Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [9]
The Blackhorse's latest enterprise to stay one step ahead of the NVA had begun in November 1969, soon after the 3d Squadron had reentered War Zone C. It centered on Highway 246, which ran eastwest and paralleled the southern frontier of the Fishhook jut. It also intersected the NVA trails running south from the border, so, under squadron security, combat engineers endeavored to upgrade the washed-out and shell-pocked dirt highway to a smooth laterite road. To further expose the NVA, Rome Plow bulldozers toppled the trees on either side of the highway until the road was actually a swath up to five hundred meters wide cutting straight through the jungle from An Loc in Binh Long Province west to Katum in Tay Ninh Province. The engineers piled and burned the toppled debris along the way, so for several weeks they and cavalrymen lived in smoke, drove in smoke, breathed smoke, coughed all day, and watched the burning embers at night.
With the engineer work completed in February 1970, Col. Donn A. Starry, commanding officer, 11th Armored Cavalry, in conjunction with the commanding general, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), who had operational control of the regiment, conducted a realignment of unit boundaries. Road marched from Bu Dop to Fort Defiance, the 2-11 ACR (Lt. Col. Grail L. Brookshire) with E, F, and G Troops, and H Company, assumed responsibility along Highway 246 from the Special Forces (SF) camp at Tonle Cham west to the one at Katum.
Meanwhile, 3-11 ACR (Lt. Col. George C. Hoffmaster) with I, K, and L Troops, and M Company, anchored the right flank where Highway 246 ran through the An Loc rubber plantations.
Finally, 1-11 ACR (Lt. Col. James B. Reed) with A, B, and C Troops, and D Company, was placed opcon to the 25th Division and anchored the left flank from the vicinity of Katum south down Highway 4 to Nui Ba Den Mountain.
The Blackhorse's immediate neighbor to the east, west, and south was the 1st Cavalry Division, which occupied a series of firebase strong-holds oriented on the infiltration routes, with the 25th Division farther south. There were no allied units north to the Cambodian Fishhook. As Colonel Starry later wrote his instructions:“…to cut enemy supply lines successfully, ground had to be held, and control of the ground followed from constant use of the ground. The operational pattern of the regiment, therefore, was one of extensive patrolling, day and night…. The cavalry soon came to know the enemy's trails well….”3
The troops under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Brookshire, better known as Battle Six, using the map captured by Major Franks on their first day in War Zone C, were making daily contact with NVA coming out of the Fishhook. Combat engineers from the 8th Engineer Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division, supported 2-11 ACR. Their commander, a young, aggressive lieutenant colonel named Smith, remarked:
Our roles were to provide highway mine clearance, to help prepare night laagers, and to support the Rome Plow operations. Having accompanied my soldiers on mine-clearing operations on occasion, I can tell you that there were very few duties more nerve-wracking and more demanding of concentration than walking up a road, hoping you could open the morning route without losing your feet, legs, or life. We had certain soldiers assigned to that duty day after day–and how they did it, I shall never know.
The footprints counted each morning on the dusty redball also guided Lieutenant Colonel Brookshire and Major Franks in the placement of their ambushes, but it soon became apparent that too many North Vietnamese were slipping through their net. The cavalry troops simply could not be everywhere at every hour of the day and night. But a solution was hammered together when Capt. Sewall H. Menzel, S-2 intelligence officer of 2-11 ACR, was given command of E Troop for three weeks in March when their CO was hospitalized with appendicitis. Menzel was a stocky graduate