Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [155]
Approaching another group of hootches on stilts with roofs of red tile, the lead Sheridan reported that unidentified people were on the road. Schulcz told them to hold their fire. He was concerned about civilians as well as the Royal Cambodian Army. Schulcz had previously listened incredulously to the part of the operations order that explained that because the location of allied units had not been relayed to the 25th Division, the ground troops could not open fire on every uniformed Oriental they saw. That was a nerve-racking directive. The figures on the road turned out to be villagers, however, which was luck: They could just as easily have been NVA with RPGs having the advantage in this game where the one who shot first usually survived.
The only people they met were Cambodians, who traded their delicious pineapple for C rations. The Kit Carson Scout on Schulcz's APC pointed out the areas he recognized when he'd originally been in this area, before his defection when he was coming down the infiltration trails with a communist weapon and a communist uniform.
While C Troop moved in column toward Krek on the flank of 3-4 Cav, A and B Troops moved abreast, on line, while the helicopters of D Troop (which was organic but not opcon) skimmed in ahead of them. The Loaches and Cobras spotted nothing hostile and, likewise, when the Sheridans and APCs reconned by fire as they ground slowly forward in the forest, no fire was returned. The advancing line was slowed somewhat by the terrain, including marshy pockets of a fine gray silt nicknamed elephant dung, but not by any man-made obstacles. Knotts, overhead in a Loach with Hickey, was pleased:
We knew NVA forward supply depots were in the vicinity, and we knew such depots remelted the TNT from dud B52 bombs and used it in making all kinds of grenades and mines. We all expected significant numbers of antipersonnel and antitank mines at the border and along the road up to Highway 7. I was delighted and nearly amazed that we had encountered none. I wonder if COSVN was aware there were no mines there. I suspect all three troop commanders and their troopers were also considerably surprised and thankful at what must have been some NVA engineer officer's failing.
Captain Schulcz and Charlie Troop had just checked the civilians on the road when dragonfly lines of Hueys bearing the 4th of the 9th Manchus and the 1st of the 27th Wolfhounds thumped past overhead.
The infantry LZs were cold, except for the one where A/1-27 Infantry landed. They took one wounded from an NVA delaying squad, then walked into a supply depot four hundred meters in circumference that had been evacuated so hastily that the GIs found rice cooking on NVA field stoves. The NVA were not holding their ground; they were running. Once again, Loaches from D/3-4 Cav played above the treetops and trails, dropping red smoke grenades to guide the Cobras to where the retreating enemy units were spotted.
At 0910, a light scout team took ground fire some three klicks south of Krek, and returned it at a cost of eleven NVA killed. The aero rifle platoon was inserted and a brief firefight left two more NVA dead, while a third was hauled back to the helicopters as a prisoner.
At 1500, eight NVA died under the miniguns. At 1505, eight more NVA died. At 1530, the sighting of a large group of NVA resulted in fifty-eight more kills being recorded in the 25th Division operational report.
Meanwhile, south of the turkey shoots, A and B Troops, 3-4 Cav, chugged north through trees and vines and broke into a clearing near Route 7. They then wheeled west and guided along the macadam road. One troop reconned a gravel path that branched off the highway to the south, while the other continued on into a roadside hamlet.
The troop on the gravel nosed into a bamboo grove on the left shoulder and suddenly came under enemy fire that dribbled off under a blaze of .50-caliber and M60 machine guns. Knotts and Hickey darted down in their