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By Root 931 0

11th Artillery, or both, at the direction of Lieutenant Colonel Parker of the 2d Battalion (Mechanized), 22d Infantry. Earlier that morning, at 0715, A and C Companies had departed the Triple Deuce laager, boring due west through the brush on the little-used road toward the Rach Cai Bac, preceded by minesweepers, while HHC, B, and D Companies had temporarily stayed behind with Parker's CP. When informed that his lead company was within a kilometer of the border, Parker had, per routine, requested a rolling artillery bombardment to discourage ambush as they proceeded the last dangerous leg of the journey. The problem was that, because of the hasty way in which Operation Bold Lancer had been slapped together, no published plan had been distributed and–incredibly–the instructions that Parker had received via radio from brigade had never included the information that a company would be waiting for them on the other side of the Rach Cai Bac. Nevertheless, the artillery fire direction center should have had this info.

The result of this mismanagement was that Captain Pride of Charlie Company found himself suddenly standing up beside his tree and grabbing the radio as another salvo of artillery rounds exploded a bit closer. The 3-22 C&C Huey was overhead with Lieutenant Colonel Hazelwood, Major Cavezza, and Sergeant Major Rommal aboard, having diverted over C Company after monitoring the airmobile insertion of A and D Companies farther inland. Pride talked with Cavezza, “… we got artillery coming this way, awfully close. I hope that will be stopping pretty soon, and that's as far as it's going to go.”

“Okay, let me check that out.”

Pride continued watching across the river. There was a lull, then two or three shells suddenly whooshed into the trees only three hundred meters away. Everyone took notice this time, and Pride was again hollering to Cavezza, 'There's artillery coming into our position, and if you don't cut it out there's going to be people killed! And I damn sure didn't come over to Vietnam to be killed by my own folks!”

“Well, I've checked,” Cavezza responded, “and it's not our artillery. It must be incoming.”

Pride dropped to one knee behind his tree as the next salvo slammed in almost at the river's edge. Completely out of his mind with fear because he knew exactly what the artillerymen were doing–they were walking the barrage in on him–he screamed into the radio, “This is not incoming! This is American artillery! I know the sound of American artillery! This is one-five-five or one-oh-five, and I'm telling you it's our artillery! Get it cut off!”

“Calm down, calm down.”

“Don't tell me to calm down! The artillery is just about ready to land on us!” Pride shouted a final message before flipping the handset back to his radioman, “I gotta go, I gotta find cover!”

Overhead, there was a sudden rushing noise past the C&C Huey and the pilot quickly banked away as Cavezza and his artillery liaison officer worked their radios. On the ground, platoon leaders and squad leaders bellowed at their men to move back toward the deserted enemy bunkers they had discovered on their way in. A shell suddenly geysered in the river, and everyone speeded up, sprinting between the trees, tripping over vines, dropping helmets. Explosions. Pride's RTO ran out of control past him, and Pride screamed at him to hang tight until he caught up to him. More explosions. They stumbled up to the enemy bunkers. Someone was screaming, “Captain Pride, Captain Pride!” Pride spun around to realize that one of his men was crawling on all fours only an arm's length away. The kid was clutching his throat and Pride could see straight down his windpipe where the white-hot shrapnel had ripped away the skin. Pride and his RTO pulled the GI the five feet to one of the dugouts, and Pride told his RTO to get a bandage around the man's neck. He took the radio handset and rolled under the logs arranged as an overhang to the bunker entrance. Several men were crammed inside. Others were hunkered down among the saplings, trying to squeeze lower through the vines.