Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [208]
Charlie Company swept back into the hootch complex, with Lieutenant Downing and Lieutenant Janowitz leading. The air hung trapped and stale amid the vines, and the filtered sun cast shadows through the canopy. The heat was smothering. Sweat towels were soaked, nerves were tense. The platoon file on the left slowed to a snail's pace as they began to hump up the jungled slope beyond the hootches. McBride radioed them to quicken the pace, then finally had to stride up the platoon line, murmuring at the frightened kids, “What the hell! Nobody's shooting at you. Quit slowing down.”
McBride got the platoons fanned out and, with his RTOs tagging along, he stayed on the point, trying to shame his men into going on.
The AKs exploded from farther up the slope.
McBride saw a face pop up from a hole and he triggered his M16 at the black hair and green fatigue shirt. He then radioed his platoons to eat dirt, and brought in support fire from the 105mm howitzers of C/1-77 FA and the 155mm howitzers of A/1-30 FA on FSB Speer. The shells whistled in, and clods of dirt and spent bits of shrapnel came pattering through the leaves above them amid grunts of, “Jesus, how close is that stuff?” McBride got operations officer Gatlin on the radio to report that arty was coming in too close for comfort. They were going back and forth about that when an excited voice cut in on the radio that McBride had to his other ear: Sp4c. John Marquez had just been killed; a chunk of artillery shrapnel had blasted through his helmet. McBride moved over to the body. Goddamn. Marquez had been a good kid. Quiet, hardworking. The artillery was turned off, and Phan-toms roared in next to send silver napalm cannisters tumbling through the treetops as Charlie Company continued hugging the slope of the ridge.
During this, Lieutenant Colonel Ianni found a spot to land his C&C Huey, and he snapped at McBride, “Why in the hell did you pull back? What was the size of the enemy?”
McBride replied that the NVA might have a platoon on the hill, but there was no way to tell. They were dug in tight with a slit trench or a network of spiderholes on the slope, and even a good-sized squad could put out enough fire to bog down a company. Supporting arms wasn't blasting them out. Ianni was unimpressed, “Hey, you've got a hundred and some men. You don't have to go making any suicidal charges, but what are you doing breaking off an engagement with the enemy?”
Ianni wanted fire and maneuver.
It is always a balancing act for a commander to complete the mission even as he looks out for the welfare of his men, and in this case, rightly or wrongly, McBride became mulish. He tried to explain that his troops were inexperienced and suffering from combat fatigue. But he was a soft-spoken man. Lieutenant Janowitz must have thought that Lieutenant Colonel Ianni wasn't really listening, because he suddenly elbowed his way into the huddle. Janowitz looked like Abbie Hoffman and probably shared his political ideas. He barely controlled his anger as he told Ianni that this was an utterly ridiculous mess: Why should we risk our lives to recover what is probably a corpse when we know the NVA are waiting up there to ambush us? Ianni barked back, “First of all, we're going back there because that's where the enemy is. And we're not going to leave a body!”
Ianni relieved Janowitz on the spot. Then he turned back to his company commander, “McBride, do you want me to stay here with you and go?”
McBride said no, he could handle it.
“I'm not sure, because the clear impression you're giving me is that you're not prepared