by James Estep
Yankee Papa, now nearly overhead, began a lazy orbit as we prepared to mark our LZ, it being the small clearing extending downward from just below the top of the hill upon which we stood. Unfortunately, the hill’s level crest was not part of the clearing.
“Slope’s too great for him to set it down, sir. I’ll bet on it,” Sergeant Luden commented.
May be right, Ken,” I replied, “but it’s his call. All we can do is mark it for him and hope.”
He nodded in agreement, pulled the pin on a purple smoke grenade, and threw it down the hill, where it came to rest in a clump of dry elephant grass.
“Roger, Roaring Tiger,” Yankee Papa transmitted, moments later.
“Got your grape. Let me give it a quick looksee. Stand by.”
After orbiting us once more at a lower altitude, he said, “Okay, Roaring Tiger. Think we can do it, but that hill falls off pretty damn fast, so I’ll be setting down as close to the top of it as I can. I’m coming in now.”
It almost worked. Yankee Papa attempted to land his cumbersome bird parallel to the side of the hill as near to its wooded, fairly level crest as possible. Creating a mighty backwash, it descended slowly, not more than fifteen meters from where we stood watching.
The H-34 is a three-wheeled helicopter, its two weight-bearing wheels on the front of the aircraft’s fuselage. As Yankee Papa’s left-front wheel touched and began settling into the hill’s soft upper slope, its rightfront wheel, facing downhill, remained suspended above the ground.
The helicopter started to tilt dangerously. Its pilot, belatedly recognizing that the hill’s slope was too great, attempted to throttle back up and lift off again. But it was too late. Increasing the engine’s RPM merely amplified the aircraft’s downhill cant, hastening the inevitable.
The helicopter momentarily lifted itself off the ground and then, suspended in air and as if in slow motion, lazily rolled over on its side, its belly facing us and its main rotary blades—still spinning at top pitch—nearly perpendicular to the earth below. We watched in shock as it went plunging, crashing down the side of the hill. Within seconds the whirling blades struck the jungle’s edge at the base of the clearing, throwing foliage, tree limbs, dirt, and dust into the air.
Suddenly one of the main rotary blades freed itself from the aircraft’s engine and, along with other debris, spiraled upward toward where we stood. It crashed to the ground ten to fifteen feet in front of us.
Then, for a brief moment, an eerie silence settled over the landing zone. The helicopter was obscured in a haze of dust and smoke at the base of the hill.
“Jesus H. Christ!” Luden said.
“Oh, shit!” I said.
“Think we’re gonna need us another dust off, Skipper,” Kipler commented, grinning at the two of us somewhat oddly.
“Uh … you got that right, Chief,” I replied. Then, with the plight of the helicopter’s crew in mind, I turned to Luden, only to find he had already grabbed a couple of the nearest Nungs and was on his way down the hill.
Turning back to Kipler, I said, “Kip, get hold of base and tell ‘em what happened. Tell ‘em to pass it on to Yankee Papa in Danang. Tell ‘em we’re gonna need a dust off. Tell ‘em … oh, shit, just give ‘em a sitrep. Okay?”
“Right, mate,” he responded, as I began running down the hill after Luden.
I had moved but thirty meters or so before my right foot suddenly gave way from under me, and I felt a stabbing pain in my ankle. Retrieving my foot from the hole into which it had plunged, I saw a long slender bamboo spike protruding from my canvas jungle boot just below the ankle.
Holy mother of Mary! A goddamn pungi trap. What else can go wrong? I reached down and pulled the spike from the side of my foot.
Continuing down the hill toward the crash site, I ran into Ken, his Nungs, and Yankee Papa’s crew moments later. The crew, carrying the helicopter’s M-60 machine guns, appeared to be unhurt.
“Hey, sir, goddamn miracle. Not a scratch on any of ‘em,” Ken said. But he was limping badly.
“Uh … yeah, got a little problem here,” he said, noting my concerned look and pointing to his right foot. It was much worse than my minor wound. The entire side of his boot and the flesh underneath lay open as if cut by a surgeon’s scalpel.
“Fell into a damn pungi trap. You believe that? You believe anyone could be that fucking clumsy?” he said.
“Uh … yeah, I do, Ken,” I replied. “And we got to get you out of here. Your whole foot’s laid open!”
“Sir, it’s really not that bad, and I’d prefer to stick with the patrol. Couple pills, a battle dressing—I can make it.”
AR Of course we both knew he couldn’t. However, before I could say anything else, the pilot of our bent and broken helicopter, a Marine Corps captain, came forward and with a stoic expression asked, “Who’s in charge of this circus?”
“I am, I guess, sir,” I replied.
“Well, Lieutenant—you are a lieutenant, I presume, noting that discolored bar on your collar—you owe the United States Marine Corps seventy-five thousand dollars for one H-34 helicopter. Now how do you like them apples?”
As I looked at him aghast, he smiled and said, “Hey, Army, just joking. My fault, and don’t worry about it. Worthless piece of shit anyway, outlived its usefulness. Ah, now, have you called anybody ‘bout getting us out of here?”
I told him we had, and we continued up the hill together. Nearing its top, just feet from where Kipler was standing, we were suddenly, apparently, taken under fire by an unseen enemy.
Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!
We hit the ground.
“Where’s it coming from?” I yelled to Kipler.
“Coming from our LZ, Skip,” he replied, standing above us and smiling as if this was turning out to be a pretty good day after all.
“Your marking grenade landed in some dead elephant grass down there. The bird’s backwash blew us up a bit of a fire, which is now burning in a clump of bamboo. Mates, that’s bloody bamboo you hear exploding.”
He paused momentarily, allowing us time to regain our composure and to laugh at ourselves as we did so—although on the whole there was really very little to laugh about.
“Skip, called base and gave ‘em a sitrep,” he continued. “Sanford [the team’s communications sergeant] just called back and said Danang’s gonna have a Huey out here in thirty minutes or so. Same time, I told him to pass on that the crew’s okay.”
While waiting for the Huey, Kipler pulled me aside and suggested I accompany the others back to Danang to have my foot taken care of.
“May not be bothering you much right now, sir, but I promise you it’ll be hurting like hell later on.”
“No way, Kip! You’d be left as the only round eye on the op, and Nungs or no Nungs, we don’t do things like that. ‘Sides, it’s a very minor cut. Once we get these people out of here, I’ll take a couple no-sweat pills, slap a battle dressing on it, and be as good as new.”
He smiled as if he knew better but said, “Okay, Skipper. You’re the boss.”
The sun had set and darkness was rapidly approaching when we heard the Huey overhead. Although I suppose one could argue as to which of us had proven ourselves least qualified to land a helicopter on our downward-sloping LZ, I decided to ask our visiting Marine captain, the pilot of the downed H-34, to bring the Huey in. He at least spoke the Huey pilot’s language. Besides, if the government should find me liable for the loss of its H-34, one helicopter was all I could afford on lieutenant’s pay.
After talking to the airborne Huey a couple of minutes, the captain turned to us and said, “Okay, he’s gonna land in basically the same attitude I did.”
Oh, that’s just great!
“Only difference, he’s gonna touch down with only his uphill skid and then hover, so he wants us to load quick. Got an ACL eight; there’s four of us. How many you gotta get out, Lieutenant?”
“Just one, Sergeant Luden. No, make that two. Forgot about our wounded
striker.”
“Super, that makes it six and no problem. Now listen up, since the Huey’s gonna hover at a level keel.” He paused, smiled, then said,
“Which, in passing, is the best way to land a rotary-wing aircraft. Landing or lifting off a helicopter at a cant can be disastrous! ‘Course, we all know that now, don’t we?”
His crew chuckled at this, and so did we.
“But seriously,” he continued, “with the bird hovering like that while we board from the uphill side, those blades, which ain’t that far off the ground to begin with, are gonna be low and dangerous. So keep your heads down and move under them in a low crouch.”
Unfortunately, the Huey’s onboard medic didn’t hear the captain’s warning. The helicopter came in with its left skid uphill and began hovering. As soon as the skid touched ground, the medic, who I thought was the helicopter’s crew chief, jumped from the Huey and ran toward us, in a crouch to assist with the wounded. He had barely gotten himself from underneath the periphery of the Huey’s main blades—which, since the helicopter was maintaining a hover, were rotating at full pitchbefore our boarding party, moving toward the helicopter, passed him.
Pivoting in midstride, he fell in behind Ken Luden and our wounded striker and started back toward the Huey. I fell in behind him, wanting to give the pilot a thumbs up in appreciation for flying this mission.
Approaching the medic in a low crouch from the rear, I heard a soft, swift zippp. Suddenly, my face and the front of my jacket were covered with blood! The medic had been hit squarely atop his head by one of the whirling main blades of the Huey. If he had been a fraction of an inch taller, or if he had stood a fraction of an inch higher in his crouch, the top of his skull would have been instantly crushed. As it was, the helicopter’s blade merely skimmed the top of his head, separating his scalp from his skull and throwing it back on his neck like a toupee caught in a sudden gust of wind.
The medic looked up from the ground, perplexed, and said, “My hat! I lost my hat.” The blood seeped down his forehead, forming little droplets on his eyebrows.
I yelled, “Medic!”
“Sir, I am a medic,” he said, looking up at me, smiling. For a fleeting second all I could think was, will this day never end?
As the Huey’s pilot looked at us in shock from behind his Plexiglas windshield, I kneeled; took the young man’s scalp, which was still attached to his skull by a shred of flesh; and placed it atop his head as neatly as possible. Then I put one of his hands on top of his scalp, telling him to hold it there until he arrived safely in Danang.
Once we had the medic on board, I gave a thumbs up to the pilot and in a low, a very low, crouch, ran out from underneath the Huey’s “kill zone” as the helicopter lifted off.
An hour or so later, my foot began to really hurt.
After the Huey’s departure, Kipler had dressed the wound, noting in doing so that my foot had begun to swell. I was able to get my boot back on only with some difficulty. Can’t take it off again; I’d be going barefoot the rest of the op!
The Kipper, old bush hand that he was, knew I would be in pain by this time, so he suggested a shot of the big M. (On extended operations of this nature, one or two of the team members carried syringes of morphine.)
“No way, Kip,” I said between gritted teeth as I lay wrapped in a poncho liner, unexplainably cold. “Don’t believe in it. Don’t want some mind-boggling drug messing up my thinking.”
Yeah, as if a clear head had done anything for us thus far. Hell, things might take a turn for the better if I did start doing my thinking from cloud nine.
“Okay, Skip, you’re the boss.” Then, chuckling, he said, “Say, mate, what do you make of our op so far?”
“Great start, Kip,” I said, with a straight face. “I don’t see how our first day could have conceivably gone any better.”
He laughed.
“Shit, Kip, after this is over, Peterson probably won’t even let me set foot on ARO. Probably just have me flown directly to Danang to issue toilet paper for the rest of my tour as the C detachment’s new assistant to the assistant deputy logistics officer.”
“Hey, Skipper, never setting foot again on ARO ain’t punishment! Sides, you’d eat better in Danang.”
He paused for a moment, then said, “But seriously, sir, I was just thinking. ‘Fore we came over here all them experts in jungle warfare told us not to worry much ‘bout pungi stakes. You know, at worst they’re nothing more than a nuisance, a minor annoyance. But today, one fucking pungi stake compromised an entire operation, destroyed a seventy-five-thousand-dollar helicopter, and wounded four soldiers, three of ‘em Yanks. Now I’d say that’s a pretty good payback for a couple minutes’ carving time on a sliver of bamboo!”
I nodded in agreement. The pain in my foot had progressed from a dull constant ache to throbbing torture. I couldn’t understand it. The wound was so small. How the hell could it hurt so?
“Oh, yeah, forgot to mention it, Skip,” Kipler said after a moment’s silence. “Thought you might be sleeping and didn’t want to wake you, cause you won’t be getting much sleep tonight. You can bet on it. Anyway, Sanford called in and said your Marines are gonna have a crew out here at first light or as soon after as they can get a bird in. Gonna pull the radios from their H-34 here, then torch it. Want us to stay with the helicopter till they finish up and leave.”
He paused and felt my forehead.
“Running a fever, mate, and it’s gonna get worse, ‘cause the gooks put all manner of shit on those two-minute pungis. Now let me tell you something, Lieutenant,” he said forcefully. “Your foot’s infected, and you can’t walk, and you’re gonna be out of here on that bird in the morning! And I think you bloody well know it.”
Then in a softer voice, he said, “Come on, Skip. Let me give you a shot of morphine. Make the night go quicker, and you’ll be in Danang with some little nurse in the morning.”
“Like I said, Kip, no fucking way. I’m not leaving this op, and I’m sure as hell not taking any morphine. I can take the pain; it’s part and parcel of the trade. Ain’t taking no morphine, period!”
“Okay, Skipper, you’re the boss,” he said, getting up to leave.
Well, I guess I set him straight, I thought to myself as he wandered off toward his part of our perimeter. Hell, pain’s part of the game, and I can play the game.
It was perhaps twenty minutes later when I crawled over to Kipler’s hammock and, somewhat sheepishly, asked, “Uh … Kip, where’s the fucking morphine? How many syringes do you have, anyway?”
And the next morning, as the Kipper had predicted, I departed the op aboard the Marine’s radio-recovery helicopter. Kip had seen to it that I was ordered to do so, but that was really unnecessary. I would have gone anyway. I could no longer walk.
13. Farewell to ARO
Ken Luden and I were back at ARO, limping about, within a week or so.
Although we wouldn’t be participating in any long-range patrols for a while, that really didn’t matter—for there were to be no more long-range patrols. Detachment A-104 had received new orders: destroy ARO.
It was not a trivial task, even though ARO was little more than a useless airstrip and a lot of holes in the ground. How does one go about destroying useless airstrips and holes in the ground? Or why would one want to? The Viet Cong had no air force, and none of us could see how our bunkers—our holes in the ground—could conceivably provide the enemy aid, comfort, or any material advantage if left intact. Clearly, he could not take these holes and use them against us elsewhere.
But orders were orders, so we spent the next month burning, dismantling, blowing up, and caving in bunkers.
The night before we bid our final farewell to ARO, we also bid a sad farewell to our two attached Aussies, neither of whom would be accompanying us to our new camp. The C detachment in Danang (our higher headquarters) was fanning a Nung “Mike” force that could rush to the aid of any besieged Special Forces A camp in I Corps. It was
a good idea and a necessary asset, as these camps were usually well outside the range of artillery support, ARVN could not or would not send forces to aid them in the event of an attack, and in the spring of ‘65 there were no American ground forces to come to their assistance.
Unfortunately, the C detachment needed our attached Australians to organize and train this Mike force. So on that last night atop a hill we’d never miss, we threw a party for a couple of Aussies whom we’d miss very much indeed. We drank, we talked, we sang. By any measurement, Kip and his companion beat the rest of us at all three—for no one can outtalk, outdrink, or outsing an Australian.
The following morning, we blew what remained of ARO sky high, mounted Marine helicopters, and journeyed our way southward to Kham Duc, another of I Corps’ border camps.
14. Ha Thanh, Vietnam: April 1965 to January 1966
On April 25, the day after ARO had become but another page in the history of I Corps’ ill-fated border surveillance program, we boarded C123 Providers and flew ninety miles southeast to Quang Ngai City, the capital of Quang Ngai Province. From there, we flew another fifteen miles or so in a westerly direction, once again via Marine Corps H-34s, to a hilltop overlooking a small remote village called Ha Thanh, the district headquarters of Son Ha District. We had arrived at our new campsite.
Son Ha was the west mmost of Quang Ngai’s districts. It was a fertile rice-growing area dominated by its valley of the same name, which ran generally northsouth through the district along the banks of the Son Ha River. To the north and west of the valley were the mountains in which the Viet Cong, and Viet Minh before them, reigned supreme. In the lowlying areas the district was inhabited by “friendly” Vietnamese, who lived primarily in the village of Ha Thanh, and Hre Montagnards, who lived mainly in the countryside. With a population of perhaps twelve hundred people, Ha Thanh was the social, economical, cultural, and most certainly political center of the district.
Our strikers fell in love with Ha Thanh the moment they disembarked the helicopters. Although the village was little more than a random assortment of thatch-and mud-walled hutches astride a dirt road, it had everything ARO lacked—food, sundries, beer, women. Understandably, we preferred Ha Thanh to ARO. Here there was a camp to be built instead of destroyed, a mission to be accomplished, a populace to be protected, assisted.