Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [77]
“ Doue roi,” Menzel answered with the working vocabulary he had picked up during the last six months of his first tour, when he had been a militia adviser,“ cam on, trung si.” Okay, thank you, sergeant.
Who was the enemy in the plantation?
Rear guard or lost company, the ARVN replied.
Menzel radioed Brookshire about the enemy force that had been reported on the road, then settled back to open a can of C rations. One of his troopers walked up and pointed to the workers milling around their impromptu laager, “Sir, there are some people over there who aren't very happy.”
Along with his interpreter, Menzel walked over. The workers pointed to one of the water-retention berms that crisscrossed the plantation grounds, and one of the women broke into tears. The berm was crushed down where an ACAV had come up over it. After an exchange, the interpreter explained that the workers had dug shelters into the berm in case of a battle for their plantation. “… she say two baby san in ground.” A couple of soldiers immediately began tearing away at the berm, and lifted from the dirt two pretty little girls who looked to be two years old. The medic breathed into their mouths and thumped their chests, but their little hearts never resumed beating. The husband and wife stared stricken at their unmarked but dead babies, and Menzel fought not to allow himself to show any emotion: He was of the opinion that his men would see weakness in any tears. He jotted his name and unit, and the date and circumstances of the mishap, on a scrap of paper and handed it to the parents. He also radioed Brookshire so compensation could be decided upon by regimental civil affairs.
On the spot, Menzel could only order two cases of C rations to be dropped at the parents' feet. Then the moment was broken when Brook-shire came up on the net, “Move on up the road. You are the lead element.”
* * *
It had been late on 2 May 1970, while conducting treetop-level scouting even farther north of where the Blackhorse's Thunder Run was presently located, that WO James Cyrus of B Troop, 1st Squadron, 9th Air Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division, had looked down from his Loach into the largest cache yet discovered in the Vietnam War. The scout pilot first noticed a well-camouflaged hootch down through the triple canopy, then followed a bamboomatted walkway, complete with street signs and rope banisters, to numerous other hootches. Warrant Officer Cyrus marked the complex on his map as ten kilometers south of Snoul, one kilometer east of Route 7, and five kilometers west of the border. It wasn't until after midnight on 3 May 1970 that this information was relayed to Lt. Col. James Lee Anderson, CO, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division, which like much of the 1st Cav was still in III CTZ.
By half past ten in the morning, the battalion was being shuttled into a clearing astride Route 7, one of the few clearings in this densely jungled area, which was dubbed LZ Terri Lynn and which sat four kilometers north of the suspected cache site. The 1st of the 5th Cav was then the allied ground unit farthest north in Cambodia. As Chinooks lowered howitzers and bulldozers to turn the landing zone into a fire support base, it was renamed FSB North One.
The Cambodian villagers on the highway were friendly, and they roughly located the enemy base camp, pointing the GIs in the right direction but at a loss when it came to the distance involved. They further described it as a major supply area, information that Lieutenant Colonel Anderson passed on to Capt. Kevin Corcoran, whose C Company was to find and capture the cache while D Company secured the developing firebase. That settled, Corcoran and Charlie Company began hiking down Route 7, while Anderson dispatched the first of numerous air strikes whose bombs tore enough holes