Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [113]
Demoralized troops of A/2-22 Mech recover an APC (above and below) destroyed during an ambush near Krek, Cambodia, on 30 May 1970. (Courtesy Jim Ross)
The 3-506 Infantry was opcon from the 101st Airborne Division to replace the third infantry battalion of the 1st Brigade, 4th Division, namely the 3-12 Infantry, which on the eve of the incursion had lost its commander, operations officer, artillery liaison officer, and sergeant major when the battalion command ship was shot down south of the Mang Yang Pass on Highway 19. The 3-12 Infantry was moved to a quiet area to rebuild the battalion headquarters and so missed the Cambodian operation.
The 4th Division of 1970 also had a poor reputation because of combat inexperience. Platoon patrols in the Central Highlands were liable to encounter NVA equal or superior in numbers and organic firepower; to do so was to take politically unacceptable casualties so the division tended to fight as companies and always under artillery coverage. The NVA could not beat a company, so they simply avoided them, meaning that few of the 4th Division troopers sent to Cambodia had ever been in heavy combat.
The dust was so thick at Plei D'Jereng that requests for penaprime, an oily spray used to tamp down dust, went all the way up to the commanding general, I FFV, himself, but there was simply not enough available. During the withdrawal from Plei D'Jereng, a Chinook pilot, confused in the dust storm that his rotors were provoking, accidentally landed atop a truck carrying a platoon from B/2-35 Infantry. One of the wildly tilted rotors decapitated their lieutenant. Another soldier, caught in the truck bed by the Chinook that was conked out on top, was, observed Lt. Col. D wight Adams, CO, DISCOM 4th Division, “… in danger of drowning from the leaking helicopter fuel. A major, who was in charge of controlling helicopter operations around Plei D'Jereng, sat astride the Hook and directed a forklift in lifting up the Hook. Many soldiers around the accident tried to help in spite of fuel all over the area. In view of the danger of the fuel igniting, General Wheelock and I tried to get the extra troops away so there would not be unnecessary casualties, but they all wanted to help.”
PART SIX: ACROSS THE RACH CAI BAC
The men were brave and even enthused when Operation Bold Lancer sent them into Cambodia, but the NVA were elusive most of the time, and tough when cornered. For all the division's technology and guts, General Greene of the 25th Division found that Cambodia could be as frustrating as Vietnam. Every Sunday, he, like the other two generals in the division, would visit every hospital where there were casualties from the 25th to present Purple Hearts. Never once did Greene hear a complaint from these maimed young men. Their stolid acceptance of their fate was amazing. What their sacrifice had achieved in the big picture was questionable.
Chapter 20: RESHUFFLING
Given a combat mission, the role of the division commander is not to craft the plan meticulously, but to delegate and ramrod. So it was not at all unusual on the evening of 3 May 1970, having received word from Lieutenant General Davison to move into Cambodia, that the briefing notes taken by Maj. Gen. Edward Bautz, Jr., commanding general, 25th Infantry Division, fit on both sides of a single three-by-five index card. The entire meeting, in fact, had lasted only about fifteen minutes.
Bautz had been lifting off from Tan An near the Parrot's Beak to return to his division headquarters in Cu Chi when word had been received to fly instead to the 1st Cavalry Division forward CP for a private conference with Davison of II Field Force and Roberts of the 1st Cav in, it turned out, one of the base camp's small, sandbagged hootches. Davison had explained that the 25th Division would conduct operations in at least three areas of Cambodia, the first thrust to be directed against NVA Base