Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [97]
Quite simply, Snoul was not obliterated as had been reported by the press and, in fact, anyone overhead in a helicopter could have easily discerned that only a tenth of the small town, primarily the area around the market, had been gutted by air strikes. Although the NVA had decided to turn Snoul into a battleground, and although 2-11 and 3-11 ACR could have easily bombarded the whole town and then shot their way in, Brookshire explained that higher command's concern with civilian lives and property demanded that they be more cautious in their tactics. Their goal was interdiction of supplies, not body count, and as such, they broke contact when their reconnaissance met entrenched resistance. Air strikes had been employed only to facilitate that withdrawal. Much of the damage to the inner city had occurred when the NVA seized Snoul from the Royal Cambodian Army the previous month. There were no slit trenches stuffed with charred enemy corpses for the reporters to photograph precisely because of their cautious tactics: A gap had been left open north of Snoul through which, according to villagers, the enemy had retreated with their casualties during the night.
Most of the reporters were not impressed with Brookshire's commentary, and did not find space to include his version.
About twenty individuals were, however, very pleased to see the Black-horse enter Snoul: namely, the French plantation managers and their French and Vietnamese wives. Through the plantation supervisor's English-speaking wife, they explained that the NVA had kept them under house arrest and that they had spent the battle in their cellars. Their company had dispatched a plane for them, and an impromptu ceremony developed along the sod airstrip as they waited, complete with invitations to the assembled officers to visit them in Paris, and the distribution of items that could not be taken aboard the light aircraft. The young warrant officer who flew Brookshire's Loach received several bottles of wine, and Brookshire was presented with a pair of large, decorative elephant tusks, which traveled with him through Cambodia and became something of a squadron trademark when they were mounted beside the TOC armored cavalry assault vehicle at each laager. The plantation supervisor gave his card to Menzel:
JACQUES LOUAT DE BORT
SOCIETE DES PLANTATIONS DE KRATIE
PLANTATION DE SNOUL CAMBODGE
Captain Menzel slipped the card into his pocket, where he also had a photograph of a smiling Ho Chi Minh that he had taken off the body of an NVA political officer killed by G Troop in the rubber trees.
Pointing to his manor house, the plantation supervisor said that they were welcome to whatever had been left behind, and suggested that they recover his stereo before the communists did. That appealed to the Loach pilot who was flying Major Marsh back to Quan Loi that evening, and Marsh gave him permission to make a detour to the courtyard of the manor house. They landed in the front yard, and the pilot and crew chief ran inside. When they returned with a large console system, the eyes of the reporter on board shot open. Marsh quickly explained the situation over the intercom, and the reporter seemed to approve, but when the investigation began, the stereo was one of the items in question. Brookshire told Marsh to have the damned thing returned, and returned it was to the courtyard by a helicopter pilot from an altitude of a hundred and fifty feet.
As the 2-11 and 3-11 ACR expanded their sweeps through the rubber and jungle around Snoul, it became evident that the NVA retreat to the north had been complete, but also hasty: One abandoned cache contained 85mm tank gun ammunition, and an abandoned motor park contained grease racks and spare parts. Meanwhile, some thirty kilometers north of Snoul, elements of the 1st Cavalry Division had airmobiled across the border onto sections of the same trail network that continued south into the rubber trees, and had fought a pitched battle for a huge cache site nicknamed Rock Island East. Soon thereafter, 2-11 pushed north