Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [34]
* * *
Artillery helped save Firebase Illingworth. It also helped destroy it. The NVA bombardment had almost immediately set fire to some crates of eight-inch artillery powder cannisters, and the fire spread to the nearby projectiles. There was no chance to battle the fires, and finally, at 0318, the ammunition bunker of A/2-32 FA went up in a thunderclap.
It turned the whole base upside down.
Lieutenant Colonel Conrad had just ducked back into his command bunker after checking the lines when a sudden titanic roar and brain-jarring concussion knocked out their light, knocked out their radios, knocked them off their feet, and filled the bunker with so much dust they couldn't breathe. Conrad and Moore scrambled out with their radiomen. The antennae above the bunker had been turned into spaghetti, and they couldn't see a thing in the sudden dome of ash and dust and smoke. They thought they'd taken a direct hit. As the after-action report noted, it took everybody a moment to figure out what had happened:
One of the eight-inch powder storage bunkers began burning and the heat and exploding cannisters drove the defenders away from that section of the berm. Shortly thereafter the other 8” bunker, containing some 190 rounds, apparently struck by enemy fire, detonated with a tremendous blast, blowing a 20' deep crater and knocking both 8” howitzers and the FDC out of action. Nearly every defender was knocked flat and many were burned and deafened. All indirect fire control equipment (collimators, aiming circles, aiming stakes) in the 105 area were blown away and the guns partially buried. The blast was followed by a complete lull of five to ten minutes in which everyone, friendly and enemy, attempted to recover from the stunning force of the explosion … A vast impenetrable pall of choking dust covered the base, blinding the defenders and jamming weapons…. The infantry commanders rushed reinforcements to the southwest corner and defensive fire resumed. One of the 105 guns was out of action due to casualties; the B Battery commander, assisted by several infantrymen placed the gun back into action.4 The 8” ammunition had not been stored underground, as required, and its detonation caused a significant portion of total casualties and damage, including blowing away the southwest portion of the berm.5
Lieutenant Meiser had just crouched beside the berm and frantically but methodically was breaking down his dust-clogged M16 to wipe the parts clean when suddenly he was enveloped in the hot blast that knocked the breath out of him and threw him backward head over heels like a body surfer caught in a bad wave. The next thing he knew he was on his haunches. He didn't know if he had blacked out. He reached for his rifle; it was somewhere in the dark in a dozen pieces. He couldn't see anything. The dust was so thick it even blocked the illumination rounds floating down on their parachutes. He didn't know what direction he was facing. Everything was completely silent, except for the fire still blazing in the crater, a hundred feet across, that seconds before had been the ammunition bunker.
Scared and shaken, Meiser got to his feet and, in a low crouch, stumbled toward what he thought was the center of the perimeter. He bumped into a man he took to be a medic who was toting an M16.
“ Hey, I've got to have that sucker!”
Meiser grabbed the M16 and ran back to the berm. He suddenly realized that his left flank, which tied into Echo Recon, had evaporated. That portion of the berm had been demolished, along with the six GIs he had positioned there. Meiser found himself staring