Warrant Officer Class Two Keith Payne's initial duties in Vietnam were with a mobile strike force that was reconnoitering enemy infiltration routes from Laos into Vietnam. These routes were being used to surround the newly established Ben Hut Special Forces camp. On 24 May 1969 Payne was commanding the 212th Company of the 1st Mobile Strike Force Battalion when the unit's hilltop position was attacked by a large North Vietnamese force. A barrage of rockets, mortars and machine gun fire hit the two forward companies from three directions simultaneously. The indigenous soldiers under Payne's command faltered, forcing Payne to mount a vigorous single-handed defence, firing his rifle and throwing grenades to keep the enemy from over-running his panicked soldiers. In the process, he was wounded in the hands, upper arm and hip by shrapnel from rockets and mortar rounds.

The US officer commanding the battalion decided to make a fighting withdrawal back to base. With a small number of soldiers from his company, which had suffered heavy casualties, Payne covered the withdrawal of the rest of the force, again relying heavily on gunfire and grenades to hold off the enemy. By nightfall Payne had gathered a composite party of survivors from his own and another company into a small defensive perimeter about 350 metres from the hill they had previously occupied, and which was now in the hands of the North Vietnamese enemy.

In darkness, Payne, on his own initiative, set off to find other survivors who had been cut off during the confused withdrawal. At around 9 p.m. he found one such group, having followed the fluorescence created by their movement through the rotting vegetable matter on the ground. This was followed by similar searches over hundreds of metres of dark jungle over the next three hours. Throughout, enemy soldiers were also searching the area and occasionally firing, but Payne was able to locate 40 men, several of whom were wounded, some of whom Payne personally dragged to safety. He organised for others who were not wounded to crawl out taking the wounded with them.

He led his group of rescued soldiers back to the temporary perimeter only to find that it had been abandoned when the remaining troops withdrew back to the battalion base. Undeterred, he led his party, along with another group of wounded he encountered on the way, back to the battalion base, arriving at around 3 a.m.