Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [18]
During March and April 1970, the 11th ACR's automatic ambush campaign netted ten to thirty bodies or blood trails per night, with 2-11 making most of the contacts. According to Brookshire's memory, 2-11 killed three hundred sixty NVA and captured ten NVA at the loss, before the counterattack on Fort Defiance, of one man–1st Sgt. Willie Johnson of E Troop. Moving from ACAV to ACAV during a night attack on his laager, Johnson took an RPG in the chest.
Chapter 3: HARD-CORE
Not long after originally entering War Zone C and before Fort Defiance had been established as the command post, Lieutenant Colonel Brookshire had attached to his squadron a company of infantry from the 1st Cavalry Division. The company was typical grunt–graffiti across their helmet covers, olive-drab sweat towels around their necks, the stoop-shouldered, bandy-legged walk under their eighty-pound ruck-sacks, the stiff laces of their bleached and cracked jungle boots. Brookshire attached the straight-leggers to Captain Dickerson of G Troop, and had them deployed in platoon ambushes along the NVA supply trails. ACAVs busted paths through the undergrowth to each ambush position so that G Troop could reinforce quickly if needed. Each platoon wired a mechanical ambush, a less elaborate version of the automatic ambush, and one night one of their chains of claymores suddenly detonated in a burst of thunderclaps. At daybreak, the platoon walked in to police up the ambush but was ambushed itself.
The company commander broke contact to medevac his wounded, but the highway had not yet been cleared of mines and the morning fog was still down at the treetops: No medevacs were flying yet.
In fact, there was only a single helicopter in the air, piloted by Major Smart and Captain McKnight of the 11th ACR Air Cavalry Troop. Earlier, when Smart had arrived at Troop Operations at Quan Loi, he found that McKnight, his operations officer, had told everyone to“sleep in”since the fog was so thick you couldn't see across the base airstrip. Smart, who had just come to the troop from a USARV position at Long Binh, where he had certified instrument qualification for helicopter pilots, told McKnight that, fog or no fog, if the weather in the squadron area was okay, they would get an instrument clearance and take off. McKnight objected that the instrument facilities were unreliable, but when Brookshire radioed back that the weather in his area was marginal but at least he could see some blue sky, Smart and McKnight took off into the fog.
Their helicopter was guided to the squadron laager, where Lieutenant Colonel Brookshire climbed aboard. Following the highway toward the contact area, they spotted a cavalry platoon from G Troop moving cross-country as the reaction force, and Smart and McKnight touched down long enough so that Brookshire could jump out and climb onto the back deck of one of the Sheridans. Rolling up to where the infantry company had pulled back, Brookshire talked quickly with the company commander, who explained that he had pulled his wounded back but couldn't call in artillery because he and one of his platoons had lost track of each other's exact positions in the tangled, confusing brush.
Meanwhile, Smart and McKnight were directed down through the fog one more time, and