Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [192]
Working parties carried the captured equipment to the LZ, and engineers bulldozed a road into the area so trucks were also filled up, but the 2d of the 12th Cav would have bogged down for an intolerably long time if they had tried to evacuate every captured bullet. So, on 10 May 1970, after the decision had been made to destroy what had not yet been back-hauled, Capt. Wilkes T. Martin and M. Sgt. Richard M. Land of the 99th Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Detachment, USARV, Phuoc Vinh, arrived to work out the details. Rock Island East was so crowded with official visitors, reporters, and souvenir hunters that it took the EOD men some time to track down Colonel Ianni. Once they did, it was agreed that a seven-man team would be sent in two days hence and that D/2-12 Cav would provide them with water, rations, and whatever extra explosive materials were required. By the evening of the eleventh, the team had been lifted to FSB Myron, where they were to spend the night, and Ianni briefed the members: Capt. Edward H. Schollian, 533d EOD, M. Sgt. Richard M. Land, 99th EOD, M. Sgt. Richard D. York, 42d EOD, Sfc. Roy L. Catchings, 42d EOD, S. Sgt. Alonzo A. Wilson, 99th EOD, Sp4c. Mike R. Vining, 99th EOD, and Sp4c. Manuel T. Vega, 99th EOD.
Besides being helicoptered into Rock Island East the next morning with their rucksacks, ammunition, and weapons, the team also brought in three hundred cases of C4 plastic explosives, with thirty sticks to a case, each stick weighing one and a quarter pounds, and twelve cases of detonating cord, three rolls to a case and a thousand feet to a roll. Captain Sirota, acting commander of Delta Company, explained their mission. Stacked within each cache were crates of 12.7mm ammunition, and after they had all been sorted out and carried to the LZ, the EOD team was to destroy everything that remained. The work was miserable, the humidity almost unbearable under the canopy that turned the noonday glare into a smoky twilight, and some of the caches were crawling with ferocious red ants that tried to eat the soldiers alive as they worked.
There was every reason to be cautious. Two fire teams from Echo Recon escorted Master Sergeant Land and Spec Four Vega to a narrow trail two hundred meters north of the LZ, and as they set the charges on the two enemy trucks there, movement was detected all around their hasty perimeter. In fact, the third truck of this group had already been rolled off by the enemy and the two remaining had been stripped of some parts. No one fired, and after igniting the ten-minute fuses that had been cut, the team pulled back to the LZ. Right on time there were explosions–but only two, sounding like two blocks of C4, not the fourteen per truck that had been set. Land reported this to Sirota, speculating that the NVA had moved in after they withdrew, and disconnected the two blocks with the primers inserted from the other blocks so their trucks would not be demolished. No one was sent back to try again. Seven GIs had already died for Rock Island East–their names were posted on a large piece of cardboard for all visitors to see–and the unwillingness to risk more lives explains the notation in the subsequent EOD report: “The trucks had not been destroyed and Capt. Sirota ignored this information. The trucks were not mentioned again during the entire operation.”
By the morning of 16 May, only Captain Schollian, Master Sergeant Land, and Specialist Vining remained on site, since most of the work had been completed. All the crates of 12.7mm ammunition had been back-hauled from the slingout pad and the perimeter had shrunk to the immediate vicinity of the landing zone, with only an eight-man team from Echo Recon and the three EOD men still on the ground. Almost ten thousand blocks of C4 had been placed among the crates remaining at each of the twenty-eight pads, each cache linked by two strands of detonating cord, which had been buried and camouflaged, and which ran