Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [22]
The NVA were also always watching.
At first light on 8 March, Charlie Company and Echo Recon continued their hump to a small clearing of elephant grass–tall, bright green, and razor sharp–where they took a helicopter resupply of ammunition and charlie rats. Before pushing off again, the Echo Platoon sergeant, serving as the acting platoon leader, approached the Charlie captain: His guys were pissed about pulling point every day. The CO agreed to place Echo at the rear, so it was that they were still sitting back on their rucks in the LZ clearing when the lead platoon had already humped several hundred meters off the landing zone and right into an NVA ambush among the trees. The CO pushed forward with his other two platoons to extract his pinned-down platoon, while Echo Recon deployed around the clearing to secure it for the mede vacs.
Mortar rounds were lobbed around them as Charlie Company worked its way back with three dead men and a score of wounded.
By then, the sky above them was stacked with aircraft. Loaches. Hueys. Cobras. Phantoms. As was proper, Major General Roberts was at the highest point in the Division C&C and, as was also proper, he spent the least amount of time on the immediate battle control radio nets and the most in communicating to the rear area arranging for air and artillery support, and resupply to the battle area. Colonel Ochs was in the next aerial tier in the Brigade C&C and on the battle control radio net a bit more. Lieutenant Colonel Conrad and Major Moore, his operations officer, were even lower in the Battalion C&C and, donning headsets and leaning out into the slipstream, they dominated the battle control radio nets. Conrad was a typically undramatic battalion commander, a West Pointer on his second tour, an infantry technician: He made sure that the gunships came on station, that the medevacs were en route, that the air strikes were coming in where his captain on the ground wanted them.
At Conrad's direction, smoke grenades were popped and Cobras cleared their guns into the trees around the clearing to cover the first Huey medevac. It never got its skids down before NVA ground fire drove it off.
The captain radioed for more ammunition. It was standard to carry two or three cases of ammo and grenades in the charlie-charlie bird, and, taking advantage of a quick refueling stop, Conrad had more ammo hefted into the cabin. The pilot brought their Huey into a low hover over the LZ and, with the cracks of passing rounds in their ears, Conrad and Moore shoved the ammo out into the clearing. The pilot pulled pitch as groups of two or three GIs materialized from the trees to drag the crates back to cover.
The NVA followed Charlie Company's retreat back to Echo Recon's clearing, and by late afternoon they were firing across the tight perimeter from three sides. Private Rappaport, for one, had hunkered down with several GIs behind the slender trees at the edge of the landing zone. They'd already burned through a lot of ammo and had none to spare. If a bush rustled, they heaved a grenade, if a leaf moved, they fired a burst. One of the guys pumped M79 rounds into the bamboo. Return fire snapped overhead. A brush fire, begun by a smoke grenade, crackled in the brittle grass behind them. Smoke burned their eyes. Several GIs from Echo Recon hacked at the saplings nearest the clearing with machetes in a frantic attempt to expand the landing zone. One of them went down with a bullet in his leg.
Cobras splintered the trees again, and the first Huey was able to set down in the elephant grass. Rappaport and another GI got a wounded man between them and hastily hefted him into