Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [28]
Illingworth was a hot, miserable little place.
The TOC of Lieutenant Colonel Conrad and Major Moore, CO and S-3, respectively, of the 2d Battalion, 8th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division, was simply a bulldozed square in the center of the circle with pierced-steel planking (PSP) matting laid over it at ground level and sandbags stacked on top of that. It was easily identified by the flock of radio aerials bristling up from between the sandbags. Given the circumstances only two days after the NVA had tried to overrun FSB Jay, Conrad had scheduled an alert for two hours after midnight, but it was actually two hours before midnight that the radios in the command bunker began crackling: The crew of the firebase's PP-55 Ground Surveillance Radar had detected movement nearby. Calls were made and the 2-19 FA Fire Direction Center at Tay Ninh initiated an exercise firing of the prearranged support plan. Artillery began thudding around the base, and a section of gunships rolled in. The GIs along the berm fired Mad Minutes across the clearing, a noisy and, as always, beautiful show of tracers; then they took the precaution to reposition their M60 machine guns.
The woods, silhouetted by the flashes of artillery, remained silent, and shortly after midnight the radar crew no longer detected movement.
Conrad dozed on his cot until his radioman woke him up at two in the morning. He pulled up a wooden ammo box seat, and he and Moore passed the word to go to a hundred-percent alert. Just in case. A bare lightbulb attached to the artillery generator hung from the ceiling of their command bunker, as did one in the similar command bunker occupied by Hobson and Beauchamp. Their radiomen passed the word and platoon sergeants began rousing the men, who'd wrapped themselves in ponchos and had been sleeping along the berm line with their heads on their rucksacks and their jungle boots laced up. One by one, the platoon leaders reported by radio when they'd gotten all their men on the berm. When the last one, a young buck sergeant, finished his report, as if on cue, the first NVA mortar round hit the bottom of its tube and lobbed into the hot night sky.
It was 0218, 1 April 1970.
Lieutenant Meiser had just taken a seat on the low earthen berm when the hollow pops began echoing from the wood line, and he instantly scuttled into one of the culvert-and-sandbag bunkers on the berm. Seconds later, the first round impacted on target, followed by another, and another, and another, until within about twenty minutes the NVA had pumped some three hundred rounds into Firebase Illingworth. Attempting to clip the firebase radio antennas, a few rockets roared horizontally over the perimeter, but the rest rained down like freight trains: 107mm, 122mm, and 240mm rockets; 82mm and 120mm mortars; and 75mm recoilless rifles. Shrapnel and dirt clods pelted the culverts like hail, and dust surged through the entrances to the underground bunkers. As soon as the shelling began to slacken, Lieutenant Meiser was out of the miniature bunker. Everyone knew it was coming, and all along the berm line, helmets began to pop back up.
Meiser squatted with his RTO behind the bunker, their M 16s pointed across the sandbags. The bombardment had fogged the base with dust, and the tree line facing them across three hundred meters of clearing was invisible. The firebase artillerymen were already slamming out illumination rounds, and a line of screaming, silhouetted figures began to come into focus through the spotlighted veil of dust.
The NVA were making a full frontal assault.
There were mobs of them coming like ghosts through a mist, with their round pith helmets and banana clips and RPG projectiles catching the flarelight. Lieutenant Meiser began lining up NVA