Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [109]
Meanwhile, Captain Boudreaux and Bravo Company, who were to have followed Charlie Company in, were loaded on the birds at Plei D'Jereng and diverted north to FSB Meredith, the bald crest of a ridge line that had been reopened by the 1st Brigade forward CP and the 3-8 Infantry jump CP. After dark, Boudreaux was summoned to the command van, which had been backed into a dozed-out trench and layered with sandbags. The brigade and battalion commanders were the only ones inside. Sitting in the fluorescent light, Boudreaux mused that the battalion commander, a new man, looked scared stiff.
The brigade commander, whose name was Yow, was made of tougher stuff. Thin, almost frail-looking, he was a man from the Old Army, capable, gruff, and rather kindly. Chain-smoking and brow furrowed, Colonel Yow explained to Captain Boudreaux what had happened to the group from C Company: “Bo, we owe it to those men to get them out. You are my most experienced commander so I'm counting on you.”
Bo Boudreaux, age twenty-seven, was a big man with a Cajun accent from Avery Island, Louisiana. He was in his fourth month of command of Bravo Company when Cambodia broke. After Colonel Yow explained the situation, Boudreaux asked about the possibility of another LZ near where C Company was pinned down. Yow explained that the closest jungle clearing was at least a mile away.
Bravo had to land in the hornet's nest.
It was still twilight the next morning at FSB Meredith when Captain Boudreaux stood in the LZ, helmet and rucksack on, the crest of the 8th Infantry pinned to his pocket flap and the Ivy Division patch stitched to his fatigue shoulder. “It was a beautiful morning, blue sky with patches of fog mixed with campfire smoke. We were picked up as the sun began to rise.”
Meanwhile, the bedraggled members of Charlie Company huddled in their brushy ravine as Captain Cavito cranked up the redleg again. Artillery rounds smashed through the treetops two hundred feet above them, and pieces of red-hot shrapnel pattered down through the next two canopies. Cobras rolled in next with rockets, and Cavito ordered smoke grenades popped and tossed from their ravine as the lift ships bearing Bravo Company came in behind the gunships. Captain Boudreaux, in the lead helicopter, tensed as the pilot brought them to a two-foot hover: If the soil was muddy he'd sink to his knees, the hundred pounds of ammunition, charlie rats, water, and equipment on his back making him a sitting duck. He jumped from the cabin door facing the popped smoke. The soil was solid, and he sprinted for the ravine. He ran past Lieutenant Phillips who lay among the tree stumps, then dropped his rucksack in the ravine where Captain Cavito stood, having slept only one hour during the night, with a big grin on his stubbled face.
The NVA had not fired, so while C Company finally rested and B Company secured the clearing, appropriately dubbed LZ Phillips, the rest of the 3d Battalion, 8th Infantry, shuttled in, one chopper right after the other for the next six hours. Five soldiers from the last platoon of B Company at FSB Meredith, however, refused to board the choppers. D Company had a similar incident as they rucked up at Meredith. Matching faces to the names, Boudreaux was not surprised that all of his troops refusing to go were soul brothers. It was not a matter of race; any company commander observing the sterling performance of his troops, black, white, and brown, during the first years of the war could tell you that. It was, however, a matter of minority groups. By this stage in the war, a large percentage of blacks were not willing to bleed for what they now considered to be someone else's reasons.
C Company secured LZ Phillips. Before nightfall,