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By Root 775 0

and their lead pilot asked us to 'pop smoke.' I swear, no one in Vietnam or Cambodia ever landed a chopper without having to ‘pop smoke’ unless at an established airfield.” Knotts and Schulcz were briefing several of the correspondents when Schulcz was summoned to his radio: Five or six NVA had been spotted at the base of a bamboo thicket some six hundred meters to the west. He gave the platoon leader permission to open fire, and went back to tell the colonel and the reporters, who he was sure would think this was staged. The NVA disappeared at the eruption of six or seven .50-caliber machine guns, as did the correspondents, who had all scrambled inside the tracks at the first shot. Moments later, the reporters were atop the vehicles as the squadron began rolling south on the Rome Plow road. Each APC had its RPG screen and cots secured to the splashboard on front, and Schulcz sat behind the M60 shield on his track, feet hanging off the side, with his flak jacket and headphones on. He had his M16 in his lap, and had a camera of his own out while the newsman sitting beside him told amusing stories from his days on the NASA beat. The road south was lined with brown puddles. When the troops crossed back into Vietnam, they released their tension by throwing smoke gre-nades. The red, yellow, and purple haze obscured the wooden sign that faced them beside the road:

WELCOME TO VIETNAM COURTESY OF CO A 588TH ENGR BN 595 ENGR CO. LE

Graffiti on the sign included a peace sign or two, but a hole had also been blown through it and it was flecked by shrapnel.

Colonel Knotts thought that everyone was relaxing too damn soon. Following the muddy road into Katum, Knotts made sure to remind his people that War Zone C was no rest area as he deployed security elements, even as the 25th Division band played “When the Caissons Go Rolling Along” at their arrival. Grunts shrugged off their helmets and flak jackets and got down to dancing in the mud when the band moved on to some livelier tunes, and Doughnut Dollies made sure everyone had a cold beer and a warm smile. Pet monkeys perched atop shoulders and peace signs were flashed for the television cameras. Knotts later commented that the reception committee was “kind and generous and hell bent on making every trooper in 3-4 Cav feel that he was a hero and that they were most assuredly happy to have him back in South Vietnam. The reception was one of the kindest acts I had ever seen in the U.S. Army.”

Coming out last and close behind the 3d Squadron, 4th Cavalry, was the 3d Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry. Captain Miles of L Troop, the last to cross the border, radioed to Lieutenant Colonel Griffin, “From the back of the bus, we're all across.” The expected heavy contact had not developed. Everyone was glad of that, but in a way it reinforced that they were retreating without battlefield cause. There was the belief among many professional officers and noncommissioned officers that the U.S. Army had won the war during the Tet Offensive and had won it again during the Cambodian Incursion, but that in both instances they had been hamstrung by politics before the successes could be capstoned and made meaningful. Rolling on south that evening, Captain Speedy of K Troop was somber with the thought that they were leaving Cambodia after a limited operation that really should have been a major campaign mounted three years earlier. Upon pulling into Tay Ninh before dark, he was even further haunted. Whereas on his first tour there had been unit guidons stuck along company streets, and all the other hustle and bustle associated with an army at war, the Withdrawals had stripped Tay Ninh to the point that it now resembled a ghost town in comparison. To Speedy the very sight of the empty barracks made hollow what the last two months in Cambodia, the last five years in Vietnam, in fact, were supposed to have meant. We did so much, he thought, for so little.

Chapter 43: THE VERDICT

The results of these operations have far exceeded expectations. It has been the most successful operation in the history