Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [19]
Hard-core.
Back at the contact site, having finally pinned down the lost platoon's position, the infantry's forward observer brought in 155mm fire from the Howitzer Battery to block the NVA's possible escape routes. Then the Sheridans and ACAVs from the G Troop platoon began slowly rolling forward between the trees, on line. Brookshire stood on the back deck of the platoon sergeant's Sheridan holding onto the bustle rack on the back of the turret, where ammunition cans and cartons of C rations were carried. Staff Sergeant Easter, another one of the squadron's hot, young potential lifers on his second tour, was behind the .50, and he and the rest opened fire with such a sustained roar that amid the sweat, smoke, and dust, it was impossible to tell if the NVA were still firing. Smashing through the shrubbery and vines, they found the NVA squad sprawled amid the undergrowth in the twisted positions that the .50-caliber slugs had punched them into.
The body count was twelve.
That was all well and good except that shortly thereafter the assistant division commander (ADC) of the 1st Cavalry Division, whom Brookshire greatly respected and with whom he usually enjoyed a fine working relationship, landed at the 2-11 ACR command post. The brigadier general expressed concern that Brookshire was using his attached straight-leggers as bait. Afterward, Brookshire requested of Starry that the attached company be lifted out and no others sent in. If any straight-leg outfit under his command suffered heavy casualties, there would be too much finger-pointing, and Brookshire would rather be clean of the potential problem. He could, at the same time, appreciate the pressures that the ADC was under. Since the presidential announcement of withdrawal the previous summer, field commanders had had to chart a prudent line between aggressively keeping the enemy off balance, and pursuing the enemy with such vigor as to incur a politically unacceptable number of casualties. The compromise was usually to halt the infantry in place once contact had been made, instead of decisively closing with the enemy, and to allow their superior firepower to do as much damage as possible before the enemy unit fragmented and disappeared.
Everyone knew they were closing up shop.
The tempo of NVA operations, in the meantime, had changed not at all. Of the twelve NVA killed in the skirmish with G Troop and the straight-leggers, ten of them had already been wounded. They had survived the mechanical ambush because the infantrymen had aimed their claymores too low along the trail, but some had had their feet blown off. The surviving two had dragged their wounded comrades to cover and helped bind their stumps, then they had all fought to the last man.
Hard-core.
Chapter 4: HUMPING THE BOONIES
At first light on 7 March 1970, in the Fire Support Base (FSB) L Victor area of operations (AO) of War Zone C, Pfc Alan “Rapp” Rappaport, a squad radioman with the Reconnaissance Platoon, E Company (Support), 2d Battalion, 8th Cavalry, 1st Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), followed his squad's rush into a grove of trees beyond their night perimeter. They had followed blood trails to these trees and had prepped their charge with a couple of M16 magazines apiece and a shower of fragmentation