 In the morning of December 31 , the 4th Marines Battalion returned to the crash site with the entire force and the American graves were located and their corpses were dug up . At about 3 pm , a single U.S. helicopter arrived on the battlefield to evacuate the casualties , but they only picked up the bodies of the four American crewmen , while South Vietnamese casualties were forced to wait for another helicopter to arrive . At 4 pm , Major Nguyễn Văn <unk> ordered the 4th Marine Battalion to carry their casualties back to the village , instead of continuing to wait for the helicopters . As the 4th Marine Battalion began their return march , three Viet Cong battalions , with artillery support , suddenly attacked them from three directions . The battalion 's commanding and executive officers were immediately killed and air support was not available . Two ARVN Marine companies managed to fight their way out of the ambush and back to Bình Giã , but the third was overrun and almost completely wiped out . The fourth company desperately held out at a hilltop against Viet Cong artillery <unk> and large infantry charges , before slipping out through the enemy positions at dawn . The 4th Marines Battalion of 426 men lost a total of 117 soldiers killed , 71 wounded and 13 missing . Among the casualties were 35 officers of the 4th Marine Battalion killed in action , and the four American advisers attached to the unit were also wounded . Backed by U.S. Air Force bombers , on January 1 three battalions of ARVN Airborne reinforcements arrived , they were too late as most of the Viet Cong had already withdrawn from the battlefield . 
