Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [195]
The 5th of the 12th Warriors had previously been uprooted from the Xuan Loc AO, leaving behind what had been relatively happy hunting grounds: Although the jungle was muggy and laced with thorns, and although red ants would pour onto your neck and ruck if you brushed a banana tree, there simply weren't many dinks about. The battalion's hot, lethargic routine had been broken on Day Three of Cambodia. The line companies had been recalled to FSB Libby, which was shut down, then hooked up to Redcatcher Rear, which was a section of the sprawling base at Long Binh, for a two-day standdown. They then caught trucks to Bien Hoa, and four-engined, big-bellied CI30 transports to FSB Buttons, then new orders sent them packing again. They ended up in a small firebase named Snuffy on the site of the old Bu Gia Map outpost, and conducted local patrolling until word was received to make the short hop across the border into FSB Brown. On 11 May, the 5-7 Cav had moved from Brown to another jungle hole, Neal, near a recently discovered but mostly deserted NVA training area, and 5-12 Infantry was to take up the slack.
At dusk on 12 May 1970, Lt. Col. (P) David A. Beckner and Maj. Glen A. Blumhardt, commander and operations officer, respectively, of the 5th of the 12th Warriors, had their battalion crowded along the old airstrip at FSB Snuffy: H&H Company (Capt. Thomas Moore), A Company (Capt. Mike Hess), B Company (Capt. Gordon Perry), C Company (Capt. David Thursam), D Company (Capt. Brice Miller), and E Company (Support) (Capt. George Lodoen).1 D Battery, 2d Battal-ion, 40th Artillery, from the 199th LIB also accompanied the Warriors.
Their new home, FSB Brown, when viewed from above was a brown scab some hundred meters across scraped out of a lush green field, and surrounded by more jungle. There was a berm and some wire left by the previous occupants, but not much else.
Bravo and Charlie Companies were lifted in. Only three of the six 105mm howitzers from Delta Battery, however, were slingloaded into Brown under Chinooks before darkness. The evening rain left the rest of the artillerymen and infantrymen sitting on their rucksacks back at Snuffy. The three howitzers were laid at one end of the firebase under the supervision of 1st Lt. Stan Hogue, XO, D/2-40 FA, the only artillery officer who made it in before the lift was cancelled. Things were pretty hectic as the infantrymen laid claymores and the artillerymen uncrated their ammunition and put fuses in the shells, all of this after sundown and in the rain. And the worst thing that could happen in an unfamiliar, unreinforced perimeter occurred at 0315 when the battalion executive officer, who had gone in with the lead element, radioed the CP at FSB Snuffy: The GIs on the berm had just fired on some faces in the wire.
The single 81mm mortar and the three 105mm howitzers that had been landed began thumping out illumination rounds. Figures moved among the spools of concertina wire. Fire was exchanged. The battalion executive officer reported that it was unclear just what the enemy was trying to do.
The NVA faded back. Time passed.
Then it came, this time from all sides. Mortar rounds whistled down on Brown, and automatic weapons fire began from the surrounding jungle as dozens of shadows poured from the tree line–silhouetted by the ilium–and made a rush for the berm. The infantrymen of Perry's Bravo and Thursam's Charlie leveled M16, M60, and M79 fire into the running men, and the thirty artillerymen under Hogue depressed their three tubes to ground level and did likewise with 105mm high explosive and beehive rounds. Each artillery piece had its own stockpile of ammunition, and those men not on the guns humped the shells to the crews, who were flattened behind their howitzers because of all the tracers that were snapping overhead and occasionally ricocheting off the guns. Only the loaders exposed themselves as they rammed in each fresh shell.
Hogue saw another cluster of NVA rushing across the field. Another