Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [196]
The NVA had been obliterated.
He saw other NVA reaching the berm. Infantrymen were tossing gre-nades to just the other side of the berm, and in the confusion of noise and flashes and dark and light, it seemed to Hogue that green tracers from two or three AKs were going out from behind them. He couldn't tell if several NVA had actually clambered over the berm, but he was terribly concerned that, if they had, one might get a satchel charge into the artillery ammunition, which was sandbagged but not yet dug in. Hogue had no radio communications with the infantry, so he sent a runner to tell them about the tracers. In short order–Hogue couldn't see what was happening–the AK fire stopped.
For two hours, the NVA kept coming. Finally, by twilight, the artillery-men, out of ammunition, were firing illumination rounds straight over the berm, hoping that the cannisters would hit some of the NVA still running in the field. At 0545, the gunner on the infantry's single mortar dropped his last round down the tube. One GI from the mortar crew had been shot and killed as he carried ammunition to the tube, and eight other GIs had been wounded, but by dawn the NVA attack had petered out.
Fifty-nine NVA were dead in the wire.
Lieutenant Colonel Ianni of the 1st Cav had monitored the radio reports from FSB Brown and had his command ship at FSB Myron loaded with mortar rounds. Brown was a short chug to the south, and they came in over the treetops through the hazy gray twilight. The NVA were still lobbing in an occasional mortar round as they landed. Ianni told his pilot to go back for more ammunition, then jogged over to the bunker where the major from the 5th of the 12th had things well in hand.
Ianni's C&C returned and out hopped a reporter whom Ianni had previously told to stay off his ship: The weight priority was to ammo. By then the sun was up, the enemy was gone, and the rest of the battalion was completing its shuttle into the firebase. To one side the captured NVA weapons were stacked up, including seventeen AK47s, eleven SKSs, four RPGs, two pistols, three RPDs, and one 60mm mortar. The NVA dead were similarly stacked up in a bulldozed ditch: Just grab an arm or a leg and pull. The reporter complained to Ianni about that. Ianni was disgusted, “These people have just been in a life-and-death situation. They're exhausted. Do you really expect them to carry these dead NVA gently to the ditch?!”
Bits and pieces of those North Vietnamese shredded by the beehive rounds were also thrown in for burial. The dead enemy soldiers appeared unusually young, maybe fifteen to seventeen years old, and had new weapons and new uniforms. They might have been recruits from a training compound discovered nearby, but new to battle or not, some of these young soldiers had been wounded one, two, or three times but kept charging back until they had been killed. Their bandages were proof of this. These young men had died bravely. Others had died obliviously: Vials of liquid speed were found in the pockets of many of the corpses. Colonel Robert W. Selton, CO of the 199th Redcatchers and a visitor to FSB Brown after the attack, said:
The casualties were probably more one-sided than was usual in a normally well-planned and executed attack by NVA regulars. Heavy blood trails could be seen from the berm back into the jungle, indicating numerous wounded in addition to the fifty dead. Without detracting from the valor or professional expertise of our troops, who were in an unfamiliar place in the dark of night, I would assume that the NVA saw the 1st Cavalry Division withdrawal from LZ Brown and, believing the LZ to be abandoned, thought they could walk in. Surprised at discovering American troops in the berm, they were forced to hastily improvise an attack–an undertaking not well suited to the well-disciplined, dedicated, and tough junior NVA commanders who, nevertheless, lacked initiative and independent decision-making