Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [30]
Some NVA died. Some NVA kept coming.
The right flank of Echo Recon tied into the left flank of Lieutenant Meiser's platoon from Charlie Company. The North Vietnamese were moving through the dust in front of them too, firing and running, trying to converge on Echo Recon. Meiser trooped the platoon line in a low crouch with his RTO tagging with him. Half his platoon was new– this was their baptism of fire–but everyone was heads up in the fire storm, firing, ducking to change magazines, up again to trigger bursts at the shadows in the dust. Meiser ducked from frightened man to frightened man, making sure they had enough ammunition. Because he too had never been so scared, he often dropped with his elbows to the berm to loose off a burst or two of his own. Some NVA tripped in his sights, but others refused to go down even though he seemed to pump bullets right into them, and he let loose an exasperated curse. It was the pucker factor: He was firing high. A lot of the men were. They were terrified, but no one was cowering.
The only man Meiser had gotten to know in his few days with the platoon was his radioman, a friendly little Southern boy. As they crouched for a moment, face to face, against the berm, the radioman's eyes suddenly popped open as if in surprise as he was smacked against the berm. Meiser grabbed him: The kid's neck was torn open, and there were no signs of life. Meiser hollered for a medic, and as soon as one dashed out of the shadows, Meiser was on the move again.
He suddenly felt a thud and a warm sensation when a splatter of red-hot shrapnel caught him in the leg, but there was no pain and he kept dodging from point to point along the berm line, bent low with his helmet on and his ammo bandoliers hanging from his shoulders.
Behind Echo Recon and Charlie Company, the firebase artillerymen had scrambled to their guns. One 105mm crew cranked their gun tube to maximum elevation, and as fast as they could eject empty cannisters and ram in fresh shells, they fired illumination rounds over the base. The other 105mm crews had their howitzers depressed to ground level, and were jamming cannister rounds into the breeches.
Major Magness of the 32d Field Artillery had been sleeping under a culvert when the shelling began, and he and the NCO sharing the shelter quickly donned their helmets and flak jackets and scrambled toward their FDC conex. Although it had been dug in, it had already been severely damaged by a direct hit, and several of the off-shift radiomen sleeping nearby had been killed instantly. The fire direction officer was trying to reestablish radio contact, and Magness rushed on toward the portion of the berm line that his artillerymen were manning alongside the infantry. It was chaotic–everyone was scared and confused. Magness, a West Pointer, was a bit less scared and much less confused than his young troops, and he moved up and down the berm, pounding on the culverts to make sure everyone was up and firing.
He put a GI on an unmanned M60 and, checking back moments later, found the man was almost out of ammunition. Magness threw bandoliers over his shoulder from a nearby bunker and hustled back only to find the M60 gunner was gone. He fired the M60 himself until it jammed, and was staring back toward the FDC to check on conditions there when he was suddenly sent sprawling by an explosion that left his arm and a leg in tatters.
His flak vest had saved his life.
Magness bellowed for a medic. Behind him, a bunker of powder cannisters was hit and began to burn fiercely, but somehow in the flashing confusion, a medic did stumble upon him. The medic got a tourniquet around his shattered leg, then Magness told him to get going, and he dragged himself by his elbows to one of the culvert bunkers on the berm. It was empty. There was a stretcher inside, and he lay on it, exhausted,