A WALK IN THE PARK

     A simple operation, performed by two platoons of the River Rats, one platoon coming in from the northwest and one from the southwest. The LT was with the northwest platoon (Mike Platoon - 2nd)  moved through the jungle with the village coming into sight after about 15 minutes. Lima Platoon (1st Platoon) came in from the southwest and saw a spattering of trees in the distance and a pond with hootches and more small buildings on the other side.
     Little intel was available about the strength of the enemy before them and so the advance was cautious as the American forces moved through the trees and brush toward the village. Then at the insistence of the forward observer, 105mm fire began to drop on the western edge of the village, pummelling the far buildings, but seemingly causing little damage. With the fall of artillery shells on the edge of the village, automatic weapons fire began to thrash the treeline on the northwest edge of the village and the advance of the platoon stopped temporarily as first fire was thrown at the green-clad soldiers and they dove for cover, returning fire. The sergeants walked upright, up and down the firing line, encourage the troopers to return fire at the building, pointing out targets, and directing the fire of the teams and sending the independent machine gun around on the left flank to lay fire into the building.
     The first platoon, Lima Platoon, moved forward through the heavy trees and came to an opening in the brushline. Rat-Alpha-1, the point squad, seeing the path clear, dashed across the clearing and into the trees. They were very surprised when. in a firestorm of bullets, small arms, medium machine guns, and an AAA heavy machine gun opened fire into them and pinned them down immediately. They struggled for cover and hoped for assistance.
     The platoon leader saw all of the green tracers flying out of the trees, including the deep thuds and the flaming tennis-ball-sized tracers from the triple A gun, realized he had kicked over a hornet's nest and he called for his RTO, who had hunkered down behind a log.
     Calling the call sign of the OH-6 that was tasked to provide support, he gave the coordinates of the enemy. He unconsciously ducked after only 30 seconds as the Loach screamed in over his head from west to east, it's minigun whining and brass dropping in a golden tail from the helicopter's belly. The storm of rounds hammered the tree line and the Loach screamed past, over the pond toward the village, searching for the enemy amongst the hootches and the streets of the village.
     The Platoon sergeant took the opportunity to charge with a squad of lifers out of the treeline and engaged the VC fireteam, rolling them up and crashing on into the anti-aircraft machine gun position, taking control of the position, where they halted, not dashing into the open to engage the medium MG position because of the possibility of fire from the ville across the pond.
     As Mike Platoon moved forward, the Red Leg FO called another mission into the western edge of the village, pounding the buildings with 105mm fire. He was rewarded this time with movement amongst the houses and yards, and hollered "Repeat, Repeat" into the radiophone.

Three VC Casualties But Some American Casualties Are Coming

     More machine gun fire began to pour out of the buildings on the south side of the village and now the North side was beginning to light up as well. The LT was beginning to think that this mission was the walk in the park high command had said. After hearing on the radio that Lima squad had taken casualties trying to crack the nut of the VC lair on the south side, and more casualties trying to rescue the nutcrackers, he called in medevacs to the south of the ville where they could set security and lay big beaten zones with Claymores to keep the enemy off them and keep the enemy off them.
     Now how was he going to explain this to the Colonel? He started thinking about how he could have done better and how he would do it the next time ....