Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [60]
Chapter 11: BLACKHORSE IN CONTACT
Captain Menzel of G Troop, 2d Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry, considered his Ml6 too long to be comfortable, so he hung it inside his track with a sack of twenty spare magazines. Thus he was sitting on the back deck of his ACAV with his AK50, the folding stock version of the AK47, when Lieutenant Colonel Brookshire's voice came through his CVC headset: G Troop was to immediately join H Company's fight. At the time, G Troop was reconnoitering those hootches that had been spotted earlier. It was a deserted NVA troop compound, complete with a cooking berm. By the time Menzel radioed his platoon leaders to saddle up, smoke was drifting into the hot, windless sky from where cavalrymen had held their Zippos up to the thatch roofs.
They hurtled down the clay trail toward the cacophony of battle ahead, with sunlight streaming through the vegetation overhead and the red dust clinging to their sweaty faces and arms as each Sheridan and ACAV went through the dust cloud in the wake of the Sheridan or ACAV in front.
Lieutenant Cambria's platoon was on point. Captain Menzel's head-quarters came next, and Lieutenants Burg and Crupper followed along with the tracks of their 81mm mortar section.
Captain Sisson of H Company had gotten his tanks on line and advanced firing cannister rounds. They slowly ground through the light forest when G Troop came around a right turn in the trail. Approaching what Captain Menzel took to be the rear and right flank of H Company, he radioed Lieutenant Cambria to wheel his placoon off the road and come on line to extend the right flank. One of his three Sheridans fell behind with mechanical problems as they came off the road, and Cambria ended up with two ACAVs on line to the left of his own ACAV, forty feet between tracks, another Sheridan completing the row to his right. Advancing in right-enfilade formation, an ACAV was to the right of the Sheridan, a bit behind the line, another Sheridan was to the right of the ACAV and farther behind, with a seventh and last track even farther behind so as to refuse that exposed flank.
Three hundred meters ahead through the forest, the vegetation closed in again, lush green and impenetrable to thè eye. Passing between the trees at a slow roll, Cambria's platoon could see NVA sprinting away from them. There were glimpses of khaki in the deep vegetation, and Cambria radioed Menzel that he was going to open fire. The left flank of Cambria's line hadn't yet cleared the right flank of the tank line. Concerned that G Troop might end up firing into H Company, Menzel shouted into his radio mike, “Negative! Not unless you're fired upon. I'm bringing the rest of the troop on line.”
The NVA were running, not shooting.
Cambria was frantic, and his grunts were screaming from behind their gun shields, “We gotta fire! We can see 'em, we gotta fire!”
White-knuckled as he gripped the handles of his .50-caliber machine gun in the track commander's cupola, thumbs on the butterfly trigger, Cambria looked into the dense underbrush that was now only fifty meters in front of them. His heart was pounding! To hell with the captain! Cambria was about to order his platoon to commence firing when the wall of jungle suddenly erupted with RPGs and RPDs and AK47s. There was a hellish explosion to Cambria's right and something slammed into his face like a fist as he instinctively pulled back on his .50-cal and saw everything blur at the vibrating recoil.
They rolled another twenty meters before the driver could respond by stopping. Cambria frantically reached for his face and peeled something off. It was a hunk of flesh. It was not his.
The brush was obscured by the gray smoke from the RPG launchers, and Cambria glanced back quickly at the Sheridan immediately to his right. It was stopped between the trees and belching smoke: An RPG from the first volley had slammed into the .50-cal gun shield, almost