 |
Skyraiders Fly Close Support(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 |
It had been noisy for a few
minutes, of course, and had caused everybody at the forward base to sit
up,
take notice, and then lie down again - in a hole.
Lt. Col. James Nix’s
battalion had a fight going about 2,000 yards away where its Bravo and
Charlie
Companies had tied into what was apparently a full battalion of fresh
troops
from one of the North Vietnamese army regiments attempting to flee the
Plei Me
area and find sanctuary in Cambodia.
During the night I kept
hearing the radio at battalion headquarters, which was actually only a
tense
little group of men crouched under a tree with maps spread on the
ground. I heard a platoon leader from
Bravo Company
radioing a plea which emphasized the close quarters of the battle,
which was
still going on at midnight.
Air Force A1E Skyraiders
had come on the scene and were
dropping napalm in an attempt to take some of the pressure off the
fighting
lines and allow some semblance of form to come to the scene so that
reinforcements could be helicoptered into them.
Bravo Company had penetrated
deeply into dug-in PAVN positions before its assault had been stopped,
and it
was fighting in all directions.
The same was true of Charlie
Company, which had attacked from the other direction.
There was no fixed line.
The Americans were in wagon wheel perimeters 200 yards from each
other
with PAVNs in between and all around.
When the Skyraiders made
their first run I could watch the big, silver propeller craft dive and
see the
flaming belch of napalm. I also heard
the radio:
“Bravo Six . . . Bravo
Six . . . Bravo Six” it stuttered with
an urgent voice obviously shouting into the microphone.
“Stop him, stop him! Call it off. He’s
getting it on us, too. I’ve got two
casualties.”
I didn’t hear the answer
because we had more firing from the 105mm howitzer battery nearest us
then, but
I heard the platoon leader’s voice again, much more calmly now.
“Bravo Six . .
all right. No, they aren’t
serious but it was close,” he said. “I
guess you’re right. Watch the next guy,
though. He’s making his run right now
and it’s coming right at us again. Keep
it coming, but for God’s sake don’t get it in any closer!”
Nix, his face lit by flares
which were being dropped now from “Smoky Bear” - the Air Force C123
which
circles such areas at nights kicking magnesium flares out on parachutes
-
talked to somebody.
“We’ve got to get some room
in there!” he said grimly. “Our guys
won’t pull back from it and the PAVNs are laying in close to get away
from the
artillery and air. We have got to
expect some of anything we put on the PAVNs, so keep the fire going in
there.
“They’re taking a licking
and I don’t think they can stand that close rifle fighting much
longer,” he
said. “When they break the contact they
are going to pay like hell for it, too.”
A little OH13 helicopter
came in about 5 a.m. and I heard Maj. Anthony (Tony) Carroll, Lt. Col.
Jack
Cranford’s executive officer of the 227th Assault Helicopter Battalion,
talking
to CWO Arthur Smith as they came over toward the command post. There wasn’t any sleep available around this
place anyway, so I went over and Smith told me what they had been doing.
“That major is a tiger,
Charlie!” Smith said. “You know what
we’ve been doing? He got two M-16s and
filled a C-ration carton up with magazines and came over to talk me
into flying
that OH13 Bell for him. We’ve been over
there all night, flying right around the perimeter along a trail and
along a
creek. I’d put it down on the trees and
he would cut loose a magazine.
“I got worried because every
time he would cut loose those Communists would cut right back,” Smith
continued. “I told him ‘Major, every
time you shoot that thing we get a big burst of automatic fire right
back.’ He cranked off another magazine
and said ‘Well, Smitty, fair is fair!
We shoot at them and they shoot at us.
Fair is fair.’
“He shot until one rifle got
too hot, and then he switched to the other one,” he said.
“He must have put a thousand rounds
down. The guys kept radioing to us to
‘keep it coming, keep it up.’ I think
it made them feel good seeing that little bubble chopper up there
strafing.
“I’d been complaining about
not getting enough action, but I’m not complaining any more, not since
that
ride with him,” Smith concluded.
Carroll and I went down to
the artillery area to get some coffee (Cannon men always have coffee
because
the nature of their work keeps them up and moving at all hours) and I
made a
deal with him to cart me up to the fight.
“I’ll get you into that
landing zone where they are getting the casualties out,” he said. “It’s hot, but we’ll get that little bird in
there. There is a lot of fire in those
woods around there, but I know a way to get to that field in one piece.”
I asked him about his use of
the little Bell as a gunship during the night and he grinned.
“Smitty and I were so damned
frustrated knowing that fight was over there and not being able to get
into
it,” Carroll said. “I figured we could
lend some moral support, and by golly I think we got some of those
jokers,
too. I know I feel better now after
getting in some licks.”
Later, when the fight was turned into a pursuit of fleeing Communists, a patrol I was with found three bodies lying on the trail where Carroll and Smith has been blazing away. There were half a dozen weapons left there. He had definitely “gotten in some licks.”
© Columbus Ledger-Enquirer