Sept 10, 1965
|
Fairfax, Ala., Captain Leads
Task Force
|
(EDITOR'S
NOTE: Enquirer Military Writer Charles Black is in Ankhe, the Viet Nam
encampment area for the 1st Cavalry Division now en route to the
overseas
assignment. His series of articles on the Fort Benning unit will
continue as he
moves with the division to give a first hand account of its activities.)
By CHARLES BLACK
Enquirer
Military Writer |
|
ANKHE –
A unique
organization ranges the area of Route 19 west of the high mountain pass
which
the road ascends to come to this little village where the 1st
Cavalry Division’s advance party has been clearing brush, unloading
equipment
and preparing for the landing of the most powerful U. S. fighting unit
committed here.
The task force guarding the
lower reaches of the pass is living in mud and water in a dank field
across
from an abandoned village which has been partially demolished by
peasants
seeking building materials. They are living in impromptu tents made
from
ponchos or in squad tents. Dump trucks have brought sand into the field
and
dumped it to build up the sleeping areas, but square sumps filled with
water
are all over the field.
The unit is called “Task
Force Panther” and is made up of the air cavalry troops of the 101st
Airborne Division and of the reconnaissance platoons from the First
Infantry
Division and the 101st Airborne Division. I got out of CWO
Mike
Lowe’s jeep and met a 101st Airborne trooper, Sp4 Roger
Rogers of
Dothan, Ala., and he drove me to the operations tent.
Capt. Robert C. Anderson of
Langdale, Ala., a very tired looking man, but apparently not sweating
out the
war too much, found some coffee and an ammunition case which could be
used for
a chair.
“We are the only cavalry
squadron in Viet Nam this minute. We whip all over the area, sometimes
in
choppers, sometimes motorized, sometimes on foot, keeping the VC away
from this
end of the road and the pass. We’re real proud of Task Force Panther,
they
ought to make it a regular outfit,” Capt. Anderson said.
A look at his operations map
showed that they had been active and that the Viet Cong had not
deserted the
area.
A battalion of about 45 VC
had been spotted the night before moving south but had disappeared into
the
thickly timbered mountains before an air strike got there. A while
later, 75
more were spotted moving south across the road in the area.
A raid in the afternoon
before had netted the task force its first kill. They hit a village and
when
they drew fire, killed one Viet Cong guerrilla, capturing his weapon,
and
captured another. They had had a casualty during the night.
A sniper had spotted a
sergeant silhouetted against a light, and had fired on him from the
concealment
of the abandoned village. The sergeant had been hit in the thigh.
“Not a bad wound. He’ll be
back to duty, but it’s the outfit’s first Purple Heart. We’re way ahead
of the
VC on the score,” Capt. Anderson said.
A convoy of trucks had just
come down from the winding mountain pass as we talked and after a coded
radio
exchange, the operations sergeant, S-Sgt. Ralph Toby, 101st
Airborne
Division, who comes from Montgomery, Ala., took a red grease pencil and
entered
another report number.
“Convoy reports sniper
attack as it came down pass at 13:30 hours,” he wrote.
Sgt. Toby made a circle on
the map which indicated that the VC had fired at the trucks as they had
come
around a switchback turn, letting the convoy go by and then firing into
the
rear of it. They had hit no one but had punctured one of the truckbeds
with a
bullet.
Chase Six VC
“We chased six VC up that way. We
wounded one
of them,
his arm was bloodied; we got that one and ran down a suspect who was in
the
area. That means there are at least four of them still around, I’d say.
We’ll
keep the pressure on and either get them or they’ll run,” Sgt. Toby
said.
Sp4 Leonard Beard and Lt.
Robert Raleigh poked their heads in the tent then and announced that
they were
ready to “make a jeep run up to the pass.”
A lot of vehicles were
heading out of the mud flat toward the mountain just west, loaded with
men
wearing the red patch of the1st Division and the eagle of the 101st
Airborne Division. They seemed to have shaken together very well into a
team.
Seeing them head up the road, immediately after the report of the
snipers, was
a comfort.
“We’ll have some company up
there. There will be at least a battalion working that pass over after
that
report a while ago. Everybody put a round in the chamber when we got
throught
that thing, though, because you could hide a division up there,” Capt.
Anderson
said.
The lieutenant wore a 1st
Division patch and the specialist a 101st Airborne patch. Lt. Raleigh
had
served at both Fort Rucker, Ala., and Fort Benning and asked me more
questions
about how the Valley area was doing than I had a chance to ask him
about how
things were up in the Ankhe pass.
Troops Seek News
A jeep with the windshield
down, whipping up a narrow road which twists and turns around a
mountain where
riflemen had been active an hour earlier, has a dampening effect on
conversation but everybody talks about the United States over here and
Columbus
is a kind of a crossroads for Army men. They pump me for every possible
scrap
of news about the town and area -- even asking about local politics and
real
estate developments.
“I’ve been gone a week or
so. I’m pretty far behind on any news at all,” I told the two soldiers.
“We’re three weeks behind so
anything you know is news,” Lt. Raleigh grinned. “It doesn’t seem to
make any
difference how old it is, or whether it’s news or not, a guy just gets
hungry
to hear something he hasn’t heard, I guess.”
Like Georgia
Mountain
The road reminded me more of
driving over Unicoi Mountain up in North Georgia than any place I can
think of.
Pine trees and oak trees mingled with tropical foliage. Rocks jutted
out of
elephant grass and vines, and the twisting turns caused the jeep
passengers to
twist their necks, looking in all directions at once.
Platoons and squads of
American soldiers in helmets and sweat-stained fatigues were pushing up
the
side of the mountain in spots. Vehicles were parked along the sides of
the road
below them. They looked as if they were combing the areas very
thoroughly and
hopefully.
At the exact top of the
pass, the temperature had dropped at least 15 degrees from the muggy
heat of
the valley of the Ankhe River which we had followed up from Binh Dinh
on the
trip up here. It was down to about 85 and it wasn’t so completely damp.
The
pleasant landscape at the top of the pass, where a whole company was
prowling
the brush now, made a sign up there seem necessary just to remind
people that
there was a war going on around here. It is the kind of sign American
outfits
are always erecting.
Sign Says ‘Welcome’
“1st Cavalry Division,
Welcome. This pass is secured by the 101st Airborne Brigade,” it read.
The 101st is providing perimeter
security for the advance party of the Air Cav.
“Do you know that bunch of
air assault soldiers is doing something that I doubt has ever been seen
in the
Army? When you get there, you’re going to see lieutenant colonels and
PFC’s out
with gloves on using those native brush hooks and clearing ground. I
mean it, a
major may be boss in the working party and it will be half officers and
half
NCOs, hacking out bamboo and thorns,” Lt. Raleigh said.
He twisted around in the
right side of the jeep and looked back at the sign.
“I think maybe they ought to
put up a sign on that base they’re building outside of Ankhe about
that, maybe
something with crossed brush hooks and a full colonel’s eagle on one
side and a
PFC’s stripe on the other, because they have sure pitched in together
and done
something. Wait until you see the place and you’ll understand what I’m
talking
about. It has been a real good thing to watch,” Lt. Raleigh said.
Ankhe Typical Town
We came down the mountain,
and then in a high, rolling plateau surrounded by a ring of mountains,
heavily
timbered and very beautiful to see, the village of Ankhe showed up. It
was a
typical town here: ox carts, chickens, pigs, children, women carrying
shoulder
poles with baskets, little open shops, narrow muddy streets, the
pink-blue-and-white color motif of a stucco villa-style building
surrounded by
wattle and thatch huts making a colorful backdrop for the dusty,
olive-green of
Army vehicles and helmeted soldiers.
Most of the soldiers were
wearing a screaming eagle here, but the green-dyed patch of the 1st
Cavalry
showed on the shoulder of Sp6 Roy Hernandez, standing by a jeep on the
edge of
a runway of pierced metal filled with a long stack of boxes and crates.
A row
of tents showed on a hill across the runway, sandbagged bunkers and
holes and
an orchard of puptents and poncho shelters behind them located the
division’s
new home.
It was just out of town on
the edge of a huge sweep of land which looked like few other places in
Viet
Nam. The brush and vines and bamboo were gone, stacked in big piles,
many of
them smoking and burning, but the grass sod was left untouched and I
could see
groups of helmeted soldiers hacking at brush clumps and dragging brush
to the
piles.
Hernandez grinned and
shouted a greeting, then he shook his head.
“You better go back to town
and tell the blacksmith to make you a brush hook. Everybody uses one
here. Col.
John J. Hennessey, Sp6 Roy Hernandez and everybody else, buddy. They
probably
already have you assigned to a working gang,” he said.
Return to Index