Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [40]
A Troop moved on a bit to a defensible clearing, where they circled their wagons. At dusk a light rain began to fall on the GIs who sat behind their fifty shields on watch, and on the NVA who had battered FSB Illingworth and who, thanks to their delaying force, had made it that short distance across the line to Cambodia.
The B/1-77 FA remained at FSB Illingworth until 4 April 1970, at which time they were airlifted to FSB Wood built by 5-7 Cav. It was not until the night of 15-16 April 1970 that the NVA counterattack finally spent itself against FSB Atkinson, the latest minifirebase in War Zone C. Manned by B and E/2-7 Cav, plus B/2-19 FA, the attack by a battalion of the 95C NVA Regiment was halted at the berm line with seven U.S. KIA and twenty-five U.S. WIA. Three NVA were captured and sixty-six bodies left.
Although not by Major General Roberts, who commented, “…the losses the NVA sustained in trying to take Jay and Illingworth broke their back. Despite the losses we sustained there, these two firebases succeeded in their mission. The troops–ground and air–with extraordinarily few exceptions performed superbly and in the highest traditions of the U.S. Cavalry.”
PART TWO: FINALLY
Conversation between Lt. Gen. Frank T. Mildren, deputy commander, U.S. Army Vietnam (USARV), and Brig. Gen. Douglas Kinnard, chief of staff, II Field Force Vietnam (II FFV), after the latter informed the former that the U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) had instructed them to develop plans for an attack on the NVA in Cambodia:
MILDREN: Well, these plans happen all the time.
KINNARD: I think this really is going to happen, sir.
MILDREN: Well, I don't think it is.
KINNARD: Well, uh, I'm just giving you a briefing. I don't want to debate whether or not this is true, since the decision-making process in MACV or the United States is not within my scope.
Chapter 8: MARCHING ORDERS
One day in March 1970, at Long Binh, Maj. Edwin S. Olsmith walked into the office of the man to whom he was aide-de-camp, Lt. Gen. Julian J. Ewell, commanding general, II Field Force Vietnam. He found the general and his counterpart, Lt. Gen. Do Cao Tri, commanding general, III Corps, on their hands and knees on the floor poring over a map. Ewell immediately barked at him to get out of the office, and only later when events unfolded did Olsmith realize why his presence had been unauthorized: Ewell and Tri had been planning a strike into Cambodia.
The reins were finally being loosened.
The presidential hand that released the grip–Nixon's–was not the one that had originally pulled the war horse away from the border. That decision had been Johnson's, and the change was a dramatic and welcome relief for the allied field commanders. For the previous five years of the U.S. infantry war, they had had to tolerate the sanctuary.
Cambodian neutrality, about which the communists were publicly reverent while privately considering it a farce, had actually never been perfectly observed by the allies. There had been incidents of hot pursuit of enemy units retreating across the border, even incidents of ARVN pursuers being killed by the Royal Cambodian Army, and SF and MACV-SOG teams had periodically and surreptitiously helicoptered in to monitor the developing complexes and to snatch a prisoner or two for intelligence purposes. But President Johnson had never felt emboldened enough to acquiesce to the repeated requests of Gen. William C. Westmoreland, commander, U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam, 1964-68, for full-scale operations in Cambodia. Johnson had, in a sense, been faced down by Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the plump, flighty, charming, and vain premier of Cambodia. Sihanouk reacted shrilly whenever