Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [139]
They lay in the dirt near the road and listened. It was as quiet as a tomb near them, but they could hear people moving around down in the part of the village that B Company was facing.
It was time to get out, and Lowe told Weed to push off with one of the GIs, then he followed with the last GI. It took them nearly half an hour to crawl less than two hundred meters to the dike where 3d Platoon sat.
Meanwhile, those NVA who'd gotten away through the recon team's tracers hiked right into 2d Platoon north of town. Water buffalo were milling in the area, snagging the wires running back from the platoon's claymore mines, and the grunts mistook the line of NVA for refugees. Actually, they suspected that NVA would be mixed in with the gaggle of frightened civilians, but none of the GIs had the heart to open fire. Taking turns on watch behind the dikes, exhausted but thankful that no mosquitoes were rising in hordes to torment them, the grunts watched the figures walk right between two of their squads. And, because no GIs were smoking or talking or coughing, the NVA probably had no idea how close their escape really was.
Concerned that the NVA entrenched in Chantrea had preregistered their mortars around the town, Captain Lowe directed Weed to move his platoon north from the dike they were huddled behind–and where they'd been seen–to the road toward which Sprinkles and Mize were also moving with their second platoon. The lead squad crawled so that the NVA would not notice their change of positions, with Weed accompanying them and setting them in along the trail to ambush any more NVA who tried to slip out. Weed left Staff Sergeant Dicerbo with them, then crawled back for the next squad. The men moved sluggishly, drained from exertion and an afternoon of terror. It was taking forever, and Lowe dozed as he lay in the dirt, waiting to come out last. His radiomen, Mickels and Moran, crawled up to the road, and realizing that the captain was not present, they informed Weed.
Weed went back one more time, and crawled up to Lowe's sleeping figure, “Sir, you comin' with us?”
Lowe raised his head in a stupor.
“Sir, you okay?” Weed was a big, gregarious, blond man from Decatur, Alabama, and he was looking Lowe right in the eye and grinning because the NVA in Chantrea were expending their mortar ammunition, carried so painstakingly down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, on a patch of dirt only he and Lowe still occupied. “You've got to come now–we're under mortar fire.”
A loud blast nearby woke Lowe right up.
Lieutenant Colonel Gearin had departed the scene in his helicopter before nightfall, and Captain Lowe, having crawled back up to his two-platoon company, took control of the battle. He tried to plug the gaps between the three companies with artillery illumination and high explosives, and he brought in AC-47 Spooky gunships, which strafed the village with five-and-one ball and tracer. At first light, the strings of GIs around Chantrea began moving in, and Lowe, Lavezzi, and Francia let each other know when their troops were going to fire across the clearing. The other commanders, in turn, would get their troops' heads down. In the cacophony of small arms fire, it was impossible to tell if the NVA were returning fire. Taking no chances, Delta Company hung close to the paddy dikes as they approached, and Lieutenant Bayer cranked up the artillery at Seminole again. Around eight in the morning, having fired since dawn, Bayer turned to Lowe: “Batteries don't like to run out of ammunition. What are your orders?”
“Tell 'em to report to me after they fire their last round.”
An emergency ammunition resupply was slingloaded under Chinooks and winged out to Firebase Seminole, while Phantoms and Cobras took up the slack for the companies inching toward Chantrea.