Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [170]
Koch turned to answer and saw that the entire company was heads down along the embankment. In his last six months with the company, they had made little contact, and Koch suddenly choked on the realization that his comrades had grown rusty. If they'd known better, they would have remained on their vehicles and torn the canebreak apart with their .50-caliber and M60 machine guns. In addition, the company commander, a belligerent, thick-necked man so overweight that his helmet looked like a derby, was shouting instructions that, at least in Koch's book, were as incompetent as the troops' response had been inexperienced.
Faced with what appeared to be a reinforced NVA squad at best, the captain decided that they could be flushed by a dismounted, on-line assault across the rice paddy. Koch was incredulous. Since no one said anything to him, he remained atop his track as the company went over the embankment in two groups. Koch was pained to watch men, inexperienced or not, whom he considered good, tight guys, walk into what he knew would be an ambush within an ambush. Koch angrily sighted in on where he'd previously seen the leaves move, thinking: when that sonuvabitch pops up to shoot, I'll nail him!
The NVA, invisible in their spiderholes, let the company get halfway across the rice paddy before they opened fire with a renewed fury.
There were no paddy dikes for cover and, although the group with the company commander flattened themselves and began returning fire, the other group fell back. Actually, they ran all the way back to the embankment and, in doing so, they left behind a medic who'd been shot in the legs.
He let out an occasional yell for help.
As Koch watched from his APC, a black lieutenant and a white sergeant from the captain's group took off toward the medic in a flat-out run. They made it. The sergeant grabbed the medic's arms, the lieutenant his legs. They were stumbling back with him. Aghast, Koch saw the flash of another RPG from the canebreak, and for a fraction of a second, he saw the sergeant's legs standing by themselves as the man's upper body was blown away by the rocket-propelled grenade's direct hit. The lieutenant, splattered with gore from the sergeant, went into shock, screaming and running wildly. A soldier from the captain's group dashed out, tackled the lieutenant, and held him down under the firing from the canebreak.
Incredibly, the medic was still alive. He screamed incoherently from the paddy, and two other medics who'd been part of the retreat clambered back over the embankment. One clutched an Ml6, the other an aid bag. They ran straight across the open field. The company commander's group laid down covering fire into the cane and bamboo.
The two medics went flat beside their partner and began wrapping his wounded legs. They had no cover. Koch, his mind racing, dropped into the driver's hatch of his APC and drove off the road. He hoped to go past them at a slow roll, the medics throwing the wounded man aboard, then grabbing the handles on the back as he hauled off, but they did not look up at his arrival. He should have then halted the track as a shield between the medics and the cane, but he was too excited. Instead, he jerked to a halt beside the three men. F m fucked! Koch stood up on the driver's seat, screaming down at the medics, “Throw him the hell up on the track!”
“We can't move him! His legs are shot and the bones are all broken!”
“Forget his fuckin' –” and out of the corner of his eye, Koch saw the flash. The RPG slammed into the APC under the driver's seat and Koch was hurled straight up and crashed down unconscious on the back deck.
When he came to, he couldn't see, his head was ringing from a ruptured eardrum, and a piece of shrapnel stung in the back of his neck. He could hear firing. He rolled off the APC and landed hard in the dirt.
Someone was shouting his name.
Blind, confused, and terrified, he staggered toward the shouts. Someone hauled him down.