Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [125]
The wood line around Charlie Company was brightened and pulverized by artillery and aerial rocket artillery, and a reaction force was mounted out of the battalion laager. Lieutenant Doucette's Scout Platoon and a platoon from Alpha Company quickly suppressed a contact en route by their overwhelming firepower, and they rolled through. Going through the end of a village, the reaction force was again ambushed. Two tracks were damaged by a recoilless rifle or rocket-propelled grenades and several men were wounded, but because civilians had been seen in the ville, the reaction force was reluctant to put arty on the area, and they sped on under fire. Lieutenant Doucette linked up with Lieutenant Meilstrup at the first hint of gray twilight.
The NVA lobbed a few mortar rounds at their arrival, but by then the enemy, estimated to have been a battalion of the 95C NVA Regiment, had faded away, leaving thirteen bodies among the blasted trees. The RPG screens sagged on their stakes, holes torn through the chain link, and six armored personnel carriers were out of commission, with rocket-propelled grenades and recoilless rifle rounds punched through their aluminum hulls.
Five GIs and one Kit Carson Scout were dead. Fourteen GIs were seriously wounded. Thirty GIs were walking wounded, including, Gunn noticed, his lieutenant, who was nursing a minor scratch and was waiting for the Chinook that was inbound for that group after the Hueys had taken out the dead and the maimed.
Charlie Company, now numbering about forty men, finally moved back to the large clearing where battalion had circled its wagons. All were mightily surprised when a helicopter deposited none other than General Abrams, COMUSMACV. A stocky, powerful-looking man with an ever-present cigar and a genuine feel for his soldiers, Abrams had four black stars on each collar and across the front of his fatigue hat. He spent half an hour shaking hands and talking with the grunts. The general told these haggard troops that he was sorry about what had happened to their buddies, but in a manner that did not downplay the importance of the operation. Word was also passed to Charlie Company that, after ninety days in the bush, they would be pulling out of Cambodia for a standdown at the Holiday Inn at Tay Ninh. Both messages were well received.
Although Charlie Company was the only unit winded enough to rate a standdown,1 the entire 1st Brigade, 25th Division, was pulling out of BA 354 as Operation Bold Lancer folded up. As usual, there had been more tasks than troops, and after only seven days of searching the area south of the Dog's Face, the last unit was withdrawn and was shifted immediately north to the Fishhook to commence another operation and to relieve the 1st Cavalry Division units in the area.
The success of Bold Lancer was open to interpretation. The 3d of the 22 Regulars, losing three men killed and eighteen wounded on Day One, had spent the next week quietly picking through the woods around Tasuos at the northern fringe of the operation. Besides discovering a ten-ton cache of rice and a few weapons, they also destroyed an NVA training compound with two hundred hootches.
The 1st of the 5th Bobcats, first across the bridge, had done most of the moving and shooting as they pushed south, killing forty-nine NVA and capturing eight, but losing nine of their own and sixty-one wounded.
The 2d of the 22d Triple Deuce, next across the bridge, claimed four enemy dead on their first day. Then, on the ninth, they rolled into a base camp containing, among other things, 1,500 NVA uniforms, 1,200 pounds of rice, and 200 gallons of gasoline and kerosene. The battalion's only casualties, two disabled tracks, were towed to a rice paddy and Sky Hooked out. Then, on the tenth, they rattled back across the Rach Cai Bac to join another operation in another part of Cambodia.
The 2d of the 14th Golden Warriors, landed in the pocket of jungle with the Triple Deuce to the east and the Bobcats to the west, had lost one man