by Dennis Foley
Iron Mike pulled up on the collective and pushed the cyclic forward, picking up airspeed and putting the chopper in a steep nose-down attitude. His wingman mirrored his actions on the far side of the PZ.
Mike squeezed the trigger on his cyclic, and pairs of rockets burst from the pods on either side of his gunship. His wingman fired grenades and miniguns.
While the gunships made their firing runs, Hollister made out the navigation lights of the two pickup ships that had moved to a safe orbit high above the PZ.
More confident of their eventual extraction, Hollister allowed himself a little release.
If things went the way they were supposed to, they would be able to complete the entire extraction under a shield of friendly artillery and gunship fire without a break in the protective umbrella—the pickup sequence would look like ballet. Now Hollister’s only job was getting them home in one piece.
In the extraction ballet, every dancer knew that the tiniest screw-up could cause a loss of momentum. And once momentum is lost on a pickup, everything soon falls apart. One delay would lead to another and still another.
Many patrols had been wiped out by delays at the PZ. Hollister’s night extraction had the same risks: everyone for miles around knew exactly what was going on and where the American patrol was. Fire support and speed were his only security.
Watching closely, he estimated the flight pass of the gunships and picked a time to move that would put the patrol at the edge of the pickup zone just after the guns had passed by. Confident in his estimate, Hollister joined the ballet. He yelled over the gunships, “Camacho, let’s move!”
The gunships pulled up at the end of their firing pass. “Two-six, this is Iron Mike. We’re saving the rest of our ordnance for now. Let me know when you’re ready and we’ll come back to burn more bridges behind you. The PZ is now clear. I say again, the PZ is clear. Guns are safe.”
Running, Hollister’s voice was a little more excited and short of breath. “Roger, thanks, Mike. Break. Gladiator, Gladiator, this is Two-six. We are at the Papa Zulu, ready for pickup. I will mark my location on your command. Over.”
Just then Camacho broke through the trees on the edge of the pickup zone and halted the patrol.
Hollister stopped just behind Camacho and looked over his shoulder out across the PZ. It was getting light. Still, it would stay inky black in the pickup zone until long after they were out.
“Stand by, Two-six. We are zero three out and will call final,” Gladiator answered.
Untangling it from under his arm, Hollister passed the handset back to Vinson and looked around at the others. All but Camacho were facing to the rear, to be ready in case they were followed.
Hollister looked back out onto the PZ. Not much bigger than a couple of basketball courts, but it looked huge and threatening. He knew that anyone could be following them. And hundreds of VC could be hiding in the black ribbon of trees that ringed the empty clearing.
But the only way they could ride home was to make that dash to the choppers once they touched down in the clearing—where any VC could drop them from up to five hundred meters away.
Over his own heavy breathing Hollister heard the approaching helicopters getting louder and louder, even though he couldn’t see them. Somewhere south of him they had dropped from orbit altitude to the treetops as they screamed toward the pickup zone.
Vinson tugged on Hollister’s sleeve. “Gladiator’s on final. He wants a strobe.”
Hollister pulled a handheld strobe light from its pouch, clipped to his harness. He fitted the tubular plastic shield over the business end of the light and turned it on. The high-pitched squealing noise of the charging capacitor could just be heard over the approaching choppers.
Hollister pointed the strobe light where he expected the choppers to break across the tree line.
By the third flash the pickup chopper’s red and green position lights broke the blackness.
“We got you … let’s try an’ make this a work of art, folks,” Gladiator said.
Vinson tugged on Hollister’s sleeve again and gave him an exaggerated nod.
Hollister had to get the team to the exact spot where the chopper was to touch down. He didn’t want to get them out in the middle of the landing zone one second before they needed to be there. He also had to allow for someone tripping or taking a hit from an unseen sniper in the tree line. There should be no false moves that would cause the chopper to lose forward momentum by landing and having to wait on the ground for the patrol to reach it.
The patrol members readied themselves for the dash to the aircraft, each man pumped to go as he watched his sector of fire. They occasionally stole quick glances over their shoulders to check on the chopper’s approach.
Hollister gauged their dash knowing Gladiator would touch down on the nearest possible spot to the leading edge of the clearing, to allow himself maximum takeoff room. The chase ship would pass over the pickup ship, break into a hard turn and come back around ready to drop into the landing zone if the pickup ship was crippled by enemy fire.
“I really hate this shit!” Camacho yelled over the chopper noise. “Who said this was fun anyway?”
“I don’t know, but you keep coming to these parties,” Hollister answered, trying to cover his own nervousness.
Gladiator cleared the trees, flared nose high to bleed off airspeed, and settled onto the clearing. Its tail rotor clipped some small trees and the popping sounds caused the patrol to react with a start.
Hollister immediately slapped Camacho on the butt and yelled, “Go, go, go!”
Each man fell in line behind Camacho and ran half backward for the first few yards, covering the tree line for enemy fire. Once in the clearing, they turned and sprinted for the chopper doorway.
Camacho leaped and did a belly flop into the chopper. Doc Norris landed next to him, and Theodore landed on top of Norris. Davis threw himself sideways and landed across the three pairs of legs.
Hoping that he had timed it right, Gladiator rolled the Huey forward. As the weight of the aircraft shifted to the front of the skids, Vinson and then Hollister leaped up and in.
The door gunner on the far side was smoking the tree line with six-round bursts of M-60 machine-gun fire, and Camacho started firing out the far side of the ship into the same tree line.
Barely in the chopper, Hollister reached up from behind the armor-plated seat and slapped the co-pilot’s helmet, yelling, “Go, go, go!”
Vinson and Theodore began firing out the near side of the chopper at the spot they just left.
From above Iron Mike saw the tracers as he heard the coming-up call from the pickup ship. It was clear for the guns to roll in again.
Hollister raised his head just as the pickup ship lifted its skids off the clearing and started forward and up. At that same moment the tree lines on either side of the chopper exploded in matching ribbons of rocket, minigun, and grenade fire from the gunships.
Relieved, but not even close to being safe, the entire patrol started yelling encouragement to the chopper and gunships’ crews—none of whom could hear them.
As the pickup chopper skimmed the top of the tree line on the far end of the landing zone, Hollister and Vinson looked out and back behind them at the black hole they had just left. It was ablaze with ordnance raining down from the two gunships.
Gladiator pulled them out of range of any enemy small arms fire.
As the chopper climbed, the temperature dropped considerably. “I’m freezing my goddamn ass off. You fuckers can have this job!” Theodore yelled to the door gunner who huddled in the corner of his cut-out seat compartment to shield himself from the ninety-knot wind that was making his lips slightly blue.
He smiled at Theodore and pointed down at the Vietnamese countryside. “I’ll take it, my man. You won’t get me down there with nothin’ faster than my feet to get me out of trouble.”
The two soldiers smiled at each other. Grunts never understood the bravery of chopper
crews, and vice versa.
“Clear your weapons! Clear your weapons!” Davis yelled over the chopper noise.
After dumping his magazine into his hand, Hollister yanked back the charging handle on his rifle to eject the round that was in the chamber, then scooted to a sitting position in the doorway of the chopper. He threw the selector switch on the left side of the rifle to the safe position, took his first deep breath, and looked out past the foothills, across the glasslike rice fields, at the huge orange ball coming up out of the South China Sea. He looked back inside at the team members. They were all there in one piece. He couldn’t help but look back out at the sunrise and whisper, “Thank you …”
CHAPTER 3
THE FOUR CHOPPERS CROSSED over the barbed wire surrounding the sprawling American Airborne brigade base camp. Only then did Hollister start to feel a release from tensions that had knotted his gut when they lifted off six days before.
The gunships peeled off and went to a different landing pad, where they could reload their weapons systems if another patrol called in a contact.
The two slicks began to settle down on a large asphalt pad with a three-by-ten-foot yellow and black arc painted on it. Inside the arc an amateur had painted the words LONG RANGE PATROL.
Just off the pad a jeep and trailer were waiting. The trailer was filled with chunks of dirty Vietnamese ice, cans and bottles of beer and soft drinks.
The driver got out of the jeep and stood next to it, looking up at the landing choppers. It was Easy. Hollister smiled. Easy could always be counted on to take care of his troops.
The pickup chopper touched down and the team wasted no time getting out.
“Listen up, you dickheads. I want you to ground your weapons, make sure they’re cleared. Pile the captured equipment next to the vehicle before you touch any’a that beer. And I don’t want any shit about it,” Davis yelled.
The team members hastily dropped everything in one huge pile and headed for the trailer cooler.
Hollister got out of the chopper and stepped up on its skid to get closer to Captain Peter Shelton—Gladiator 36.
“That was pretty smooth. Will you thank your people for us, sir?” Hollister asked through the window in the pilot’s door.
Captain Shelton flipped the lip mike away from his face and smiled at Hollister without looking at him. Preoccupied with shutdown procedures, he answered, “It’s all in a day’s work there, young lieutenant. Hell, derring-do is our specialty … the really hard stuff takes us a bit longer, but I’ll pass the word. Glad to help.”
The others were already telling war stories about the ambush as they sloshed beer all over themselves trying to drink it. Hollister moved to the cargo bay, leaned against the chopper and pulled out a cigarette. Putting it to his lips, he lit it and watched Easy’s beaming nice as he listened to the excited soldiers tell and embellish their tale.
Hollister met Easy on his very first day in South Vietnam. After hitching a ride on a cargo plane from Saigon, Hollister found himself standing outside the airfield at An Hoa.
The smell was like nothing he had ever experienced. It was a strange mixture of dust, mildew, rotting fruit, sewage, charcoal ashes from unseen cook fires, and exhaust fumes.
He had expected things to look a little more like World War II newsreels. But it was the summer of 1965, and American troop units had only been in country for a few months.
As Hollister stood there he felt vulnerable, wondering if it would be a year that would leave him proud, ashamed, or dead. In that moment of anticipation he said a little prayer that he would not embarrass himself or his family.
Suddenly, a jeep careened around the concertina-wire fence surrounding the airfield and stopped. The jeep’s untuned engine drowned out the noise of the Vietnamese civilians scurrying along the roadside. It, in turn, was eclipsed by the bellowing of an enormous NCO who wrestled the jeep through the throng.
“Get the fuck off the damn road, you slant-eyed motherfuckers!” screamed First Sergeant Horace P. Evan-Clark.
The driver had a large, round, whiskey-reddened face punctuated with a thick rope of rust-colored handlebar mustache. His forearms were damn near as large as Hollister’s thighs. Each bore a faded tattoo that had lost its proportions in the years since they were injected under his leathery skin.
The jeep had spooked two older Vietnamese women who were pushing a load of scavenged cardboard on a twenty-year-old bicycle. They lost their grip, and the load turned the bike over into a roadside sewage ditch.
“For Chrissakes, if you hadn’t been stealin’ that shit you wouldn’t be pickin’ it out of the fucking sewer. You the dumbest bunch of sons’a bitches I ever seen!”
Hollister had seen loudmouthed NCOs before, but Evan-Clark had added a special insensitivity to this common trait.
Evan-Clark turned his attention away from the shaken women and looked over the hood of the jeep at Hollister. Throwing something that looked like a well-worn version of an old army salute, he automatically shifted into a more deferential tone. “Sir, you Lieutenant Hollister?” he bellowed.
From Evan-Clark’s tone of voice, Hollister knew that he was being tested. He just wasn’t sure how. Something from his training back at Fort Benning told him that he had to take the initiative from this crusty old relic. Hollister quickly ran through a couple of options in his head and only concluded that a rank-pulling showdown wouldn’t settle anything. A new second lieutenant, Hollister was sure of one thing—no lieutenant could operate in a vacuum in an infantry unit. The NCO contingent in an Airborne brigade was a tight network. And Evan-Clark was obviously a charter member.
“I just dropped off a young soldier on his way back to the World and got a message that I should be lookin’ for a new lieutenant just in from Camp Alpha,” Evan-Clark explained.
“That’s me, First Sergeant.” Hollister threw his duffel bag into the back of the jeep and immediately turned to the two old women. He assumed that Evan-Clark was wondering if Hollister was going to call him on his stupid driving stunt.
“Give me a hand. These old gals need somebody your size to get their load back upright again,” Hollister said without looking at the first sergeant.
Hollister heard him mumble a muted “Yessir” as he climbed out from behind the steering wheel and helped get the old ladies and their bicycle upright.
They didn’t talk much as they threaded through the streets of An Hoa headed for the base camp. Hollister was trying to size up the mountain of a man. Evan-Clark’s right sleeve bore the 82nd Airborne Division shoulder patch—either he saw combat with the all-American division in WWII or the recent action in the Dominican Republic. One was a real paratrooper’s war, Normandy invasion and all. The other was a schoolyard fistfight.
The master parachutist’s badge on Evan-Clark’s baseball cap was a clue. The tiny bronze star attached to the wings meant he had made a combat jump. That meant WWII. Hollister was impressed.
After some preliminary conversation that served to position the two, Hollister found out that Evan-Clark was the senior noncommissioned officer of the brigade’s forty-man provisional Long Range Patrol detachment. Discussion about the LRP unit came so easily to Evan-Clark’s lips that Hollister got the sense that the first sergeant was feeling him out as a possible candidate for the unit.
“Did the lieutenant go through ROTC?” Evan-Clark asked in the archaic third person, which was still commonly used by NCOs over forty.
“Nope. I’m still trying to finish college. I was a staff sergeant before I went through CCS. Actually, I was drafted and spent a couple years in a mechanized infantry battalion in Germany till my platoon sergeant talked me into applying for Officer Candidate School,” Hollister said, only telling Evan-Clark a half-truth.
The whole truth was that Hollister had to fight with his platoon sergeant to apply for OCS; but he wanted Evan-Clark to feel that he was a lieutenant because of an NCO somewhere.
It worked. Evan-Clark straightened his back, taking some
little pride in a fellow sergeant’s perception, professionalism, and devotion to the development of leaders.
“There’s two majors and a lieutenant colonel struttin’ their stuff back in the States ’cause I did the very same with them when they was young soldiers.”
“I’m sure they’re pleased you did,” Hollister replied.
The first sergeant looked quickly at the large blue-and-red-rimmed face of his Rolex GMT Master watch that would dwarf a normal man’s wrist. “If the lieutenant isn’t in too much of a hurry, we could stop off at Bell’s,” Evan-Clark suggested.
“What’s Bell’s?”
“Well sir, it’s a cross between a car wash, a bar, a cathouse, and a laundry.” Evan-Clark spoke as if it were a fact of the war that they were forced, even expected, to go to places like Bell’s to take care of some of the understandable necessities of soldiering in a foreign war zone—like laundry and jeep washing.
Hollister felt that Evan-Clark was waiting for him to become squeamish and object. Searching for a no-loss solution to the situation, Hollister recalled the hours of leadership classes that covered the taboo of overfamiliarity leading to contempt. But he didn’t want to start off on the wrong foot with an NCO who would soon be spreading word about the new lieutenant, so he tried to reply without giving approval.
“I’ve got a whole year, Top,” Hollister said, using the more informal, unofficial title.
Evan-Clark jumped on Hollister’s response. “That’s good, sir! ’Cause we ought to get Mamasan at Bell’s to sew up some name tapes for the lieutenant’s uniforms, and I gotta pick up my laundry, and …”
Bell’s was a large shack sitting alongside the road on the outskirts of An Hoa. The ground around it was wet and muddy from the bevy of young boys who moved quickly from jeep to jeep washing them.
The building contained a bar and whorehouse. It was covered with flattened Carling’s Black Label beer cans recycled as a Viet version of aluminum siding. Rock music escaped through the entrance, which was decorated with shocking pink strips of tubular plastic hung from the top of the doorway. Mixed with the music were the high-pitched giggles of the Vietnamese girls inside.