Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [108]
Lieutenant Phillips and Charlie Company were to secure the LZ for the arrival of the rest of the battalion, but their original LZ crackled with ground fire. They were diverted to an alternate LZ, and the first chopper set down without a problem. Their LZ was a flat, barren bowl studded with tree stumps, and was looked down upon from the east and south by ridge lines on which towered two-hundred-foot trees. The second Huey came to a hover in the LZ when a sudden burst of fire from the trees to the southwest dropped it straight down into the tree stumps and dust.
Unlike the combat assaults of the previous day, this one could not be aborted. It was a costly exercise to extract men from a hot LZ, so if even a single helicopter load of troops was on the ground before the enemy opened fire, it was SOP to continue the assault with maximum pressure.
The NVA knew this.
Another Huey made its approach, having to slow to a speed completely unacceptable to the men aboard and completely beneficial to the enemy gunners hidden in the vegetation. The Huey was riddled like a target drogue before it could land, and it sputtered a couple of hundred meters before slamming into a tree and crashing on its side. One after the other, several more Huey s came into the shooting gallery. Somehow they managed to land, with the grunts clambering off the skids at a run and dropping their bulging rucksacks as they sprinted for cover. Thickets concealed an abandoned NVA trench at the edge of the LZ, near the base of the ridge, and the twenty GIs who hadn't crashed and burned, as they damn well thought they would, huddled there under fire.
Lieutenant Phillips, a handsome young man from South Carolina, was new to company command but had already proven to be a mature, conscientious, and capable platoon leader. He and Captain Cavito, commander of the artillery battery that was to have followed them in and who had decided to fly in with the infantry, got a hasty perimeter organized. Three hours later, another Huey dipped into the clearing, only to be greeted by more NVA fire. At Phillips's and Cavito's direction, Cobras pumped rockets toward the sound of NVA fire. Only thirty troops were now on the ground. Phillips kept their heads down, and the grunts sat in the trench with no idea what was going on. The sun was blazing. Their rucksacks, with three, four, or five canteens hanging from each one, sat in the open, twenty feet away. The NVA, firing downhill into the troops, shot those who exposed themselves. One frightened, sweat-soaked medic hurtled from trench to trench with his aid bag.
Somehow, a mede vac managed to land for the wounded; then several more lift ships were in and out as quickly as possible. By then it was dusk. No more choppers were coming, and with sixty men on the ground, Phillips decided to move to the tree line along the northern rim of the landing zone. One or a few at a time, the grunts dashed across the clearing, each man grabbing the shoulder strap of one of the dropped rucksacks as he went by. Phillips and his RTOs set up in a ravine shielded by thick brush near three abandoned hootches while his men spread out around them, setting up machine guns and claymore mines. Phillips requested another mede vac for his remaining wounded, then entered the clearing with one of his lieutenants to guide the bird in. By then it was dark, and the Huey was only a black silhouette marked by small, flashing lights. It roared out as soon as the wounded were helped aboard.
The grunts quickly headed back for the cover of their ravine, but an NVA popped from a spiderhole only fifty feet away–actually inside the landing zone–and squeezed off his AK47 magazine.
Lieutenant Phillips was shot in the head.
Leaving Phillips where he had fallen, several grunts helped the lieutenant who'd been beside him into the trees; he was shot in