MAD CHARLIE

Rod Willis (One Seven) completed his scout training flights and moved onto the active flying roster, taking the place of Jim Ameigh. Jim Morrison had left the scout platoon for troop maintenance, so there was another vacancy in the Outcasts. Filling that slot was a new pilot, Bob Calloway, who took the scout platoon call sign One Zero. I made it a point to fly with new pilots coming into the troop as often as I could.

Calloway had been flying as door gunner for about a week, getting the feel of things. On 7 July, I decided to take him out on a pilot training mission, with him doing the flying out of the right seat and me riding along as observer in the left seat. I chose an area where I felt we could work without a great deal of danger–out along the Saigon River north and west of the Mushroom.

At that time of year, the Vietnamese were harvesting their rice crop and planting a new crop right behind it. In the area where Calloway and I were to fly that day, there were lots of U. S. Army and ARVN troops, protecting the farmers while they harvested and planted their rice. I felt, therefore, that the area would be relatively free of bad guys and potential combat situations. Besides, there were old forts, winding trails, Highway 14, various types of bunkers, tiny villages, and rice paddies on which Calloway could practice scouting techniques.

When we reached the area, I asked our Cobra pilot, Paul Fishman (Three Four), to put us down over a small open field. I wanted Calloway to practice how to drop out of altitude into a low search pattern, orbit a given area, and report everything he saw to the gun pilot.

I counseled One Zero, remembering that not so long ago, / was the trainee. “The good scout pilot never stops talking to his gun from the moment he goes down out of altitude until he comes back up again. It not only keeps the Cobra happy and informed, but it tends to keep your own guts stabilized when you’re down low working and, at any instant, could catch a bellyful of AK‑ 47 fire. ”

Then, while Calloway practiced, I relaxed. I hung my left foot out of the aircraft and let it flap in the breeze. I lit a cigarette and began watching the ground out the left side of the ship.

I noticed a group of people working a rice paddy out to the west, just off the east bank of the Big Blue (Saigon River). It looked like about thirty Vietnamese men and women all wearing the usual conical hats and traditional pajama tops and bottoms, pants rolled up above their knees.

Calloway didn’t see them at first because he was looking straight down in his right‑ hand orbits over the field. But each time we came around, I watched their progress as the group waded through the paddy, all heading in the same direction and working in almost perfect unison.

It was fascinating to see how smoothly and quickly they worked. They had bags of rice shoots strapped to their backs. With each step, they’d withdraw a shoot from their pack, plunge the shoot into water up to their elbows, leaving it standing erect in the mud, then move on to insert the next shoot. I was momentarily captivated by their almost military cadence as they moved down the watery furrows.

Then, the little alarm twitch in the back of my neck went off. Something about the group was just not right. I couldn’t figure it out.

My attention began to center on one of the workers near the middle of the group. He didn’t seem to be doing things the way the others did. As he moved forward with the group, he seemed also to be inching his way ninety degrees out of the knot of workers and toward the riverbank.

He didn’t have a hat on, and all the other workers were wearing hats. I studied his face. He appeared to be about military age, not very young or very old like the rest of the workers. While they marched steadily on, planting their rice and paying absolutely no attention to our orbiting aircraft, this person kept nervously glancing up at us, keeping close watch on where we were and what we were doing.

To distract him from the fact that we were keeping an eye on him, from our orbits over the adjacent field, I dropped a couple of smokes. I hoped that would make him think we were interested in something right beneath the airplane.

But he was too nervous to take the bait. Every moment or two he glanced over his shoulder at us–all the time trying to give the appearance of feverishly planting rice–while hurrying his movement across the main body of the group to make his exit.

That did it for me. I got on the radio to the gun. “Three Four, this is One Six. We got a guy over there in the middle of those farmers who’s planting rice the wrong way and looking suspicious as hell. ”

“What do you think you’ve got, One Six? ” Fishman came back.

“I don’t know, Paul, ” I answered. “But I don’t think he’s a farmer. I think we’ve got a dink over there who’s trying to look like he’s planting rice, while trying to pull a didi‑ mau out the other side and make a run for the river. ”

“What do you want to do, One Six? ”

“I’m going to tell Calloway to go over there and make a few passes near them to see what this person does. Then I’ll let you know. In the meantime, why don’t you get up on the ARVN push and find out who the controlling agency is for this area, so we can bring an interpreter in here and run a few questions by this guy. ”

Three Four rogered that and I pushed the intercom button to Calloway. “OK, Bobby, roll out of here easy and move on over to that group of farmers. Then take up an orbit at a respectable distance away, not directly over their heads. There’s a guy acting weird. We’re going to see what the hell he’s doing in there and nail his ass if he keeps looking phony. ”

Just as we were getting to the group of farmers, Fishman came back up on VHF. “Sorry, One Six. None of our friendlies in the area have anybody right now they can plug into this area to pick up your guy and interrogate him. What do you want to do now? ”

I thought for a minute while we watched below. Calloway now had the bird in right‑ hand turns about twenty feet off the ground, just to the west and on the river side of the group.

Our bareheaded rice planter was looking more suspicious than ever, glancing over his shoulder to make sure that he knew our every move. The other farmers were ignoring us, planting their rice without ever breaking stride.

I was convinced by this time that the fellow didn’t belong in that group of farmers, so I suggested that Fishman call up the troop and scramble the ARPs. We could put them down somewhere around here and they could take the guy into custody and find out what he was up to.

In less than a minute, Fishman was back to let me know that the ARPs were on strip alert for an infantry operation someplace else in the 1st Division area. So they weren’t available to us for anything other than a major priority situation.

Well, damn! I thought. I keyed the gun back. “OK, Three Four, cover me, please. We’re going in there and land, and I’m going to get that sucker myself. ”

“You really want to do that? ” Fishman responded.

“Well, he’s right out there in the middle of that rice paddy, and it doesn’t look like too big a deal to me to take my M‑ 16 and round him up. Then we can fly him to the ARVN unit just down the river and they can talk to him. ”

With that, I pointed Calloway to a thin dike in the flooded paddy near the group of farmers. “Make a circle and drop the bird on the dike just as close to that guy as you can. Then just hold her right there while I get out and get him. ”

Flying beautifully, Calloway settled the Loach on the little bare piece of ground. I jumped out of the aircraft, carrying my M‑ 16 with a thirty‑ round magazine in it. As usual, I was dressed in my Nomex flight suit and was wearing my chicken plate, which alone weighed about thirty pounds. Then my survival vest on top of that. My APH‑ 5 flying helmet, flight gloves, a pistol belt with my. 45 Colt and survival knife hooked onto it, plus a shoulder holster where I carried my own personal Python 357.

I walked in front of the aircraft, where I could look over the heads of a couple of rows of farmers and right into the face of my fidgety suspect. Since I didn’t know how to say, “Get your ass over here, ” in Vietnamese, I simply pointed my finger directly at him and motioned for him to come to me. He looked back at me with an “In your face! ” grin.

So I waved to him again, this time using the M‑ 16 instead of my finger. I looked him straight in the eyes and snarled, “Come over here to me! ”

By this time you would have thought that all the people in the rice paddy would have stopped what they were doing to watch the confrontation. But, not so. They paid no attention to me or to him; they just went on planting their rice more furiously than before.

This was their obvious signal to me that this guy was no part of their operation, that the rest of the group wanted nothing to do with him, with me, or with whatever we were arguing about.

I motioned to him a third time and said again, as sternly as I could make it sound, “Come over here to me right now! ” He looked at me with that stupid, toothy grin and slowly shook his head. Then he started backing away from me, as though he was looking for a fast way out of this deal.

“OK, you little son of a bitch, ” I yelled. I dropped to one knee, leveled the M‑ 16, and let three quick rounds fly, aimed at a spot right in front of him. Mud and water kicked up in his face.

Immediately his hands went up over his head and he started walking toward me, nodding and grinning like a Cheshire cat. When he got to me at the dike, I patted him down for weapons, forced his hands behind his head, and made him lock his fingers together. Putting my hands over his, I pushed and prodded him around the front of the aircraft. My intention was to put him in the crew chiefs jump seat and strap him in so he couldn’t go anyplace.

As I laid my M‑ 16 in the left front seat, he suddenly twisted out of my grasp and bolted away from the airplane. He darted underneath the tail boom, just missing the still‑ turning tail rotor, and made a running jump back into the rice paddy.

“You little son of a bitch! ” I screamed, as I grabbed the M‑ 16 back out of the front seat and ran around to the rear of the aircraft. I intended to fire one round over his head to make him stop and come back to me.

In my haste, I jerked the selector of the M‑ 16 to full automatic, inadvertently firing all twenty‑ seven rounds that I had left in the magazine. “Damn! ” I muttered in disgust.

I watched for an instant as my adversary bounded through the paddy toward a tree line that separated the paddy from the river. He was getting away, and all I had was an empty M‑ 16 and a mind‑ set–I was either going to get that little bastard or bust my ass trying!

With all my gear on, I probably weighed two hundred pounds or more. But I jumped in the paddy to go after him… and immediately sank to my waist in that water buffalo shit‑ stinking muck!

I could hardly move. Waving my empty M‑ 16 above my head, I yelled, “Stop! Come back here or I’ll let you have it! ” He wouldn’t know that I had a dry weapon.

But I was losing him. In desperation I turned back to Calloway, who was still holding the idling Loach on the dike. I pointed to the guy and shouted, “Go get him… run him down! ”

Calloway, I learned fast, was the kind of pilot you didn’t have to tell twice. He picked up the aircraft and took off at a dead gallop, holding the Loach about two feet off the ground.

He cut an arc right over the heads of the rice planters, who started diving into the water in every direction. It made a tremendous splash as all thirty of them screamed (probably a choice Vietnamese obscenity) and simultaneously hit the deck.

My guy was running through the water for all he was worth, with Calloway hot on his trail. I could only watch–my boots were so deeply mired in the slimy gunk at the bottom of the rice paddy that I could hardly move.

I managed to struggle forward a couple of steps while Calloway tried to corner the running Vietnamese. Bob had caught up with the suspect and circled above his head a couple of times, to let him know that he wasn’t going anyplace. Then Calloway dropped the helicopter down right in front of him to cut off his route of escape. Rotor wash made the paddy look like a full‑ blown geyser in Yellowstone Park.

Every time the Loach let down in front of the Vietnamese, he would change direction, like a halfback doing a fancy piece of broken field running. Calloway’s OH‑ 6 looked like a yo‑ yo on a string as he jerked the little Loach up and down, always managing to get down again right in front of the fleeing man and block his progress. Bob, through some damned skillful flying, had the man cornered like a rat in a trap.

As I made my way toward the sparring Loach and the frustrated escapee, I heard a sound in the water very near me. Then I noticed little splashes of rice paddy water kicking up on both sides of me, not more than a few inches away.

What in the hell is that? I thought. Then it quickly occurred to me: Those were bullets hitting the water, obviously aimed at me!

Looking toward the riverbank, about 150 yards away, my eye caught a pair of muzzle flashes coming from the tree line, no doubt a couple of AK‑ 47s winking right at me.

So, there I was, standing ass‑ deep in the rice paddy with an empty M‑ 16 and no spare ammo, and no way I could tell either the Cobra or scout ship that I was being fired on.

Determined to do something, I reached down into the water and fumbled with the holster flap of my. 45. Withdrawing the dripping weapon, I let fly with a couple of rounds toward the river, before realizing how futile it was. Using my. 45 at that distance was like fighting a fire a hundred and fifty yards away with a twenty‑ five‑ yard hose.

Calloway in the scout ship was about twenty yards away from me by then. He was making diving passes at the prey, forcing him to fall flat down into the water each time he brought the ship around. Every time the man got up to run, Bob would turn his ship sideways in front of him, then rock his skids back and forth, slamming them into the man. Using the side of the skid like a boxing glove, Bob kept knocking the guy ass‑ over‑ appetite back into the water.

Having dropped the worn‑ out man several times, Calloway then expertly maneuvered the Loach over the flailing suspect until one skid rested across the Vietnamese’s shoulders, pinning him to the bottom of the rice paddy.

As Bob held the man down in the water, I finally made it to the hovering ship and crawled up to the rear crew compartment. Plugging in my helmet mike, I keyed Fishman: “Three Four, I’ve got bad guys on the bank of the river at six o’clock right off our tail. They’re shooting at me out here. Can you hose down that riverbank before they close in on us? ”

With my last word, Fishman rolled in, making a rocket pass down the tree line. When I saw that Paul’s rocks were right where I needed them, I backed out of the airplane and told Calloway to raise the ship off the guy while I jumped down to get him.

As the Loach lifted, I was back in the water reaching for the SOB. His eyes bugged as I grabbed him by his shirt collar with one hand and punched him in the face with the other. His eyes rolled back in his head and he went out like a light, his limp body falling into the water.

Calloway moved the Loach in closer so I could pick the guy up and dump him in the back of the aircraft. I didn’t even tie him in, just grabbed a cargo strap and bound his arms and legs behind him. He was still unconscious, so he didn’t give me any more trouble.

Jumping back in the left front seat of the bird, I grabbed the controls and told Calloway, “I’ve got it. Let’s get out of here! ”

As we lifted off the paddy, Calloway looked over at me, his nose crinkled up. “Jesus! You smell like shit! ”

“Thanks a lot! By the way, for a student pilot, you did one hell of a job flying back there. A hell of a job… and I appreciate it very much. ”

We flew our suspect down the river to an ARVN compound, where he was quickly identified as a major from a VC division located near Dau Tieng. More than that, his interrogation revealed that he was a VC tax collector. It was his job to go out among the local civilian population in that area along the Saigon River and force them to pay taxes to support the VC. He’d hit up the farmers for food and money, and even pressed them into service to carry supplies to the Viet Cong forces. This guy was a pretty big fish to capture–a damned lucky stroke for us, since we were on a routine training mission.

This incident actually provided excellent training. I could have thought forever and never come up with a better example of one of aerial scouting’s most basic principles–contrast, or, what’s wrong with what you see below you? What’s in the picture that shouldn’t be there? What’s not there that should be there?

In the case of our VC major‑ tax collector, all the clues were there. The farmers were all planting rice in one direction; this single person was going off in a different direction, moving away from them. Everyone in the group of farmers wore a conical hat; this guy was bareheaded. The farmers paid no attention to our aircraft as we orbited nearby; this person kept sneaking glimpses at us over his shoulder and was moving away from the aircraft. Everybody else in the group was either very old or very young; this man was of military age.

When we got back on the ground at Phu Loi, Fishman came running over from his Cobra. He couldn’t believe that the enemy soldier in the rice paddy had turned out to be a VC major. Paul slapped us both on the back. “A VC major? Jesus Christ, I can’t believe you guys… I just can’t believe you guys! ”

The crew chief of our airplane had a different reaction, however. He came over to me with a thoroughly disgusted look on his face. “Shit, sir, have you looked at the back of my aircraft? There’s blood, swamp water, water buffalo shit, and all kinds of other crud back there. Ah, shit, sir…”

But that was a mild reprimand compared to what I got when I arrived at my hootch to shower and change clothes. As I walked in the door, Mai, our hootch maid, immediately stopped what she was doing and looked at me. There I was, still soaking wet from my jousting match in the rice paddy. My boots were fouled. Nastiness dripped from my flight suit and made a smelly, dark‑ colored puddle on the floor.

Mai’s nose curled up and she came at me with an up‑ raised broom. “Ding‑ wee! You stink bad. You smell like water buffalo. Get out and take shower, and no come back anymore until you no smell so nasty! ”

Over the next week or so, the troop got a lot of feedback on the VC major‑ tax collector incident. Division G‑ 2 and ARVN G‑ 2 were ecstatic about having a VC field grade officer to interrogate. It turned out that he was the chief tax collector for that area, so he was able to tell interrogators where all the local and main force VC units in the area were located. He also knew all the shadow government and chain of command in the villages along his stretch of the river.

For his absolutely masterful piece of flying that day, Bob Calloway was awarded the Air Medal. But the thing that made the episode really unique was the fact that Calloway received this meritorious award for flying the OH‑ 6… before he was even signed off in the Loach as a scout pilot.

We had a little saying around the troop, which was probably common among American forces all over Vietnam; “We own the day; he [Victor Charlie] owns the night. ”

During the day the American soldiers and our allies generally controlled the war. We were the aggressors; in daylight we usually had tactical advantage over the enemy. At night, however, when our forces went back into defensive positions, Charlie stayed out in the jungle. He used the night as a cover for his resupplying and offensive actions. He couldn’t stand against us during the day, but he sure could cause us a lot of difficulty once darkness set in.

We received a lot of night mortar and rocket attacks on our base at Phu Loi. Scouts didn’t fly operationally after dark, and we valued a good night’s sleep to be ready for those first light VRs, which had us in the air by 5 or 5: 30 in the morning. The VC seemed to have some insight into this fact. When they hit us after dark, the scout pilots would have to spend the night in bunkers instead of in our hootch bunks. It was cold and damp in those damned bunkers, and the only place to sleep was on hard, rough board benches. Not conducive, you can be sure, to a decent night’s rest.

Since it was not unusual for us to catch a few rounds of enemy mortar fire during the night, we’d sometimes just stay in our hootch bunks and try to sleep through it. Rockets were another story, however. Russia supplied Charlie with an individual heavy 122mm rocket that weighed 112 pounds, had a 42‑ pound warhead, and had a range of ten miles. This weapon could be fired from an easily made and highly portable launching stand. The enemy could set it up in short order by resting the body of the weapon on top of two crossed tree branch supports, preaiming it, and then arming the rocket to fire when two wires made contact after the pan of water they were in evaporated.

One night, after softening us up with a few rounds of 81mm mortar fire, Charlie let us have a few rockets. I was just about asleep in my bunk when a rocket hit out near the runway. The resulting explosion actually lifted the roof right off my hootch. I could see starlight through the gap between the roof and the sidewall! Needless to say all of us spent the rest of that night in the bunker, hard board benches and all.

Trying desperately to sleep that night, I couldn’t help but think about those enemy rockets and what it must have taken to get them from their initial supply point to a spot where they could be fired into our airfield at Phu Loi.

Charlie’s supply system was rudimentary, but with his dogged tenacity, somehow he was able to transport 122mm rockets–about the size of a telephone pole and weighing every bit as much–from an arsenal somewhere near Hanoi all the way down to Phu Loi. Through monsoons, B‑ 52 strikes, snake‑ infested streams… along dust‑ choking trails. Amazingly, these rockets reached a Viet Cong encampment in American III Corps area. All to keep American aerial scout pilots in Phu Loi from sleeping at night.

It didn’t take us long to understand what our new troop commander, Major Moore, meant when he told us on that first day that he was going to be involved in everyday combat operations. The previous commander had essentially run the troop from his office desk. Major Charles Moore liked to be in the air in his command and control bird, right above the action.

I found this out in spades on 8 July, the day immediately following the “swimming” experience with the VC major in the rice paddy.

On that day, Chuck Koranda (Three Nine) and I received a frag order for a hunter‑ killer team to assist the 2d Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry on a sweep mission near the Dead Man, a terrain feature located just south of Boundary Road and west of Highway 13. Our first step was to fly into the 2d Squadron’s night defensive position to get briefed on what they wanted us to do for them. They were located up Highway 13 north of Lai Khe in the general vicinity of our Thunder I base camp.

Koranda and I landed outside the wire, shut down, and walked together into the NDP. Chuck met with the squadron’s S‑ 2 and got all the map coordinates, details of the operation that 2/11 was about to launch, and the latest information on enemy activity in the area. There was to be a 2d Squadron sweep‑ and‑ destroy mission into an enemy base camp thought to be located immediately south of Boundary Road. The intent was to push an armored column up from the southeast to hit the south end of Charlie’s base camp. Additional tanks and infantry were positioned to patrol Boundary Road on the north of the camp. This would put the enemy in a vice if he tried to escape through the back door.

Our job was to get out ahead of the main column, guide it through the jungle, and screen to its front and flanks. As the aerial scout, I was to stay on the FM radio and keep Strider Eight (the armored column’s CO) continuously informed as to what I was seeing around him.

As the crow flies, it was about ten kilometers from Thunder I northwest up to the enemy base camp area. As the column got underway, Koranda and I took off to circle it a few times and make sure the area was clear.

From my position twenty to thirty feet above the armor, I was fascinated watching the column work its way through the jungle. Out in the lead were five or six M‑ 48A3 diesel‑ powered tanks with their 90mm main gun turrets pointed forward. The flanking tanks had their turrets turned to the side. The ACAVs (M‑ 113A‑ ls), with their infantry troops, were in the middle.

Mixed in with the ACAVs were several Zippo tracks, which were Ml 13s with a turret on top that carried a flame dispenser. The flamethrowers were used on bunkers and a variety of other targets when their special kind of devastation was needed. The Zippo tracks were particularly vulnerable to enemy ground fire, however. All loaded up with jellied fuel and tanks of compressed air, they were a choice target for an enemy RPG round.

My door gunner that day was Al Farrar, and as we geared the base camp I told him to be especially alert because we weren’t sure whether the bunkers were occupied. The jungle was very thick, double canopy reaching up eighty to a hundred feet. Because of the dense jungle, Koranda told me that he couldn’t see where the base camp actually was. I asked Farrar to get a yellow smoke ready to mark the area.

Al reached up to the wire strung across the back of the bulkhead and pulled off one of the smoke canisters. He popped the pin and held it outside the airplane, tipping the top of it toward me so I could verify the yellow color. The color of the smoke we dropped and the color I told Koranda to look for had to match, for obvious reasons.

As we passed over the center of the base camp area, I told Farrar, “R‑ e‑ a‑ d‑ y… NOW! ” He threw the grenade straight down from the aircraft. Yellow smoke boiled up out of the jungle, telling Koranda exactly where to mark the bunker positions on his map.

As we passed over, it was apparent to both Farrar and me that there were people down there. We didn’t see any bad guys out in the open, but there were plenty of fresh traffic signs. The trails and the general area were well beaten down; the camouflage strewn around looked all freshly cut; a few pots and pans were lying around; even some clothing was hanging out to dry on lines underneath the trees.

After dropping the smoke, I headed back to the column, which was still several klicks away to the southeast. I needed to keep them on a straight‑ line course to the base camp, as well as scout the area around them again. With the main guns of the tanks pointed either to the dead front or flanks, the vulnerable point for ambush appeared to me to be the immediate left and right front of the column.

I also had to keep a close watch on the north side of the base camp. If Charlie decided to bolt out the back door to the north, I needed to immediately alert the tanks patrolling along Boundary Road.

Running back and forth to check the base camp and check the progress of the column kept on through two Loach fuel loads. Each time I got low on JP‑ 4, Bob Davis and Bruce Foster would come up from our staging area at Lai Khe and take over until I could get back on station.

I had just come back from Lai Khe with my third fuel load when I learned that the troop C and C Huey with Major Moore aboard had pulled in above us. The new troop CO especially liked to watch his hunter‑ killer teams work during enemy contact and action. With the armor nearing the southern outskirts of the enemy base camp, Moore probably thought that sparks were about to fly.

Moore was a dynamic man who liked to talk on the UHF radio to his aerial teams, especially the scouts. He acted almost like a cheerleader from the sidelines, spurring on his people.

I liked Moore. I didn’t mind him suddenly appearing overhead in the C and C ship, to be on hand “to make troop command decisions” when he felt they were necessary. But what did bother me–and most of the other scouts–was his almost continuous use of the UHF radio. The aerial scout talked to his gunship on UHF, and the gun spoke back to his scout on VHF. By using different radios, there was never a voice overlap and no words were ever garbled. Charlie Moore’s UHF cheerleading screwed up the equation, because the gun pilot couldn’t always hear what his scout was saying.

Just back on station with my third load of fuel, I made a pass through the enemy base camp to see what was happening. Our armor was drawing near from the south.

Just as I rounded the northwest corner of the base camp, Farrar’s M‑ 60 opened up in several quick bursts. Shooting with one hand and keying his intercom with the other, Farrar yelled, “I got dinks under me, lots of them, sir. And they’re running north out of the camp. ”

I had to immediately alert Koranda, as well as the tanks patrolling the back door along Boundary Road, so I keyed Three Nine on UHF. As soon as Major Moore heard us say we had seen enemy and taken them under fire, he opened up on UHF from his command and control ship. Right in the middle of my transmission to the gun pilot, and completely overriding what I was saying to Koranda, Major Moore began hollering, “Where are they, One Six? Go get ‘em! Knock ‘em down… kill the little bastards. Get in there One Six… shoot their asses off, Mills. Get the fuckers! ”

Seeing the impossibility of trying to outscream the Old Man over UHF, I flipped off the toggle switch for UHF, put the selector on VHF, and came up to Koranda. “Three Niner, this is One Six. I’m on Victor. Can you hear me now? ”

Koranda came back, “OK, One Six, good copy. Glad you switched. I couldn’t hear a damned thing you were saying. ”

Now, without “Mad Charlie” screaming in my ear, I pulled the Loach around hard in a decelerating right turn and looked straight down at where Farrar had fired.

There they were! Probably fifteen to twenty VC, dressed in brown, green, and blue uniforms, some with camouflage cloaks, all wearing Ho Chi Minh sandals, carrying weapons, and running like hell to the northwest out the back door of the base camp.

Farrar’s M‑ 60 began to chatter. Two VC dropped instantly, one right out in an open area, the other crumpled up under a tree. Continuing bursts from Farrar’s gun nearly drowned out my FM transmission to the armor, telling Strider Eight that we had people running from the base.

The column commander, about 150 yards out by then, responded, “OK, One Six, let’s back off. We’re going to recon by fire. ”

One of the things that low‑ flying scout birds had to be very careful of while working around our armor was their 90mm main gun canister rounds. The shells were essentially filled with lead pellets, perhaps an inch in length, about three‑ quarters of an inch in diameter, and shaped like a miniature soup can. There were hundreds of them in a single 90mm canister round. When our tanks let go with canister fire, everything in front of the main guns went to hell in a hurry. It cut down trees, mowed the grass, and neutralized everything in the area. An aerial scout had to be sure he didn’t catch a bellyful of pellets. So I immediately pulled back to the rear of the column and did figure eights, watching the enemy base camp area literally explode.

After a few rounds forward by the lead tank, Strider Eight in the second M‑ 48 came up on FM. “Darkhorse, we’re taking a little AK fire now that we’re starting to enter the bunker complex. Can you…”

There was a long pause in Strider’s transmission. Then he went on, “OK, Darkhorse, I’m back. We’ve got a slight problem down here. One of our tankers has hit an obstruction and thrown a track. We’re going to circle the wagons around him and get some people reshoeing. Keep us covered and we’ll get it fixed as fast as we can. ”

Reconnecting a tank track is difficult even on a good day. In jungle terrain and oppressive heat, I knew that they had their work cut out for them. While that job was going on, I worked back into a 360‑ degree orbit over the armor, letting my circles out just enough so that I could sweep a corridor all around the halted column.

I was on my third pass around when Farrar hit the intercom. “My God, sir, there’s gooks down there! ”

“Where? ” I shot back.

“Right in front of the lead tank. ”

“No, ” I answered, “that’s our guys working on the tracks. ” Just a second before I had looked down and seen one of our people with a tanker bar in his hand wave to me as we went over. I was sure that was what Farrar had seen, also.

“No, sir, ” Al shouted back at me, “they’re dinks… they’re dinks! Go back, go back! ”

I swung around hard and looked straight down. What I saw was a VC antitank team… two people! One man had an RPG‑ 7 rocket launcher in his hands, camouflage cape on his back, and a back‑ mounted carrier for extra RPG rockets. The other Victor Charlie was carrying an AK‑ 47 assault rifle and was wearing the same paraphernalia on his chest and back as the first guy. He was the loader.

During the lull after the tank firing, while our guys were working on the busted track, these sons of bitches had sneaked in to within fifteen to twenty meters of the lead tank. And there they were, getting ready to blow M‑ 48s!

Farrar opened up again with his M‑ 60. As I swung around, I let go a blast with the minigun. Everybody in the tank column dove for cover.

Strider Eight shouted at me over the radio, “We’re friendlies down here, for Christ’s sake! Knock off the shooting. Do you read, Darkhorse? Check fire! Check fire! ”

I swung the ship abruptly away from the point of contact and keyed Strider. “Negative! Negative! RPG team to your direct front. Danger close. Depress and shoot everything you’ve got–twelve o’clock! ”

I could hear Strider Eight’s order to the column. “Full depression… main guns… fire canister… twelve o’clock! ”

I wasn’t able to get the Loach any farther away than the middle of the armor column when the whole jungle to the front exploded. All three forward vehicles in the column fired canister. At the exact same time, the enemy team let go with an RPG round.

The best place for me was right where I was–oyer the middle of the armor column doing tight three sixties to stay out of the way of those canister rounds.

After the lead vehicles, had fired, all the other tanks let go with canister that literally sliced down the entire circumference of jungle around the column. Flame erupted, trees flew, debris rained down, dust and smoke billowed up in almost a perfect circle. And I continued my tight little orbits, right above the center of it all.

Suddenly my FM radio came back alive with Strider Eight. “OK, Darkhorse, ” he said, “we’re going to check fire. We’d like One Six to jump out there in front and see what you’ve got now. ”

I pulled the OH‑ 6 out of the protective circles and headed back over the lead tanks toward the spot where Farrar had spotted the RPG team. Looking down, I came back up to Strider. “You’ve got five or six bad guys down here; all appear KIA. One of them has on a red scarf–damned if that’s not the first guy with a red scarf I’ve ever seen in Nam. They are all not more than fifteen meters dead front of your lead vehicle. You’ll need to send your infantry up to check ‘em out. I’m going to continue on over to the base camp to see what the live Charlies are doing. ”

I arrived at Boundary Road just as the enemy fleeing out of the base camp was making contact with the blocking armor patrolling the road. This put Charlie in a hell of a fix. He was now caught between the advancing armor‑ infantry column on the south and the tanks waiting for him on the north.

With the ground forces now fully committed, there was not much more Koranda and I could contribute. But we could give Charlie one more kick in the ass before departing station. I re‑ marked the area with smoke and asked the Cobra to expend his ordnance in a good hose‑ down of the entire base camp.

I also contacted the Sidewinder FAC, who brought up a flight of F‑ 100s with napalm, as well as an ARVN flight of Douglas A‑ l Skyraiders. After watching them put down their ordnance, Koranda and I broke station and headed back to Phu Loi, knowing that we’d be back in a day or two to make a BDA of the entire area.

It took about three days for our ground friendlies to finish mopping up the enemy contingent that had occupied the base camp. Most of the VC had to be flushed out of their bunkers. Those who wouldn’t flush were dealt with by 2/11 ‘s M‑ 48s. They would simply poke the muzzle of the main gun into the bunker entrance and let go with a single 90mm canister round.

The ground guys found–not more than ten meters in front of the lead tank–the five dead bad guys that we had spotted and engaged from the air. There were actually three RPG gunners and two loaders armed with AK‑ 47s. If there was a third loader, he either got away or was vaporized in the hullabaloo.

The three RPG weapons and gunners meant that Charlie was setting up to knock down the three lead tanks in the column. If that had happened, the rest of the column would have stalled behind the halted lead elements, then, one by one, been disposed of with RPG rounds.

Another interesting thing the ground guys discovered was that our tank 90s and the first RPG round from the enemy had indeed fired almost at the same instant. The lead tank had a huge gouge cut into the armor plate on the left side of the vehicle’s turret. The hastily aimed RPG round had actually hit the tank, but with only a glancing blow. The projectile did not penetrate or detonate when it hit. The nasty scar it left, however, was witness to the massive destructive punch that the Russian RPG‑ 7 carried, even in a near miss.

I learned something from the experience, as I did every single time I flew in the aircraft in combat. I discovered that an up and running armored column can take a lot of the heat off a noisy helicopter. When tanks are nearby, they not only terrify the enemy, they also make so damned much noise that the helicopter overhead can’t be heard–thereby shifting Charlie’s attention from me to them. I was fairly certain that that was the case with the enemy RPG team.

A short time after the base camp incident, I learned that I had been recommended to receive the Air Medal with “V” device for discovering the enemy RPG team. I decided that it was time to grind an old troop‑ policy ax that had bothered me (and Bob Davis) for as long as we had been in aerial scouts. Policy was that when an aircraft commander was put in for an award, the copilot was automatically put in for an award one step down from the pilot. Then the crew chief generally was recommended for an award one level down from the copilot. In the case of the scout platoon, where we did not normally carry a copilot‑ observer, the crew chief was recognized right under the pilot. In other words, if the pilot was put in for a DFC, the crew chief might be awarded an Air Medal with “V” device for the same action.

Bob Davis and I both thought that it was a stupid way to handle the awards situation, particularly since that crew chief was up there in the same aircraft, yet had no control over his destiny. He was totally at the mercy of the pilot. If a pilot made a mistake that cost him his life, the crew chief generally died too. On the other hand, in order for the pilot to do his job effectively, he had to have a good crew chief who would keep the enemy’s head down, knock out enemy gun positions before they could come to bear, and provide a second pair of sharp eyes to help spot trouble.

As scout platoon leader, I told Davis that I would write up anew policy and present it to the Old Man. That new policy simply stated that I would no longer endorse any awards for combat flight unless the crew chief got the same award as the pilot. If the pilot got a Silver Star, the crew chief got a Silver Star.

Major Moore agreed.

^{CHAPTER 9}