Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [67]
Conducting recons near the mired tanks of Lieutenant Forster's platoon, Lieutenant Peske's happened upon an NVA, apparently mangled in one of the prep napalm strikes, who lay stiffly beside the trail, his skin stinking and charred. He was still breathing. Peske halted his platoon so the medic could treat the enemy soldier, and Captain Muehlstedt got on the horn to ask what the delay was. Peske explained, and Muehlstedt stressed that they were in an extremely hostile, nebulous situation and didn't have time to waste on one NVA who was probably beyond help.
The captain was no brute. In fact, Peske respected him, but he pressed the issue, asking for instructions. Muehlstedt paused. He was a cool head, blond, mustached, sallow cheeked, and young, like Peske a citizen-soldier for whom every day in the bush was a heavy load. He was responsible for the lives of more than a hundred men. When he finally answered that he would arrange a medevac, the tone of his voice implied to Peske that he wished they'd just shoot the dying man or leave him, but that he couldn't risk saying that on the radio for the whole world to hear. It was a tough choice: By being a humanitarian, Peske realized he may have saved a life–he never forgot that the enemy was human too–but he had stalled his patrol and made his own men an easier target for ambush. Nothing is simple in war.
By dusk, Lieutenant Forster sat exhausted in his tank turret, ammunition racks finally empty, and radioed Captain Muehlstedt to send up an APC from the night laager that Alpha Company was setting up in a rice paddy near the shot-up cow shed. From Forster's tank, Ted, Nabua, and Harvey threw their cans of .50-cal ammo into the mud and left them there, while the staff sergeant commanding the other tank, with Thornwald, Hart, and Tiny Geiger, did likewise. They put on their steel pots and flak jackets, slung their M16 rifles, averaging about two mags apiece as tankers, gathered some canteens and C rations, and toted their two .50-caliber machine guns, unlocked from the cupola mounts, over to the APC sent to pick them up.
All the APCs in the laager faced outward, back ramps down, as GIs walked in and out to gather up claymore mines and tripflares for the perimeter defense. Forster and his crew were sitting around with nothing to do when several men suddenly tumbled out the back end of their track at a run. Smoke puffed from the open cargo hatch. The crew hollered that a tripflare had ignited inside the APC, which was crammed with ordnance, and everyone except for one young soldier ducked in anticipation of the coming fireball. This exceptional GI ran up the ramp into the track, grabbed the burning flare with a towel, and threw it into the middle of the laager, where it smoldered harmlessly.
There was no room inside the APC that took Forster's crew under their wing, so they borrowed a shovel and the tankers buddied up to dig sleeping trenches six feet long, four feet wide, and six inches deep to get them below harm's way in case of a night probe. The mech infantrymen also gave them several long plastic sheets used to keep artillery shells dry, which was lucky because the rains began again that night. Forster and Nabus, lying shoulder to shoulder in their trench, pulled the plastic sheet over their faces, but the rain was crashing down and soon the water was up to their ears. They finally cocked their heads up on the muddy edge of the trench and, vaguely hoping they wouldn't get their heads blown off in a mortar barrage, they collapsed into numb, exhausted sleep.
* * *
The platoons of Lieutenant Flowers and Lieutenant Nerdahl, having finally cleared the trees to make some good time on a smooth clay road, circled their wagons in a scrubby clearing, which provided good fields of fire into the surrounding woods. The rains came with the night, and Flowers tried to sleep on the back deck of his tank, where the metal was still warm from the engines. He wrapped his poncho around him. When he awoke, it was still black and pouring rain.