Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [147]
Captain Lowe, who had no use for a third Purple Heart, didn't even report the wound.
Chapter 28: DON't MEAN NOTHIN'
Sitting in the dark outside Ph Tnaot, Walker asked Miller if he remembered that gook on the bike. Yeah, Miller said, and Walker grunted, “I wish I would've killed that guy.”
The sun came up red hot.
Lieutenant Colonel Gearin instructed Delta Company to make another attack into town, and a Loach arrived to take Captain Lowe on an aerial recon. When he came back he had, believe it or not, Wylie Walker's lucky bush hat in his hand. It had been blown off in the ditch the day before when the Cobra rocket had exploded. Lowe called Walker over to give him the hat and tell him that he was sending him to battalion rear. He did not say why, but Walker's performance during the ambush had been an insane explosion of recklessness; also, Lowe was going to recommend Walker for the Medal of Honor and he wanted the kid to live to see it. Walker had been in the bush for eight months, and the captain said he'd already taken too many chances.
“So, what do you want to be?”
“Sir, I don't want out if I have to go to mortars, pull berm guard, or burn shit.”
“Well, what do you want to be?”
“I'd like to be a jeep driver.”
“Okay, you're a jeep driver. Get on the mail chopper.”
The door gunner tossed out a mail sack, and Doc Miller ended up with a stack of letters. He knew they were going back in, and he knew this was his last day on earth. The first letter he opened was from his fiancée and the first line was a cheerful version of, hi, honey, how's everything on your side of the world? Miller instantly tore all the letters to pieces.
But the NVA were gone, leaving spiderholes piled with spent shell casings, a few pith helmets, and, in ten cases, bodies. The bodies were booby trapped. One NVA was found sprawled stiffly over a smashed 12.7mm machine gun. The destroyed mortar tube had also been left behind with its napalm-seared crew. Toward evening, Hueys landed, and Delta Company left deserted, sun-blasted, napalmed Ph Tnaot and was set down near Ph Baray on the border. They set up ambushes, and during the night a company of what Captain Lowe took to be Khmer Rouge passed by. They were just out of claymore range. In no mood to make a hasty, impromptu assault, Lowe let the artillery and mortars do the job instead.
The next morning, Delta humped back to FSB Seminole, where Gearin informed Lowe that the battalion was being withdrawn from Cambodia. In five days, the Polar Bears had progressively driven the enemy farther from their headquarters at Ba Thu and, together with their supporting elements, had inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy at Chantrea, Ph Tnaot, and in numerous smaller firefights. Officially, 6-31 Infantry killed fifty-one NVA and captured twenty-one NVA; E Company, 75th Infantry (Rangers), killed four NVA; 2-4 Artillery killed fourteen NVA; 3-17 and D/3-4 Air Cav killed twenty-seven NVA; and USAF F4C Phantoms killed thirty-two NVA.
In the process, though, the Polar Bears had lost eight men killed and twenty-two wounded in what was supposed to have been a limited screening operation in the shadow of the Fishhook and Rach Cai Bac sweeps. The NVA had been engaged in unexpectedly high numbers, but the Parrot's Beak was not a primary concern of higher command, and Long An Province had been unpatrolled too long in the battalion's absence. So, that afternoon, 12 May 1970, A, B, D, and E/6-31 Infantry and C/2-4 Field Artillery were airlifted out of FSB Seminole. The Hueys brought them back to FSB Keaton, and they disembarked with glassy eyes and torn, filthy fatigues. Doc Miller sleepwalked into their barracks, dropped his gear on his cot, took a shower, then hit