Life and Death in the Central Highlands: An American Sergeant in the Vietnam War, 1968-1970

Chapter 8. The Cambodian Invasion: May 7 to May 15, 1970

199 8. The Cambodian Invasion May 7 to May 15, 1970 COMBAT ASSAULT INTO CAMBODIA The 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry lifted off from LZ Jackson Hole for Cambodia in the middle of the afternoon on May 7, 1970. Col. George Webb, the acting chief of staff for the II FORCEV, wrote a report on what we did there called,“The Commander’s Evaluation Report—Cambodian Operations.” I read it in the summer of 2003, and I was surprised by the brevity of information about what happened to us that day.The colonel wrote, “Immediately upon landing,1/22 made contact with a reinforced platoon in bunkers. Killed 4 NVA. Captured 2 weapons.”1 Maybe the colonel’s terseness was because he was separated from our landing by both time and space. He wrote the report at the end of June, and as the acting chief of staff for the II FFORCEV, he was not in Cambodia. He was in the command post in the Central Highlands Special Forces camp at New Plei Djerang. That probably explains why his report makes it seem like the four hundred men of our battalion dropped on a clearing with thirty or forty NVA, shot four of the outnumbered enemy, and took two of their weapons home as souvenirs. It has often been said that truth, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. 200 Life and Death in the Central Highlands Since I beheld this action as a participant that day, my truth about it is different from the colonel’s.This is how I remember it. At midmorning, we formed lift groups and sat in the sun waiting for the troop slicks (UH-1 helicopters) to arrive. They showed up around 1:00 p.m. and landed in groups of four. As each lift landed, the men assigned to it swung on their packs, locked and loaded their weapons, and sat in the doorway. My friends Greg Bodell and Richie Beunzel gave me the “safe” seat, in the middle. It was “safe” because it was equidistant from the door gunner and the pilot who were always prime targets on hot landing zones. Cecil Dykes, Jim Henderson, and Jim Hinzo sat in the doorway on the other side. LT Mack sat on the floor in the middle because the platoon leader of the first unit always went in the first slick of the first lift.The slick lifted off, and I remember feeling sleepy, scared, and angry all at the same time. There were about a hundred slicks in our part of the invasion. They landed in four-ship lifts, picked up the infantrymen, and then orbited Jackson Hole until the entire battalion was airborne. Each lift was flanked by two Cobra gunships. We flew most of the way in the cool air, above small arms range at 1,500 feet over the triple canopy jungle.A kilometer from the landing zone, our Cobra escorts dove in ahead of us to strafe the wood line around the clearing.They gave it their full treatment of 122-millimeter rockets, 40-millimeter cannon, and six-barreled machineguns. While they were doing that, our four-ship lift took one turn over the landing zone to go in facing the wind so the pilots would have better lift and maneuverability.Then we started the descent. We dove in nose down and tail up, to give us the most speed, and the ground came up so fast I thought we had been shot down.At about twenty feet off the ground, the nose came up, the tail rotor dropped, and the slick began to shudder from the strain of converting a dive to a hover and from the hits we were taking from ground fire. I couldn’t actually hear the shots being fired, but I knew we were taking ground fire when I saw some green The Cambodian Invasion 201 flashes in the dust storm we were kicking up and heard a sound like hammers hitting the aircraft. I thought they must have been using the big 12.72-millimeter machineguns because when they hit, the rounds made fist-sized gray circles in the olive drab paint on the doorframe between Greg Bodell and the pilot. The door gunners in all four slicks opened up with their M-60s to give us some protection while we were over the LZ. Then, when our ship came...