Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [217]
A medic scooped the mud from Olson's mouth so he could breathe, and after getting his one very rattled lieutenant medevacked–a good kid but a dumbbell, Lodoen thought–the request went to battalion for an explosive ordnance team. A morning or two later, the CO of the 99th EOD, USARV, departed Phuoc Vinh aboard a Loach along with eleven cases of explosives. His partner, Specialist Vining, was completely nonplussed as the CO said that he'd heard there were news people at the cache site. So that's why the captain was finally coming on another mission! They landed at the 5-12 Rear at FSB Buttons. The S-4 made arrangements for their flight to FSB Myron, where DeLeuil briefed them and then used his C&C Huey to drop them into Lodoen's position.
Vining climbed into the first cache bunker, which held one hundred three 120mm rounds, one per crate. Like the other caches he'd worked in, this one was full of “all manner of critters”: Cave crickets bounced off the damp earthen walls, off his bush hat, and off his back; and centipedes hanging from the ceiling retreated from his flashlight. The centipedes didn't bite, but the brush of their long legs secreted a poison that left blisters if they walked across your skin. Vining also kept his eyes open for the six-inch scorpions that claimed the jungle as their turf while a pair of 199th grunts handed down five cases of demo. Vining then cut two ten-minute fuses, which he ignited after Lodoen moved his people back a safe distance. Scratch one cache, but by then the rain clouds had closed over their LZ and Lodoen said they'd have to spend the night.
Much to Vining's embarrassment, his captain began complaining that they couldn't stay, explaining how important and busy they were, even as Lodoen kept repeating that no more choppers were flying. Finally, the captain picked up his rucksack. Vining, who stoically went on three hundred eighty EOD incidents during his combat tour, showed him how to set up a poncho hootch. If this was not the captain's first night in the bush, he gave every impression that it was. As he sat bitching the next morning about a spider bite, Vining grinned inside: When they'd left for the mission, the other guys had told him he didn't need to bring back the captain.
The demolition work continued. For the 5th of the 12th Warriors, the whole operation was a matter of searching and searching. During its forty-five days in Cambodia, the battalion discovered: 636 B-41 rocket-propelled grenade launchers, 449 AK47 and SKS rifles, 4 mortars, 429,850 AK47 and SKS rounds, 4,846 rocket, mortar, and recoilless rifle rounds, 4 trucks, 9 jeeps, 16 Chinese radios, 6,682 radio batteries, 10,000 feet of communications wire, 2,000 bicycles, and 320 tons of rice.
There was a price to be paid: Fourteen men from the 5th Battalion, 12th Infantry, died in Cambodia. The humps up and down the jungled ridge lines were arduous both mentally and physically: Soaked by the almost daily rains, unshaven, hunched under their rucks, the grunts moved through the clinging, dense underbrush like zombies. Always hot. Always thirsty. Always hungry. You couldn't see more than ten feet ahead. And the NVA seemed to be everywhere. This was their backyard. The whole place was a maze of trails and caches, and even if the NVA bunkers weren't evident, the tree stumps from their construction were. A combat photographer who joined Delta Company on the fringes of Bravo Company's large find captured the claustrophobic paranoia of the foot soldier under the canopy:
The helicopter set down in a small landing zone and American soldiers clutched their hats and ran forward from the tree line. Water and hot food were swiftly unloaded, and crates of new SKS rifles were tossed aboard. The chopper rose and flapped away, and soldiers scurried back into the edge of the jungle. “We found the rifles