Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [63]
In a stupor, the driver crawled back into the turret to drag out the body of the decapitated loader. Menzel turned around, and a body bag had already been laid out and zipped up behind the Sheridan. He turned back toward the wood line and, catching a flicker of movement deep in the brush, he emptied his AK one more time. All along the line the firing was petering out, and the tanks of H Company smashed into the slit trenches as Cobras from the 11th ACR Air Cavalry troop rolled in to pump rockets at each khaki shirt seen moving through the trees. The NVA were retreating.
Columns of smoke belched through the thick canopy as US AF Phantoms ended the firefight with sorties against the enemy routes of withdrawal, and by dusk, fifty NVA bodies had been claimed.2
A Huey landed in a clearing amid the trees, and Menzel watched as parties of GIs hefted the handles of the body bags of Keith Arneson and Paul Dailey. He then found Frank Cambria lying on a stretcher. He looked a bloody mess soon to die, and Menzel, who was a polished, crisp, and competitive professional, knelt beside him and said encouragingly that if he survived he would put him in for a Bronze Star. Cambria, who respected the captain but thought him too callous, was too groggy to really hear, and things did not come clear for him again until someone rolled him from his stomach onto his back: The pain bludgeoned him then. He gritted his teeth, and his eyes came to focus on a GI who stood above him smoking a Marlboro and drinking a Budweiser. Without a word, the grunt knelt beside Cambria and handed him the warm beer. He took a long drink, then the grunt placed the cigarette between Cambria's lips and walked away.
Another mede vac began its descent into the clearing, only to be chased away by a flurry of green tracers.
Cannister rounds boomed from tank cannons.
Cambria heard the heavy thump of Huey rotors, and a pair of GIs started to lift his stretcher. He thought it would be wrong to take a litter with him in case someone else needed it, and he stiffly got to his feet. Frank Cambria, who was immensely proud to be a member of the Blackhorse Regiment and who would talk his way out of the hospital and back to the field thirty days later with forty stitches holding his arm and back muscles together, staggered toward the Huey and refrained from passing out until he was sprawled on the vibrating metal floor.
Specialist Fourth Class Keith S. Arneson and Pfc Paul M. Dailey were the only members of G/2-11 ACR to be KIA in Cambodia (Pfc Walter M. Pierce later drowned), and the only Americans to die on D-Day. Cambria recommended them for Silver Stars.
It was estimated that 2-11 ACR had rushed headlong into a battalion of the 165th Regiment, 7th NVA Division; the contact lasted from 1600 to 1645, 1 May 1970, until the NVA withdrew in the face of the withering frontal fire of G Troop and H Company, and the approaching pressure of 3-11 ACR, which Colonel Starry had ordered to approach on the right flank. With darkness falling, Lieutenant Colonel Brookshire decided the situation was too nebulous to explore the regimental-sized base camp, so the squadron consolidated and laagered to one side of the complex. The base camp was festooned with hammocks and laundry, and littered with weapons, ammunition, and an odd pith helmet or rucksack, along with the enemy corpses in the collapsed slit trenches. Morning light revealed 2-11 ACR to be the sole occupants despite the nervous night. They soon moved on deeper into Cambodia, as did 2-47 Mech and 2-34 Armor, leaving 3-11 ACR behind to clean up those NVA who had been bypassed.
Chapter 12: WET RICE IN BOWLS
Having been briefed that his two tanks would lead Task Force A out of Katum, Lieutenant Forster of A Company, 2d Battalion, 34th Armor, spent a night in the laager of C Company, 2d Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Infantry, that could best be described as torturous. Too primed to really sleep, he let his crew off turret guard and, from ten until six, sat huddled in the cupola, rain pouring down. Every five