Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [93]
Lieutenant Forster's real heroes were his soldiers, a rather average grouping of young men. Most of them were nineteen or twenty. They did everything that was asked of them.1 They were well served by company commander Tieman, a twenty-five-year-old West Pointer, undynamic but respected for his common sense and loyalty. In the days before Cambodia, Captain Tieman's instructions from Lieutenant Colonel Red-mond sent his tanks jungle-busting day after day as if they were bulldozers. Maintenance problems were legion. The men were also burning out. Some crews were down to three men, and double duty was required. When Tieman checked the lines at night, he almost always found one or two guards comatose at their posts. Each morning, Redmond, whom the men considered an aloof hard-ass, would land in this Loach to issue more of what Tieman considered unrealistic, hyperaggressive operations orders. After the battalion commander winged off, Tiemán finally took to bringing all his platoons into a laager so the troops could catch up on sleep and maintenance. Captain Tieman, meanwhile, would radio bogus patrol reports to Lieutenant Colonel Redmond.
Tieman, a career-minded officer, was risking relief if his ruse was detected, but his concerns were directed to his troops. As he said, they were really the ones with their butts on the line.
And, actually, it was Lieutenant Colonel Redmond's neck that was being stretched for the chopping block.
On 7 May 1970, Command and Control helicopters from the 25th Division visited 2-47 Mech and 2-34 Armor. Major General Bautz's stops included the 2-34 CP near Katum. General Bautz, dry, taciturn, with an exceptional record as a combat tanker in Europe, asked Redmond why spare parts and other supplies were not being sent forward in the required amounts. Redmond said that helicopter support from the 1st Cav was inadequate. He could have added that his tired old fleet of tanks, some of them with the battalion since it came ashore four years earlier, had previously been used as Rome Plows and mine detectors, and the wholesale maintenance failures should have come as a surprise to no one. Bautz also pressed Redmond on why he was not out with his line companies. The answer was again inadequate helo support, which, true or not, was dismissed by Bautz as only a mitigating circumstance. He thought Redmond should have been aboard a tank in Cambodia, but,”… to the best of my knowledge he had never set foot in Cambodia, and again he was dressed like a parade-ground soldier. It was just a disaster.”
General Bautz visited next with General Roberts and Colonel Meyer of the 1st Cavalry Division. He said he was going to relieve the CO of 2-34 Armor unless they had something to say in his defense. Did they?
“Oh no!“ Roberts answered.
Task Force B continued to squat in place as Bautz went looking for a replacement for Redmond. Meanwhile, on 8 May 1970, Claybrook's Task Force A again pulled up stakes.
Making a half-mile jog east on Route 7, then turning south into rolling rubber plantations, Lieutenant Forster could not help but regard his hostile surroundings as beautiful. Everything was vibrantly green and alive: In Vietnam, everything that wasn't bulldozed or pockmarked was coated with three layers of dust. The column turned again in the rubber trees, this time to the west. With his two-tank platoon, Forster put his staff sergeant on point