by Lew Jennings
A guy who would coordinate fighter bombing runs right on target with the FAC.
A guy who would shoot the snipers out of the trees over their heads.
A guy who would blow bunkers, reaping havoc in front of them with point blank rocket runs.
A guy who would risk his life escorting “Dustoff” in for their dead and wounded.
A guy who would go in knowing he would probably be shot down and when crashed inverted, would construct an LZ, under fire, to evacuate the dead and wounded.
A guy who would continually fly low and slow to identify enemy positions until he was shot through the legs, forced to land, bind his wounds with the help of combat medics and then fly himself out again in the face of certain death.
And finally, a guy who would land his Cobra in the middle of an enemy bunker complex facing the smoking ruins of enemy bunkers and machine emplacements he had personally destroyed to signal the troops that it was okay to move forward and recover their dead and wounded.
I, and my brothers in Alpha Troop were always glad to be that guy. Like our fellow Army Helicopter Pilots, we couldn’t do enough for the troops and were honored to serve.
Post Script: Lieutenant Dan Bresnahan of A/3/187th was one of the few surviving Platoon Leaders of Hamburger Hill. When he returned stateside after his tour, he attended flight school and Cobra school and returned to our own little Alpha Troop, 2/17th Air Cav just 18 months later where he distinguished himself again, this time as a Cobra Aircraft Commander with the Air Cav.
Hamburger Hill After Apache Snow
Scout Pilot Eddy Joiner, Assault 11.
Mark Stevens, Assault 43, receives the Silver Star for his actions on Hamburger Hill.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MONTGOMERY RENDEZVOUS
Hamburger Hill was finally taken on May 20, 1969 and Lieutenant Colonel Honeycutt’s 3/187th Battalion was air lifted out the next day, 21 May.
The drama wasn’t over though as the enemy continued attacking with mortar fire as the helicopters came in to extract the troops. Honeycutt was airborne in a Loach, directing gunships and artillery fire until late afternoon when the last troops left at 1500 hours. The Battalion was deployed to the coastal plain for a much-needed rest.
The fighting wasn’t over for us in Alpha Troop either as we continued our mission of finding, fixing and destroying enemy forces and their supplies and equipment in the northern A Shau Valley for several more weeks in an operation called Montgomery Rendezvous.
The 3rd Brigade was still out there too. The road from Camp Eagle had been completed by the 326th Engineers and 3/5th Mechanized Infantry, LZ Rendezvous and Firebase Currahee were still up and running in the bottom of the valley and the 1/506th and 2/501st Airborne Infantry Battalions were conducting reconnaissance-in-force missions to root out enemy locations.
We roamed the area searching for the NVA that were infiltrating from Laos. They had suffered terrible losses inflicted by the 9th Marines in Operation Dewey Canyon and then by the Army’s 101st Division and 1st ARVN Division in Operation Apache Snow. Yet here they were again, starting to appear in the A Shau just days after the battle for Hamburger Hill.
Our teams discovered a large rope bridge in the western mountains spanning a deep canyon between two ridges. The bridge had been strategically positioned far down the sides of the canyon, making it nearly impossible to get to and destroy with fighter jets or artillery. We were having trouble trying to destroy it with rocket fire from our Gunships, as there was no way out at the end of a rocket run to turn left or right and escape enemy fires. And over-flying the target at low altitude invited disaster.
Len Constantine finally saved the day. He carefully maneuvered his Cobra way up high and almost slowed to a stop before beginning his gun run, carefully aiming the gun sight and pulling in just enough power to streamline the aircraft. Firing off several pairs of rockets that were dead on target, even at long range, allowed him adequate time to maneuver without crashing into the sides of the canyon. He did the same thing two more times while his Scout bird provided covering fire with his mini-gun. The bridge finally collapsed and crashed to the bottom of the canyon. There was a lot of hollering and congratulations over the radio. “Yay Lenny!”
We weren’t congratulating ourselves a week later though when we lost one of our own back on Hamburger Hill.
We had abandoned the hill earlier as there was no one left to fight, however, just a few days later our Scouts started seeing evidence that the enemy was reoccupying some of the bunkers and fortified positions on the hill.
Dick Dato recalls how it all started.
“I was flying with Don McGurk in a Cobra. Our Pink Team had just completed a mission a little north of Hamburger Hill near Tiger Mountain and we were on our way back to Firebase Blaze to rearm and refuel, when Don mentioned he wanted to swing by Hamburger Hill and get some pictures,” Dick remembers.
“When we arrived and flew low over the scene of the battle that had a taken place earlier, our Scout saw NVA soldiers out in the open around a campfire waving to us, like they were friendlies. We actually fell for the deception, took a bunch of photos, then called in the report of seeing the soldiers as we headed to Blaze. We were immediately told there were no friendlies on Hamburger Hill and to get back there ASAP! We refueled and headed back but alas, they were gone or at least in hiding.”
“As we continued checking things out, Don thought he saw movement at one of the bunkers. We finally laced it with fire and sure enough, on our next pass saw a tripod-mounted machine gun lying on its side next to the bunker.”
“Our Scout came in low and saw at least two enemy soldiers hiding in the back of the bunker. That’s when we called in for a snatch mission to get the bad guys and recover the machine gun. Major Curtin decided to do a mini-air assault and land the Blues (our 40-man infantry platoon) on the ridge to check it out,” Dick concluded.
Captain Lou Herrick had taken over command of the Blues from Keith Reed just a few days earlier on June 1st. Lou had led the Lift Platoon of Hueys prior to that. Today, June 6th would mark his first mission on the ground leading the Blues.
Mark Stevens and the rest of our Huey Pilots airlifted Lou and the Blues into a landing zone on a ridge just to the west and below Hamburger Hill. Don McGurk and Dick Dato were flying a Cobra overhead and Tom Michel was scouting low in his Loach.
The Blues started their reconnaissance patrol heading up the ridge towards the hill. As they approached a line of old bunkers, all hell broke loose when enemy soldiers, concealed in the bunkers and nearby fighting positions, launched a coordinated ambush. Point man Sp5 Norman Brown was killed instantly. A bullet grazed Lou’s head, wounding him in the ear. He ordered the Platoon to pull back, deploy and return fire as McGurk and Dato fired rockets and grenades and Michel fired his minigun from the Scout bird at the enemy positions. McGurk, Dato and Michel quickly ran out of ammo and I (Assault 23) was called in to relieve them on station.
When I arrived a few minutes later, Lou and the Platoon were pinned down by the enemy’s continued fire from the fortified positions on the higher ground. We came in hot and smoked the positions with our rockets, grenades and minigun as Lou led his men forward to recover Brown’s body.
I could see the enemy soldiers firing from the bunkers and trenches and continued to engage them at near point-blank range. Their bunkers were small and well protected. I needed to be accurate with the rockets and put them right through the small 3 by 3-foot openings in the bunkers to blow them up from the inside out.
On each pass, I would shoot a couple of pairs of rockets while Keith Finley in the front seat fired hundreds of rounds from our turret mounted minigun to protect us as we broke left or right to set up another run. Our Scout, Mike Ryan would follow behind in his little bird shooting underneath us with his minigun. A great wingman, Ryan saved my bacon many times as I tried to do the same for him.
The battle was fierce and we quickly ran out of ammunition, however I continued to make fake
gun runs at the enemy to keep their heads down while Lou and his soldiers recovered Brown’s body and withdrew back to the landing zone for extraction. Another team quickly showed up to replace us and continue covering the Blues as we headed to the nearest firebase to rearm.
The Hueys were already in the air and the Blues were successfully extracted and flown back to home base at Camp Eagle. The rest of us continued to attack enemy positions on the hill with Artillery and our own rockets, grenades and minigun fire from the helicopters.
I saw Lou later back at home base after he and the other soldiers in his platoon had been treated for their wounds. He thanked me profusely for the close air support work and especially the fake gun runs, even when out of ammo, to help protect the troops. He said he would put me in for a Silver Star, however, that was not to be. Lou could not forgive himself for Brown’s death and several days later asked to be relieved of command. Don McGurk would take over from Lou as leader of the Blues.
The rest of us in the Weapons and Scout Platoons continued to roam the A Shau with our hunter-killer teams of a single Cobra and single Loach, trying to locate the NVA who were continuing to infiltrate the valley.
A few days later on 9 June the enemy attacked Firebase Currahee, located in the middle of the valley below Hamburger Hill, and ambushed a convoy on the newly constructed road, Highway 547, from Camp Eagle to the A Shau.
Eddy Joiner and I were flying out of Firebase Blaze headed to the valley, when I got the call the convoy was under attack. In just a few minutes we were overhead. Things looked grim for our guys on the ground.
A North Vietnamese soldier, in an apparent suicide maneuver, had stepped out into the road and fired point blank at tanks leading the convoy. The lead tank returned fire killing the enemy soldier instantly. The rest of the convoy stopped as the tanks deployed in a ‘Herringbone’ formation, each pivoting in place to a 45-degree angle to fire outward. That’s exactly what the enemy wanted them to do.
With the entire convoy now at a standstill, they became sitting ducks as hidden enemy fighters on the high ground on both sides of the highway launched their ambush. They damaged or destroyed nearly every vehicle in the convoy, killing or wounding many of the occupants.
When we arrived overhead many of the vehicles were on fire, some blown clear off the highway, and guys on the ground were screaming for help. We immediately started reconning the hills on both sides of the highway looking for the bad guys, while the friendlies on the ground repeatedly warned us that we were receiving fire as well.
We discovered some fighting positions and fired on a few enemy soldiers we detected however, in typical NVA hit and run tactics, most of the enemy forces had melted into the surrounding jungle to fight another day.
All that week we continued to discover enemy soldiers and engineers reoccupying the high ground around Hamburger Hill and reconstructing the bunkers, spider holes and fighting positions.
For three days in a row after, I had attacked a small enemy engineer unit, complete with bulldozer, working on a hilltop just to the west of Dong Ap Bia.
Each night I would lay awake on my bunk back at the hooch thinking of ways I could try to outsmart them and attack them again without getting shot down.
Each day I would come in low level from a different direction, pop up to see if I could catch them by surprise, and come in hot blasting at the hilltop.
It turns out Lenny Constantine had been doing the same thing with his team and adjusted Artillery barrages on the site as well.
We were definitely becoming a thorn in their side.
On the fourth day, June 10th, Dick Dato was flying back seat on his first mission as a new Cobra Aircraft Commander with his mentor, Bruce McNeel, in the front seat. Lenny and I had told them about the enemy activity in the area and they set up for another attack on the same hilltop. The bad guys were waiting for them this time with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).
On their very first run they took a direct hit from an RPG which severed the tail boom and put them into a violent spin as they plummeted towards the ground. The aircraft hit a tree, stopping the spin, however, then dropped another hundred feet or so straight down, slamming into the ground with such force that the airframe was crushed and both of them were severely injured and knocked unconscious.
Eddy Joiner was flying the Scout bird and called the May Day over the radio alerting all of us that Dato and McNeel had crashed. The Boss was on the scene in minutes and a Medevac Helicopter, “Eagle Dustoff”, was on the way.
Lenny arrived on the scene in his Cobra and with the help of the Scouts kept the bad guys at bay while the Medevac was coming in for the pickup. Lenny remembers all he could see of the wreckage was the top of Dato’s head where the canopy had been busted through. McNeel was slumped over and unconscious in the front seat.
What transpired next was the stuff of legends.
Dick Dato regained consciousness and somehow managed to climb out of the back seat. Even though blinded by severe facial injuries he felt his way along the crushed fuselage around the front of the aircraft to the opposite side where McNeel still sat unconscious in the front seat also with severe facial injuries.
Dick is a big, strong guy over six feet tall and nearly 200 pounds of solid muscle. He is also famous for his no nonsense “can do” attitude. Even with his injuries, he reached into the damaged front cockpit, undid McNeel’s seat belt and shoulder harness and then lifted him out and laid him down on the ground beside the aircraft. They huddled there, somewhat protected from enemy fire, while the rest of us blasted the hill and covered the Medevac Helicopter that was lowering a basket down to recover them.
Lenny recalls that he would never forget the sight of Dick Dato holding Bruce McNeel in his arms, staring towards the sky hoping help would arrive.
Dick was trying to see the rescue Huey hovering over him, however he was so severely injured and blinded that he couldn’t see the basket coming down to them on the hoist wire. The Eagle Dustoff crew carefully nudged him with the basket, which he managed to grab, as they lowered it to the ground.
He then placed McNeel in the basket and waited on his knees, his head hanging down, as the basket was hoisted up to the rescue helicopter. Once McNeel was safely aboard, the basket was lowered again and gently nudged against him so he could feel it, then he climbed into it and was hoisted to safety. Safety was a relative term as all the while the bad guys were trying to shoot the Medevac down while we were blasting their positions.
Two more bunks in the hooch were empty that night as we packed up Dick and Bruce’s stuff to be shipped back to the States. Their time in Vietnam was over. I hoped and prayed Dick Dato and Bruce McNeel would be able to recover from their wounds.
For years, I felt guilty that somehow it was my fault they were ambushed. I should have been the one attacking the hilltop again.
Three days later we would lose Scout Pilot Mike Ryan. He would be wounded in a horrific crash over on the west side of the valley, near where Lenny Constantine had blown up the bridge.
“It was Friday, the 13th,” Ryan recalls. “I knew something bad was going to happen.”
Circling in low in his Scout bird with his Observer, Bob Bickle, they spotted an enemy hooch structure below the triple canopy jungle. Don McGurk and Mike Talton were flying the Cobra, providing cover overhead. It was Talton’s final ride as a Copilot before being promoted to Aircraft Commander.
Ryan started receiving fire and broke off while Bickle threw out a white phosphorous grenade to mark the enemy location. McGurk dove in to attack the structure with rockets while Ryan circled around to cover them in his Loach.
As McGurk broke off his run, Ryan continued the attack, firing the minigun. Then when he tried to break left, the controls wouldn’t respond! They continued their dive straight into the mountainside down through the trees and thick jungle.
As McGurk and Talton lined up for another rocket run, they looked around to see where Ryan was. “Crap, I lost
him!” Talton yelled into the microphone as McGurk took his finger off the firing button, which would have launched another flurry of rockets.
“He just disappeared,” Talton explained as they strained to see Ryan’s Scout bird. “They were gone in an instant, literally swallowed by the jungle.”
“I kept trying to fly the Loach as we crashed down through the trees,” Ryan recalls, “but it was no use as our controls had been shot away and the collective I was holding in my left hand had broken off and wasn’t connected to anything.”
“We finally hit the ground and rolled onto our left side. The whole front of the cockpit had been ripped away. I was hanging in my harness in the right seat. Bickle was trapped under the airframe in the left seat.”
“My left leg hurt like hell. Turns out it was broken, as my ankle had been violently twisted in the crash. I had also taken a bullet in the calf and another bullet had grazed my thigh after ricocheting off the .38 pistol I kept strapped between my legs to protect the family jewels. Thank God for that!”
“I unbuckled my harness and fell on top of Bickle,” Ryan continued. “His left arm was stuck under the door frame. There wasn’t much left of the aircraft so I crawled out and simply lifted the whole damn thing up and he got his arm out. I unbuckled him and he fell out on the ground with me. We crawled over and huddled under a tree and popped a smoke grenade so the guys overhead could see our position.”
“We started hearing Vietnamese voices nearby and figured we were going to be discovered any minute. Bickle and I made a pact that we wouldn’t be captured alive and counted the bullets we had on hand for our pistols.”
“Then we saw 20 or so enemy soldiers, but they were running away! Apparently, McGurk was diving at them from overhead and scaring them off.”
“Then we saw the Huey hovering over us above the trees. It was the Boss (Major Curtin). His crew chief, Duane Acord, was peering down at us and dropping a line with a 4 by 4 attached.”