Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [197]
On the battalion's first full day in Cambodia, 14 May 1970, luck was still with them as they located a fifty-ton rice cache. The company at the cache site was joined by bulldozers from the 20th Engineer Brigade, escorted by tracks from the 11th Armored Cavalry (which was pushing north from Snoul), which began to carve out one of the many roads leading back across the border to facilitate the back-hauling of the captured material. With the first eight tons of bagged rice loaded in trucks, the column reached FSB Brown that afternoon, where shirtless grunts and artillerymen were digging in. Captain David P. Kuter, the battalion surgeon, noted in a letter that night, “It was sure exciting to hear bulldozers break out of the jungle into the clearing in which Brown is located, followed by tanks, trucks, and armored personnel carriers–one hundred vehicles in all. It was great to see evidence that other Americans were in the area, for it seemed rather lonely with just our battalion in the midst of the NVA's large base and supply complex.”
Things began going downhill the next day. Operating between FSB Brown and FSB Myron, Captain Perry, CO of B Company, 5-12 Infantry, walked in platoon file into the fringe of an NVA base camp around midafternoon. Pushing deeper, Perry, an experienced soldier who'd been wounded three months earlier, fanned out two platoons on line with his third walking drag. About the time that everyone was realizing that the complex was too big for one company, the 3d Platoon, on line with the 2d Platoon, crested a gradual, wooded incline and came face to face with three soldiers of the North Vietnamese Army. They were sitting with their arms stacked, cooking rice.
The 3d Platoon took them under fire. Then the jungle came alive with fire from the squads of NVA entrenched throughout the complex. The 3d Platoon was shot up on the hillside; one man was killed, about ten were wounded, the rest were pinned down.
Less than a hundred yards down the slope, 2d Platoon dropped in place among the trees. While on drag, 1st Platoon did the same, only to take some wounded from NVA suddenly appearing at the rear of the company. Bravo was strung out and pinned down.
From their slope, 3d Platoon reported that they were running low on ammunition. Down in the 2d Platoon area, Staff Sergeant Smith, the platoon sergeant, a man on the second of three combat tours, draped six or seven M16 bandoliers around his neck, shoved three or four M60 bandoliers into a waterproof bag, and, along with a second man similarly loaded down with ammo, began crawling toward the buzzsaw. Smith and his partner got to within shouting distance of the GIs on the slope. These men yelled that they couldn't come back, so Smith and his partner flung the bandoliers up to them, then asked if any wounded needed to be taken back down. The shouted answer was that they couldn't pull back because the NVA positions included a little knoll that overlooked their only possible avenue of withdrawal.
In the tangle under the canopy, Bravo Company hunkered down as the jungle vibrated under the return fire that was mustered. The jets flashed over the expanse of green at supersonic speeds, releasing their bombs over the clearing around Brown. The men on the firebase had the eerie sensation of watching the clusters of black specks pass directly overhead, wobbling, hurtling forward and down into the jungle. The Phantoms flew all day. The firebase howitzer crews, in helmets and flak jackets, expended their ammunition as fast as the Chinooks could sliqgload it in, but it was not enough. Bravo Company was pinned down all night, with 1st and 2d Platoons sort of pulled together in a circle, the word out not to fire toward the incline where 3d Platoon was still scattered and bleeding. The artillery fired during the night and into the next morning. With the sun, the Phantoms were up again and Hueys orbited Bravo to try to get their wounded. The first medevac descended into the crossfire but veered off when the medic aboard was seriously wounded. The next medevac was similarly