Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [173]
“You can't make me fire. Nobody can make me fire this weapon. They can send me to Vietnam, but every time we get fired up, I'm just going to lay low until it's over.”
Ross buried the impulse to kill the man, and instead shoved his face into his, “Get the fuck away from me. Just get the fuck away. Get your ass out of my sight, or I'm going to shoot your ass myself.”
The GI disappeared.
Another ambush, and Ross and his squad were at the prone, firing perfunctorily, out of the worst of the crossfire. There was heavy firing at the point, and the call for a medic. The new platoon medic, a black kid, was on the ground beside Ross. A minute later, the call was repeated. The new medic stared ahead stunned, then looked at Ross, who was looking at him. Another call and Ross said, “They need somebody up there. You better get going.”
The medic got up to his hands and knees, then froze up. There was no cover on the roadway for the hundred meters to the point.
“Medic!”
Ross scuttled over to the new man, “Let's go. We'll go together.”
The medic got up and they hustled up the road, emptying a few magazines into the brush along the way. The two of them literally slid behind one of the point tracks like they were on the baseball diamond; then without thinking that it would be best to stay where he was until things quieted down, Ross spun around and ran back to his original position with his squad.
Jim Ross was twice decorated for valor.
His was a good platoon, but they had a complaint: They felt that they were riding point on Ambush Alley more often than their sister platoons. Lieutenant Yarashas, who made it a point to fill sandbags alongside his men and to talk with them at night over the Cs, answered their bitching, “Look, the reason we're riding point is because Captain Lechner doesn't want anybody else riding out there. We haven't had any problems.”
“Well, shit, you know, what do we have to do to get off point?”
“Screw up.”
“Well, we're gonna get killed then.”
“Well,” said Yarashas, who had a dry sense of humor and a constant smile, so the men never saw the pressure he was under, “you're gonna keep riding point then.”
Ambush Alley was in what some considered Charlie's backyard, and when the rain crashed down at night the Mad Minutes actually lasted five minutes apiece. Artillery fired harassment and interdiction missions, and whenever the weather allowed, Phantoms came in to splash napalm into the trees along Ambush Alley to keep North Vietnamese Army RPG teams away from the supply convoys and track patrols. The NVA kept the pressure on, though, because operating in squads, they were able to slip up to the road undetected, dig in, fire their rocket-propelled grenades at whatever happened past, then disappear back into the smothering tangle. For all the shooting along Ambush Alley, Private Ross saw only one enemy soldier, early on when the company approached a bend where the elevated road gave way to a flat, sandy clearing. The NVA was crossing the trail when the point track rounded the corner. He froze, and a burst of .50-cal dropped him. They left him lying there, stretched out, face in the dirt, and three days later when the company came by again, the man was still there, black, bloated, and carpeted with flies.
On 20 May, the regular supply convoy reached the battalion command post laager, but reported that because of the deteriorating condition of the road, further resupply would have to come by helicopter.
On 21 May, with their trucks and wheeled howitzers towed behind tracks, the Triple Deuce began withdrawing south on the main road with 1st Lt. Francis G. Ratka's Scout Platoon on point. We're always the guinea pigs, thought Sp4c. Tim Albright, a twenty-year-old trooper riding atop the second track in line; and sure enough they had not gone far when the ambush began. Albright saw RPGs aimed at the lead track slamming into the dirt–missing. The driver of his track, Putterball, brought them to a halt as they began tearing down the roadside tangle with their return fire, with no real idea of