AND LO, I BEHELD. A PALE RIDER ASTRIDE. A DARK HORSE, AND THE. RIDER’S NAME WAS

AND LO, I BEHELD

A PALE RIDER ASTRIDE

A DARK HORSE, AND THE

RIDER’S NAME WAS

DEATH

Carriss came back up on VHF. “One Seven, I’m going to roll back in for another pass. Are you OK? ”

“I’m OK, Three Eight, and holding down here on the southeast. ” With that, Carriss pulled a one eighty, rolled back into the target from south to north, and placed more “good rocks” right into the cooking fire area. The devastation was a terrifying and sobering sight.

Once back up to altitude, Carriss asked me if I wanted to make a recon of the target area. I pulled on power and started back inbound, this time headed from southwest to northeast. The cooking fire, though I hadn’t noticed before, was on the south bank of this little tributary off the Saigon.

The gun’s rockets had blown away most of the vegetation and overhanging growth. There were craters where the rockets had impacted, and the entire area looked as though it had been sprayed with fine dust, dirt, and mud. In spite of all that ordnance coming into this little spot in the jungle, the enemy’s backpack was still in its original place on the log, with the SKS rifle lying across it.

I had made a couple of orbits, looking over the scene, when Crockett, obviously very excited, came up on the intercom. “I got three dead VC… three dead VC… I got ‘em in sight, sir. You see ‘em… do you see ‘em? ”

My vision tunneled right into that area below the ship, where the three bodies were sprawled. On my third orbit, it finally occurred to me to look over toward the water. “Holy shit! ” I practically screamed. Coming up right on my nose were two sampans, side by side, lying parallel to the bank. My scouting inexperience was showing. I was still focusing on individual things–the pack, the bodies, the devastation. I had failed to sweep the whole target area to see what else might be around.

One of the sampans had military equipment piled in it. The other one had a VC lying in the bottom of it face up, with an AK‑ 47 pointed right up at me. I jerked my head around over my right shoulder and yelled at Crockett: “See the guy… you see the guy? ” I didn’t think to tell Crockett it was the guy in the sampan.

Crockett came back. “No, I don’t see him. Where is he? ”

My minigun! I thought. I’ll use the minigun, since Crockett can’t see him. But, again, my inexperience reared its ugly head. I was coming up too fast and close for a minigun shot. In that instant, however, I somehow managed to dump the nose and pull on power. I was suddenly almost standing on end, looking straight down at the ground through the bubble, the ship’s tail sticking up in the air almost perpendicular to the ground.

I jerked the minigun trigger and in my excitement pulled right through the first trigger stop into a full four‑ thousand‑ round blast. I had the cyclic pushed full forward, tail in the air and losing more airspeed every second.

Fighting to regain control of the helicopter, I jerked back the cyclic, armpitted the collective, and nearly crashed into the top of a nipa palm. I could hear Crockett screaming into the intercom: “Son of a bitch… SON OF A BITCH, sir! You cut that son of a bitch right in half! ”

Coming around again, we could see the results of the minigun, at four thousand rounds full fire: The sampan and VC were literally cut in half and sinking into the foul river water.

Crockett was back with his M‑ 60, reconning with occasional bursts of fire. As he put some rounds into the second sampan, he asked, “Do you want me to shoot the pack? ”

“No. We’ll put the ARPs down to sweep the area… don’t shoot the pack. How many people is that? ”

“There’s one in the water, three on the bank… that’s four… and a couple more I can’t see. Don’t know about them, sir. ”

Trying to control my excitement, I keyed my mike for the gun. “Hey, Three Eight, we’ve got a lot of stuff down here. We’ve got four bad guys dead, two sampans… we’ve got a pack… a bunch of weapons. We need to get the ARPs up here. ”

“OK, One Seven, why don’t you head out to the southeast, build up some airspeed, and come up to altitude. Let’s hold you at altitude until we can get the ARPs on the way up here, then we’ll scout an LZ for them. ”

I rogered that, then monitored Carriss’s FM call to Darkhorse Three (operations officer) back at the troop. “OK, Darkhorse, we’ve got a hot target with some body count. Let’s get the ARPs out here and put them on the ground… grid X‑ Ray Tango 677263. You might want to start Scramble 1. Tell him that we’ve got about twenty‑ five minutes on station… and start another team up here. ”

The Hueys–shut down on the “hot line”–were about to get the word to crank. Harris’s ARPs, with their equipment laid out, were always on scramble alert. Everybody would run full bore for the Hueys, and the flight would be off the ground in three minutes or less.

I needed to quickly scout out a landing zone. They would require a spot close to, but not directly on, the target area. I found a suitable place in a nearby dry rice paddy and radioed the location to the gun for transmitting to the slicks. I didn’t put a smoke down at the spot for fear of it being seen by the enemy. No reason to tell the VC just where our men would be setting down. The smoke would go in just before the slicks landed, to give them wind direction and the exact location of the LZ.

Having reported our fuel situation, it wasn’t long before another hunter‑ killer (H‑ K) team came up on station to relieve us. Hootch mate Bob Davis was my scout replacement. As soon as he joined up, we went back down to about five hundred feet over the sampan area and I began filling Davis in on the action.

“OK, One Three, see where the rockets worked out up that little tributary off the Blue? The rocks hit on the south side of the bank and right under me now–mark, mark–we got three bodies, a pack with an SKS lying across it, some AK‑ 47s. Right at the edge of the water are two sampans–cut one in half… a guy was in it… it sank. And there’s another one behind it. Took no fire after our initial runs. Follow me for the proposed LZ. ”

With Davis on my tail, I came around to the southwest of the sampan area and keyed One Three again. “Right under me now–mark, mark–is the dry rice paddy recommended as an LZ for the ARPs. I’m low on fuel… you got everything? ”

Davis gave me two clicks from his transmitter and I headed back to altitude to join up with the Cobras. Having received our briefing, One Three and his gun were now in control of the area and would wait for the slicks to show up with the ARPs. I got on Carriss’s wing and we headed back to Phu Loi to refuel and rearm. On the way back to base, we passed the Hueys carrying the aerorifle platoon. They gave us a wave and a thumbs‑ up. Not having touched base with Crockett for a while, I hit the intercom switch and asked him if everything was OK in back.

“Yup, ” he said, “I’m rigging a smoke. ”

Looking back over my right shoulder, I saw him wiring a red smoke grenade to the muzzle cover of his M‑ 60. 1 knew it was traditional for red smoke to be trailed when an H‑ K team returned to base after having scored a kill. It was a visual symbol to everyone at the installation, like the submarines during World War II lashing a broom to the bridge, signifying a clean sweep.

Coming in on the downwind, Crockett’s M‑ 60 poked out the door, trailing red smoke for all the world to see. I was coming back from my first scout mission, in command of my own ship, and trailing red smoke marking our kills–including my first from the air.

The emotion was one of excitement mixed with horror. My hands were trembling and there were no words. There was no need for them. I had engaged the enemy in combat, face to face. I had made mistakes, but I had accomplished a mission and survived. And I had drawn my first blood.

Happy twenty‑ first birthday.

^{CHAPTER 5}