Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [193]
Everything was timed and planned. When two Hueys landed, Land and Vining ignited the ten fuses, then ran back to the helicopters that the rest had already boarded. However, one of the pilots reported that he had a weak engine and could not carry his normal load, and as they started aboard, an infantry captain shouted to cut the fuse. Land and Vining ran back and used crimpers to cut each of the ten smoking fuses in half, then went back to the helos, where the captain, apparently told the helo had regained full power, asked, “When's it gonna go?”
“Goddamnit,” bellowed Master Sergeant Land, who had thirteen years in EOD and, well respected by his men, was the real boss of his detachment. “You told me to cut the fucking fuse! It's not going!”
“Light it, light it, light it!”
Out of fuse igniters, Land and Vining split the end of each fuse with a knife, inserted a match head, and lit it with another match. After a second or two of spitting sparks, the lines were burning again. Having been cut in half, they had only seven or eight minutes apiece. With their scare charges starting to go off, the two did not get all the fuses relit before they ran back to one of the Hueys.
The Huey wouldn't lift off!
The door gunner, thinking the scare charges were incoming rounds, grabbed Vining's shoulder and told him to get on the helicopter behind his. As soon as Vining jumped back out, the relieved Huey quickly thumped almost straight up to avoid the trees around the tight little landing zone. Dropping his rucksack and gear as he ran toward the only Huey still on the ground, Vining suddenly saw two men disembark from it and, its straining engine similarly relieved, it too cleared out. Abandoned, terrified, Vining was running to cut the fuses again when another Huey appeared and the three of them piled aboard as the pilot quickly pulled pitch. Four minutes later, at 1727, 16 May 1970, when Vining's helicopter had just made it to a healthy altitude three kilometers away and 3,500 feet up, and as Ianni sat in his command ship with his camera ready, Rock Island East blew up with an enormous mushroom cloud that could be seen some fifty kilometers away at FSB Buttons. When one helicopter descended to insure that all had been destroyed, the pilot had to bank away as tracers began snapping from the jungle canopy.
That same afternoon, Col. Carter Clarke, CO, 2d Brigade, 1st Cav Division, oversaw Lt. Col. Maurice Edmonds, CO, 5-7 Cav, as they CA'd into LZ Brown, one of the few natural clearings in this bumpy, hilly terrain, due south of LZ Myron. Meanwhile, the first CI30 transport planes containing 5-12 Infantry (Lt. Col. David Beckner) of the 199th LIB were touching down at FSB Buttons to secure the area in the absence of the 2d Brigade's airmobile infantry battalions.
First Lieutenant Thomas W. Matthews was a conscientious young officer, but he'd been with the company only a month and his inexperience killed him. C and D Companies secured the cache to back-haul the supplies, and on 13 May 1970, Matthews took out two squad leaders to inspect their claymore mines. They blundered into their own tripwires: Matthews and one of his sergeants were killed instantly, and the third man lost his legs.
When Specialist Fifth Class Jury, ISO, USARV, joined D/2-12 Cav with his cameras on 15 May 1970, he sat with a dozen grunts who had found a very private corner of Rock Island East, thrown up some poncho shelters, laid out some air mattresses, turned up the hard rock on their cassette players, and, convinced by being in the limelight that they were no longer