by Eric Meyer
“Captain, would you get the chocks removed from the wheels, we’ll be taking off shortly. Can you withdraw the ladder and close the door?” He nodded curtly and disappeared.
“I’m not happy about taking off without knowing the fuel load, Jurgen,” Paul said.
“Think of it as a gamble, Paul. Hopefully we’ll get lucky,” I grinned.
“And if we don’t?”
I laughed. “Then maybe we should say goodbye now, before we dive into the jungle, although we might land this thing without engines if we find a suitable strip.”
“Might, if. That’s not usually the way we do things,” he sniffed.
“How many times have we charged the Soviets or the Viet Minh, hoping that we didn’t take a bullet before we killed them?”
He was thoughtful for a moment. Then he smiled. “Ok, I see your point. Nice knowing you, Jurgen.”
“You too. I’ll see you in hell.”
We shook hands just as Cady came forward.
“All done, Hoffman, the men removed the chocks, the ladder is stowed and the door shut.”
“Ok, Captain. Would you get your men to hold onto some of the cargo straps, this take-off is going to be touch and go.”
“Yeah, I’ll tell them. Hoffman?” I looked back to him. He was holding out his hand and I shook it, Paul did the same.
“You’re a pair of Nazi bastards, but before we crash in some Vietnamese jungle shithouse, thanks for what you’ve done.”
I shrugged. “It’s no problem. Why the problem with the Nazis, the war was over a long time ago?”
“My grandmother, she was Polish, she died in Auschwitz.”
“I’m sorry, Captain. For the record, I was never near any prison camp and we didn’t even belong to the Nazi Party. I agree with you, they were bastards. Hold tight, now.” He went back into the cabin and we primed the engines and switched on ready to start. I looked at Paul.
“Hals und Beinbruch!”
He grinned. “Du auch!”
I hit the start button on the port engine and it whirred slowly, picked up speed and burst into life. Then the starboard engine spooled up and shortly we had both engines running. A light came on in the control tower, then several buildings lit up and a flood of light spread over the field as the overhead security lights were switched on.
“Time to go,” I said to Paul.
I throttled up and taxied onto the runway, heading for the end to turn into wind for take-off. Across the field, a Soviet built GAZ jeep had turned on its headlights and I saw soldiers jumping into it. It started towards us, bumping on the uneven field at the side of the runway. I put on the headset and heard the North Vietnamese controller shouting in French at the unauthorised Ilyushin 14 to halt immediately or they would open fire. Another set of headlights switched on and a ZIL-157 lorry, another gift from the Soviet Union, started towards the runway, we could clearly see a dozen armed troops sitting in the back. More ominously, the passenger side of the cab had a mounted light machine gun, the gunner was pushing up through the roof hatch preparing his weapon to fire.
“They’re going to block us, Jurgen,” Paul said.
“I can see that, it’ll be touch and go. If Cady’s men could open the cargo door and return fire when they start shooting, it would be a help, would you give him a shout?”
While I concentrated on getting the aircraft to the end of the runway, Paul turned in his seat and shouted for Cady. When the Captain came into the cockpit, he explained to him what we needed. Cady nodded and went out. We reached the end of the runway, I spun the aircraft through one hundred and eighty degrees, lined up on the runway and opened the throttle wide. The aircraft picked up speed but it was too slow, much too slow. The GAZ was almost alongside us, keeping pace and the ZIL was halfway down the runway, manoeuvring to block it and prevent us from taking off. The voice in the headphones was screaming at me now but I had to keep listening, I needed to know when they decided we were an enemy. Which wasn’t long in coming, I heard him shout ‘Trier’ into my headphones to be picked up by the Viets on the airfield frequency. Paul heard it too. He shouted back to Cady.
“Open fire, Captain, now!”
There was a single muzzle flash from the GAZ, then it veered off the runway as the Special Forces peppered it, Woltz’s rifle cracked first to hit the driver and then the others open up with sub-machine gun fire. I could see an anti-aircraft emplacement across the field, men were running towards it but they would be too late, our problem now was the ZIL.
“Call Cady back up here,” I shouted to Paul.
He called out and the Captain appeared in the cockpit. I explained what I wanted, he nodded and went back into the cabin. The ZIL grew nearer and nearer, a soldier with a rifle fired three shots but they went wide, I ignored them.
“Three seconds,” I shouted to Paul.
He called back to Cady, we were almost on the ZIL when I wrenched the aircraft to the right and onto the rough grass at the side of the tarmac. The IL14 had a reputation for being able to operate on rough fields, I was about to test it to the limits. As we shot past the ZIL the soldiers in the cabin opened fire again, I didn’t have time to see the effect of their gunfire, we were past. I swung back onto the runway, the aircraft lurching to one side and then righting itself.
“Rotate,” Paul called across to me.
We hauled on both control columns, the aircraft was a heavy bastard as it took to the air, climbing slowly. I kept her at treetop level, they’d get that anti-aircraft gun working soon enough and we’d have been a sitting target at high level. At five hundred feet we levelled off and set course for the DMZ. Paul took over and I went back into the cabin to check the passengers.
“A bit of a hairy one, Hoffman,” Cady said.
I looked at him closely, he’d acted well during the take-off but I was still worried about his ability to lead men under battle conditions. I smiled.
“Hannah Reitsch would have done it with half the Vietnamese Army shooting at her.”
“Who’s Hannah Reitsch, does she work for you?”
I laughed. “No, Captain, she does not. On Hitler's orders, she took off from the Tiergarten in Berlin with von Greim, the newly promoted chief of the Luftwaffe, during the evening of the 28th April 1945. She flew the last German plane out of the city shortly before it fell by climbing out through heavy Soviet anti-aircraft fire. The Soviets were in the city at the time, it was an incredible piece of flying.”
He was silent for a moment, digesting my little piece of history.
“Well, yeah, but they were Nazi’s, weren’t they?”
He didn’t get it, just didn’t get it.
“That’s true, Captain, they were Nazi’s, fighting the same enemy that shot at you and your men out there on the airfield.” He looked puzzled and I didn’t pursue it.
“Were there any casualties during the take-off?”
He shook his head. “None, but Anderson and Goldberg don’t look too good, we need to get them medical attention as soon as possible. They took a good beating back there.”
“I’m doing my best, Captain.”
“Yeah. When will we cross the DMZ?”
“If we don’t run out of fuel, and if we’re not shot down, I would hope we should reach it in about three hours.”
“No way to check the fuel situation?” he asked.
I shook my head. “In situations like this one they would top the fuel tanks up before every flight so that they know they always start with a full fuel load. We don’t know of course if they did that or not before we took the aircraft.”
I noticed the other soldiers looking at us intently. Of course, they wanted to know their fate as much as I did.
“If we run out of fuel, what then?” Cady asked.
“Then we land. Crash land, that is. If we can find a flat piece of ground we may get down in once piece, if not, who knows?” I shrugged.
“Fuck it,” he said abruptly, “if only…”
“If only what?” I
asked him curiously.
“Nothing,” he answered.
We droned on for two hours, our spirits lifted and somehow Russo managed to tune in the antiquated Soviet built radio to receive a South Vietnamese channel, they were playing an Elvis Presley song, ‘Good Luck Charm’. That was something we sorely needed, a good luck charm, somehow I doubted we were going to get one on this mission. In my experience you made your own luck and the more enemy you killed the luckier you became. It was a simple equation of war.
Cady smiled after a few minutes. “I reckon we might actually make it, Hoffman.”
I shrugged. Ideally we would have called for an escort from the South, possibly from an American aircraft carrier off the coast, but the second we used the radio they would triangulate on us and we’d become the target for every MIG they could send to shoot us down. Besides, the American military had made it quite clear that we were on our own. I looked out of the window, they would be hunting for us now, of course, but flying at low level made it difficult for them to find us. Difficult, but not impossible.
The first burst went just wide of the port wing, the sound of the gun coming just after the fighter shot past us, one cannon round even went through the wingtip but failed to explode.
I banked hard to port, guessing that the attacker was crossing port towards our starboard. Sure enough, a MIG 17 flashed past the cockpit as Paul shouted for the passengers to hold on tight.
“That’s something new,” he said, “I’d heard about the MIG 17 but it’s the first one I’ve seen in the flesh.”
His voice was oddly calm, he was making an effort to keep relaxed and not do anything that would panic the soldiers in the back. Cady had come up to the cockpit again and was peering silently out of the windscreen.
“It could be the last one, my friend,” I said to Paul, “Unless we can lose him, can you see any cloud we can disappear into?”
He was looking out of the window at the sky, but it was clear and blue. A mountain range loomed in front of us, maybe five minutes flying time away. Too long. I could see the MIG turning in for another attacking pass and I pushed the control column forward just as another burst of fire came towards us, this time we weren’t so lucky, it stitched across the fuselage causing chaos in the cabin. Cady rushed back to check the damage while we concentrated on keeping the aircraft alive.
We reached the jungle canopy flying literally feet above it, if we’d lowered our wheels they would probably have touched it. We flew on, but I wasn’t in any doubt that it was a matter of seconds, minutes maybe if we were lucky, before the MIG came in again and finished us.
“He doesn’t know his business, that pilot,” Paul grinned.
“Let’s hope he’s not a fast learner,” I replied grimly.
Cady came back into the cockpit. “No injuries yet, Hoffman, what do we do next?”
“I’m trying to find somewhere to put down, Captain, before we’re blown out of the sky.”
He looked down at the unending jungle canopy and shook his head. “Any other options?”
“Pray he runs out of ammunition,” Paul said with a grin.
The smile was wiped off his face as the MIG came in again, I was ready for him and wrenched the rudder, turning the aircraft sharply to starboard to vector away from the cannon fire, but it was hopeless. Another burst hit us, this time it was the port wing that took the brunt of the attack, the engine erupted in a cloud of smoke and oil and caught fire as the propeller began to feather.
“Get your men ready, Cady, we’re going down,” I shouted.
He went back in the cabin and I heard him shouting orders to them to find something to hold on to. We were almost on the ground anyway, there was no room to manoeuvre when I saw a small clearing in the jungle and pointed the aircraft at it.
“Landing gear?” Paul shouted.
I shook my head. “No time and anyway, the gear could topple us if it tangles with any branches or roots. Feather the starboard engine.”
The first of the trees rushed past the cockpit window and we hit the ground with an enormous crash, the Ilyushin bounced back into the air and came down again as we slid along the clearing. We bounced up and down as we hit fallen trees and small mounds of earth. The sea of foliage hurtled towards us as we rushed along, then we came to the end of the clearing and the Ilyushin buried its nose into the first of the trees. We instinctively threw up our arms to cover our eyes as the windscreen burst in and shattered glass showered the cockpit and the aircraft rolled to a halt.
“Get everyone out fast and undercover,” I shouted to the men in the cabin. “Paul, we’ve done what we could, let’s go.”
He nodded, picked up his pack, we grabbed our weapons and rushed into the cabin and I followed him with my pack. The cabin was in chaos as the men scrambled to get out of the crashed aircraft, they had the door open already and were helping Anderson and Goldberg down to the ground.
“You need to move faster,” I shouted to Cady, “the MIG is still around and there may be several hundred gallons of aviation fuel that could catch fire.”
He nodded and started to urge them on but they had heard me and were already throwing their gear out and jumping clear as if their lives depended on it. Which of course, they did.
When they were all out Paul followed them and I left last, jumping to the jungle floor. Paul was already urging them to get away from the aircraft and they were running for the shelter of a huge, fallen tree that looked almost like the body of a giant dinosaur that had lain there for centuries, millennia even. I followed them and looked up at the sky from behind the giant tree trunk. The MIG was circling, almost certainly using his radio to ask for instructions. In a communist North Vietnam everyone had to wait until orders were relayed from someone at the top. Apparently this time he didn’t have to wait long. Abruptly he banked and turned towards us at high speed, then fired his cannons at the crashed plane. Someone would be in serious trouble for that order, I reflected. This was North Vietnam with a chronic shortage of everything. A crashed aircraft could be retrieved and repaired to fly again, one that was destroyed with cannon fire was useless. Then the Ilyushin exploded as the cannon shells hit the fuel tanks, sending a ball of flame shooting up in the sky that we could feel behind the shelter of the tree. Before he completed his attack his guns suddenly stopped firing, he was out of ammunition. I turned to Cady.
“Captain, we need to move, fast, away from here.”
He was mystified. “Hoffman, we’re ok, he’s out of ammunition.”
“And calling in reinforcements and ground troops to catch us here. Round up your men and get moving.”
His expression changed as he realised the danger we were in. He started giving orders and we struck out under the jungle canopy, out of sight of the MIG. We came on a game trail that looked passable and almost ran along it for a mile before I called a halt.
“We need to move east or west, the Viets know we’re heading to the South and they’ll be hunting for us in that direction. What do you think, Paul?”
He was looking at a map he’d brought from the Ilyushin. “We’re a few miles away from the village of Dong Hoi, I think. If we head due east, we can swing south when we’re further away and cross the DMZ near an old French fort just south of the border called Lang Vei, it’s near the village of Khe Sanh.”
“So we’ll be as good as home when we get to this Lang Vei place, yeah?” Cady asked.
“No, we won’t be. There’s over a hundred miles to travel to get to the DMZ, the area will be thick with Viets searching for us. Once we’re over the border, the Viet Cong will still be hunting us down, we won’t be safe until we get back to Tan Son Nhat. Let’s move.”
We hacked our way east through the thick jungle, eventually we hit another game trail and the going got easier. As far as we could tell no one had passed this way recently but we couldn’t allow ourselves the luxury of jumping to conclusions. Cady put out a rearguard, Russo and Beckerman, to stop us being attacked from behind. There wa
s little point in sending out a point guard, we could barely get through the jungle as it was. We travelled that way for fifteen hard, brutal miles until the light was fading. Goldberg and Anderson looked all in, as if they were about to collapse unconscious.
“We’d better stop here,” I said to Cady. “We can’t go on any further and neither can they.”
Cady nodded and gave orders to make camp. It started to rain and we sat miserably under our waterproof shelters to try and keep dry, but it was hopeless, the rain seemed to get through everything and we spent a miserable night listening out for the enemy. In the morning we were a sad, sorry group, cold, wet, tired and hungry. Frank Burr went to each of us and put together a collection of rations from which he produced a breakfast that tasted like decaying rat, but we wolfed it down, it could be the last food we would eat in a long time.
I was discussing the direction we would be heading in when Beckerman came up to us.
“Captain, Goldberg and Anderson, they’re not looking too good.”
We went over to inspect the two men. Goldberg had an obvious fever, he was hot, his eyes unfocussed and he had been unable to eat any food. Anderson was no better, apparently his ribs had been broken and his right knee smashed with a blow from a pistol, he said he was in a great deal of pain. They wouldn’t make the entire trip, of that I was certain. I nodded to Cady and we moved away to discuss it out of earshot.
“What do you think?” he asked me. “They don’t look as if they’ll travel a hundred miles through this jungle.” I nodded in agreement, it would be impossible.
“We need to get them evacuated. Do you have a working radio?” I asked him.
“Yeah, Jack Bond our comms guy has been working on the surviving set, the other was smashed during the escape. But you know that the second we transmit they’ll home in on us like flies around a stale turd?”
I grinned, it was an apt analogy. “You’ll need to move the party on at least ten miles. I’ll remain here with your communications sergeant and contact my people at Tan Son Nhat. What about the military, will they help?”