Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [25]
Captain Poindexter went out on the last one.
Daylight brought more helicopters with a large ammunition resupply and a TC meeting with each platoon leader and platoon sergeant as A Troop reorganized. Afterward, Sergeant Young told Pagan that he'd recommended him for the Bronze Star, which was later disapproved along with many other awards the TCs had written their crewmen up for. Pagan had nothing to say to either bit of news. He was only doing his job, helping his buddies. They were the best people he'd ever known.
In the meantime, after having been rescued on 26 March, Charlie Company was helicoptered out on the twenty-seventh and deposited at FSB Illingworth to catch their breaths. There, their ranks were further depleted when a handful of men threw in the towel and reupped to get out of the bush. (At any time, an infantryman could reenlist for three years in exchange for a rear-area assignment.)
The battalion's original firebases in the area had been named after the officers' wives and daughters, but with casualties increasing, that seemed almost sacrilegious. This latest firebase was named after one of the grunts' own, John James Illingworth, who–as a trooper explained to a visiting combat correspondent–had died hard in one of their recent contacts in War Zone C:
We were humping the boonies when the point man got hit and he was lying out there wounded and we were trying to get to him but the fire was just too damn much. Illingworth was next to me and he says“Fuckit”just like that. He says“Fuckit”and gets up and runs out–through this wall of fire–and picks up the point man and comes back with him. That's why they put him in for the Silver Star. But a couple of days later the guy got hit with a B40 round and he was messed up. God, was he in bad shape. But he had more guts than anyone I've ever seen and he kept trying to sit up and I was trying to hold him down and he kept saying,“Hey, give me a drink of water,”and finally he got up and saw it was me and he said,“Moore, you son of a bitch, why won't you give me a drink of water?”God, I never prayed before in my life, but I prayed,“Dear God, please don't let this man live,”because he was hit so bad he just would've been a vegetable.
At FSB Illingworth, C Company, 2d Battalion, 8th Cavalry, was joined by Capt. Ken Hobson to replace their wounded company commander. The next morning Sfc. Charles Beauchamp was also choppered in to assume duties as acting first sergeant. Beauchamp landed with thirty other replacements. After shaking hands with Hobson, a sturdy little man who seemed up to the job, Beauchamp realized that there were no officers left with the platoons and that his new company consisted of a platoon's worth of fatigued survivors and a platoon's worth of pale and inexperienced new guys.
Sergeant Beauchamp, who was on his second tour and who had a thick Puerto Rican accent, approached Colonel Conrad about getting some more lieutenants. Beauchamp had served with a Lieutenant Meiser1 in the 2d of the 2d Mech in the Big Red One, and had seen him at 2-8 Rear, where he also had been awaiting a new assignment. Meiser was a West Pointer, and Beauchamp considered him a squared-away young officer, so he asked Conrad where he intended to place him. Although Meiser had already done his six months as a platoon leader and had only two months remaining on his tour, Conrad replied that he was giving him a rifle platoon again. Beauchamp, feeling rather alone in his new outfit, asked that Meiser be assigned to Charlie Company. Meiser and a brand-new second lieutenant were helicoptered out within hours.
Like Beauchamp, Meiser would have preferred to have ended up almost anyplace but Firebase Illingworth. The perimeter defense consisted of an earthen berm and a few pathetic culvert bunkers. There was no timber, not much wire, not many claymores. The artillery ammunition was not bunkered in. Crates of the stuff were stacked at ground level.
Illingworth was trouble waiting to happen.
Colonel Conrad seemed a reasonable