Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [225]
Homesick. Lonely. Scared.
Lieutenant Peske considered his time in Vietnam as dead time. Meaningless. But you couldn't let your guys down.
On 29 May 1970, in the rubber plantations of Memot, Cambodia, Lieutenant Peske almost died for his men. He was riding atop the lead of his four APCs as they headed back to the company laager. It was another sweltering, dusty day. Something suddenly shrieked in Peske's ears and stung up and down his left side. Hensen, his driver, was screaming and screaming and trying to push himself out of his hatch but couldn't. Without exploding, an RPG had punched through the left side of the track–smashing through Hensen's legs–and out the other side. As the crew on the back deck clambered off and headed for the roadside ditches, Peske tried to tug Hensen up and out as AK rounds ricocheted off the APC. Leaves and twigs fell down from overhead. Peske's left arm wasn't responding, and Hensen was too busy screaming to help, but with a surge of adrenaline, Peske finally managed to get him out. One of Hensen's legs was gone, barely bleeding because the heat of the rocket had cauterized the amputation, and the other leg was hanging by shreds. Peske screamed for help, but no one heard or wanted to hear, so he just dumped Hensen off the pony to the road.
Hensen's mangled leg tore off on impact, and he seemed to yell out. It was hard to tell in all the fire.
Mostly it was enemy fire. The other three ponies had jerked to a halt behind the smoking point vehicle. Sergeant DeFrank was one of the few returning fire, standing on the road, horribly exposed, his M16 to his shoulder. A terrific impact against the front of his rifle suddenly spun him around, and squeezed tight against the side of his track a second later he saw the round dent in the flash suppressor of his M16 where the AK47 round had hit it. DeFrank simply slipped a fresh magazine into his battered M16 and kept shooting.
He was about the only one. Peske, tumbling into the roadside ditch after several men had scrambled out to drag back Hensen, grabbed Harvey and screamed at him to get back up and man the fifty. Harvey swung himself up on the point APC and spun the .50-cal to face the rubber trees. Hands on the grips, he started splintering trees while Peske clutched his bloody arm and hustled to the next pony in line. The crew was buttoned up inside and he screamed at them to man their guns. A head popped up to exclaim, “We thought you were dead!”
“No, I'm not! Now get out or we'll all be dead!”
“No!” Confusion. Fear.
“I'm going to throw a grenade inside if you don't get out!”
The second .50-cal went into action, and Peske sprinted to the next pony, hollering for the medic. The medic was so scared he wouldn't come out until Peske promised to run between him and the fire. They held each other as they ran to the ditch. The rubber trees for a hundred feet on either side were shredded by the platoon's return fire, mowed down. When Peske finally got everyone to cease fire, they realized that the NVA had beat feet. Another platoon rumbled up and pumped a few last bursts into the rubber trees, then took off for the company laager with the maimed driver and several others who'd been slightly