CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
It was an awesome sight even for seasoned chopper patrols: over two hundred helos carrying two thousand of Second Army’s Assault Helicopter Battalion and Airborne into battle, fifty miles north of Phu Lang Thuong to the edges of the valley southwest of Loc Binh. From a distance to the fighters and bombers already plastering the scrubby ridges around Loc Binh with H.E. and napalm, the choppers made it look as if the sky was full of gnats.
Marte Price had wrangled a ride on one of the helos. General Jorgensen, she discovered, was a much easier obstacle to work around than Freeman. Jorgensen, at pains to be politically correct, had also allowed several other reporters, including LaSalle, to be in the first wave. Marte Price now wished Jorgensen had refused permission. The noise of over two hundred helicopter engines and rotors chopping the thick, humid air, and the distant thunder of heavy ordnance being dropped to clear the ridges of the PLA, combined to fill her with a fear she had never felt so intensely.
The members of the nine-man squad she was with were mostly silent, all but two sitting on their bulletproof Kevlar vests instead of wearing them, fearing shots from below that could easily penetrate the skin of the chopper and hit their genitals. The minutes before deplaning were filled with apprehension, each man knowing that the PLA might well be ready to spring a trap around the landing zones, holding their fire till the helo’s soldiers were spilling out on the flats between the ridges and then opening up in a murderous ambush.
As the First Battalion of Airborne went in led by Colonel Smythe, Freeman was in the control chopper high above the swarm of helos below, with F-14 Tomcats from the
Normally a colonel or a one-star brigadier general would have been directing the local deployment, but this had been Freeman’s plan, and if he was going to take responsibility for it, — he wanted to personally direct it. Besides, like Patton, he was known as a front-line general, no matter whose plan it was. Furthermore, Second Army was his until told otherwise by Washington.
Then it happened. Bravo Company of the First Battalion were deplaning close to a dike running along the edge of a rice paddy when the field seemed to erupt in fire, the fusillade of bullets coming from a scrubby and partially treed ridge that sloped down to the valley floor of green fields. Even as a star, or six-point 105mm howitzer, gun position was being set on the ridges south of the landing zone, with 105mms slung under the bellies of an equal number of heavy-load Chinook choppers, the PLA infantry were laying down a murderous fire on the Americans.
How did the PLA know there would be a major force attempt to secure the valley as a hub from which to “spoke out” attacks against the PLA’s supply line between Lang Son and Loc Binh and the road between Loc Binh and Lang Duong? In fact they didn’t know. The PLA had guessed that Freeman, a general known for his “keep- moving” tactics, wouldn’t be satisfied waiting for a set-piece battle about Phu Lang Thuong. He wouldn’t wait for his enemy to come to him, but would probably try to leapfrog, overflying the PLA’s spearhead on the Lang Son-Phu Lang Thuong road, to hit Wang’s and Wei’s forces deep in their own territory. That would stop the Chinese supply line, splitting their forces and allowing two divisions from Second Army’s I Corps to close in from Phu Lang Thuong.
Wang and Wei, while having made spectacularly impressive gains so far, had not managed to take Hanoi. The U.S. artillery was too formidable. The Chinese generals now had to decide whether to recall those PLA elements to the south now wheeling before Phu Lang Thuong for the attack on Haiphong on the USVUN eastern flank. If these PLA regiments were able to reach the allied port of Haiphong, then the winding, seventy-mile-long Haiphong-Hanoi road, the allies’ vital supply artery, would be cut, and with that would come a bonanza of allied supplies for the PLA. And whatever the PLA couldn’t find dockside at Haiphong could be supplied along the southeast coast from the Chinese city of Mong Cai.
On the other hand, if the PLA regiments did not pivot before Phu Lang Thuong toward the Red River delta, but stood their ground to prevent the other units of Second Army’s I Corps from pressing north toward Ban Re and Lang Son, the oncoming Americans would soon meet up with Freeman’s Airborne, allowing the Americans in the north, now reinforced, to split into two spearheads, one swinging west to take Lang Son, the other right to Loc Binh.
The two Chinese generals knew they had the numbers, but also knew that if their supply line could be cut this far north, then Freeman’s Second Army I Corps would not only advance but would be constantly reinforced by Haiphong. Wei was still ready to go along with the two political officers and make an all-out assault on Hanoi.
“Imagine,” Wei said, “if Washington fell — the terrible effect on American morale.”
Wang arrogantly waved his comrade’s comment aside. “Washington did fall, comrade. The British burned it to the ground, and look at it today. If anything, its fall hardened American resolve to counterattack.”
“This is another time,” Wei responded.
“Exactly!” Wang retorted. “In any case, it was our agreement that if we did not take Hanoi by the tenth day, we would turn to Haiphong.”
“Yes, Comrade General, but we have been held up on the highway to Hanoi by American and Vietnamese saboteurs. We’ve not really begun our attack on Hanoi.”
“Enough of this wrangling,” Wang said. “I demand a vote.” It was two for going on to attack Hanoi, two for Haiphong.
“Very well,” Wang said. “Beijing must decide.”
“What do we do meantime?” one of the political commissars asked.
Wang’s knuckles rapped the map, his regiments red-flagged, the enemy’s blue. “I suggest we crush Freeman’s helicopter assault at Loc Binh.”
One of the political commissars had the temerity to point out that it would not be correct to report that the Americans were attacking with helicopters. This would give Beijing the impression that the assault was a gunship attack by American Comanche and Apache helicopters when in fact it was an infantry attack, albeit airborne.
Wang said nothing that would injure his career, but merely smiled at the commissar. The other three took this to be a sign of acquiescence. In fact it was a well-camouflaged expression of contempt for the tendentiousness of the political officers. B «t clearly, neither commissar detected his true feelings about them. He was glad they were deceived and was hopeful that Freeman’s forces were about to be equally deceived by his camouflage at Loc Binh.
Apache gunships came to the fore as those who had deplaned their troops flew westward of what were now being called the Loc Binh fields, the Apaches spraying machine-gun fire into the scrub and bamboo that came down to the edges of the fields. In a confusion of communications, some choppers got the order to withdraw with their full complement of troops so TACAIR could be brought to bear, while others still a few feet above the field, their blade wash flattening the elephant grass along the edge of the field/ridge interface, deplaned their troops into a maelstrom of small-arms fire directed at the troops just landing, their most vulnerable moment, the helos also drawing heavy fire.
Up on a ridge held by the Chinese, a battery of 12.7mm machine-gun-cum AA fired had already downed three choppers: one after its troops had alighted, the other two while fully loaded, approaching hovering position. Two Tomcats came in low, dropped napalm on the batteries, and rose quickly as an enormous, roiling orange-black ball of flame engulfed what just seconds before had been enemy positions.
But meanwhile the PLA were “walking” 82mm heavy mortar rounds across the fields, telling Freeman that the PLA crews must have had time to angle — prepare their trap. Then the walking would stop, the rounds hitting the Americans with “unison” rounds in which up to ten mortar rounds landed together, shrapnel whizzing through air, immediately followed by the screams of men being hit.
Freeman, seeing he was between a rock and a hard place, had to decide to cut and run or drop more men into the maelstrom of fire. There seemed to him a better than fifty-fifty chance that he could hold position with a stream of troop-carrying helos keeping up the supply of men and materiel into the LZ while its perimeter was being established. “We keep going,” he ordered. “Hold the perimeter.” Already more helos were taking off from Phu Lang Thuong.
Meanwhile Wang was on the phone with his Loc Binh field commanders, ordering them to commit several
