Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [186]
Johnson and the two platoons with him were able to rush through the jungle to the section of trail where his other platoon had deployed in a thin ring around the three caches they had found. Everyone went prone amid the brush and thorns and vines, facing outward, flattened out, if they were lucky, behind one of the wooden crates. Enemy fire screamed over their heads from all sides as the NVA moved up on the perimeter in groups of three and four, mostly unseen in the tangle, occasionally rustling the brush as they passed and drawing a torrent of M16, M60, and M79 fire on themselves. The heat and tension were smothering. The radiomen from the command group in the center of the miniature perimeter heaved down crates from one of the caches and built a low wall behind which Johnson and Huessed lay coordinating the support fire: 105mm howitzers of 1-77 Artillery were banging out shells from FSB Myron, and Cobras from 2-20 Aerial Rocket Artillery rolled in. The firepower thundered down on all sides of the perimeter except the curve facing the reserve platoon, which was some three hundred meters to the north. They were under only light fire, and a young sergeant with them, a man on his second or third tour, was screaming into the radio to get up to the fight, “…let us come, let us come!”
“Just hold where you are right now,” Johnson answered. “FU bring you in when I can.”
“Well, let me bring a squad and come in. FU leave three squads back here.”
“Just hold where you are!”
Huessed and his RTO brought in salvo after salvo of artillery so close that torn branches dropped down on the men in the perimeter. The arty was landing right where it was wanted and needed. Johnson was running multiple gunship and air strikes, but the NVA fire sustained its roar. So much air support was orbiting their firefight that it got to the point that Johnson couldn't control them all with just his two radios. Alerted that another flight of jet fighters was inbound, Johnson quickly got on the horn to Ianni, overhead in the battalion command ship, asking him to control the strike and have them expend their ammunition along a certain line. Ianni answered, “FU do anything that I can do to help. Whatever you want me to do, just let me know.”
Lieutenant Colonel Ianni, with the sounds of battle coming through his earphones but his view of the battlefield nothing but a lumpy spread of treetops, sounded totally concerned and almost totally helpless.
There was a lull in the NVA fire.
By then, the jungle had been rocked by so many explosions that dust and smoke were thick in the hot, humid, still air. They hung so languidly in the canopy that the gunship pilots, expending their ammunition, then coming back after rearming and refueling, could no longer pinpoint exactly the company perimeter. Delta Company was out of smoke grenades. A helicopter came low to kick out a case of smokes but no one heard where it landed.
The ring of enemy fire began again. The NVA always fired from all sides at the same time but never massed to break through the perimeter at one point. After several more of the peaks and lulls, the three platoons were almost out of ammunition. Crates from the captured caches were broken open; the enemy ammunition was of the wrong caliber and the enemy weapons were unusable, still packed in Cosmoline grease, but the stick grenades from Red China were passed out on the Delta Company perimeter. Several men lay dead on the line, many more were wounded.
The NVA opened fire again from the high brush, one group getting behind a cache and firing into Delta Company from such an angle that, although they were hitting people, it was almost impossible to return the fire. Johnson was in contact with a flight leader who'd been above them for most of the fight and whose bomb racks were now empty.
Johnson asked if that was all he had on.
No, the pilot said he also had 20mm rockets.
Johnson gave the pilot an azimuth and a direction to fire. He made his first run, then he brought him in a hundred meters