Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [228]
The dust-off was not smooth: The medevac commander, who had the option not to land if a landing zone was under fire, matter-of-factly said that he would not come into the potentially hot LZ of the highway.
Claybrook could not change his mind.
Also overhead, however, having diverted to the LZ when the request came over the medevac net, was Colonel Williams of the Go Devil Brigade, temporary CO of the 2d Brigade, 25th Division, coming in under the low overcast aboard a Huey from A Company, 25th Aviation Battalion, 25th Division. When the medevac refused, the command ship door gunners, Sp4c. Gregory Pybon and Sp4c. Joseph Reynolds, yelled over the intercom to CWO Gary Thompson and WOl James Boyea, pilot and copilot, respectively, to go on in. Helping the wounded was one of the few satisfactions aircrews ever got. The crew had already decided to go on in when Colonel Williams got on the headset to ask the pilot if they would, so with the APCs on the road laying down cover fire, they landed smack on the asphalt road. Colonel Williams and his artillery captain and sergeant major jumped out to find Claybrook, who was on an APC behind the lead company, as the wounded were rushed aboard. As the Huey regained altitude, the grunts aboard with punctured eardrums began screaming in pain. Door gunner Pybon reported the problem to pilot Thompson, who dropped low again. They went in at treetop level all the way back to Tay Ninh.
Meanwhile, Alpha Company approached the trees on line, and Younts's voice buzzed through the vehicle radios, “Travel slow…. Do not get ahead of anybody…. Watch in the trees….” In the distance, four figures were hiking away. One had on the white shirt of a civilian, but that proved nothing. “They're down there! Open up! Open up!” Civilians again? “Don't fire!” “Fire! Fire! Fire!” An automatic weapon cut loose, then jammed up, and in the next instant the fifties and sixties were screaming and the slender rubber trees splintered and fell over as the APC roared toward them. The stand of trees clouded with smoke and dust and Younts ordered a cease-fire. They knocked down trees as they advanced to where the figures had been spotted.
Nothing.
The roadside ambush that took those four lives was the last heavy contact the 2d of the 47th Panthers made in Cambodia. Vietnam in the wake of the incursion turned out to be even more quiet, much to the detriment of morale. It seemed to Private Spurgeon that the lieutenants and captains felt powerless and, not wanting to compromise their positions by seeing and being able to do nothing, chose instead to see very little. So, in the rear, where their hootches would fill with marijuana smoke, conversations consisted of: “Spurgeon, I'm looking for Smith. Is he in that hootch?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell him to come here.”
“Yes, sir.”
Still, morale was always better in the field. Sometimes a new guy would not understand that the bush was not the same as base camp, and a few times Spurgeon was woken up on ambush by a man who smelled marijuana: “Do you smell what I smell?” “Shit, yeah.” “If we can smell it, so can the bad guys.” Someone would crawl up to the new guy, grab his arm, and whisper hard in his ear, “There's a time and place for everything, asshole, and this ain't the fucking time. I ain't going to kick your ass now, but wait till we get back.”
The ambushes proved an old point: American GIs will grumble and dangerously cut corners when there is no immediate threat, but most will fight when slapped. One night, Lieutenant Peske picked seven men to bush a suspected enemy supply route. They set