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By Root 982 0

Lieutenant Colonel Parker had the entire battalion execute a Mad Minute to scare off the enemy, which it did, and to give all their weapons a final field check. The firepower show was fright-fully loud and dazzling. The wood line had barely fallen dark again when, at 0330, there was a flash and boom on the western horizon as the first USAF Commando Vault was dropped. Then came the slight rolling tremor of its 15,000-pound concussion. The process was repeated at 0430. At the crack of dawn, strings of helicopters alighted from the chopper pads at Cu Chi and Tay Ninh bound for the marshaling areas around Thien Ngon. Eighteen of the Hueys landed in the bush pickup zone of Captain Pride and Charlie Company of the Regulars, and the men tensed out the ride to the Commando Vault LZ as sixteen tactical air sorties were run around the landing zone. The air prep was followed by an artillery barrage around the overlapping circles of the Commando Vault explosions, which expanded away from the flattened rubble so that the trees at the fringe of the explosions were further skeletonized to resemble the victims of a tornado. The artillery ceased firing as Cobras led in the Hueys, pumping rockets into likely enemy firing positions.

Finally, the Hueys hung wobbily above the tree stumps, door gunners pouring M60 machine gun fire into the dried-out, leafless trees facing them, infantrymen coming off the skids at five feet and scrambling for cover behind the nearest toppled tree. The LZ was cold. No NVA.

Once heads had been counted, Captain Pride showed his map to the buck sergeant known as Apache, who ran the point squad. In short order, C Company, 3d Battalion, 22d Infantry, was humping off the LZ and into the jungle, which led five hundred meters or so east to the Cambodian bank of the Rach Cai Bac. Apache was a tall, rawboned, broad-shouldered kid with blond hair and freckles who was enamored of the whole business of war–not the gore, but the challenge–and Pride was damn glad to have the man on his team. That had been especially true in the beginning, when the young career sergeant had cushioned Pride's awkward assumption of command of Charlie Company. He had taken over from an older captain who'd been commissioned from the ranks and whom, Pride realized, the troops regarded as a saint. They were watching to see how Pride would fill the older man's jungle boots. During Pride's first patrols, he might never have been lost, but when he had been temporarily disoriented he would point out to Apache where he thought they were and ask for a second opinion. With his own map and a crew of volunteers, Apache would glide off down this or that jungle stream, then return to point out another spot on the map with a firm, “We're here.”

Most of the grunts savored checking off each day on their short-timer calendars, but Apache rarely if ever talked of going home. Unlike his comrades who tried to get away with murder in the bush when it came to long hair and mustaches, Apache was the trim, neat soldier. By the time of Operation Bold Lancer, Apache was stolidly running the point squad as they humped through the dense vegetation on the way to the Rach Cai Bac. The point squad discovered a bunker complex with logs laid across the tops, then broke out from the trees into the scrub brush along the narrow river. A length of the bank was secured, and battalion was informed that the mission had been accomplished without seeing hide or hair of the enemy, and that the engineers and mech infantry could now proceed toward the rendezvous point.

Captain Pride shrugged out from under his rucksack and piled his gear beside a tree about ten yards up from the river. Some of the grunts around him were leaning back on their rucks and cracking open a breakfast of C rations when Pride saw the first explosion across the river. The smoke hung eight hundred meters away. The next round fell a bit closer.

The artillery fire walking toward C Company, 3d Battalion, 22d Infantry, was coming from the 105mm gun tubes of either the 1st Battalion, 8th Artillery, or the 7th Battalion,