by Robert Mason
Helicopter pilots, like cats, were finicky about getting their feet wet. That was one of the reasons they were pilots. Grunts got dirty; pilots didn‘t—so the story went. Anyway, Resler and I crawled over the seats, sat in the shade on the cargo deck, and picked and pawed at the C-ration boxes for snacks.
When the pace of the action was broken by periods like this, we sometimes compensated by indulging in what the army called “grab-ass.” That is, we tried to make each other laugh.
“Hey, how’re we gonna heat the water for the coffee?” asked Resler.
“Here, gimme that can. I’ll make a stove.”
“Oh, yeah? How ya gonna get to the fuel drain?”
“You’re right. Let’s make Miller get the fuel.”
“No,” said Miller.
“Aw, come on. You want us to be alert, don’t you? What if we fall asleep and crash?” Resler coaxed.
“You ain’t gonna fall asleep, and I ain’t gonna go slog in that shit for the fuel.”
I looked at Rubenski in the pocket next to his gun. “Rubenski, grunts are supposed to love mud. Will you go get some JP-4 for me?”
“No. And I ain’t a grunt. I was a grunt; now I’m a gunner.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The difference is that a grunt would go get the fuel for you and I won’t.”
“Good point.” I glanced up and saw a tin-can stove burning on the dike next to the Huey beside us.
“Hey, you guys,” I yelled. “Give us some coffee, huh?”
“Get bent,” yelled Nate, grinning.
“Hey, have a heart. I’m nothing without my morning coffee.”
“You’re nothing anyway, Mason.”
“Shit, I can’t take this whining. I’ll go get some fucking fuel.” Rubenski jumped out and sank to his knees in the leech-infested bog.
“Now, that’s what I like to see—the true determination of an American grunt,” I yelled.
“Gunner!” Rubenski yelled back as he slogged heavily toward Nate’s ship.
When he was just about there, we heard “Crank ‘em!” from up front.
“Goddamnit!” Rubenski turned and slogged back through the morass. “Fuck!”
We cranked and checked in on the radios. The grunts were coming across the paddy, laboring at each step. They were tired and torn, unshaven and grim. Ammo cases clunked wearily on the deck. So did rifles and canteens and helmets. With eight of them in the back, the surface of the deck disappeared under mud and pieces of rice plants.
The flight leader gave us the word to go. One by one the ships wriggled loose from the slime. I rocked the ship back and forth and from side to side as I pulled the pitch. It was especially sticky stuff.
The ship in front of us, an attached ship from the Snakes, had a new pilot, or an old pilot in a hurry. He jerked up through the mud and promptly flipped over. The rotors hit the paddy, exploding into pieces. The mast came off. Parts flew everywhere. When the Huey stopped kicking, men started climbing out the cargo door, now the top of the bent and muddy fuselage. The command ship overhead told us to leave. He would get the men. While we circled back toward the valley ridge, I saw the command ship and a light gunship land and evacuate the men. I grinned while I imagined what the pilot who had crashed was thinking.
We chased Charlie around his valley for more than two weeks, flying too many hours every day. Observed or reported movements of the enemy were immediately countered with air assaults to the spot. The Cav’s Third Brigade fought tirelessly and well in this hectic hopscotch war and was chalking up an impressive kill score. The marines were being misused on the beaches northeast of the war. So far they had not made contact, but a marine had hurt his foot on a beach assault. Things were getting better for pilots because we were shot at less and less in the secured areas. The big question was whether they stopped shooting because they had been defeated or because they just stopped shooting and became civilians.
Colonel Lester, of the Third Brigade, probably wondered about this, too. He decided to find out by putting the VC in a position where they would have no choice but to fight, because there would be no escape. The VC always knew our exact positions by watching the Hueys.
The first stage of his plan was to airlift nearly three battalions of infantry to a crow‘s-foot of seven intersecting valleys, twelve miles south of Bong Son. Nothing unusual about that, except that once the troops were dropped off, we would not return to support them. Instead, they carried several days’ rations themselves and operated independently. For three days they deployed themselves throughout the crow’s-foot silently and without any helicopters flying near them, placing themselves in ambush position for the VC who would be coming their way.
Part two called for convincing Charlie that we were landing huge forces on top of the ridges along the long valley that led to the crow‘s-foot. We did this by flying empty ships for two days to normally prepared LZs along the ridge tops. We went in with all the hoopla of a standard air assault on every one of the fake LZs. On short final, the door gunners blasted the bushes. We landed and stayed on the ground for thirty seconds or so and then left. Later we’d fly out to “resupply” these units at regular intervals. We were in on the plan. And the fact that there was a plan was a novelty. So, for two days, the VC watched the buildup and decided that things were getting too hot in the valley and began to drift south toward the trap.
After the imaginary forces were placed on the ridges, real troops were landed on the valley floor to act as beaters. The beaters ran into occasional Charlie delay teams that sacrificed their lives so that their comrades could make it to safety. During the next few days we supported these beater troops with hot food and new clothes and the phantoms with counterfeit visits.
Life for the grunts in the valley was grim. In a few days they were reduced to sodden, weary, leech-encrusted men. One company took a break at a particularly scenic spot on the river. A hundred and fifty men stripped themselves of their rotten clothes to bathe in the sandy shoals of the river, leaving a handful of men as security. Charlie was well ahead of them. No one felt the slightest threat of ambush at this delicate moment.
Without warning, Charlie opened up. Naked men scattered in all directions as the bullets churned the water. The sentries couldn’t see where the shots were coming from. For long minutes the men were completely exposed. They got to their weapons. The tide of the battle changed abruptly and Charlie was driven off.
I landed next to the riverbank soon after the firefight, and the naked men were still laughing about it. Nobody had been seriously hurt. That was unbelievable, and therefore funny.
We dropped off food and sat on the ground for a while, waiting for the men to eat. I’d spent the night with these guys several times. As usual, several grunts gathered around the machine. Some guys asked all sorts of technical questions. How fast can it fly? How long can you stay up on one fueling? Why don’t you make all your takeoffs vertically? Do you get scared? Others would stand back and grin knowingly, as people do around race-car drivers.
Around us, the men were breaking open the boxes of clothes we’d brought. Their old sets, two days old, were literally rotting off their backs.
One man pointed at a bullet hole in my door. “Where’d that round go?” I slid the side armor forward and showed him the crater where the bullet had hit. “Damned if that wasn’t lucky.”
“Yeah, I’d probably be dead if it hadn’t been there,” I said.
Somebody poked his head inside and exclaimed, “Do you really use all those dials and switches and stuff?”
“Yeah, but not all at once. We check each one in a pattern.”
“What’s that one do?”
“That’s the artificial horizon, which shows you where the horizon is when you can’t see it, like in bad weather.”
The soldier nodded and said, “I’d sure like to fly one of these.”
“What? You crazy, Daniels?” his friend responded. “You want to be a fucking target?”
“It’s better than being a grunt, asshole. You stay clean.”
“Man, what does that have to do with anything? We get dirty, but we can at least hit the dirt when we’re shot at. I mean, haven’t you been on enough lifts to get the piss scared out of you yet? Coming into the LZs is the worst part of this fucking war, because you got no cover. If it weren’t for the shit, I’d kiss the ground every time I got off one of these birds.”
“Yeah, but I bet when you guys get back to base those nurses really go nuts for you, don’t they?” said Daniels.
“Our base?” I started to tell them that our base was just a pile of sand at Phu Cat and that I hadn’t seen one Caucasian female since I’d been here. “Yeah, it is good back at base. I mean, we’re just regular guys like you. But, it’s true, the nurses do get out of control.”
“See, asshole. This is class, in case you can’t see it. I mean, this takes brains. While we’re out here eating mud and fucking fists, these guys are sleeping in soft beds and scoring all the nooky they can handle.”
His friend wasn’t impressed. “They can have the nooky. Look at them bullet holes. They got ‘em up there in the roof, through the doors and the windshields—this thing is a fucking sieve. I’m staying here on the ground and nurse my poor aching cock back home to my waiting mama.”
“Ah-fucking-men, brother,” someone agreed.
To Daniels I said, “If you’d like to get on one of these ships, they are always looking for gunners. You can volunteer.”
“Yeah, I guess I could.” Daniels looked unhappy. “But I made it this far like I’m doing. Six months and I’m gone.”
“Well, if you change your mind…”
“Yeah, if I change my mind.”
Rubenski walked up beside the cockpit.
“Just found my friend, Mr. Mason.”
“He’s in this unit?”
“Yeah, this is my old company. I’m trying to get him to transfer to the 229th as a door gunner.”
“What’d he say?”
“He said yeah. Man, can you see the two of us on the same ship? We would mow—I mean mow—VC!”
One of the gunners had to be a crew chief, like Miller. I told him this.
“Aw, it don’t matter. Just having him in the same company would be enough. Him and me went through a lot together in Chicago. And we have plans for when we get back. You know, sir, with the stuff we’re learning here, my friend and I could knock off even a bank.”
“Knock off a bank? You’re gonna rob a bank?”
“I guess that is kinda wimpy. Maybe even a bigger job than a bank. That’s why it’s so important to have him with me. We can plan the right job. He’s the brains and I’m the muscle.”
I was really surprised that Rubenski was considering a life of crime when he got home. More likely it was a day-dream that kept him going. I laughed.
“You think I’m kidding?”
I laughed again.
“Wait, Mr. Mason. You’ll see. Rubenski and McElroy. That’s the names to look for, sir. The best.”
“I’ll be watching the papers, Rubenski.”
“Great. That’s all I ask. Watch the papers. Give us a chance.” Rubenski turned around and noticed that the grunts were getting organized. “Be right back.” He ran toward a group of soldiers.
The grunts were dressed in their new uniforms, back in business. They loaded the empty food containers on board along with two guys with minor wounds. When they moved away from our ship, I saw Rubenski hugging one of the grunts in farewell. He ran back to our ship as I cranked up.
As the VC were driven southward, they moved toward the crow‘s-foot in Kim Son valley. In that valley one of the serpentine turns of the river looped back almost upon itself. The piece of land within the loop was the site of a large village.
“This is LZ Bird.” Major Williams pointed at the map at our operations tent at the Rifle Range. “North Vietnamese and Vietcong units are holed up here, and in the jungles north of it. Our assault will be to the village itself. The approach path is across this high ground south of Bird, and there doesn’t seem to be any ground fire along that route. Antiaircraft emplacements are reported at Bird, but the LZ will be thoroughly prepped before we land. After the initial wave is on the ground, some of you will return to the staging area to pick up more troops and take them to the LZ. Good luck. Let’s go.”
As we left to walk to the aircraft, Resler said, “Jesus, sometimes I get the feeling I’m in the middle of a war!”
“What did you think? The war’d be over when you got back?”
“I was hoping. God, you should have seen Bangkok. Absolutely precious women, great food, strange sights, and, best of all, no shooting.” We approached our ship and threw our chest protectors and helmets up front on the seats. Gary did the preflight walk-around, and I climbed up top to check the rotor hub and mast. “Those girls look so cute and so shy, it’s really a shock to find out that they love to fuck,” he added.
“Give me a break,” I said. The rotors were clean, showing no delaminations.
“Really. They practically fell all over me.” Then I heard him tell the crew chief, “Missing a rivet here. Course, I don’t see how it matters, with that bullet hole next to it.”
The dampers were free and there were no cracks forming in the hub, the Jesus-nut safeties were in place, and there were no fractures visible. I climbed back down. “Did you get any sapphires?” I said.
“No. I can’t tell a good one when I see it. Got laid, though.”
“Gary, I will kill you if you don’t stop—”
“They’ve got the biggest eyes you’ve ever seen. Small, delicate features; small, firm breasts; and tight little pussies.”
“Tight?” I sighed.
“And juicy.” Gary cackled and began to walk around to get in.
“God, I need to go to Bangkok,” I muttered. “How much?” I called to Gary as he strapped in.
“Free.”
“Free?”
“Yep. And all you can handle. If you can walk when you leave, you weren’t trying.”
“Crank ‘em!” someone yelled.
I climbed into my seat and strapped in. “Tonight, Resler, I will strangle you.” He laughed so hard he cried.
The fifty-ship gaggle cruised in the cool air on the way to Bird. Gary and I were twentieth or so. We did little talking on the way. It wasn’t exactly fear that caused that tickling, queer feeling in my stomach at the beginning of the assaults. At least I wasn’t conscious of being afraid. Instead I concentrated on the radio chatter to see how it was going, shrugged now and then to relieve the stiffness in my neck and shoulders that always seemed to be there, and patted my pistol.
As we crossed the ridge, the LZ was visible at the bottom of the bowl. Streams of smoke from the prestrike drifted up to the top of the valley and blew away. The twenty ships in front of us formed a line descending steeply toward Bird, going down a staircase. Up through that line of Hueys, huge tracers from the anticraft guns streaked silently by. The only sounds of battle came through my earphones as pilots talked. I could hear the chatter of their own machine guns.
“Crew chief hit bad! I’m going back,” someone ahead of us radioed. Pfc. Miller had taken a direct hit in his chest protector, but the shrapnel from the bullet had ripped off his left arm. He would have bled to death if the pilot hadn’t aborted.
“Roger. Get him to the hospital pod.” A wounded air crewman or great structural damage were the only reasons you could abort. If a grunt was wounded, you kept going.
Gary flew. I chanced a few clicks on the camera around my neck while I lightly followed his movements on the controls. I didn’t look through the viewfinder; I just hit the shutter a couple of times, shooting blind.
I could never understand how tracers appeared to move so slowly. I knew they were going really fast, but they always seemed to be on a lazy flight. Unerringly straight, but lazy.
The guys up front did all the work, took the chances, and
lost two ships. By the time we got closer, the heavy guns were knocked out by the grunts, leaving only one still blasting away.
We landed in somebody’s sandy vegetable patch, and the grunts were off, bounding toward the tree line. Gary nosed over and we were off. Gone. Away unscathed. Back to the beautiful sky where small clouds played in the cool air.
“You got it,” said Gary.
“I got it.”
We had to pick up some more troops and return. Gary flipped on the RDF (radio direction finder) and tuned in the station at Qui Nhon. Nancy Sinatra sang “These Boots Were Made for Walking.”
“Pretty good reception, high like this,” said Gary.
“FuckyouGIfuckyouGIfuckyouGI!” came over the radio.
“Hey, Charlie’s got our frequency,” I said.
“Say again, Charlie,” Gary broadcast back on the same channel.
“FuckyouGIfuckyouGI…”
“Who’s calling Charlie?” yelled the command ship.
“FuckyouGIfuckyouGI,” said the Oriental voice.
I spun the dial on the FM homer, and when the needle nulled, I had the general direction to the transmitter. “Coming from the south.”
Gary called the command ship. “We’re monitoring a Charlie broadcast from the south.”
“Roger.”
“FuckyouGI…” The high-pitched voice persisted, and then stopped as a Huey turned off in his direction.
“Little gook’s got some balls, don’t he?” said Gary.
“Yeah. I bet they’re bigger than he is.” If all the gooks were killed, I hoped that at least this guy survived. Every time I heard his emphatic staccato rendition of “Fuck you GI” I laughed my ass off. Somebody else pissing into the wind.
While the command ships tried to track down the VC radio broadcast, Gary and I flew back to the staging area and loaded more troops.
The second landing to the LZ was uneventful. We set down off to the right of the village compound in some gardens. We were told to shut down and wait to carry trophies captured in the battle.
Chinooks were slinging in artillery as we walked over to the newly captured/destroyed village. Once-swaying palm trees were now obscene sticks standing awkwardly above the pall that covered the craters and burnt hooches. I saw no living Vietnamese.