Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [94]
Forster swung his .50-cal on them. So did the TCs on the tank ahead and the tank behind, and under the jackhammering, one of the NVA fell almost instantly. The other was also hit, struggled on twenty more steps, then fell into a heap.
Continuing generally west, Marvin Six ordered a halt around noon on the outskirts of Memot. Forster walked over to the command track, nicknamed Thundercooter. Tieman said that some of the company's tanks would be rejoining them soon. Having crossed the border with only his tank, three-five, and his staff sergeant's, three-two, Forster had been feeling like a glorified tank commander and was mighty happy when, three hours later, the sound of engines closed on their position. As they broke through the brush, Forster recognized his platoon sergeant, Sfc. Richard Stinchcomb, in the lead tank, three-four, which had been at Cu Chi with a blown pack on D-Day:
Each tank had its own signature that could be detected by its compatriots at a distance. Three-four was the oldest tank in the platoon, and had no searchlight so its turret's shining front slope could be distinguished quite easily. Furthermore, Platoon Sergeant Stinchcomb was the only black tank commander in the platoon. He sat quite motionless on his commander's hatch but got jostled around a lot because through the years the shock absorbers on three-four had been blown off by mines, so it was a rough-riding son of a bitch. Stinchcomb was lucky he was from Texas.
Well, Forster thought as the rest of the column rolled into their roadside position, happy days are here again! Tanks from another platoon arrived with the company's fuel 548 and ammo 548, towing water trailers, followed by a section of papa Charlies from their mech partners and, finally, six deuce-and-a-halfs towing the rubber-wheeled one-oh-fives of the task force's artillery battery. The perimeter was spread out to accommodate the new arrivals. As dusk approached, Lieutenant Forster's tanks and several tracks were sent out to scout their new surroundings. They kept to the gradual, grassy hillsides because the bottomlands appeared to be wet paddies. Sure enough, when one of the fifty-two-ton tanks decided to test trafficability in the paddies, it immediately bogged down. The engine was shut down so as not to dig the tank in any deeper, then the nearest tank prepared to tow it out. The problem was that the towing tank had weak batteries and had to be jump started each time it was shut down. The tow cables were hooked to the stuck tank. Since the cables lost their flexibility when fixed at one end, it took up to a minute to wrestle them into place at the rear of the towing tank. Furthermore, that vehicle's engine had to be shut down first because the hot exhaust was deflected straight down onto the tow-hook area. However, this towing tank might not start up again. Said Forster:
I thought that just this once we would try to hook up the cable with the engine running, so I offered to go behind and help the driver to hook up in the exhaust blast. No way! No way in hell could you stand that heat for more than eight seconds. So we told the driver of the front tank to shut her down. We got the tank hooked up and tried to start the pulling tank. Rn, rn, rn, blahh! It wasn't going to start without a jump, so we got one of the infantry papa Charlies to run through the paddy and