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Surprised Reporter Finds Self at Command Post |
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(EDITOR’S NOTE: Charles Black, Enquirer military writer, has returned home after four months in Viet Nam. He was with men of the 1st Cavalry Division during many of their recent engagements with Communist guerrillas, and his articles on the war as he saw it will continue in The Enquirer daily.) By CHARLES BLACK Enquirer Military Writer |
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In reconstructing what the
platoon led by Capt. John Oliver of Troop B, First Squadron 9th
Cavalry, did
during the night, a lot of little things seem out of focus and out of
chronology.
I remember once somebody
whispering to me:
“Hey, how would you like to
be back in Columbus having a family argument with your wife or paying
off a
traffic ticket?”
I can’t remember if it
happened when we were crawling into the perimeter or after we got
there, but I
remember everybody being immoderately tickled by it and how it made the
next
five minutes easier to take.
The same is true of more
crucial events, too.
We may have taken our three
fatal casualties after we had gotten to the perimeter and gone into
that fight
rather than when we were trying to get into the perimeter around the
patrol
base, for example.
There was no real line of
demarcation when we could say that we were under fire coming home and
that we
were under fire when we got there.
The fire fight was raging
full blast all around the little field where Maj. Bob Zion had gathered
the
three platoons of Cavalry riflemen and had been reinforced by a night
landing
of two platoons from Company A, First Battalion (Airborne) Eight
Cavalry.
Somebody got me by the wrist
as I crawled along in the grass and whispered “. . .come on, come with
me.”
I followed, my head and face
pressed into the grass, moving by pulling myself with knees and elbows
and
wriggling. The figure put a hand back
and said “. . .wait here.”
There were two of us there,
lying side by side, listening to the whine and crack of bullets and the
din of
explosions. We lay there for what
seemed an hour and I finally inched closer to the other man.
“Where is the captain?”
“Which captain are you
talking about?” he asked.
“Which captain? The
only one we have, Capt. Oliver! Where is
he?”
“He is back there on the
perimeter where you just came from.
You’re at the command post,” he whispered.
I sat up and stared around
me in one of the most insane moments of relief I have ever suffered and
immediately was notified that, command post or not, it wasn’t a place
to sit up
and breathe joyous sighs. Bullets were
cutting brush, knocking bark off of trees and making a spider web of
tracers at
exactly eye level and I gave a horrified moan and flopped back down
again.
“This is the command post.”
“Yeah. You got
any ammunition? We are holding this part
of the
perimeter. They ran us around the
anthill and they keep trying to assault from that direction. We’re going to be short of ammunition before
long,” he told me.
By this time I had noticed
that he was wearing a warrant officer insignia and wings.
I saw it was CWO John Goldenstein and kept
wondering what in the world he was doing here.
I asked him.
“That’s my bird we’re using
for sandbags over there. They put two
rounds into it while we were loading casualties and it’s broke. The other one over there got hit about 25
feet up and came down and bounced. One
.50 slug right into the turbine. Nobody
hurt, but man, they sure don’t teach this kind of stuff at flight
school in
Fort Rucker!”
I found that the warrant
officers and crew chiefs had been taken right into the ranks and were
operating
machine guns and rifles. One pilot had
crawled over to the perimeter to try to help pull back wounded and had
been
pinned down and simply enlisted himself in the platoon.
He fought there until the next morning.
I could hear Maj. Zion on
the radio.
“I believe they will make
their final assault on us about 5 a.m.
We’re still here but I can only promise you one thing, they’ll
fight for
every damned inch they get! Over.”
I heard some racket on the
speaker and then heard Maj. Zion again.
“Situation report? Don’t
know.
My situation is that I’ve got my head under this log and
somebody is
shooting bullets into the other side of it.
Soon as they give me a chance, I’ll look around.
Over.”
We had been hearing mortar
rounds landing in a senseless pattern, walking along the woods several
hundred
yards from us, then a barrage of three which landed almost where the
PAVN
positions were, as if the men shooting were going by guess.
There were Four Sky Raiders
just coming in and the little L-19 observation plane used by the Air
Force
officers who have been with the division since it formed was buzzing
around to
our north.
There were three horribly
close explosions in the center of the little clearing where we were
cornered. They were triple cracks of
dooms so far as I was concerned.
I knew we couldn’t stand
being mortared and hold off an assault by many times our number at the
same
time. I heard the Sky Raiders roaring
down and the whoosh of rockets.
“They got the mortars, boys,
they got the mortars!” Maj. Zion suddenly shouted.
I found later that Capt.
John Hudson of Lt. Col. Harold Stoner’s “poor man’s Air Force” which
walks and
lives with the 1st Cavalry Divisions, had spotted the flash of the
mortar
battery as it attempted to pinpoint us.
“That was the easiest
perimeter to define I ever saw. I just
had to look down and where all the tracers crossed, that was where you
guys
were located.
“I’ve never seen fire like
that. One little circle of solid
gunfire criss-crossed by all those tracers coming in at you! Then I saw those mortars bursting in the
trees and just when those went off down among the choppers that were
down I
spotted the battery.
“Those A1E lads hit it with rockets and napalm. There just wasn’t any more mortar fire after that,” Capt. Hudson told me.
ã Columbus Ledger-Enquirer