Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [129]
Due to insufficient Chinook sorties, the whole affair was becoming ragged around the edges by late afernoon when Lieutenant Sprinkles, now serving as XO, D/6-31, landed with a platoon's worth of men that he did not know to provide final security. As he positioned his men along the perimeter, Sprinkles was shocked to see tripflares and claymores still in place, as well as hundreds of mortar rounds stacked under culvert halves. He approached a harried major whom he took to be from the 4th Field, “Hey, what are you going to do about all this stuff that's lying on the ground around here?”
“That's not my problem.”
“Hey, you can't leave that shit behind. That's going to end up killing a lot of GIs.”
The major dismissed him, “Stuff it.”
Sprinkles was unaffected by the comment: he's not in the infantry, and he doesn't have to trip these things three days from now after the VC turn them into booby traps. The evacuation was completed by dusk and, after checking with battalion, Sprinkles and his crew stacked the abandoned ordnance in the center of the deserted firebase. Their Chinook finally arrived, but the pilot refused to land in the dark and instead settled in a low hover with the rear cargo ramp down. After the last GI had boarded, Sprinkles fixed a twenty-minute fuse to a brick of C4 plastic explosives and set it atop the stacked ammunition. He jogged for the Chinook, but then found himself in a ridiculous situation: He was slung with so much equipment that he could jump only a few inches, and he kept slipping off the ramp. The fuse was burning and he was thinking, oh shit, I can't believe this, until a helicopter crewman grabbed his arms and hauled him inside. They disembarked at another firebase where Sprinkles checked his watch and called to the platoon, “Okay, guys, everybody form up.“ He was in his best ringmaster cadence, “Now, look to the south. See over there? Now, watch this.”
Right on time, there was a flash on the flat delta horizon; then ammunition streamed off in all directions against the night sky.
The next stop was Cambodia, and on 5 May 1970, Delta Company was choppered to an abandoned sugar mill on the Vam Co Dong River where they took a helicopter resupply and bought soda and beer from the locals. The next morning, the company commander, Capt. Karl H. Lowe, called his men into an informal huddle in front of the three-story mill building. Lowe was twenty-seven years old, lean and muscular, an ex-sergeant well respected for his professional competence and well liked for his precise but concerned manner. He bore four scars from his first tour. He knew and treated his men as individuals. Without rancor, Lowe told his grunts that they would be leading the combat assault into the Parrot's Beak the next morning. The 1st Platoon would remain behind to secure artillery positions; but 2d Platoon under 2d Lt. Harvey Mize and his shake'n'bake platoon sergeant, Sgt. Cliff Macomber, would secure Ba Thu for the battalion CP and C/2-4 FA, while 3d Platoon under 2d Lt. Morgan Weed and his shake'n'bake platoon sergeant, S. Sgt. Lou Dicerbo, would accompany Captain Lowe and the company CP to Ph Tanoy, where refugees were streaming across the border.
Sometime afterward, during this evening of preparation, Lieutenant Colonel Gearin arrived and lined them up. With white crewcut, sunglasses, and starched fatigues on which were stitched the combat infantryman's badge and the olive-drab-and-black shoulder patches of the 9th and 25th Divisions, the battalion commander at least looked every inch the fighter as he placed his hands on hips and barked at the men that chances were the enemy wouldn't hit them, but if they made that mistake the Polar Bears would stack 'em up like