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By Root 801 0

of the airstrip, Captain Menzel ordered Lieutenant Burg to swing wide and sweep to their right, while Chaplain Trobaugh's platoon crossed Highway 13, which ran into town from the southeast and halved this section of the plantation grounds. The rubber trees gave way not far beyond to a shallow, jungled draw that stretched for perhaps half a kilometer to a ridge line dotted with more rubber trees. Rolling to a stop among the trees at the edge, Menzel saw movement on the slope of the ridge. The Sheridans and ACAVs under Trobaugh opened fire again, tracers ricocheted on impact, and dust and smoke rose through the treetops. There was no discernible return fire. When their own fire slackened enough so that voices could be heard again, Menzel reported via radio to Brookshire, and then requested permission to press the attack to the far ridge. Instead, Brookshire told him to return to Highway 13. Menzel, who was surprised at such a directive because he did not know of the disaster that had befallen the command group, turned his platoons around. Making a slow sweep back through the rubber trees, they found plastic canteens and rucksacks in the leaves covering the ground, as well as another 14.5mm antiaircraft gun. When they reached the highway, Menzel jumped down, and an RPG suddenly cracked from the trees north of the road. As the poorly aimed projectile skipped across the ground, a startled Menzel pointed at the bluish smoke hanging above the launch point and hollered at the nearest ACAV to open fire. The RPG gunner was probably a lone NVA who'd buttoned up in his spiderhole when G Troop first came through. Lieutenant Zerbach, the forward observer, swung his .50-caliber to face the hole. He commenced firing.

A mede vac came in right behind the regimental command ship, and Sterba photographed the shirtless troopers who rushed through the prop wash with the stretchers. The wounded prisoner was also lifted aboard. Sterba asked if there was room for him, and someone waved at him to grab a seat next to the door gunner. It had been only some fifteen minutes since the grenade exploded. The Huey lifted off amid the deafening cover fire from the tracks along the strip, pumping low and fast over the rubber trees as NVA gunners sighted in on them. The NVA prisoner never regained consciousness. As Sterba later wrote, “He died aboard a helicopter being shot at by other North Vietnamese as an Army medic breathed into his lungs to try to save him.”

Almost as soon as Colonel Starry was lifted from the C&C Huey, on the pad beside the 37th Medical Company, 11th ACR, Quan Loi, Col. Robert L. Bradley, deputy commander of the 11th Armored Cavalry, climbed aboard with Sergeant Major Horn for the flight back into Snoul. Colonel Bradley had been monitoring the radios, and as soon as the command ship landed, he had grabbed his steel pot and pistol belt and met it at the chopper pad. They flew back into Snoul amid another stream of tracers. E Troop, G Troop, and H Company were in contact.

Lieutenant Colonel Brookshire, moving from one radio to the next as helicopters clattered onto and off the airstrip, attempted to relay some quick instructions to Major Franks. He could get no answer. That's when it suddenly hit him that the tremendous soldier he had worked beside for eight months was really gone.

G Troop's fight to the east was going well, but the probe by E Troop (whose tracks had EVIL painted across their fifty gun shields) toward the market at the south edge of Snoul had come under heavy fire. The NVA were dug in. Given Shoemaker's instructions to avoid damage to the town, he would have broken contact had not a Sheridan been disabled by a rocket-propelled grenade. He instructed H Company to assist E Troop in recovering the vehicle.

Sitting atop his ACAV, Brookshire happened to be looking toward Master Sergeant Bolan, who was to one side of the airstrip clearing bunkers, when the space between them suddenly convulsed with rocket explosions. A Cobra rolling in to support the fight at the market had proceeded to strafe the command group on the airstrip.