Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [209]
McBride said no, sir, he was going.
Colonel Ianni returned to his Huey with Lieutenant Janowitz in tow and a company's worth of hot stares drilling into his back.2
Captain McBride and his RTOs moved with the poiiif again, and again they came under heavy fire. Colonel Ianni had helicoptered into another one of his company positions, so it was Major Gatlin in the TOC bunker who answered McBride's call. Gatlin was usually at the TOC since Ianni, breaking with routine, habitually took Gatlin's assistant, Rector, aboard the command ship. Gatlin said to continue pushing forward. McBride asked instead to speak with Ianni, and was told that he would not be back for hours.
“Well, let me talk to him when he gets in. In the meantime, I'm just going to use my own judgment out here.”
Captain McBride's judgment was to pull the company back to the base of the ridge as more artillery plastered the hillside. Soon after having originally taken over C Company, McBride and several other company commanders had been invited to the rear for a meal with the brigade commander. The colonel had commented that they were no longer trying to win a war or to amass body counts, but were instead trying to avoid casualties and maintain a holding action until the war wound down and they made their exit. McBride tucked that reservation into all of his operations, which was bound to get him in trouble with Ianni, who argued that, withdrawals or not, aggressiveness was the key to survival because an enemy left to slip away one day would be there the next day to blow you away.
Slight tremors rolled under McBride's feet as the arty slammed in. He was dizzy as he stood with his map and radios: For the past few days he'd been catching a couple hours of sleep a night, and maybe a charlie rat can of fruit a day. His grunts looked even more wretched. They sat back on their rucks, hollow eyed or unconscious in the heat. No one was complaining, but they looked as if they'd run out of steam.
McBride was a West Pointer, but when Ianni returned to the TOC that evening he canceled his career. In the last five days, C Company had gone from ninety-five to sixty-four men, and he told Ianni that he should either extract his company or reinforce it. Ianni replied that such casualties did not constitute a slaughter, and that he expected his company commanders to motivate their men, not let them feel sorry for themselves. However, since McBride was the man on the ground, Ianni said that he would CA another platoon into his position.
The next morning, Charlie Company moved up the hill again. The NVA were gone. Before long the call went back to McBride that their missing man had been found. Supposedly, the NVA had left him strung to a tree with commo wire, but by the time McBride got up the line, the body was on the ground, face bloated and dark, the eyes horribly sightless. The GI had been shot in the head.
On 3 June 1970, Charlie Company was flown back to FSB Speer to relieve the company on the berm line. A day or two later, Colonel Ianni called McBride in and told him that he was reluctantly relieving him of command. McBride sat subdued, having expected it, as Ianni explained that courage was not the issue but that McBride's sincere concern for his people had interfered with his ability to complete the mean task at hand. He was being reassigned as the adjutant of division rear in Bien Hoa, and he left the battalion bitter and embarrassed. “One amusing thing did happen in all this,” McBride wrote home. “Grand-mother Ely, please don't take any kind of offense but …I got a letter from Grandma E. by a kickout resupply when things looked the darkest. She told me that she was praying for my moral health and to ‘pray for my own self.’ For days I had prayed for all I was worth and had sworn off sneezing in case sneezing was a small sin of some kind. I definitely appreciated Grandmother's concern and good wishes, but at the time it sure was humorous. The timing was just so perfect. So don't worry gang, I have my spiritual stuff in order. If the kid should