Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [24]
A Troop had just entered a world of hurt.
Specifically, they were in the FSB Illingworth AO of War Zone C, opcon to the 2d Battalion, 8th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division, whose newest firebase of the week was smack atop a known infiltration route and attracting much enemy attention. So it was soon after the mortar disaster that the ACAVs and Sheridans of A Troop were laagered in a clearing they had flattened in the underbrush to allow in a resupply bird when C Company, from their adoptive straight-leg battalion, humped in through the sun-dappled forest.
In the morning, 26 March 1970, C Company humped off through the woods and bumped into a company and then a battalion of the 95C NVA Regiment, which, in two hours, had Charlie Company pinned down from three sides. Three GIs were killed, some thirty wounded.
The wounded included the company commander. Lieutenant Colonel Conrad, CO, 2-8 Cavalry, instructed Captain Poindexter, CO, A/1-11 ACR, to immediately return to FSB Illingworth to drop off his disabled vehicles and to take aboard A/2-8 Cavalry from the berm line, and then to rush to the rescue of C/2-8 Cavalry. With the grunts of Alpha Company humping along on both sides of A Troop's column, they had to bust jungle almost the whole way in. They were moving single file, the lead tracks smashing down saplings and brush. Then they roared into the hasty, besieged perimeter of Charlie Company that was obscured by vegetation and roaring with gunfire. The troop tried to come on line–grunts were strung out in the vegetation as flat as they could get– and rocket-propelled grenades shrieked out of the jungle at them, then a troop's worth of machine guns and main guns opened up as grunts scrambled on their hands and knees to get behind the vehicles. Crewmen hollered at them to get the hell out of the way.
Everyone was firing and firing and firing, and there were Phantoms and Cobras orbiting and expending in sequence, orbiting and expending, the concussion walloping the men on the ground, showering them with shattered tree limbs. Captain Poindexter was everywhere, encouraging and directing. Crewman Pagan noticed that the captain's hand had been hit badly–he could see the bone–but Poindexter wasn't slowing down. Neither was Pagan. Three vehicles were disabled by RPGs, and he overheard a radio request for a medic. Pagan jumped from his track to find the medic and lead him to where the wounded were, then he ran back to his vehicle. Sergeant Young, his Tango Charlie, jumped in his shit about leaving without permission, but finally just smiled and said to forget it.
The fire continued raining in both directions. The NVA were dug in, and although the sheer weight of A Troop's suppressive fire may have splintered the logs around some of the bunkers, may have disintegrated the men inside–the official body count was eighty-eight–it could not defeat a battalion. Captain Poindexter, though painfully wounded, was firmly in command of his troop and the two line companies, and he organized a withdrawal. By then it was dark, and flareships circled overhead, making the forest a surreal carnival of intense white light and black lines from the blasted, silhouetted trees. The grunts helped their wounded onto the tracks, threw aboard their rucksacks and equipment, then climbed aboard themselves, maybe ten to a vehicle, and hung on for dear life. They backed up to the trail that they had ploughed on the way in. Since everything had fallen forward as the tracks had originally ground in, all the branches and brush now pointed toward them as they tried to get the hell out. The bedraggled column jerked and rumbled its way seven kilometers to the burned clearing where the Mortar Platoon of A Troop had been blown up, and, with strobe lights pinpointing the perimeter,