Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [128]
They were there because they were trapped. Lieutenant Bayer also spoke for the majority when he described their response to the situation:
When I say morale was good, generally I mean among ourselves there was a pretty solid camaraderie. But the attitude toward the Army generally, and toward certain commanders, was never very good. Sure we used to search and evade. Hell yes. Kind of go through the motions, let Charlie know you're around, and he goes away and you go away. We didn't have to work at it: American troops are some of the noisiest people. But why die in the middle of this goddamned nipa palm, mud-forsaken piece of nothing–for nothing. And, really, it wasn't that philosophical. The gut level was: I don't want to die.
On the first day of May, an ARVN armored task force blitzkrieged into Svay Rieng Province, Cambodia, otherwise known as the Parrot's Beak. They were scheduled to roll back into South Vietnam on 7 May, at which time the 3d Brigade (Separate), 9th Division (Col. Walworth F. Williams), was to man a temporary screen across the flatlands that the ARVN had crisscrossed, to prevent the immediate return of the NVA to their burned base camps. There were subordinates of Colonel Williams, USMA 1948, who called him the best brigade commander in Vietnam. Although such a contest would be impossible to judge, it was true that he was one of the most experienced, with four tours. Colonel Williams was a low-key and personable but aggressive commander who, despite the eagles on his collars, picked up two Purple Hearts.
Formidable qualifications aside, Colonel Williams was hard pressed by the order to enter the Parrot's Beak of Cambodia. Not being a primary concern of higher command, the brigade was not to have its battalions already opcon to units in the Fishhook and around Krek–those were the major operations–so that Williams had only two battalions at his disposal: 6-31 Infantry (Lt. Col. Cornelius J. Gearin) and 2-4 Field Artillery (-) (Lt. Col. Robert C. Forman).
The 6th of the 31st Polar Bears had been deployed in blocking positions in the wet, tabletop terrain of the Plain of Reeds when the ARVN had first crossed the border. They had watched ribbons of dust rising on the horizon, marking the armor task force, and were still sitting, ignorant in their isolation, a few days later when the infantry commander, Gearin, and the artillery commander, Forman, paved the way for their own deployment into the Parrot's Beak. Departing from the brigade base camp at Tan An at dusk with a six-man reconnaissance team, their Huey touched down at Ba Thu, a border town that had been the hub of NVA infiltration and, naturally, the focal point of the allied offensive. Toting CAR 15 Colt Commandos, the two lieutenant colonels nervously poked around in the dark for two hours with the recon team, marking potential landing zones on their maps. It appeared that the NVA had deserted Ba Thu in the wake of the ARVN sweep, and the decision was made to insert 6-31 Infantry and, considering the already skeletonized disposition of the artillery, only a half battery of 2-4 Artillery.
The first indication at the troop level that something was stirring came at this time when FSB Gettysburg was closed down. Gettysburg was an isolated position in the Plain of Reeds, built along one side of a canal that intersected the major NVA infiltration routes running from the Parrot's Beak. Gettysburg was closed down to consolidate the thin brigade line, and under a sullen sun a laborious day was spent dismantling what had taken much longer to build. Air-portable bulldozers from the 65th Engineers pushed down the bunkers and berms, and Chinooks from the 25 th Division shuttled away with 105mm howitzers and cargo nets of ammunition slung beneath them like toys on a string. The 40mm Dusters followed, and then the Paddy Platforms, which were 7,300-pound