Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [32]
NVA died within feet of the berm.
Lieutenant Peters bellowed at Lemon and Casey to reman their own .50-caliber machine gun, which had been placed on the berm on a tripod but had jammed. They clambered atop a bunker and were tugging frantically at the bolt, managing to get off one round at a time, when a sudden rush of NVA materialized. Lemon and Casey grabbed their M 16s to fire red tracers into them from fifteen feet while green tracers snapped past their heads. An explosion. More grenades landed beside them, and they sprinted for one of the culvert-and-sandbag bunkers. An RPG suddenly exploded with a flash. Lemon was bowled over but was instantly back on his feet, stunned, wobbly, and stinging with more shrapnel wounds. Casey had taken the RPG and been blown apart. Lemon had no idea what happened: Casey was just there one second, gone the next, and Lemon lunged for cover.
Specialist Fourth Class Casey O. Waller was killed instantly. Sergeant Brent A. Street and Sp4c. Nathan J. Mann also died defending the berm line, and almost every man in Echo Recon was wounded.
Staff Sergeant Taylor was reported to have strangled an NVA who made it over the berm, and another man used his bowie knife, while Lemon and Lou stood firing at the darting shadows. Lemon dove back down before he could think as a burst of white flashed in front of him, while the burst caught Lou in the head and chest. Lou was down, barely alive. The NVA was firing from just the other side of the berm, and M 16s snapped tracers all around him. Another NVA came screaming out of the dust and hopped atop an earthen berm right in front of Lemon. Instinctively, Pete Lemon swung the muzzle of his M16 into the man's stomach and pumped off a burst.
* * *
Raw numbers would have eventually overwhelmed the Echo Recon GIs at the point of the NVA assault on FSB Illingworth if not for their trump card of massive and expertly applied firepower. Even before the first enemy round landed, DivArty had set in motion a detailed fire support plan. The 2d Battalion, 19th Artillery, coordinated all indirect fire support, as well as the Tac Air and ARA provided by DivArty. Map overlays sectioned the flatlands around the FSB like a jigsaw puzzle, and with everyone staying in their zones and fire direction officers juggling radios, gunships could strafe even as artillery rounds fell from the sky and gunplanes orbited with miniguns blazing. A corridor through the support fires was also maintained from the east for medevac and resupply helicopters approaching Illingworth. Such a procedure was outlined in Army doctrine, but in practice, some units did not stress the complicated networks needed to simultaneously apply all of these assets.
That the 1st Cav did was largely because of Colonel Brady, a man who relentlessly pushed people to their limits. He was heartily disliked not only because he was quick to relieve those who did not measure up to his rigorous standards–considering the youth and inexperience of many of the officers by this stage of the war, it can be argued that Brady's weeding-out process was wholly necessary–but also because of his cold, humorless personality. Most would have agreed with an aviation officer in DivArty who commented that Brady played military politics and ticket-punching to perfection, and that he was determined “to be a general no matter how big an SOB he had to be to get noticed.” About Brady's tactical abilities, however, there were no doubts. Popularity contests aside, Maj. Anthony G. Pokorny, S-3, DivArty, saw the ultimate goal behind Brady's methods:
A fire support coordination demonstration was conducted in the Tay Ninh area only a short time before the Illingworth battle. The purpose of the demo was to show the officers of the 1st Brigade how to execute the principles