Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [130]
Some of the GIs were ready to march on Hanoi, while others whispered in ranks that the colonel could go fuck himself.
Lieutenant Colonel Gearin was determined to make the absolutely best showing in what was the ultimate career experience for a man of his rank. If one wished to judge him harshly–as most did–he was guilty of pushing everything to the periphery regardless of his men's welfare, in order to win professional prizes. This was a common complaint against battalion commanders made by those at the bottom looking up. The charge was impossible to prove, and the situation was exacerbated in this case by the quiet days before Cambodia, which had given Gearin no chance to be anything but another bulletproof colonel who led from a helicopter seat. There had also been Gearin's not-always-likeable personality. Holder of a doctorate, he was imperious, opinionated, and stubborn, superior with his peers, and abrasive toward his subordinate commanders. The enlisted men, whom Gearin treated as if they were invisible, mumbled much about fragging him. They nicknamed him the Great White Mother-fucker.
The way to reduce casualties is not to assume a defensive posture– the enemy will simply hit you at his choosing–but to hit first, and this is the message that brigade commander Williams gave to his commanders. Gearin was particularly aggressive, but Williams approved, and commented:
Gearin was a very oppressive, very aggressive individual. He used to say, “I love to kill dich, ”which is Vietnamese for “enemy.” But between all the hustle and bustle and bluster, there was a very great deal of concern for the men. He'd take me to task about needing more support for his battalion, why the hell couldn't he get this or that for his people. When all hell broke loose, he'd try to sort things out and bring as much support as he could to the poor bastards who were on the ground.
Dawn, 7 May 1970. The 2d Platoon of Delta Company, 6th Battalion, 31st Infantry, assembled in full combat gear. Wearing helmets and flak jackets, with LAWs secure atop their rucksacks, they hauled themselves aboard the Hueys, then headed toward those previously reconned paddies at Ba Thu. Cobras hurtled in low over the tree lines widely dispersed across the flat, desiccated farmland, and at a shallow hover, the platoon medic, Pfc Thomas E. Miller, came off the skid of the second Huey. He was pumping adrenaline even before he saw the dust in the air and the men off the lead bird frozen in their tracks. Miller hadn't heard a thing, but the first man off the first slick had stepped off onto a booby trap: Miller watched Pfc Randy Peacock pick himself up on bloody legs and literally dive back into the helicopter he'd just exited.
The rest of the platoon cautiously fanned out across the LZ; they spotted a dozen more tripwires and blew the booby traps in place.
With the infantry securing a perimeter, Lieutenant Colonel Forman and Major Olsmith, CO and XO, respectively, 2-4 FA, directed their Loach down to the LZ. Forman gave the go-ahead for the artillery advance party to land where the low dikes formed a cross. A Chinook set down the FDC trailer, then the C&C Loach landed nearby to wait for the shuttle of Chinooks coming in with four howitzers from Capt. Joe Zalar's C Battery, 2d Battalion, 4th Field Artillery.
The paddies were so dry they cracked, and they showed evidence of the ARVN tanks and tracks that had rumbled across them some days before. Treads had sliced brown ribbons into the green scrub grass, and expended machine gun brass sparkled in the glare.
This area was also planted with antitank mines. The Loach pilot spotted the first one after he'd climbed from his seat; the skids had straddled it. The prop wash had blown away its cover of loose dirt and dry grass. Other of the disk-shaped mines had also been exposed by the helicopter props, and bare-chested artillerymen were damn careful about where they put their feet as they got their ammunition uncased and their gun tubes up. Major Olsmith almost stepped on a mine himself as he walked down a paddy