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By Root 993 0

up in helmet and flak jacket, and each track groaned under the weight of extra ammunition and explosives. The road from brigade forward to the riverbank had been blazed by B and E Companies, 65th Engineer Battalion, 25th Division, but, still leery of mines, the APCs had chugged along on the flanks of the dirt trail where the broken bamboo, cut-down trees, and debris had been piled high by the engineers. The ride had been hot, slow, bumpy, and jarring. Tracks from the 1st Battalion (Mechanized), 5th Infantry, 25th Division, also pulled up in the thick brush. Helicopters crossed the sky like dragonflies, and bulldozers cleared away more brush at the river's edge. Trucks loaded with bridge decking, each with an inflatable bridge pontoon set on top, pulled up at intervals, and the combat engineers, young, hard muscled, stripped to the waist, worked like the slaves at the pyramids to get the pontoon bridge across the seventy-meter river, section by section. The engineers kept working as the sun went down, and the mech troops battened down in their unusually compact perimeter, dubbed Firebase Mini, sending out no listening posts or ambushes, or firing any Mad Minutes, only squeezing off an occasional M79 grenade into where the hanging branches swept down into the brown water on the opposite shoreline.

Recon by fire. The hot night was so clear and still that each time a round thumped into the bank, the crunch of the explosion echoed back and forth across the river.

The pontoon bridge was completed forty-five minutes before midnight. At the crack of dawn, 0655 to be precise, on 7 May 1970, after coordinating with C/3-22 Infantry about passing through their bridgehead, Operation Bold Lancer picked up steam again as 1-5 Mech, followed by 2-22 Mech, rattled across the pontoon bridge one APC at a time. A platoon from C/1-5 Mech was in the lead. In keeping with the Bobcat's hard-core reputation, aboard the third track was Lieutenant Colonel Wester-man–their rawboned, crewcut, bespectacled, three-tour battalion commander–followed by two flamethrower carriers and the Scout Platoon under 1st Lt. Dennis Doucette. Behind the lead element came the rest of C Company under 1st Lt. Mitchell C. Meilstrup, Capt. Gerald M. Bonti's A Company, and Capt. Ralph G. Laubecher's B Company.

Continuing west toward Tasuos, the Bobcats ran through scattered resistance with NVA who were either trying to get away, trying to protect caches–the forest trails were dotted with deserted hootches– or hadn't received word that the blitzkrieg was coming. The whole forest was essentially a rambling, sprawling base camp. The battalion discovered one training facility where bunkers had been built U.S. style and protected with U.S. concertina wire, as models for sapper teams, but it was not until one o'clock in the afternoon that the NVA offered any significant resistance. A squad of NVA opened fire on Captain Bonti's Alpha Company, killing one man and wounding another. Lieutenant Colonel Westerman ordered their flamethrower tracks into action as much for the psychological effect as the physical. Dripping lines of fire arched into the woods from where the NVA were firing, setting fire to the vegetation and within ten minutes ending the contact. A body count of eleven was recorded along with eight prisoners. Having seen the Zippo 'PCs as they moved out, track driver Tinsley of C Company couldn't help but think how cruel it would be to actually use them on somebody. As they continued on through this vibrantly beautiful, untouched landscape, he almost felt guilty to be bringing the war to these parts. He felt that way mostly because of the Cambodians who crowded up to their APCs when they entered villages. The GIs were skeptical of them at first, but they seemed genuine and friendly as they offered baskets of fruit. The GIs tried to respond in kind with gifts of C rations. Tinsley gave a Lifesaver to an old man who touched it to his tongue and, realizing it was only an odd new fruit, began trying to peel it. It was just one of those times when you laughed and talked with