By CHARLES BLACK
Enquirer Military Writer
PLEIKU, Viet Nam - The Second Battalion, 12th Cavalry, is an outfit which has some special significance for me.
Lt. Col. Earl Ingram’s staff
was made up of men I had long known in the Second Infantry Division at
Fort
Benning when they had served with the First Battalion, 23rd Infantry,
in
armored personnel carriers and had done such a beautiful job in their
role of
aggressor against the 11th Air Assault Division on maneuvers at Fort
Stewart,
Ga., and in South Carolina.
Sgt. Maj. Jesse Easterwood
never has forgiven me for what he maintains was “sainted” coverage of
those
maneuvers. Jesse says his battalion won
and I wrote it down the middle, being caught in a dilemma.
Besides, they don’t write the maneuver
scripts for aggressors to win - even though a redoubtable man like my
old
friend the sergeant major isn’t convinced.
(One battalion of APCs couldn’t handle an entire corps of any
other kind
of forces.)
I hooked a ride over and met
Maj. Thomas McAndrew, the executive officer; Capt. Raymond Robinson,
operations
officer; Capt. Joseph Segers, intelligence, Capt. Steve Zoliski, the
adjutant
(S-1, they call that job now) and Lt. Bill Commec, the supply officer.
I
remembered almost all of the company commanders, Capt. Gene Fox, A;
Capt.
Graham Avera, B; Capt. Bill Childs, C; Capt. George Miles, D, and Capt.
Clyde
Albert, headquarters.
Capt. John Averra, the
artillery forward observer, and Capt. Don Hubbard (a member of the poor
man’s
Air Force which I will talk about a paragraph or so from now) and I
immediately
hit it off well, all of us being more or less guests of Lt. Col.
Ingram’s
outfit. I had just concluded one or
more sessions with Sgt. Maj. Easterwood over the year-old argument
about that
maneuver when Capt. Hubbard pounced on me about the neglect I have shown where the forward air controllers have been
concerned.
I had received a letter from
a group of these same Air Force officers’ wives which asked me exactly
the same
question. I admitted being amiss.
I admitted that I had simply
said the “air was called in and . . .” without saying who had called it
in or
even noting that this group, to a man, volunteered to come to Viet Nam
with the
1st Cavalry Division and that practically all of them had served with
the Fort
Benning units which make up the first team now since the time the air
mobility
tests started way back in 1963.
These are the men who have
save my personal hide on three occasions by now and to whom almost
every
infantryman who has seen an airplane help him out of a tight spot
offers a word
of thanks:
First Brigade (All USAF
forward air controllers) - Capt. Al Voeglin; Capt. Jack Gilchrist;
Capt. Bill
Crum; Capt. Hubbard; Capt. Chuck Corey.
Second Brigade - Capt. Norm
Rice; Capt. Dick Kuiper; Capt. King Mills; Capt. Jim Swanson and Capt.
Carl
Granberry.
Third Brigade - Capt. Gordon
Eells; Capt. Andy Terpening; Capt. Chuck Hastings and Capt. Roger Knopf.
Lt. Col. John Stoner is the
man in charge of this jungle-boot wearing group of pilots.
I know that Maj. Kane is the fighter officer
and that Maj. Jackson is the reconnaissance officer but I haven’t been
able to
run down their first names. I know both
of them and I ought to have been more thorough in my memory but at
least my
intentions are good.
These pilots don’t lead the
kind of life usually associated with the bright, clean blue uniforms. They, in fact, live a sweaty and harrowing
existence, walking along with the infantrymen or flying around poking
after
trouble in their little single-engine reconnaissance planes.”
Their eyes and brains bring
in the napalm and rockets, bombs and other destructive devices provided
by the
Air Force for the aid and well being of the 1st Cavalry Division - and
they
take an infantryman’s risky and dirty life to do the job.
Any writer who has to be
reminded to give credit to men like that owes them an apology, but I
intended
to get around to it on my own hook anyway.
I enjoyed hearing from all those Air Force wives even though
they were a
little miffed at me.
I talked to Capt. Averra and
he produced what can only be called an artifact - some authentic
charcoal-filtered corn whiskey from the mountainous regions of North
Georgia. There were exactly four
tablespoons of this in a plastic medicine bottle which he had carefully
transported to Viet Nam in what is probably the longest moonshine
hauling
venture in history. I talked him into a
taste of it and then into putting a tiny portion aside in a bottle for
me.
(It sufficed to give a taste
to two city boys and an Englishman in the press corps here and the
Englishman,
Robin Mannick of Associated Press, who wears a goatee and was graduated
from
Oxford, expressed interest in taking out Georgia citizenship after the
sample.)
The staff was up late
working on the Boon Song sweep operation and I like the common sense
approach
Lt. Col. Ingram was taking. He had
worked out a simple proposition which kept his men on high ground and
always
working downhill as they moved out in patrols from the main attack.
As it turned out, of course,
it was all just good practice. The
battalion never got to Boon Song and for a while it looked as if it
might not
get out of An Khe, in fact.
About midnight, I believe
the word came that the Special Forces Camp at Plei Me had been hit with
a
violent attack which came from all sides and which brought in a barrage
of
mortar and recoilless artillery fire from the besiegers.
The new alert was to get ready for
action over in that district.
In a few minutes, the
mission of the battalion was suddenly shifted from just northwest of
Qui Nhon
over on the South China Sea to just Southwest of Pleiku near the
Cambodian
border - which is testimony enough to the mobility which the 1st
Cavalry Division
brings to a combat situation but which can make a staff just sit down
and
swear.
Several of them, as I
remember, did just that as they looked over their wasted work, but then
went
right back to work again on the new proposition.
In the next couple of days,
they were going to have a thorough test of their patience.
The switch in missions was just a foretaste
of the frustrations yet to come before the fighting started in the Plei
Me
campaign which Lt. Col. Harlowe Clark, First Brigade commander called
“Operation All the Way.”
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