Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [206]
Chapter 37: NO NAME HILL
Our new battalion commander is such a frustratingly exacting and hard-nosed man that we company commanders are getting run into the ground trying to please him and not get relieved.“ Captain McBride of C Company, 2d Battalion, 12th Cavalry, was referring to Lieutenant Colonel Ianni when he wrote that to his family the day before the battalion choppered into Cambodia.
On 25 May 1970, the big issue was helmets. Charlie Company had followed a jungled ridge line down into a small, lush draw. Deploying a squad or so on the slope of the next hill they were to hump up, they had received several Hueys, which off-loaded ammunition, rations, mail-bags, and mermite cans of hot food. Ianni also dropped in, and McBride was again on the receiving end as the colonel pointed to all the men who had removed their helmets. He also asked about security measures. McBride mapped out the situation, and Ianni bristled when he heard that no one had moved to the top of the opposing hill. McBride tried to explain that the men put up with a lot and he didn't want any of them to miss this hot meal; it was good for morale.
“What in the hell!” Ianni exploded. “You're worried about these people getting their hot food, and you have no security out! Particularly up that hill!”
Ianni didn't really dislike McBride. He considered him a good-hearted, well-intentioned young man–he was twenty-six. However, the old lesson had to be hammered into him that troops can't afford a commander who feels sorry for them, particularly in a unit where even the platoon sergeants were draftees, where there were no seasoned NCOs to ensure that the fundamentals were taken care of before anyone relaxed. In a way, McBride was a holdover of the attitude that Ianni felt had prevailed when he had taken over back in the FSB Buttons AO, at which time the companies, it seemed to him, were more intent on finding clearings for the resupply birds than on pursuing what few tracks and trails they came across. The men were operating with an eye toward Vietnamization and the Withdrawals, but Ianni was still fighting the hot war.
After Ianni departed, McBride ordered his lead platoon to continue to the top of that next ridge, then he stood beside a tree at the base of the hill as their line waited to follow. From above came the sudden crashing of AK47s and RPGs, then leaves were floating down around him and his RTOs from where rounds had clipped the branches. McBride dropped his rucksack, flattened behind it, and, ears ringing, took the radio to hear, “Hey, we got some killed up here!”
“All right, let's get some support in on that …”
By the time McBride had the artillery lined up, it was all over. Hit and run. The lead squad was probably bunched up, because three men had been dropped with bullets in their heads–killed instantly–and two others had been wounded. One of them was unconscious, a chip of bone shot off the frontal orbital ridge of his skull.
As the company battened down for the night, the FO team called in WP rounds at the four cardinal directions to make sure that they and the firebase artillerymen were playing off the same sheet of music; then the arty periodically dropped rounds in the area to keep the NVA honest. The forward observer's RTO plotted the random targets, and McBride suddenly realized that he was lining up a nearby Cambodian village for a dose of arty. They had humped through that ville shortly before those men died on the hillside. McBride asked what the hell he was doing. The RTO was one scared and pissed-off young man who was convinced that their NVA ambushers had been shielded by those villagers. He was coordinating a little revenge, but McBride put a stop to it.
On 28 May, Charlie Company took another