Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [187]
“Roger, sir.”
Captain Johnson was flat on his back as the Phantom shrieked in; he was looking up through the canopy, trying to see a plane or a helicopter– something that if spotted might help the pilots in identifying exactly where he was. When the rockets began screaming to impact, a hunk of rocket shrapnel hit his helmet dead center, putting a dent the size of a golfball in the steel. He grunted into the radio as another piece slammed into his left ankle and separated the ankle bones. The pilot was instantly on the radio with genuine concern in his voice, but his rockets had done the job, killing the NVA behind the crates.
They also set the ammo crates on fire.
Ianni's excited voice was on the radio to Johnson, “…are you hit, are you hit, are you hurt?” Yeah, shit, Johnson said he was but it wasn't all that bad, the real problem was that the cache was on fire. “If it goes, you don't have to worry about us 'cause we're gone.”
Lieutenant Calvert ran up to the burning cache. When they weren't in combat, Calvert was, in Johnson's words, a piece of shit, lazy, hard-headed, one of the boys with his troops, but when they made contact, he came alive. Johnson had never worked with anybody so smart and fearless under fire.
Reuben Calvert smothered the cache fire.
Saved from a blizzard of exploding enemy munitions, Captain Johnson realized that after two hours of heavy contact, with about five of his men dead and twenty wounded, the NVA seemed to be pulling out. There was no way to be sure, though, and Ianni alerted him that Echo Recon was to be CA'd in to reinforce Delta Company. As they hunkered down and waited, Doc Vegas, the senior medical aid man, scrambled over. Johnson chewed him out for leaving the wounded men on the perimeter, but Vegas assured him that they were being attended to as he scissored Johnson's nylon-and-leather jungle boot down to the ankle and got a bandage around the swelling, bruised abrasion. The only other man seriously wounded by the friendly rockets was a kid named Butts, who'd been a taxidermist in civilian life and who'd always declined Johnson's demands to stuff a dead gook for him so he could take it home and mount it. Butts had been hit twice before. This was it; he was going home. That is, as soon as the area was really secured.
* * *
Lieutenant Hudnell of Echo Recon had been working independently with his twenty-man platoon, looking for caches, when Lieutenant Colonel Ianni told him to clear an LZ and be prepared to CA into the Delta Company fight that he'd been monitoring over the radio. Hudnell had served in combat with the Big Red One as a private, and with the 1st Cav as a staff sergeant, before winning a battlefield commission and command of Echo Recon. Cambodia was their first major operation together. After getting the word about the CA from Ianni, Hudnell turned to his eager platoon sergeant, who, if the truth be known, was burned out and didn't know it. An old soldier at thirty, Staff Sergeant Smith wore the Horseblanket on both shoulders. The troops, who tolerated his ineptitude with good humor, called him a shit sandwich instead of a cav sandwich. Hudnell had previously sent him back to be the supply sergeant. Although Smith had literally begged company commander Camp to let him rejoin the platoon, he was still stuck in the rear on the eve of the incursion. That's when Camp departed for R and R and, without permission, Smith, who considered himself invulnerable, headed back for the bush. The troops ignored him. So did Hudnell: His