Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [79]
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On 4 May 1970 G Troop of the 11th ACR reached the first downed bridge, and, not meeting the ambush they had expected, they laid an A VLB across. Less than thirty minutes later, they were almost upon the second downed bridge. Behind them the 2d and 3d Squadrons were strung out for thirty kilometers. Colonel Starry ordered a consolidation south of the second bridge, so it was not until 5 May that an A VLB was extended to the far bank. The A VLB settled snugly into the earth as the Sheridans and ACAVs crossed one at a time. The race for Snoul was back on, at least until G Troop reached the third and last downed bridge. The lead platoon secured the site, again without contact, while farther down the column, Captain Menzel watched Colonel Starry and Lieutenant Colonel Brookshire bypass his halted troop atop one of the squadron command vehicles. Lieutenant Colonel Smith of the 8th Engineers helicoptered in to join them, along with a platoon of engineers who doffed their shirts as they reassembled a bulldozer cab to its treads. Due to their weight, the latter had been slingloaded in under a separate Sky Crane. Brookshire, anxious to resume the drive, was at Smith's elbow, and Smith was doing everything possible:
The riverbanks were quite steep and we used the bulldozer to do some site clearing and preparation work. When the helicopter arrived with the bridge slung beneath it, the pilot lowered so that the bridge touched the ground on the friendly side of the gap. This allowed me to climb on to the externally slung load and direct the Sky Crane's pilot by using the aircraft's intercom. I rode atop the bridge the remaining few hundred feet to the crossing site where the pilot and some excellent engineer soldiers did a magnificent job of positioning the bridge exactly on the existing abutments.
Before the arrival of the bridge, which took some time to get choppered in, the cavalry commanders chomped at the bit. Captain Menzel flipped an empty C-ration can into the scrub brush and hiked up the road. He interrupted Starry and Brookshire, who were huddled over a map on their ACAV, with a booming, “Good morning, gentlemen!”
“Oh, hi, Se wall,” Starry looked up with an unhappy face (according to Menzel, whose testimony contradicts Starry's recollection of this day). “We can't cross the stream because the banks are too wide. J-2 Saigon says that we will have to use engineers.” At that moment, the bulldozer was just being landed, and Menzel commented, “We'll be here all day at this rate!”
Starry and Brookshire were silently resigned.
Menzel requested permission to double-check for an A VLB site. Starry answered, “Sure, go ahead if you can, but I doubt that you'll find one.
Menzel ordered one of his platoons to spread out and report to him any potential crossing site, as he himself walked down the streambed for some fifty meters to the west. At one point, the wide banks dropped down to a lower bank that was still some thirty feet above the virtually dry river but whose edges were only about sixty feet apart. If an A VLB could be brought to this lower tier, its span bridge might just be able to reach across. With his AK swinging at his side from its shoulder strap, Menzel ran back to Starry and Brookshire, “We can do it!”
Brookshire, who was bareheaded and wearing a smart pair of wire-rimmed glasses, looked up from the burned-out cigar he was always chewing on with a big grin. Starry looked stunned that their maps could be so inaccurate. Menzel said he needed one of the A VLB s that had been traveling with the squadron command tracks, and Brookshire answered, “It's all yours!”3
Menzel rushed over to the A VLB section, and in moments was back at the upper bank with the section sergeant. The driver stood on his seat and peered over the bow of his lumbering vehicle, trying to see where Menzel was pointing. The young section sergeant finally said, “Sir, it's pretty wide. Not sure we can do this.” Menzel told him in a breath of exasperation to give it a try, and the driver nosed the A VLB down the slope to the lower