Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [188]
Great kids, Hudnell thought: gang members, really. He doubted that they ever really adjusted after their very private, personal war was over.
Echo Recon combat assaulted into the same clearing that Delta Company had. In radio contact with Johnson, Hudnell retraced their route south to where the reserve platoon was hunkered down around the company's rucksacks. That tough sergeant who had tried earlier to get up to the main fight joined the recon platoon, which, after also dropping their heavies, picked up extra ammunition from the reserve platoon. Getting the sergeant's extra squad in line, they pushed on to the brush above the hard-packed red clay trail where the trucks had been found. The trail sat in a slight depression, and about seventy meters down it, they could see an M60 crew lying beside it. Hudnell radioed ahead to Johnson, “Delta Six, this is Serpent Eight-six. I see your machine gunner, and I'll be there in like one-zero-one-five.”
Johnson was afraid that if Echo Recon approached through the brush they might get fired up by nervous grunts on his perimeter. “The area's fairly well secured. Get on the redball.”
Reluctantly, Echo Recon took the trail.
They were hustling quickly toward Delta Company when Staff Sergeant Smith ran up from the rear of the column to Lieutenant Hudnell, who was third man back from the point. Smith stopped him. He had the butt of his M16 on his hip, his hand wrapped around the magazine well. “What the hell are we doin' walkin' –” and Hudnell suddenly saw the first bullet slam through Smith's hand, knocking the magazine out of his rifle. In that instant it seemed that a hundred rifles–probably ten–opened fire from the left side of the trail. In the moment before he dove, Hudnell saw the next rounds instantaneously punching into Smith's shoulder and neck. Smith fell back on his butt on the red trail, propped up by his rucksack, as several AK47s were emptied into him. Hudnell somehow had gotten behind a tree to the right, and was still alive. The side facing the enemy squad was blasted apart in a shower of splinters as he shrieked at his machine gunner, “Get this motherfucker off of me!”
The platoon sniper, Sparks, raised his arm to signal something and was nailed in the chest, just as the M60 team from Delta, up the trail, turned their machine gun down the enemy's side of the trail and quickly quelled the ambush.
Leaving Smith's body, they quickly dragged Sparks to Johnson's perimeter. Hudnell sat down with Sparks's head in his lap, stroking the man's hair as the medic stripped off his shirt. The round had entered through one armpit, tumbled through both lungs, then blown an exit hole through the lower ribs on the opposite side. Sparks knew he was dying, and his hoarse whisper was terrified, “I can't breathe …/ can't breathe …”
Sparks died in Hudnell's arms.
Hudnell noticed then how lucky he had been. The handle of his Randall knife had been shot off, and he had a bullet hole through the toe of his jungle boot, a hole through one canteen, and another hole in a smoke grenade inside his rucksack.
Shaken, Hudnell walked over to Johnson, with whom he had a good rapport. Johnson, in considerable pain from his ankle wound but still very much in command, handed him a canteen cup of C-ration coffee and calmed him down as he pointed and explained what needed to be done. Leaving their dead in the thick brush, Johnson had previously pulled his survivors into an even more compact perimeter