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12 Rangers in Foxholes The delivery of the 5th and 8th Airborne Battalions, followed by the brigade command group and artillery battery, went off like clockwork on 15 April.1 The ride north gave me another good look at the whole area from the open doors of the helicopter. Just as I had observed the previous evening, the hills were grass covered with some brush and timber down in the draws. Cobra gunships and tactical air strikes had just completed attacks at the base of the hills and were hitting other potential enemy locations in the surrounding area as our helicopters landed. The air was heavy with the smells of plowedup earth, shattered vegetation, and burned cordite. The sudden heat on the open hilltop seemed particularly oppressive after the cooling rush of wind everyone had enjoyed during the helicopter ride. As soon as I was back on the ground the sweat began to run, and my steel helmet and rucksack seemed especially heavy. Within an hour all the 5th Airborne Battalion’s soldiers had been delivered from the pickup zone south of Chon Thanh. As the rifle companies got consolidated they spread out into a tactical formation and pushed through the grass to start moving down the northwestern slope toward the rubber plantation . The command group fell in behind the lead company and we were quickly into the cover of the trees at the base of the hill. The heavily laden troops were happy to move out of the open sun and the battalion seemed to simply flow out of sight into the shelter of the rubber trees with an absolute minimum of fuss. The paratroopers of the 5th Airborne Battalion were tough, experienced, and totally professional, and I was very impressed by what I saw. Our mission was to move across country and establish a defensive position along an old railroad bed on the outskirts of the town. We were to defend the southeastern approaches to An Loc in coordination with the 8th Airborne Battalion, 56 Chapter 12 which was off to our left and following its own assigned route toward its objective near the town. We planned to move into our proposed defensive position well before dark, leaving plenty of time to get dug in. The march through the rubber trees was conducted at a cautious but steady pace, with occasional stops to ensure the squads out on flank security were keeping up with the main body. Inside the rubber plantation the ground was generally flat with occasional dips and low ridges. The dirt was hard packed and brick red and columns of rubber trees marched off into the shade in all directions. Planted in rows, the trees grew about twenty feet apart. It was possible to stand in one place and look down an avenue between the tree trunks in every direction as they were evenly spaced on the ground. They had been planted in a pattern that resembled the checked cornfields of my youth, but on a much-larger scale. Each tree trunk was smooth and about a foot and a half thick with their lowest limbs approximately fifteen feet above the ground. It was hard to tell how tall they actually grew as the tough green leaves were as big as dinner plates and so thick the sky was lost to sight. Chevron cuts in the tree trunks indicated they had been in production. Although many of the cuts were healed, there was an occasional overflowing latex collecting-cup still attached to a tree. Visibility was sometimes as much as fifty yards, but normally less because of folds in the ground and the filtered light. Even though there was little or no direct sun on the ground it was stifling hot and the sweat was really running. I’d been carrying a rucksack and wearing a steel helmet for years and they had become an integral part of life. Shifting their weight and letting the sweat drip had become something like routine, although their burden seemed particularly telling in that heat. I noticed that not a single soldier walked out in the open avenues between the rows of trees. The men were well spread out and when they paused it was next to a tree trunk to avoid the direct fire that could come down an avenue without warning. The battalion had covered about half the distance from the hilltop landing zone to the city when our forward movement stopped, and Colonel Hieu was called...

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