Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [154]
During the afternoon as I sat on the edge of the Bo Bo Canal washing my filthy uniforms, my radio operator, PFC Gary Moran, called out that “Tropical Lightning 5” was inbound. That was Brig. Gen. Roy Thurman, Assistant Division Commander of the 25th Division, to which we were attached. I quickly slipped on my soggy trousers, flak jacket, and steel pot and rushed to the helipad just in time to meet the helicopter. As I reported, BG Thurman responded, “I know who you are, Captain, what's the situation this sector.” I explained the location of the infiltration trails on my map, told him of our “artillery pile-on” with howitzers, “dusters,” and mortars, and showed him where my rifle platoons patrolled and am-bushed. His response caught me off guard. “Let's go up and take a look.” Although the outside temperature was in the nineties, I damn near froze to death in my wet clothes in that helicopter. As we flew the corridor between the enemy base at Ba Thu, Cambodia, and my firebase, the new trails through the grass were clearly visible, passing just out of range of my radar to the north and south. He asked me what I needed and I said “helicopters to extend the reach of my night ambushes and on-call gunships if we run into more trouble than we can handle.” He said, “You'll get what you need.”
In Cambodia, Brigadier General Thurman ordered his C&C Huey into a hot LZ to evacuate a wounded man, and thus took a 12.7mm AAA round in his helicopter. The sheet of metal containing the big, ugly bullet hole was cut out, commented Capt. James R. Swinney, assistant operations officer, HQ, 25th Division (and former CO of C/3-4 Cav), and presented to the ADC during one of the nightly briefings at Cu Chi. Continued Swinney, “… there was substance to Thurman, and his exploits were almost front-page news at the five o'clock briefings– where did Thurman go today, what did he do?”
On the morning of 9 May 1970, as planned and on schedule, C Troop, 3d Squadron, 4th Cavalry, moved north from their laager position straddling the border and followed Highway 22 where it dissolved into Route 78. Halting his column while the engineers checked the suspicious stream for mines and booby traps, Captain Schulcz watched their artillery prep begin thudding in farther north. The helicopters bearing the infantry battalions would not be far behind. Lieutenant Colonel Knotts radioed Schulcz to get their AVLB down and proceed on so as to be in place to screen the flank of the infantry insertion and to reinforce the straight-leggers if needed. Schulcz was trying to follow doctrine and sweep and secure the far bank before bringing the bulk of his troop across, and he could just predict that the AVLB would break down and mess up his column on the road if he tried to move it forward while the sweep phase continued. Knotts put the pressure on him two or three more times to set the AVLB in place over the stream, and Schulcz finally just said screw it. Instead of maneuvering the AVLB forward past his column, as the point element continued securing the far bank, he took the calculated risk of calling in his engineers before they finished their mines weep and ordered his column to continue across the stream. He left the AVLB at the rear of the column to get itself in place. Sure enough when Schulcz checked back later, he found that the AVLB had indeed temporarily malfunctioned and had sat dead on the road for some four hours.
Continuing northwest beside Route 78 toward Krek, staying off the road to avoid possible mines, C Troop rolled past terrain that was refreshingly neat and clean. Town and field reflected a simple, orderly beauty, the