Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [164]
Only the day after C Troop found the rice, Knotts was standing beside one of the forest trails with his civil affairs officer, Bill Connor, and his sergeant major, Willie Hickey, when an APC coming between two trees rolled over a mine. The three walked over. One of the tracks was partially blown off. A sergeant signaled the driver to make a slight pivot that would facilitate the repair work. The pivot detonated another mine that sent shrapnel snapping past Lieutenant Colonel Knotts. The ensuing concussion decked Captain Connor and sent Sergeant Major Hickey rolling end over end. Hickey landed face down, and unconscious, in the mud, with a piece of shrapnel in his neck.
About two weeks later, Hickey approached Knotts and said he'd reached the end of his rope. With no hard feelings for Hickey, an old soldier who'd spent ten months on line with the Three-Quarter Horse, including their hard days in the Boi Loi, Knotts had him replaced with Williams, the huge, towering black first sergeant of C Troop. Hickey went to Division.
Before Captain Schulcz of C Troop lost First Sergeant Williams, in fact on the same day that the sergeant major was wounded, he was placed opcon to Lieutenant Colonel Welsh, whose 4th of the 9th Manchus were searching for caches in an adjacent area. Schulcz enjoyed the liaison because, although Welsh struck him as a solid infantryman, the colonel was not well versed on the armored cavalry and, recognizing that, basically let Schulcz operate as he saw fit. Schulcz's first mission was to pick up one of Welsh's leg companies that had located an enemy headquarter's compound. They had tried to evacuate the mounds of captured radios and codebooks, but the order eventually came to destroy the material because there were not enough helicopters available. Welsh was allotted several hours of blade time on a Loach, which he used to ferry explosives to the company. Schulcz's tracks picked up the grunts–and the battalion chaplain who was out with them–as they hiked away from the lit fuses.
The next day, C Troop responded to a contact made by one of the leg platoons and was rushing down a road in a rubber plantation when Schulcz suddenly saw well-camouflaged bunkers all along the road. Well, I hope nobody's home! he thought. By the time they linked up with the infantrymen, the contact had fizzled out without casualties, and C Troop backtracked to the bunker area. The bunkers led to trails that led to stacks of rice, and Schulcz reported the latest cache to Welsh who, lacking air assets, told him to evacuate it aboard his tracks.
“This is not a dump truck company,” Schulcz laughed. “We don't have the space to do it.”
“Well, pull out what you can.”
Schulcz returned to the battalion command post with one or two bags stuffed aboard an APC, and Welsh informed him that brigade wanted it all evacuated. Again, Schulcz balked and after the evening briefing he took Welsh down to an APC and showed him the interior, explaining that with all the ammunition, ordnance, rations, oil, and sleeping gear, there was no room inside for rice. Nothing could be taken out because, as cavalry, they could be rushed without notice to another hot spot and might not be resupplied for days by their new command. Also, even one of those jumbo bags on top would be a strain on the machinery, and an impediment should they need to spin the .50-cal around to respond to enemy action.
Schulcz suggested that he use his M548 fuel track instead to burn the rice, and with Welsh's consent, C Troop returned to the cache the next morning. They had counted the sacks before and, discovering now that some were missing, a recon patrol followed fresh bicycle tracks to yet another rice cache. The sacks at the