Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [120]
No more explosions. Cavezza's voice came over the radio, and after checking with his platoon leaders, Pride reported back that two of his men had been killed and twelve wounded, five of them seriously.
Everyone was in shock, but these were men who had been under fire before and they were quickly on their feet again. Medics went to work. Squad leaders reorganized their men who'd been scattered, and one squad quickly found a mine shaft in the jungle and secured it for the litter teams. A Huey came to a hover over the hole in the canopy, and the medevac medic rode down on the jungle penetrator, then straddled the first severely wounded man laid inside the basket so he would not fall out on the ride back up. The other seriously wounded, including the man with the throat wound who, it turned out, would survive, were similarly winched up one at a time by the medic.
Finally, after the walking wounded had been brought out, the basket was lowered again with several body bags in it. One of the dead men had been hit in the stomach while running back, and when GIs picked him up by his arms and legs, he came completely apart at the middle.
Meanwhile, the rest of the 3d of the 22d was also under fire near Tasuos, a village located at the intersection of four dirt highways about six kilometers west of the Rach Cai Bac. Sweeping in from the east after having CA'd a klick from Tasuos, Alpha Company under Captain Skiles had three men wounded, and Delta Company under Lieutenant Wright lost one man killed and three wounded when they ran into a dozen NVA hunkered in on the fringes of the ville. Pinned down in the flat, open, and sunburned fields, the grunts flattened themselves, feeling almost lobotomized by the heat, as their company commanders and forward observers brought the arty and guns down on what was reckoned to be the delaying squad for a larger unit. No one expected to catch much, because the standard enemy tactic was to retreat by breaking into small groups and melting into the jungle. It was in amazement then that the men aboard the C&C Huey, after having returned to Vietnam at least twice to refuel, flew over one of the dirt roads splayed out from Tasuos and spotted an NVA company in full view marching away in a column of threes. Lieutenant Colonel Hazelwood and Major Cavezza immediately called in all seventeen of the gun teams working for them, and Sergeant Major Rommal photographed the dust obscuring the road in the wake of the Cobra runs.
Poorly led, the North Vietnamese on the road were chopped down– the official body count was twenty–while the North Vietnamese in Tasuos, outnumbered and outgunned, faded away after their two-hour delaying action, leaving behind several of their dead caught by the gunships. Picking themselves back up, Alpha and Delta Companies found weapons, supplies, and a ten-ton rice cache in Tasuos. The battalion medical platoon was landed to treat the wounded among the villagers who were beginning to reappear. The Regulars had accomplished their mission, although, when originally loading up for the CA at Thien Ngon, there had been grumbles–motivated by a raw fear of the unknown– about refusing to go.
Brigadier General Greene was not at all surprised when informed of this potential combat refusal. The issue was not courage but motivation. The reasons for difficulty in morale were numerous, an unsupportive home front not the least of them, but Greene tended to affix the blame on the MACV policy of rotating officers at least every six months so as many as possible could be afforded combat experience. That was good for individual careers but hardly for combat effectiveness. By the time the 25th Division returned to Hawaii in December 1970, during Greene's eleventh month with the 25th, he had seen two CGs, two other ADCs, at least five G-ls, five G-2s, five G-3s, five G-4s, two DivArty COs, two DISCOM COs, and two or three different commanders with each battalion and brigade. “I recall in one particular case