Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [219]
The chopper pilot began the slow hover back up, with DeLeuil and Miller in the cabin. There was a sudden jackhammering eruption. The Huey jolted in space, and a round impacted against the underside of the armored chicken plate on which DeLeuil was sitting, raising a bruise on his buttocks. It took an eternity of fifteen seconds to ascend through the mine shaft in the trees, the blades pumping with only a few yards to spare, and the warning lights flashing red. The pilot kicked the bird all the way to FSB Mryon.
In 1970, it was easy to understand why a company commander would burn out: His old line NCOs were no longer there. Earlier in the war, they had towered over the troops in age and experience and had kept the machine running. Faced with a second, third, or fourth combat tour, though, some retired early, many others wangled rear jobs, and only a few were still humping an infantryman's ruck. They were sorely missed. What the U.S. Army now had in the jungle were twenty-one-year-old lieutenants and twenty-year-old shake'n'bake sergeants running rifle pla-toons of nineteen-and twenty-year-old kids, usually draftees, often with some college time. The grunts did not instinctively respect or fear these young leaders, but saw them more as brothers in this mess: Who wants to be the last man killed in Vietnam?
Company commanders were running themselves ragged trying to do everything themselves. Problems no longer took care of themselves. DeLeuil found it wise to have a conference call every night with his company commanders over secure voice radio to let them get things off their chests. DeLeuil was an easy commander to talk with, as Captain Kuter wrote home, “Compared to the two previous battalion commanders, it's very reassuring to have someone who seems so human …”
During another long, hard, sweltering day, Bravo Company discovered an old base camp on a hillside, then followed a path to another dilapidated old camp. The next morning, DeLeuil radioed Lodoen to hump back to Myron. Lodoen got off the radio as his GIs ate charlie-rat breakfasts and repacked their rucksacks, then everyone was instantly face down in the underbrush as someone opened fire on the trail where an LP had been set up. Lodoen ran up: A scared GI explained how he had shot an NVA who had walked down the path right into them.
Lodoen glanced at the body. He almost felt sorry for the NVA. He looked like he was twelve. Probably lost.
Nervous about the dead NVA's buddies, Bravo moved with special caution that day. Only two or three hours from Myron, Lodoen sent the point platoon up a rugged hillside to find an NDP site, and the lead squad came face to face with two bunkers. They were freshly dug and laid with freshly cut wood; beyond them was a sizable bunker complex. It was deserted. Lodoen drew a map of it and radioed it in, but the best DeLeuil could do was to arrange an air strike on it: The 5th of the 12th Warriors were leaving Cambodia the next morning. Most of the line companies and their artillery battery had already been shuttled out. Sandbags had been torn open, bunkers pushed in, trash burned, and every stitch of equipment back-hauled. That night, DeLeuil stood on the berm when they fired the phougas barrels buried around the perimeter. Most had never seen them employed before and it was spectacular, then rather frightening when they realized that a change of wind would splatter the napalm back on them. Some real bonfires blazed away around FSB Myron that night.
The next morning, 25 June, Bravo Company completed their hump, and as soon as they cleared the wire at Myron their first sergeant was on hand with blivets of water and cases of Coke. Several Chinooks set down in swirls of dust, and the firebase mortars expended the last of their ammunition in a curtain of explosions around the base. The grunts and mortarmen went out by Chinook; then DeLeuil's Loach made a last low, slow drag over Myron to ensure nothing had been left.
The jungle