Loon - Jack McLean [76]
Negron, Camacho, and Tillery slid into a small command bunker they’d dug out the night before. Had there been time, they’d have dug it a mile deeper.
Minutes passed.
Camacho got final confirmation of the coming artillery bombardment from the rear and, eschewing the radio, yelled “ON THE WAY!” and leapt back into the bunker. Around the perimeter, from hole to hole, came the cries of “ON THE WAY!” and “FIRE IN THE HOLE!” At once, we all got small.
Camacho, on Negron’s order, had instructed our supporting artillery to fire directly onto our position, and we prayed like hell that none of the rounds fell directly into any of our fighting holes. We had little choice. The NVA had broken through our lines in several places and were now inside our perimeter.
The following seconds passed in near silence but for the sporadic crack of an AK-47 rifle. Then it came. The air at once was filled with exploding artillery, flying shrapnel, and screaming boys.
Their boys.
The artillery air bursts, ordered by Camacho, had caught the enemy in the open. Instead of exploding on impact, the artillery had been fused to ignite in the air above the battlefield. It was a slaughter.
With the last explosion, we leapt from the safety of our holes to reinforce the lines and ensure that every NVA soldier who had penetrated the perimeter was dead.
They were scattered everywhere, and they were all very dead.
June 6, 1968.
It had felt like a lifetime, and the morning was only half over.
Since the opening assault on Sergeant Brazier’s squad at dawn, we had lost twenty-seven men. Three of our four hospital corpsmen were wounded, and, except for Negron, we were out of officers—all were dead or wounded. We were tired, thirsty, scared, and trapped. We were low on ammo, water, and men. There were perhaps eighty of us left out of the one hundred eighty who had made the original landing, trying desperately to man an ever shrinking perimeter.
Our ammo supply was of particular concern. We were running out of what little we had been able to take with us from LZ Loon the night before. What we did have was being rationed around the lines. Frank McCormack, who had joined us just as we’d left Camp Carroll, occupied himself by identifying who had ammo and who needed it and running around the lines constantly passing it out or picking it up. He would later receive a Bronze Star for his efforts that day. A resupply chopper that had been able to get in around midmorning had been shot down on takeoff and had crashed on the side of the hill. Several of us ran up to retrieve the valuable cargo from the hulking shell, bringing cases and cases of 7.62 mm machine gun ammo, .223 caliber rifle shells, and 60 mm mortar rounds back down to the fight.
“Skipper.” It was radio operator Tillery. “There’s a Trailblazer Six Actual on the battalion TAC-NET.”
“Who the fuck is Trailblazer Six?” Negron wanted to know. “For shit’s sake, Tillery, can’t you keep even a few of these assholes off the line until we figure out how in the fuck we’re going to get out of this?” Negron was becoming uncharacteristically frustrated. “Jesus Christ, we got enough fuckin’ ‘Sixes’ clogging up this motherfuckin’ line.”
Negron grabbed the extended handset, took a quick breath, and squeezed the handle. “This is Charlie Six Actual. Over.”
“Charlie Six Actual, this is Trailblazer Six Actual. I know it’s hot up there; I know you’re in the shit. I know you think I’m another rear jockey pain in the ass, but we gotta get you all out of there and soon, so give me a sit rep.”
“Trailblazer Six Actual, the bad guys are still here. We’re dug in and kicking ass. You want my opinion? Get us out of here and bomb the shit out of it. Over.”
“Roger that, Charlie Six. I read you. Hold on to what you’ve got. Help is on the way. Over and out.”
On the way, my ass, thought Negron. And who in the hell was Trailblazer Six Actual, anyway?
Within minutes, a CH-46 helicopter and a protecting Huey gunship appeared on the horizon and banked toward LZ Loon across the ravine. We were ordered to lay down as much fire as we could