Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [176]
On the 27th and 28th, more RIFs.
On the 29th, battening down on his side of the battalion laager after another day of pushing bush, Lieutenant Yarashas got a call from Captain Lechner of Alpha Company, “Joe, you've just made first lieutenant and Colonel Vail wants to make a deal out of pinning the silver bars on.” Yarashas rarely wore a shirt, let alone rank insignia. His guys had to find a shirt that was presentable. A photograph was taken of the miniature ceremony. After pinning on the bars, Vail, the ex-enlisted man, having previously made some negative comments about the abilities of second lieutenants, grinned at Yarashas, “Well, lieutenant, from this point on you're going to be automatically smarter.”
Vail then conferred privately with Lechner, as he did with his other company commanders that evening, after which Lechner called his platoon leaders together in his track. By the time Yarashas walked back to his platoon, all his grunts except the four sitting atop their four APCs on guard had gathered curiously behind the command track. Yarashas gave them a wily smile when they asked what was going on: “Does anybody speak Laotian?” Nervous laughs, then they got down to business. Intelligence had gotten a firmer fix on the NVA headquarters that had drawn them up Ambush Alley the first time, Yarashas explained, and they were going in the next morning. They should expect heavy resistance. After the briefing, the medics came around passing out jumbo sterile bandages, one per man, which spooked everyone, since this was not standard issue: What the hell are we up against?!
The answer, as far as the battalion could determine, was two companies from the security battalion of the NVA headquarters, some three hundred fifty men, who were expected to fight because the caches and files of the headquarters had not yet been evacuated. This information had come from the assistant leader of one of the NVA security platoons. According to this man, a defector to the allies, a deserter to his comrades–and perhaps a plant to deceive them into an ambush–he had come from a wealthy family in North Vietnam and, unable to avoid being drafted into the NVA, had come down the Ho Chi Minh Trail hoping to survive only long enough to surrender. He had waited for three years before the 25th Division finally smashed into his unit's area. The man freely pointed out the dense section of jungle where the intelligence and supply branches of the HQ were bivouacked, as well as the exact locations of the caches where their weapons and supplies were sealed in individual tunnels.
Air and arty hit the area during the night. Then on 30 May, Lieutenant Yarashas settled into his jeep seat mounted beside the track commander's cupola. (The seat had been stolen from the colonel's jeep months before on standdown after Yarashas had made the mistake of kidding his guys that he was getting a bad back sitting on an ammo box.) Because this was to be a battalion operation, Lechner had told them to get into proper uniforms, including web gear. Bitching, Yarashas slung it on. He usually rode shirtless atop his APC, his only equipment his radio helmet. When dismounted he was usually still shirtless, his Ml6 hanging by its sling from one shoulder, spare magazines in a claymore pouch, grenades in a baggy thigh pocket, bush hat crushed down on top.
Lieutenant Yarashas rode the point track of his platoon, leading Alpha Company as they rumbled into the thick jungle toward the enemy head-quarters. Their thin trail eventually forked. Yarashas told Wally, his driver, to follow the right branch. When Wally locked up the right lateral to move in that direction, one of the treads hit what was later estimated to have been a hundred-pound mine. Yarashas was blown straight up from his jeep seat, coming down so hard on the road beside the track that he thought he'd broken his back. He landed