Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [59]
Along the width of the Cambodian frontier, the U.S. and ARVN units that had been primed with anticipation found themselves almost breezing through the jungle. Allied tactical surprise of the enemy had been almost total, due to the speed and secrecy of the planning and to the fact that, unlike 2-34 Armor and 2-47 Mech, the other participating units had already been positioned in War Zone C: There had been no sudden, massive buildup to tip the enemy.
There were, however, pockets of resistance.
After crossing the Pig Path, Colonel Starry with Lieutenant Colonel Brookshire's 2d Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry, continued northwest along a thin jungle trail. The expected heavy antiaircraft fire hadn't developed. With the Cobras and Loaches of the regimental air cavalry troop skimming over the treetops to the front and flanks of the ground advance, clusters of hootches were spotted. A platoon each from E and G Troops peeled off from the main column to recon them. A narrow strip of jungle separated the two columns as they rolled in on the village, which, it turned out, was deserted. From invisible spiderholes within the brier, rocket-propelled grenades and white and green tracers suddenly sprayed out at ground level. Rushing on at thirty miles an hour, with claymore shrapnel clanging off the tracks and bullets snapping past, the cav machine gunners returned fire in such numbers that streams of red tracers burst through the narrow jungle strip, E Troop firing on G Troop, and vice versa, until they had outrun the ambush and platoon leaders shouted to cease fire. All the RPGs had missed.
Lieutenant Cambria of G Troop had taken minor shrapnel wounds in his right arm, which Doc Dailey, the new platoon medic riding on his track, bandaged. The E Troop platoon reported that one of their men had a large hole in his thigh where an NVA .51-caliber round had blown through–or had it been a .50-caliber round from G Troop?
Continuing on, H Company, still in the lead, was ploughing through some maddening, thick brush and trees, everyone high-strung as engines roared and machine-gunners laid down recon-by-fire bursts. Sergeant Hackbarth had his adrenaline shoot up even farther when he saw Rocky, their Tiger Scout, frantically throwing grenades from his tank at spider-holes suddenly materializing in the underbrush. No one could see any of the enemy, but when the reports of several AK47s and the thumps of a couple of RPGs came from within the vegetation, everyone went bananas hosing down the area. Hackbarth was so busy firing cannister rounds with his 90mm main gun to clear fields of fire in the jungle that he almost sent a round into a tank that suddenly loomed into view through the trees. Trying to bring order to the pandemonium, the always-clearheaded Captain Sisson brought his tanks on line to face down the NVA. The ACAV on which Colonel Starry and Lieutenant Colonel Brookshire rode bulled through the bramble, their view of the battle limited to the three nearest tanks not obscured in this greenhouse. Astonished that the NVA had somehow been taken by surprise, Brookshire noticed an SKS communist rifle lying on the ground, a cleaning rod jammed in the barrel and bent nearly double from the previous owner's frantic efforts to pull it back out. There were hammocks strung between trees and NVA uniforms drying on clotheslines. It had been wash day for the enemy. Brookshire ordered Menzel of G Troop to reinforce and attack the NVA that the Loach pilots could see scrambling into spiderholes and trenches farther on in the base camp. The Sheridans and ACAVs of G Troop came up through