Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [4]
PART ONE: CAV COUNTRY
When a captain named Speedy returned for his second tour in March of 1970, he had orders for the 11th Cav. He got his armored troop at Lai Khe, former stomping grounds of the famed Big Red One, but that unit had already gone home, and the part of the perimeter not manned by the ARVN was now a ghost town being silently reclaimed by the underbrush. Painted buildings and old unit signs were being faded by the sun and rain. Pet dogs abandoned by the departed Big Red One roamed in bewildered and shrivelled packs. The MPs shot them on sight, since they now carried disease. These were the signs of an army in retreat, as was the hostility between blacks and whites in the rear, and the wild increase in drug use. The situation was much better in the field, but the troops, though brave and thoroughly competent, were profoundly confused. This Speedy knew, but about it he could do little. He, too, had no clear vision of what his cavalrymen's sacrifices would gain for America or South Vietnam. This was, after all, the time of Withdrawal, and politics were defeating them like Hanoi's army never could.
Chapter 1: A TREASURE CHEST
Flying in a Loach, a small scout helicopter, on a warm afternoon during the third week of February 1970, Maj. Frederick M. Franks, S-3 operations officer of the 2d Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, happened to spot several North Vietnamese Army rucksacks. They had been dropped beside an earthen enemy bunker in a grassy clearing.
The Loach banked in for a closer look.
It was impossible to tell if the bunker was occupied, but only moments before as the Loach had rushed over the forested flatlands, Franks and his crew had clearly seen several NVA foot soldiers moving quickly among the trees at the edge of another clearing.
The NVA were running for their lives. They were part of an infantry or supply column that had tried to march in from Cambodia, but they had been spotted by aerial reconnaissance and had broken into small groups to retrace their way back across the border. From his helicopter seat, Franks could see the Loach scouts and Cobra gunships playing above the footpaths that led to the border.
Major Franks was actually an accidental witness to this turkey shoot. His unit, the 2d Squadron of the Blackhorse Regiment, had begun a road march that morning from positions near Bu Dop, finally moving west along a dirt road labeled Highway 246 into the unpopulated and defoliated wilderness known as War Zone C, which hugged the southern frontier of a salient of Cambodian territory known as the Fishhook. Major Franks had flown in ahead to speak with Major Driskill, his counterpart in a sister unit, the 3d Squadron of the Blackhorse Regiment, which was conducting a simultaneous road march out of War Zone C. Driskill sketched what they could expect in terms of terrain and enemy activity in this, their new area of operations. The Cambodian border was, of course, inviolate to U.S. ground forces, so War Zone C had become a heavily used NVA infiltration corridor, with trails heading south out of the Fishhook and across Highway 246, which ran east to west, then on toward the Saigon environs.
After his meeting with Driskill, Franks had been heading back to rejoin his unit when he flew into the melee over the latest infiltration attempt. Spotting the enemy rucksacks, he thought they had a chance for an early intelligence coup. Considering the risk involved, Franks felt obliged to ask the young pilot beside him and the even younger door gunner in the cabin behind him if they'd be willing to go in for the packs.
They would.
With a Cobra firing its minigun into the trees at the edge of the clearing, the Loach went in. As soon as its skids touched the earth, the door gunner released