Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [76]
The pressure on Brookshire was to cut the enemy retreat through Snoul as quickly as possible. The axis of advance decided on was Route 7, which ran northeast along the spine of a low ridge line through large and rather beautiful rubber plantations. However, the stretch of highway between Memot and Snoul was intersected by three narrow rivers, and enemy demolition teams had dropped all three of the bridges. With Brigadier General Shoemaker was Lieutenant Colonel Smith, CO of the 8th Engineers, who along with Major Good, S-2 of the 11th Armored Cavalry, had spent 2 and 3 May conducting helicopter and foot recons of the bridge sites. Smith explained to Brookshire that the first two streams could be crossed via AVLBs,1 but that the third and last site posed a problem. The stream was not particularly wide, but it sat in a miniature canyon, and the distance between the two raised banks was said to be beyond the span of an A VLB. No other crossing sites that would accommodate an A VLB were apparent nearby, so Smith had one of his engineer companies at Loc Ninh preassembling bridge sections that could be helicoptered to the crossing site as soon as 2-11 ACR secured the area. Nonetheless, everyone suspected that the ensuing delay would dampen the effect of the attack.
The squadron's thunder run to Snoul commenced the next morning. By early afternoon they had ploughed through the thick brush to the raised embankment atop which Route 7 ran. The tops of rubber trees were visible on the other side of the road, as each driver gunned his Sheridan or ACAV over the crest, then swung a right so as to proceed up the macadam highway. On the smooth, hard-packed surface, the column picked up speed to forty miles per hour. Moving single file, a formation they called “ducks in a row,” they were lucky they did not become sitting ducks, because as Captain Menzel's ACAV lurched onto the road, near the tail of the squadron, he happened to glance to his left in time to see some twenty men crossing the road in mass a half mile downrange. Menzel barely had time to focus on their weapons and black pajamas, and no time to swing his AK around for a shot, before they disappeared. He barked into his CVC mike, “Driver, halt! Neutral steer left! TC, open fire!”
Menzel waved frantically to Lieutenant Zerbach, his forward observer, who was in the fifty hatch of the track behind him, but there was nothing for the lieutenant to line his sights on and he held his fire. Menzel shouted into the radio again. His lead platoon, rolling north on the road, reversed directions so quickly that the tracks left gouges in the macadam, even as Menzel switched frequencies to contact Brookshire, “Six, this is Three-six. Contact. Dinks crossing the road and in the rubber to our rear. Am pursuing. Over'
“ Three-six, this is Six. Go get 'em!”
Menzel ordered the two platoons, rolling full speed down the road, to pivot to their right as he turned his own vehicle to be the guide, “Two-six, on line to the left! Three-six, on line to the right!” Rolling on line between the rows of rubber trees, they had fleeting glimpses of the enemy running away from them, but their fields of fire were blocked not only by the trees but also by scores of plantation workers milling about in confusion. Menzel explained the situation to Brookshire, who was overhead in his command ship, then requested permission to open fire. Brookshire immediately rebuked him, and Menzel repeated, “But I know these guys are North Vietnamese!”
“ I understand that. Don't shoot until you got good targets and you're not going to kill those people they're mixed with.”
No such clear targets presented themselves and, exhibiting fine discipline, G Troop did not fire a round. They halted on the road leading to the plantation manor. A gray sedan had almost been run into the roadside ditch, and a French Renault also sat abandoned on the other side of the road with one door completely open. Dropping down from his ACAV, Menzel found a magazine