Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [71]
Major Weeks was dropped off on the road. He was sitting atop an APC behind the lead company when the point vehicles, crossing a sun-blasted clearing, came under heavy fire at two hundred meters from the opposing rubber tree line. Weeks picked up his radio to talk with Captain Kaldi of C Company: “Shoot until nothing moves.”
His own TC put long bursts from his .50-cal into the rubber trees, and Weeks had to holler at him to knock it off so he could be heard over the radio. At his direction, the jets flashed in again with silver napalm cannisters, and fireballs streamed through the rubber trees.
The NVA fire ceased. A reporter who had been riding on the back of Weeks's track had disappeared at the first shot, and, in no mood to wait for him, Weeks told his driver to get moving again. In the rubber trees, they passed a string of NVA who'd been burned to death while crouched in their slit trench. Armed combatants were not the only victims of 2-47 Mech's liberal use of firepower that day. This area had been considered so secure that NVA support troops had apparently brought their families, for the bodies of women and children were discovered in the charred thatch hootches.
The air strikes were hitting about half a mile ahead of where Lieutenant Forster and his two tanks from A/2-34 Armor of the 25th Division were stopped. Both his tanks had been stuck in a pineapple field the day before, but earlier this morning their sister platoon, Kocopi's, had arrived with the company's M88 recovery vehicle. Forster's crews then remounted the two .50-cals, fished the ammo cans out of the mud where they'd been dropped the night before, then pulled alongside two of Kocopi's tanks to take aboard some main gun ammo: A basic load was sixty-seven rounds per tank, and they were each sixty rounds short when the crews passing their ammo over had said that was it. Teaming up again with A/2-47 Mech, Forster's tanks had gone all of five hundred meters when one of them broke a track. Captain Muehlstedt, CO, A/2-47, had asked in an irritated tone how long it would take to fix, and Forster said one hour. The whole company waited in place. An hour later, Muehlstedt called again. Forster checked with his crew. They needed another half hour, and Muehlstedt said okay, but hurry. Forty-five minutes later, Muehlstedt called again to remind Forster that he had promised to be moving again fifteen minutes earlier. Forster rogered that and said his men were tightening the last nut on the new end connector, then he went over to see just what they were doing. Sure enough, they really were tightening the last nut.
Because of these delays, Muehlstedt's tracks and Forster's tanks had fallen back to the end of the column as the lead was under fire and calling in air strikes. By the time darkness was closing, they were only half a klick short of Route 7. Coming slowly up the hill leading to the elevated highway as main guns again boomed from the point, Forster could see foot soldiers running through the rubber trees near where the point vehicles had halted. Forster figured they were NVA and thought to fire on them, but instead radioed Muehlstedt, who figured they were dismounted GIs running down the highway.
He was right: They had just cut Route 7. With long intervals between vehicles, the point tanks and tracks pulled up onto the road and swung left. As Forster's tank followed up the gradual embankment, he noticed a skinny old papasan who lay dead beside the dirt road that ran through the rubber trees. Nearby was a dead water buffalo heavily laden with wood. The old man had been on his way home from another day of labor.
It was getting darker as the column cautiously moved west on the highway, the long 90mm main guns of the lead tanks firing into the rubber trees on either flank. A power line along the highway had been severed and hung to the ground. An NVA jeep was burned on the side of the road.