Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [100]
The ambush was suppressed in moments.
One NVA who dropped down to fit another grenade projectile to the front of his launcher was seen rising back up, holding the launcher over his head without looking where his shot would go. Before he got off the grenade, a sweeping machine gun burst blew his hands off at the wrists.
An hour or so after the ambush, around two o'clock, Menzel received orders to move G Troop some kilometers east on the highway to a road junction that another troop was also proceeding toward on a trail that led northward. Approaching the intersection, Lieutenant Crupper, in the lead, excitedly reported that a dozen figures dressed in white had just dashed across the road. They were a kilometer down the stretch. Menzel ordered the platoon to pick up speed and shoot their way in, which they did only to find deserted trenches and spiderholes along the north-south trail.
Lieutenant Crupper secured the intersection, and Sergeant First Class Brown moved south down the trail. Captain Menzel tagged behind Brown's column, with Lieutenant Zerbach directly behind him in the last track in the line.
Less than a quarter of a mile down the trail heading south toward their oncoming sister troop, the lead Sheridan stopped at a bridge of logs and split timber laid over a thin jungle stream. This was the linkup point. Menzel climbed off his ACAV and walked down the column. The Sheridans and ACAVs were confined to the narrow trail, which was hemmed in on either side by a tangled wall of bamboo and vines. Foliage hung down into the faces of the men atop the tracks, already in the herringbone formation as a precaution. The sunlight was defused by the thick, towering trees, and the humidity was smothering and stagnant. The sandy streambed was well tracked with the prints of Ho Chi Minh sandals, most headed off into the thick brush to their left, or east. Menzel squatted beside one of the footprints to see if the soil had crumbled inward yet. If it had, it meant that the NVA had passed by only the day before.
Water from the stream was just beginning to seep into the footprint, gradually filling it.
Menzel's stomach tightened.
He flipped his AK to full automatic and yelled an order at the lead Sheridan, which had been overseeing their recon of the streambed, to traverse left and open fire. The turret began turning, and an RPG was launched from the brush to the rear of the column. Menzel paused long enough to empty his AK into the bamboo before sprinting toward his track, changing magazines on the run and ducking under the muzzle flashes and concussion of the .50-cals and M60s opening up from each ACAV. At the end of the column, Lieutenant Zerbach was severely wounded in the head, and his crew was hunched atop the track deck, stunned and bleeding: The first RPG had exploded on impact with the vehicle radio mast in a shower of red-hot fragments. There was another swoosh, another instantaneous whoomp as a second RPG slammed into the side of the smoking track. Menzel saw something move in the brush. He hollered at Tom to get a medic and emptied another magazine toward the movement. Everyone was shooting. The medic rushed past. Zerbach and crew were shepherded to cover in a mad