HOTDOGGIN’ IT

During July, August, and September, the Outcasts were training some new Loach pilots from B Company of the 1st Aviation Battalion. Their outfit was located across the base area from us at Phu Loi.

The Bravo Company guys operated a platoon of attack helicopters called the Rebels, used primarily in general support of the division; a platoon of Hueys called the Longhorns, which provided the division’s command and control aircraft work; and a platoon of OH‑ 6s called the Ponies, which flew the division ATO on liaison missions. The 1st Aviation Battalion commander, Colonel Allen, had the idea that in order to maximize use of all the helicopters in B Company beyond just general divisional support, he would get their crews trained to act also as hunter‑ killer teams like those in D Troop.

That’s where the Outcasts came in. It became our duty to take the Pony pilots and train them as scouts. The first one we worked with was Pony One Six, their platoon leader.

Colonel Allen’s idea of getting more air cavalry assets in the field was a good one for several reasons. The first was that Outcast scout crews were flying 130 or more combat hours a month and were still not covering all the ground. Plus, our scout platoon was never up to its full complement of pilots. So the prospect of having more qualified aeroscouts in the air was welcomed. Bravo Company had pilots who had already been in country for six to eight months, they were flying the same types of aircraft we had in D Troop, and they were operating over much the same Vietnam countryside. We all, therefore, were enthusiastic about the cross‑ training of 1st Aviation Battalion pilots to Darkhorse tactics. Creation of a new mini‑ cav “Lighthorse” organization promised to put even more pressure on the enemy in the field.

Overall, the scout pilot training went fine. There were a few areas of disagreement, however. Even though their pilots were experienced in the OH‑ 6 aircraft, normal liaison missions for the 1st Aviation Battalion were generally flown at altitude, fifteen hundred feet or more. Pony pilots simply weren’t used to flying on the deck, down low and slow, where the working aeroscout spent most of his time. And there was sometimes a reluctance from the guys from B Company to accept our combat scout tactics.

For instance, while out on recon, if a Pony pilot discovered a ground object, such as a bunker, he would rein up, hover in circles around the point of interest, and study the situation. It was not even uncommon for him to come to a dead hover over the scene while he examined his find. Of course, an experienced scout knew that that kind of flying could get you killed… in a hurry.

On every occasion, we tried to impress on the Pony pilots–DON’T hover, DON’T return to the target area twice from the same direction or at the same speed, and DON’T give Charlie the chance to anticipate your movement, or lack of it, or he will set you and shoot you out of the sky. That advice came from the aeroscout school of hard knocks.

Either forgetting or choosing not to follow that advice, Pony One Six took a dose of enemy AK medicine and was shot down on 23 August 1969. “Red” Hayes, one of our experienced Outcasts crew chiefs, was flying with Pony One Six that day. Phil Carriss (Darkhorse Three Eight), a very experienced Cobra driver, was his gun. While searching an area that showed some fresh traffic, Pony One Six became more or less fixated on a particular detail that he was studying below. Hayes became concerned and spoke to his pilot over the intercom. “Sir, don’t slow down. We’re getting too slow, sir… we’re getting too slow. ”

Pony One Six’s scouting technique, however, had not developed enough at that point to quickly identify what he had on the ground. So he felt that he must slow down and stay in the area long enough to read the signs. It was his misfortune. His slow, lazy, easy‑ to‑ figure‑ out circles made him an easy target for the enemy gunners. Charlie’s rounds came up in a fury.

The Pony platoon leader took one bullet through the leg. Another enemy round bit into the fuel line of his OH‑ 6. The engine quit and the Loach went down in a sheet of flames fed by the spewing jet fuel.

Carriss, in the Cobra above, was shocked to see his scout suddenly engulfed in flames and heading for impact in a tree line below. He called Phu Loi for assistance, then went down dangerously low to circle the area and try to determine if the crew had survived.

Three Eight couldn’t tell whether anybody in the burning wreck was still alive, so he had a real dilemma: wait for the scrambled scout team to arrive and get to the wreck, or take the terrible risk of landing his own Cobra. One thing was for sure: somebody had to get to the downed Loach in a hurry. If the crew didn’t get out within seconds, the flames would have them.

Realizing that the scrambled scout team from Phu Loi was still ten to fifteen minutes away, Carriss made a quick and gutsy decision. He decided to put his Cobra down in a rice paddy near the crash and send his front‑ seater, Jon Gregory, through the tree line to try and get the scout crew out of the ship and bring any survivors back to the clearing, where they could be extracted.

Carriss eased his big, heavy bird down into the water of the rice paddy. As the Cobra’s skids settled onto the bottom, Jon threw back his front canopy and jumped down into the foul water. He immediately went ass‑ deep into the muck, while Carriss’s rotor wash drove him like a nail even deeper.

With his pistol held above his head to keep it dry, Gregory struggled through the rice paddy water. By the time he reached the bank of the paddy and hauled himself ashore near the tree line, Carriss had lifted off again to cover the people on the ground. With the front seat now vacant, all Carriss could do was throw the override switch for the M‑ 28 gun turret, lock it into a straight‑ ahead position, and make low‑ level firing passes to deter any enemy drawn to the crash site.

As anybody in his right mind would have been, Gregory was scared. Cobra crews didn’t make a practice of being out of their aircraft and alone on the ground in hostile territory. But as he ran through the trees, slowed by his wet and foul‑ smelling flight suit, his thoughts were on getting to the burning wreck and helping Hayes and Pony One Six.

When he got there, the ship was still flaming, but the crew was nowhere to be seen. “Thank God, ” Gregory mumbled to himself. “But where in the hell are they? ”

Then he spotted Hayes about fifty feet away–on his feet but doubled over and holding his groin. Pony One Six was on the ground trying to nurse his wounded leg. Hayes was obviously in pain. When the Loach hit the ground at about 2 g’s, the impact had shoved the shoulder stock extension of his M‑ 60 machine gun up into his crotch.

Finally, Gregory was able to lead both injured men back to the edge of the clearing to await assistance.

At that moment, Carriss was still trying to cover the friendlies on the ground with his firing runs, but he had no idea how Gregory was faring or whether he had found anybody alive in the crash.

Just then, the scrambled scout team arrived on the scene. The new Cobra went to work shooting with Carriss while Joe Vad (Nine) dropped his Loach down to the tree line to look for Gregory. Niner soon spotted the three men waiting at the edge of the clearing. He could see that the Pony platoon leader was wounded and that Hayes was bent over in agony. Gregory was frantically waving and jumping up and down to make sure that Vad saw them.

What to do next was answered rather quickly. Both Koranda (Three Nine) and Carriss had begun to take ground fire on their firing passes. They had to get back up to altitude fast or risk the danger of having their Cobras shot out from under them. Besides, a snake didn’t have room to carry anybody except a pilot and gunner. This meant that Joe Vad, in his scout ship, would have to go in and pick up Gregory, Hayes, and Pony One Six.

For a split second, Vad pondered the fact that there were three men on the ground and two already in his bird. Besides all that potential weight, he was just fresh out of base and was still carrying a full load of fuel and ammo. Another impossible job for the incredible little OH‑ 6.

In order to quickly lighten his ship, Vad hovered directly over the guys on the ground and began to expend minigun ammunition. He kicked left and right pedal and arbitrarily sprayed fifteen hundred rounds of 7. 62 into the countryside. Niner’s crew chief began emptying his box of belts with long, chattering bursts from his M‑ 60. He couldn’t just dump his machine gun ammunition out the door because the enemy looked for that kind of stuff, and when they found it they cleaned it up and shot it right back at you.

With the weight of the minigun and M‑ 60 ammo gone, Vad dropped down into the rice paddy and the three men jumped into the water and started wading toward the ship. Two of the guys climbed into the back cabin with the crew chief, the other in the front left with Vad. With the additional weight, the skinny, thin‑ skidded scout bird began to settle fast into the slimy mud of the rice paddy.

Wanting to haul ass before the Loach sank in too far, Vad poured on the coal. But the ship didn’t move; it was held down tight by the suction of the mud.

Thinking much clearer than I had when faced with the same problem just days before, Vad immediately yelled for everybody to throw their chicken plate armor and everything else possible out of the aircraft. Then he pulled an armpit full of collective, which immediately freed the plane and sent it to a hover a good fifty feet above the surface of the rice paddy.

When everybody was back at the base, the score was added up. Pony One Six was only lightly wounded and soon recovered. Hayes limped around the area for a few days, favoring that part of his body that took the full impact of the M‑ 60 shoulder stock. Jon Gregory earned and received the Bronze Star with “V” device for his ground actions. Phil Carriss and Joe Vad were each awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross as the key players in the rescue.

I was proud of the way the Darkhorse guys reacted to the situation and were able to successfully extract the people on the ground. It was a dangerous area flush with enemy troops.

But I must admit that I was less than happy with Pony One Six. He had, in my estimation, pretty much brought the situation on himself. Obviously, every scout ran the risk of getting shot down every time he took off on a combat mission. But he should always do everything he could to try and avoid it. That was the bone I had to pick with the Pony platoon leader.

After finding out that his leg wound was minor and that he was feeling OK, I went to talk to him. I didn’t pull any punches. I strongly emphasized what the experienced Darkhorse scouts had been telling them all along: You just cannot hover. You cannot make a lot of slow orbits over a target just looking! The experienced pilots who do those things are hanging it out; the inexperienced pilots who do those things are asking to get themselves, and their crew chiefs, killed.

“You’ve got to impress on your people to start fast, stay fast, and come back in from different directions and at different speeds, ” I told him. “As your ability to read sign improves, you’ll begin to discover that you won’t have to make so many orbits over a target. You’ll see more in a single fast pass than you will in three or four slow orbits. But if you don’t live to reach that degree of maturity, it’s not going to make any difference to you anyway. Do you read? ”

The place to let off a little steam–in fact, the total social life for the officers in D Troop–was the officers’ mess, or the O club, as we called it. We took our lunch and supper there, drank there, saw movies there, played “Liar’s Dice” there, and shot a lot of bullshit there.

Social activities usually got started at about 1600 or 1700, when everybody began to gather for some drinks and a few throws of the dice. Then we’d sit down for a usual night’s dinner of roast beef, wax beans, and Jello (which was sometimes laced with pimiento bits and diced raw onion).

Following supper, it was generally back to the bar for another drink and a few more rounds of Liar’s Dice while we waited for dark and the movie to begin. Then, after the movie, somewhere around 2100, most of the guys went back to their hootches and hit the sack. Those 0330 calls to get ready for first light VRs separated the social from the hard drinkers. Those who stayed after the movie for more drinks usually closed up the club at midnight.

One evening a few of us decided to socialize for a while after the movie. We were soon joined by a couple of new lieutenants from the 82d Airborne. Just south of us and across a ditch from our base was the 82d Airborne Division Replacement Station. New 82d troops came here before going to the field, and those in the field came back here for stand‑ down and R and R.

The 82d guys would sometimes come over into our area to do a little hell raising–fire their weapons at our buildings, throw CS gas grenades into our showers, disrupt our movies. We took their horseplay in a friendly spirit, mainly because some of our guys occasionally made “shopping” trips over to the 82d side of the ditch. It was funny how some of the things desperately needed in D Troop were in abundant supply over in the 82d. So we got along swell, and even welcomed 82d Airborne officers to our O club to socialize.

On this night a couple of young, new, in‑ country 82d officers walked into the club and sat down at the bar between Bill Jones (One Eight) and me. After a few minutes, Jones (as drunk as I ever saw him) and I began getting on these two lieutenants because they were decked out as though they were ready to stand a stateside general inspection. They were all dressed up in their greens and jump boots, with a second lieutenant bar shining like a beacon on each shoulder. They had Airborne and Ranger patches all neatly sewn on. In short, they were a sight to behold at a combat base in the middle of Vietnam.

About that time, Joe Vad wandered by. He took one look at these two bright and shiny objects and decided they deserved a friendly verbal shot across the bow.

“My God, ” he said to them, “you guys look like real snake‑ eating killers. Do you airborne soldiers really eat live snakes? ”

To which one of the lieutenants replied, “You’re damned right! We’re airborne Rangers, and one of the lesser things we do is eat real live snakes. ”

That kind of bantering kept going back and forth, with our two airborne guests extolling how tough and combat‑ wise they both were. We egged them on, knowing that neither of them had ever been out of the replacement station.

While this was going on, Bill Jones just sat there on his bar stool, drinking away. Vad and I didn’t even think he was paying attention, because his eyes would close once in awhile, his head would nod, and his elbow would periodically slip off the bar.

Then suddenly old One Eight came to life. He quietly slid off the bar stool and disappeared out the front door of the club. We thought he had reached his limit and was heading back to the hootch to’hit the sack.

In about five minutes, however, Jones was back. He remounted his bar stool, turned to the two green lieutenants, and slurred, “Are you guys really snake eaters? I mean, do you fierce, hard‑ hearted airborne soldiers really eat live snakes? ”

They smirked at each other. “You got it, man. You’re fuckin’ A we do! ”

“Well then, ” Jones mumbled, “I couldn’t find a snake, but what about this toad frog? Can you eat this poor, little ole toad frog, caught fresh just now out in the perimeter of Vietnam’s famous Quarter Cav aeroscouts? ”

Jones pulled a huge toad out of his fatigue jacket and plopped the bug‑ eyed, wiggling thing down on top of the bar. Vad broke into a crazy laugh, and I just sat there staring at that struggling mass of croaking warts and ugliness. Apparently, Jones, rousing himself from his aleoholic lethargy, was determined to put our two airborne lieutenants to the acid test.

Eyeihg the by‑ now ill‑ humored toad, the two hot RLOs (real live officers) saw their masculinity threatened. Even so, they didn’t want anything to do with the kicking creature that Jones was holding down on the bar. After a couple of quick glances at each other and at the toad, they began to allow that maybe they really weren’t snake eaters, that they didn’t have to put up with that kind of chicken shit.

By then, however, all the Darkhorse warrants still in the club had gathered around the bar and weren’t going to let those two hotshot RLOs off the hook.

The taunting went on until one of the lieutenants, finally feeling that he had to defend the honor of the airborne, grabbed the toad and began trying to get it into his mouth. The lieutenant closed his eyes, opened his mouth as big as he could, and tried to stuff the creature down his throat. The toad was kicking and croaking and making a hell of a fuss.

Every time the lieutenant would just about get the toad’s body inside his mouth, he’d gag and retch and throw the thing back up on the bar. We’d grab the regurgitated toad and christen it “airborne qualified” by lifting it up to arm’s length and dropping it back on the bar. Then, pouring some beer on the bar top, we’d slide the toad along through the foam and duly pronounce the poor thing “carrier qualified. ”

After all this foolishness, I finally said to the lieutenants, “You guys can quit trying to shit us now. You obviously can’t hack it! ”

That inspired one of the jump troopers to try again to get the now‑ slimy toad down his throat. He had gotten it about halfway down when the toad hitched his legs and let out a thunderous croak. Back out it came, with the bewildered lieutenant leaning against the bar dry‑ heaving.

Now Bill Jones, in his obviously inebriated state, shifted himself on his bar stool, looked the lieutenants in the eyes, and announced: “You know, I don’t think you guys are snake eaters at all. Let me show you what a real Darkhorse aeroscout can do. ”

With that, Jones picked up the toad, threw back his head, dropped in the creature and, in one gargantuan gulp, swallowed it down whole!

The two lieutenants looked at each other in total disbelief. They began to turn green. Then they both raced out the front door and began heaving.

Jones’s eyes were bugged out and he had a funny look on his face. As soon as the two lieutenants were out the front door, he immediately took off for the back door. Once outside, he began making violent groaning noises. Then he coughed, gagged, and retched until, finally, he heaved up the still‑ struggling toad. As the dazed toad limped away, our equally dazed aeroscout returned to the bar and ordered up another drink. We never saw the two airborne lieutenants again.

Wednesday, 26 August, was the start of a three‑ day series of events that culminated with a most unusual combat engagement.

During that time most of our scouting operations were concentrated in the western Trapezoid–a hotbed of enemy activity. Enemy soldiers and supplies were almost constantly infiltrating south into the area from their sanctuaries behind the Cambodian border and from their intermediate staging area in a string of low mountains called the Razor‑ backs.

On 26 August, while looking for trails and other signs of these infiltrators, a Darkhorse scout team out on routine VR made an enemy contact up near FSB Kien. The contact appeared heavy enough that Darkhorse ops decided to alert elements of 2d Battalion, 2d Mechanized Infantry Regiment, which were then located at FSB Kien.

When the infantry (call sign Dracula) moved out to where the aeroscout had made his initial contact, our troops ran into the outskirts of a huge bunker area. At that point I went up to the contact area with my gun‑ ship to help coordinate operations.

As soon as I moved in over the enemy base camp, about four AK‑ 47s let go at me. Things were really hot down there! Dracula had advanced to the base camp perimeter anç l run into a veritable buzz saw.

What we needed, and fast, was for some tac air to get fast movers and heavy stuff in there to bust up the bunkers so our friendlies could break into the area and clean it out. I immediately went up on the net for our FAC, who turned out to be our Australian OV‑ 10 driver, Sidewinder One Five. We gave him the target information and asked specifically for any heavy stuff he might have around.

It wasn’t long before Sidewinder had a brace of Martin B‑ 57 Canberras loaded with five‑ hundred‑ pound bombs vectored into the area. Guided by Sidewinder’s Willie Pete rockets, they gave the base camp a hell of an iron bomb shellacking!

When Sidewinder’s jets were finally winchester, he asked that a little bird be put back down for a BDA. I dropped back down when the smoke and dust started to clear. The Canberras had raised a lot of hell down there. The bombs had blown away all the overlying jungle vegetation and I could clearly see the square outlines of the bunker structures. It was immediately obvious that this was a very large base camp with many bunkers, connecting trench lines, and doughnut positions for. 50‑ caliber antiaircraft guns.

I reported in as I circled the base area. “We have three bunkers, five by five, partially destroyed. There are two bunkers, five by seven. Looks like about 50 percent destroyed. We’ve got two bunkers, probably eight by eight. One bunker ten by ten. We’ll call those destroyed–the roofs are caved in. We’ve got numerous small arms and equipment spread in the area. We’ve got about forty feet of trench line, looks like four, negative… make that five bodies KBA. They’re in the trench line. ”

With the BDA, we had to break station. It was beginning to get dark and fuel was low. All the time we were doing the BDA, Drac had been moving in closer to base camp. We wondered how much more trouble they would run into that night.

As I climbed away, I contacted them on FM. “Dracula, this is Darkhorse One Six. We are breaking station because of fuel and darkness. The base area has been hit good and is pretty well opened up. You do have some KBA bodies down there. Good luck to you tonight. We’ll be back on top of you first thing tomorrow morning. ”

We were back out at first light on 27 August. As we came up on the enemy base camp, my gun, Paul Fishman (Three Four), radioed the friendlies on the ground to report our presence and tell them we were ready to go back to work.

“Drac Three Two, this is Darkhorse Three Four. We’re overhead with a hunter‑ killer team and I’m going to put the little bird down to do a VR for you. Is there any particular area that you want him to work? ”

Dracula came back. “Negative, Darkhorse. We fought an engagement here last night until about 2400. The enemy backed off about then and we’re going to try to reestablish contact this morning. So let the scout go whatever direction he wants and keep us posted on what you find. We had light casualties but we got to Charlie pretty good. Their KIA are unknown, however, because they dragged away all the bodies during the night. ”

As I listened to the conversation, I was looking down at Drac’s night defensive position. I could see ACAVs and some supporting M‑ 48 tanks all loggered up in a wagon wheel situation. I figured that right over them was the best place for me to go down low level; then, if I had any problem, I could put the bird down in the middle of friendlies. I dropped down to the treetop altitude and pulled a hard right‑ hand turn to bring me right on top of the NDP. I intended to start working concentric circles outward from our position.

As I rolled around and started outbound, I caught a glimpse of an enemy soldier’s body lying on the ground face up, not more than forty yards from the tanks and ACAVs. I went back for another look. It looked like an NVA soldier in a dark, electric blue uniform, no sandals, no headgear. His brown eyes were wide open and staring right up at me. An AK‑ 47 was beside him on the ground and he had the weapon’s ammunition pouch on his chest. He had obviously been hit because I could see some wound damage to his leg and quite a bit of blood on the pant leg of his uniform.

I wondered what the heck he was doing lying out here. Why hadn’t he been dragged off with the rest of the enemy wounded and dead during the night?

I got on FM and dialed up our friendlies. “Drac Three Two, this is Darkhorse One Six. Have you swept your perimeter since the firefight last night? ”

“Darkhorse, this is Dracula Three Two. Roger. We have done some sweeping. Why? Have you found something? ”

“Roger, Drac. I’ve got an enemy soldier down here. He’s lying on the ground about forty yards off the backside of one of your ACAVs. Do you see where I’m circling? ”

There was a moment’s delay while he looked, then he came back. “Roger, Darkhorse, I see you. How about dropping a smoke on the body and we’ll police it up later. ”

“That’s negative, Dracula. This is not a body. This is one live NVA soldier. Looks like he’s been hit in the leg but his eyes are wide open and the little son of a bitch is staring straight up at me! ”

Drac must have thought that I was seeing things. “Darkhorse One Six, this is Dracula Three Two. Confirm the enemy soldier in our vicinity is alive”

“Roger, Drac Three Two. He’s alive. He’s watching me. His head is moving and he looks like he’s trying to wave. He appears injured and he does have a weapon. If you can send somebody over here on foot, I’ll cover your man. Over. ”

“Roger, Darkhorse, ” Drac responded. “We’ll be right there. ”

I came to about a forty‑ foot hover over the trees and keyed the intercom to Parker. “Watch that guy, Jimbo. If he moves toward his weapon, if he even looks like he’s goin’ for that weapon, blast him with the 60. We’ve got troops coming over here from the NDP, so watch for them, but if that bad guy moves, blast him! ”

In a few minutes, an ACAV came rumbling up and a couple of our friendlies jumped out of the back. The two American troopers didn’t look as though they were quite ready for combat that morning. They had on jungle fatigue pants, boots, and T‑ shirts. They were carrying their M‑ 16s but didn’t have any web gear on. One of our soldiers appeared to be an NCO and the other a specialist.

Because of the vegetation they couldn’t see exactly where the enemy soldier was, but they could see me hovering over the trees nearby. The guys didn’t have a radio, so I told Parker that I was going to guide them in with hand signals. I put the Loach over on her right side so I could see beneath me and hovered to a spot directly over the wounded enemy soldier. I steadied the collective with my knee, flew with my left hand on the cyclic, and started motioning with my right hand.

The two infantrymen finally got close enough to see the NVA lying on the jungle floor. They crept toward him, covering each other with their M‑ 16s. I backed away to get the rotor wash and noise off them while they took him prisoner.

As I continued on with my VR, I began to hear reports on the radio about the NVA soldier. Though wounded badly by one of our. 50‑ caliber machine guns–his leg was shattered and just barely hanging onto his body–he was hustled back to Dau Tieng for medical attention and interrogation by the 3d Brigade’s S‑ 2. The S‑ 2 learned from the unusually cooperative prisoner that he was a member of the infamous and elusive Dong Nai Regiment. He had moved out of the Fishhook area in Cambodia with the regiment, gone on into the Michelin rubber plantation, then on down into the western Trapezoid.

The 1st Division had more bones to pick with the Dong Nai Regiment than a dog had fleas. We had been looking for that unit: We wanted desperately to know where it was, what it was doing, and what its tactical intentions were. This was the first good link to the Dong Nai’s recent whereabouts and activities–an intelligence windfall. The wounded POW turned out to be a noncommissioned officer. Because of his rank, he was privy to a lot of planning and, during his debriefing, revealed considerable information about the movements and activities of the Dong Nai. Afterward, the prisoner indicated strong willingness to join our Hoi Chon program and convert to one of our Kit Carson scouts.

Back at Phu Loi that evening, I was given a mission for the next morning to fly up to 3d Brigade HQ at Dau Tieng. I was to attend a briefing by the brigade S‑ 3 on what the POW had said, then plan some scout team VRs in the sectors that the prisoner had designated as Dong Nai Regiment operational areas.

From Phu Loi, it was a straight‑ shot flight up northwest to 3d Brigade HQ. The route–without artillery firing path deviations–would normally take us up over the heart of the Iron Triangle, on to the north of the Mushroom, then right on across the western edge of the Trap‑ ezoid to Dau Tieng. From my standpoint, staying at altitude always made for a boring flight, so before we got started that morning I asked my snake driver, Paul Fishman (Three Four), if he had any objection to me going down low for the course of the flight instead of camping on his wing at fifteen hundred feet. Realizing that with his scout down on the deck, there was always the chance of scaring up a little enemy activity, Fishman had no problem with my plan.

As soon as we cleared the base boundary, I flipped my weapons system to “arm” and the fire selector switch to “fire norm, ” then settled in for the flight at an altitude of about twenty feet off the ground. After a couple of minutes I heard Three Four check in with Lai Khe artillery. They reported that they were firing 105 s into the northern area of the Iron Triangle, meaning that we would have to either detour up north around Lai Khe or head south to the Saigon River and follow it on up to Dau Tieng. Rather than go north, which was farther out of our way, Paul gave me a heading for the river. We turned west, picked up the Saigon River, and started following its general course around the southwestern edge of the Iron Triangle. I was cruising along right on top of the trees and holding airspeed at a consistent ninety knots.

I was relaxed. So was Parker. He was sitting on his little jump seat just watching the scenery go by. The collective control was resting on my left knee; I had hold of the cyclic and was flying the airplane with my left hand. With my right hand I was leisurely puffing on a cigarette. My right foot was dangling outside the cockpit door. It was another beautiful morning in sunny Vietnam.

We came up on the vicinity of our FSB Kien. It was just a few more minutes from there to Dau Tieng, and I was having so much fun that I thought I would play a little “pop‑ up” for the rest of the way. I dropped the bird down to an altitude of about two feet and moved the airspeed up to a hundred knots, then up to one hundred and ten. As we ripped along, I would yank back on the cyclic, which tilted the rotor disk to the rear, and pop the bird up and over the rice dikes and tree lines. Then I’d shove the cyclic stick forward again, which tilted the blades sharply forward and pushed the nose down, and drop to two feet. I was just plain hotdoggin’ it, and I loved it!

My antics didn’t escape my gun pilot, however. As always, Paul was carefully watching me. “Hey, One Six, what the hell are you doing down there? ”

“I’m having a ball, ” I answered. Then I warned Parker to hang on for the next pop‑ up as yet another tree line loomed ahead through my bubble.

It was still early in the morning, and the semidarkness made it difficult for me to see really well. But the approaching tree line looked clear of obstacles on the other side, making it a piece of cake to pop up over the trees and then right back down again without missing a beat. I could just barely make out a rice paddy on the other side with a dike going through the middle of it. No sweat.

I closed in fast on the tree line, waited until the very last split second, then jerked back a chest full of cyclic stick. The little OH‑ 6 jumped straight up about forty feet as though she had suddenly been kicked in the tail boom by a Missouri mule.

As we leapt up to the crest of the trees and the OH‑ 6’s nose depressed for the letdown on the other side, I looked forward through the bubble. Spread out across my front from left to right was a string of thirty NVA soldiers in column, walking on the paddy dike, taking their own sweet time.

I was moving very fast and very low, so the sound of my engine and blades was muffled by the vegetation, and my Cobra was high and too far behind me to be seen or heard. The enemy was taken completely by surprise.

When I popped up over that tree line, doing more than a hundred knots and less than thirty to forty yards off their left flank, those poor bastards were thunderstruck.

I could tell as soon as I saw the column that these guys were NVA regulars. Unlike guerrillas, they were loaded down with equipment, such as mortars, SGMs, radios, and web gear. It looked like an NVA heavy weapons platoon. They had probably scouted the open ground ahead, satisfied themselves that there was no potential danger, then started to move the whole platoon across. And at that very instant, up I bounced over the tree line, catching them bare‑ assed in the open with no cover and no place to run.

Snapping back from my initial shock at seeing a whole column of enemy soldiers strung out across my front, I started to look at them more carefully. My eyes focused on their point man. He was no more than thirty yards in front of me, frozen in place, staring right at me. Then he started to jerk up his weapon.

I hit my radio transmit switch and yelled, “Dinks! Dinks! They’re right under me! ” Then I squeezed the minigun trigger to two thousand rounds a minute. My initial blast caught the wide‑ eyed point man square across his belt line and literally cut him in half.

I kicked hard right pedal, held the bird’s nose down, and spun around in order to bring the minigun to bear on the rest of the column. Squeezing the minigun trigger again–this time all the way back to four thousand rounds per minute–my second burst raked through the next four men. The bullets slammed them to the ground in a cloud of dust, debris, and body parts.

The paddy dike now seemed to explode as the NVA soldiers shot back at me, running every which way trying to find cover. I again broke hard right in order to bring Parker’s M‑ 60 to bear on the maze of trapped enemy in the clearing below.

He ripped off a three‑ to four‑ second burst, then keyed his intercom button. “Level out, sir. Level it out! ” he yelled at me.

The right turn I was executing was so sharp that Parker couldn’t fire without the risk of hitting the bird’s tilted rotor blades. I slammed the cyclic stick to center, leveling out the aircraft, and instantly heard Parker’s M‑ 60 go to full bore. He had caught a group of three NVA soldiers trying to make it out of the clearing and back to the jungle. He dropped them all in their tracks.

I was pulling the ship around for another circle over the mass of enemy confusion when Three Four’s voice suddenly erupted in my earphones. He was shouting, “One Six, One Six, what the hell’s going on down there? What have you got? What have you got down there, One Six? ”

“Dinks… I got dinks, lots of dinks, ” I blurted. “We’ve got ‘em trapped. They’re running all over the place! ”

I didn’t hear his reply because Parker was going crazy with his 60. Besides, I had just spotted an NVA with an AK‑ 47 rifle running toward the jungle. Another soldier was running in front of him and they were both hell‑ bent for election.

Determined not to lose them, I pulled the bird hard around to come up on their rear. It was then that I noticed all the shooting that was coming up at us from the ground. There was a constant stream of AK‑ 47 fire, and I could hear rounds beginning to impact the aircraft. But I was still not going to let those two soldiers make it back into the jungle. I pulled up to about forty yards behind them. They knew I was on their tail and they were running for their lives.

As I raced up the trail behind them, I noticed that one of the soldiers had a large black rice cooking pot strapped to the back of his pack. It was the size of a large wash bucket and was bouncing furiously up and down as he ran. I pulled the nose down a little, watching the bottom of the cooking pot come into view through the cross hairs grease‑ penciled in front of me on the bubble’s Plexiglas. I touched a shade of right pedal, then I pulled off a short minigun burst.

My rounds walked right up the trail behind the last man, then tore into the bottom of the rice pot. The man pitched forward to the ground. So did the soldier running in front of him. My bullets had apparently gone through the last man and hit the soldier in front, killing them both. There were nine enemy down in less than a minute of battle.

I jerked the bird around in a hard right turn to get back over the main group of trapped enemy soldiers. Again, intense ground fire poured up. We offered a pretty choice target at only five to seven feet off the ground, and I could hear bullets ripping and snapping all through the aircraft. I was trying to bring my minigun to bear on Charlie again, and Jimbo’s 60 was firing in long sustained bursts.

Things were so frantic that it took me awhile to realize that Three Four was yelling at me through the headset. “Get out of there, One Six… get the hell out of there and let me in! ”

I snapped back to reality. “Roger, Three Four. One Six is out to the west. ”

As soon as Paul saw my tail kick up, he was rolling in and firing rockets. I could see his 2. 75s impacting the rice paddy and the nearby jungle. The last pair of rockets that he fired into the swarming enemy soldiers in the clearing contained nail flé chettes. From my circling position nearby, I saw the puffs of red dye explode as the nail flé chette canisters blew open and saturated the whole area with thousands of naillike metal spears.

As Three Four broke from his last firing pass and headed back to altitude, I punched my transmit button: “One Six is back in from the east on BDA. ” I pulled back into the clearing from the east, made a couple of fast turns over the area, and discovered that there were still plenty of people moving around. They were still shooting at me, and Parker opened up again with his M‑ 60 on everything he saw moving. I could hear more of Charlie’s rounds impacting the aircraft, and I wondered how much more punishment the OH‑ 6 could take.

Coming around again, I engaged two more enemy soldiers with the minigun and knocked them down. Continuing the turn I saw Parker’s rounds splatter up the dust around two more, then slam them both to the ground.

Out of the right corner of my eye, I saw another NVA jump up from the ground and start to run toward the center of the clearing. Just as I was coming around I saw him dive into some bushes. It was a small vegetated spot, out there all by itself–the only piece of cover in the clearing.

I hit the intercom and told Parker, “Shoot into the bushes. An NVA just jumped in there. Spray the bushes… he’s got no place to go. Get ‘im! ”

Parker yelled back, “I can’t, sir, I’m out of ammo! ”

I could hardly believe it. In several minutes, Jim had gone through thirty‑ two hundred rounds of M‑ 60 ammo. “OK, ” I said, “I’ll pull around and take him with the mini. Hang on! ”

I whipped around, zeroed out airspeed, eased the nose down, and squeezed the minigun trigger back all the way to the stick. Nothing happened. It didn’t shoot. All I heard was the gun motor running. I was out of ammo for the minigun.

I punched the intercom again. “I’m dry on the minigun, too, Jimbo. Do me a Willie Pete. ”

Parker yanked a dark lime green canister off the bulkhead wire, pulled the pin, and held the grenade outside the aircraft ready to drop on my command.

As I came up on the man’s hiding place, I keyed the intercom again. “Ready… drop! ” The grenade sailed down right into the center of the bushes. I accelerated away just as the explosion erupted in the vegetation, sending up arms of hot‑ burning white phosphorous.

I called the gun immediately. “OK, Three Four, target my Willie Pete. Hit my mark, hit my mark! One Six is out. ”

As I headed out I glanced back at the little vegetated area. The man was running frantically out the other side of the scrub. Patches of his clothing were burning fiercely where fragments of the white phosphorous had landed on him.

He had taken about five steps when Three Four’s first rockets came in. They were the last he ever took. One of Fishman’s rockets impacted directly between the man’s legs.

As Three Four rolled out and away from his firing pass, I got on UHF. “Good rocks, Three Four. One Six is back in. You better scramble the ARPs because I’ve still got beaucoup people moving on the ground and lots of equipment lying out in the open all over the place. ”

Of course, the guys back at the troop had been monitoring our transmissions, so Three Four’s request was almost after the fact. The next thing I heard over the radio was, “OK, Three Four, this is Darkhorse Three. Stand by over the target area. ARPs are saddled up and about to be underway, and I’ve scrambled another hunter‑ killer team to relieve you. Stand by. ”

As I arced back down over the clearing, more enemy rounds came up at the airplane. I jigged and jogged, trying to keep the remaining bad guys corralled and to convince them that I still had ammunition. Parker had resorted to a backup M‑ 16, which he promptly emptied on anything that moved. Then he hauled out a twelve‑ gauge Ithaca pump shotgun that he had stashed under his jump seat and shot it point‑ blank until it was dry.

I followed his lead and pulled my Colt. 357 Python out of the shoulder holster. I was able to shoot the big revolver out the cockpit door by hooking the collective stick on top of my left leg, holding the cyclic with my right hand, while resting my left elbow on my right forearm and firing with my left hand. I’m sure I didn’t hit a damned thing with the Colt, but I may have scared a few NVA to death. Every time I fired that. 357, which had Super Vel Magnum cartridges in it, flames shot about a foot and half out the muzzle and it barked like a howitzer.

As I emptied the last. 357 round, I got a call from Bob Davis (One Three) telling me that he and his gun were now on station. While I was taking him on a high‑ speed pass of the battle area, I heard him say, “Damn! ”

“What’s the matter, One Three? ” I jumped back at him. “What have you got… what the hell have you got? ”

“Damn, One Six, I’ve got nothin’, and that’s the trouble. I count about twenty‑ two bodies down there and you guys didn’t leave a thing for us! ”

On the way back to Phu Loi (I never did make the meeting in Dau Tieng) I keyed the intercom and told Parker, “Let’s get a red smoke rigged on your M‑ 60 so we can let the boys back home know that we stung Charlie today. ”

I heard him chuckle. “Sir, the red smoke is already there. ” I glanced back and saw it already wired to the muzzle of his machine gun.

We made our traditional pass of the base trailing a stream ofbil‑ lowing red smoke. The field personnel waved and cheered us on. Hundreds of people worked on the base, and when the hunter‑ killer teams came back home trailing red smoke, you could hear them slapping each other on the back and yelling, “Hey, our guys did good today! ”

It was a morale booster for us, too. We knew we were doing the job that we had been sent to Vietnam to do. Maybe, just maybe, we had shortened the war a few minutes or hours.

As quiet and reserved as Jim Parker was, his emotions showed as we came back into base and settled the bird down near the revetment. My emotions probably showed, too.

I cut the battery switch, then twisted around in my seat to look back at my crew chief through the open panel in the bulkhead. Jimbo broke into a broad grin and shot me a big thumbs‑ up. That said to me, You did good, sir. We stuck it to Charlie pretty hard today.

I nodded and smiled back, then gave him a thumbs‑ up. That was my way of saying, Good job yourself, Georgia farm boy. I wouldn’t have survived that engagement today with any lesser man in the crew chiefs cabin.

By that time, Paul Fishman had walked over to the ship. He clapped his arm around my shoulder as we walked together toward the ops bunker. “Goddamnit, Mills, ” he said, “you scare the shit out of me! If you don’t quit mixing it up down there for as long as you have a tendency to do, you’re going to get your ass shot full of holes. And I’ll just be sitting up there at fifteen hundred feet watching it happen! ”

I told him the truth when I answered, “I scare the shit out of myself sometimes, Pauly, and this was one of those days that I nearly scared myself to death! ”

The base maintenance guys went over my OH‑ 6 after we got back, and their report scared me even more. Altogether, about twenty to twenty‑ five enemy rounds had impacted the airplane. My airspeed indicator had been shot out. The altimeter had a round through it, smashing it to pieces. The armor plate under Parker’s seat had been hit twice. The armor around my pilot’s seat had been hit several times from the rear, indicating that enemy bullets had gone through the crew chief’s compartment, missing Parker but smashing into the back of my seat armor before ricocheting somewhere else in the ship.

Also, Parker’s M‑ 60 door gun itself had caught an AK‑ 47 round near the front sight, right between the barrel and the gas operating tube. The almost impossible hit put a neat half‑ moon gouge in the bottom of the barrel and blew the gas cylinder right off the gun.

Then there were four or five NVA bullet holes in the Plexiglas of the bubble, a couple more in the tail boom of the aircraft, and at least three through the rotor blades. For good measure, one AK slug had gone into one side of the engine compartment and exited on the other–completely missing any engine vital, without which we would have gone down into the middle of those thirty or so bad guys.

The way I figured it, between the NVA and our Loach, in just the 120 seconds of that battle, somewhere between eight thousand and ten thousand rounds of ammunition had been fired in a jungle clearing no bigger than half a football field. And through it all, that miraculous little OH‑ 6 kept flying. Even more miraculous was the fact that neither Parker nor I was hit. Man… we both must have been living right!

That same day when the ARPs got back from their ground sweep, we found out just how much havoc we had actually caused those enemy soldiers we caught on the paddy dike. We learned that there were two POWs and twenty‑ six KIA–four more dead than the twenty‑ two bodies Bob Davis had quickly counted from the air when he relieved me. Also, ARP leader Bob Harris brought back a load of enemy weapons and equipment that his platoon had found strewn around on the ground after the fight was over. Among the recovered items were numerous late‑ issue AK‑ 47 assault rifles, a 60mm mortar, a skid‑ mounted SGM machine gun, and two Russian handguns.

But, to me, the most interesting piece in the lot was the rice cooking pot that was strapped to the back of the soldier I caught running off into the jungle. The ARPs had found it on the jungle trail, took it off the body, and brought it back to show me the twenty‑ four minigun slug holes right up through the bottom of the pot!

I hit the sack that night having already been told that, for the day’s action, Parker and I had been written up for the Silver Star medal (my second such award). That was a good feeling, but not half as good as also knowing that the aeroscouts had finally discovered a fair‑ sized element of the elusive Dong Nai Regiment.

The enemy unit that we jumped in the clearing had definitely been identified as a heavy‑ weapons platoon belonging to the Dong Nai. We had been hunting those bastards for a long time. Now we had found them, and stirred them up pretty good by destroying one of their crucial subunits in that jungle clearing.

After rehashing the morning’s activities, I finally dropped off to sleep, knowing that I was going to be back out at first light the next morning looking to find the Dong Nai again. I wanted to help deliver the coup de grace.

^{CHAPTER 13}