Black in rank—completely froze, curling into a ball begging God to take him home and not firing a single shot the entire day. Black, 23 years old on his first combat mission, had to take command of eight survivors facing an entire enemy division. For over 12 hours, RT Alabama fought off wave after wave of NVA assaults. They stacked enemy bodies as makeshift sandbags creating a "cadaver wall" for protection. Black and Vietnamese team leader Tho conducted suicide assaults on three separate NVA mortar positions, destroying all three to stop the bombardment that was annihilating their position.
The battle became so intense that multiple rescue helicopters were shot down trying to extract the team. Two Jolly Green Giant crew members were killed and their bodies never recovered. When RT Alabama finally escaped after nightfall, they left behind a battlefield littered with NVA dead. U.S. intelligence initially estimated hundreds of enemy casualties, but years later when Black met the NVA general who'd commanded the division, the general revealed the truth: his 10,000-man unit suffered approximately 9,000 killed or wounded—a 90% casualty rate—from engagement with nine American and indigenous soldiers. Black earned the Silver Star for his first mission, returned for multiple tours, and became a SOG legend known as "Blackjack"—the man whose baptism of fire destroyed an entire NVA division.

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