Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [91]
Each tank almost expended its basic load of ammunition, and with the trees bursting above their heads, the NVA pulled back.
With no room to turn around, Flowers's column had to scoot backward down the trail while the rest followed facing forward. The legs of a mech trooper were smashed when the tank he'd ducked behind backed over him. Five others had been wounded. As soon as they secured in the clearing around the deserted NVA base camp, Flowers requested a medevac. The battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Redmond, above in a Loach, radioed them to get back in there and chase down the retreating ambush force.
Flowers was excited and scared: Chase 'em where?! That's easy for you to say up there!
Without a blocking force to meet their sweep, Flowers doubted they'd do any good going back in, and he responded that they'd blown off a lot of ammunition and needed a resupply. Redmond agreed. Meanwhile, the limp form of Sergeant Barnett–a wiry, young guy with close-cropped dark curly hair and an air of gruff friendliness–was being lifted from his tank turret. His chest was a bloody mess. They laid him on a stretcher in the dirt, and Flowers frantically started artificial respiration, but something vile that tasted of nicotine bubbled up from the other mouth.
David Barnett was dead.
The casualties were medevacked, but the Chinook with their ammunition resupply took forever, and by then orders were changed to flatten the base camp they were in. This they did with relish, pushing down the hootches with their tanks and shooting the livestock: chickens, pigs, water buffalos. One hen who managed to escape was last seen running down the road, full tilt boogie with her head stretched out, a tank roaring after her with its .50-caliber machine gun blazing. Fearing that the NVA flagpole might be booby-trapped, someone chopped it down with a burst or two from his fifty. It felt good.
Before dusk, Bravo Company retired down the trail to another scrubby clearing. Shirtless tankers were staking in their RPG screens as Captain Santiago conferred with his platoon leaders in front of a parked tank. Battalion had sent word that another unit had flushed a nest of NVA into hurried flight, and a few of their tanks were to nose through the area to see what they could come up with. The lieutenant given the mission was unenthused: “Hey, you know, we just set up. We're in a mess. You pull somebody outta here, the perimeter's wide open. We've got three tanks wandering around, it's going to turn dark, and they'll never come back.”
The disagreement reached the shouting stage, and Santiago, short, stocky, and handsome, suddenly unholstered his .45. Known to lapse into his native Spanish when agitated, he tried to speak calmly and firmly, “I'm the captain and you're the lieutenant, and you do what I say or I shoot.”
“Okay, okay, be cool, you're the boss.”
The tanks were dispatched; they returned shortly carting a haul of RPGs, AK47s, and ammunition that the NVA had dropped in their hasty retreat.
Santiago was relieved of command.
Flowers's initial reaction was that the captain was crazy, but in retro-spect he could not judge him harshly: He was new to the command and getting little support from above. The operation seemed distinctly uncoordinated. The battalion commander had fixed himself in a bermed command post