Sometimes we’d need to wait a day, or even two, for a cargo plane with space. But my friend Hoot, now flying with Prairie Fire, code name for a top secret mission, had connections with the Army, and one day he handed me a set of “Blanket Travel/Classified Courier Orders, 18 Feb 1971,” made out for the two of us, saying that he and I should receive preference for a ride in any U.S. cargo plane at any time, and that we could wear civilian clothes and carry a weapon. With the new set of orders, there was no more waiting for rides to Bangkok, though we never carried anything other than the orders themselves.
In Bangkok, our regular cab driver was John, a Thai man who became our tour guide and friend. He’d drive us around for several days, never asking for money. After taking us to the airport for our return trip, he’d stand before us, lift the flap to his upper shirt pocket, and look the other way. We’d insert his pay, much more than if he’d charged his normal fee.
We’d heard about a beach with white sands in southern Thailand, a place called Pattaya Beach. Hoot and I headed that way during one of our CTOs. When we arrived at midday, rain was pouring, and it continued into the second day. No beach time. On that second afternoon we found a local bar. We sat at a booth, and in the wall at the end of our table was a large aquarium. We kept trekking to the door to see if the rain had finally stopped. Each time, it hadn’t. In the aquarium, which looked almost like a window to the outside, four or five large fish faced us. They seemed lazy, drugged. Their mouths opened and closed, opened and closed.
After a sip of beer, Hoot, straight faced, looked at the fish and then at me and, nodding his head toward the fish, said, “This rain is getting ridiculous.”
I glanced at the fish, and what Hoot had said wasn’t especially funny. But then I glanced at them again, imagining I was looking outside through a window. There were those lazy fish sitting there, having just swum up to our window in the flood, mouths opening and closing, opening and closing. I laughed. We changed the subject. I looked back at the fish. Now it was really funny, and finally it was so funny that I was lying in the booth, laughing. Soon it was funny to Hoot, too.
I recently tracked Hoot down, called him on the phone. We had not seen or heard from each other in thirty-three years. We exchanged greetings, and he said, “Hey, do you remember that afternoon we were—”
“The fish,” I said.
It was still funny.
Hoot and I liked to dogfight in the OV-10. We’d both been F-4 backseaters and knew air-to-air moves and countermoves. Whenever he and I were scheduled to be in the air at the same time over Laos, we’d be on the watch for each other flying to or from our sectors. One would make erroneous position calls to headquarters to throw the other off. Several times we were in serious dogfights over enemy territory, against regulations.
One day something happened that I never intended to tell anyone. As we were dogfighting, I managed to get behind Hoot. He was in a tight turn. I was pulling g’s, staying with him, very excited. I called “Fox Three” over a radio channel I knew he was monitoring. I was so into the action that I instinctively pressed the rocket launch button on the stick grip. But of course my arm switch wasn’t turned on. But oh, yes, it was! Ka-swish. The sound was sickening. I just missed him. To the rear. (I didn’t have enough lead on him.) Had I connected, he may well have been shot out of the air.
He never saw the rocket whiz behind him.
In May of 2004, after contacting Hoot by phone, I saw him for the first time since 1971. We had lunch. Surely after all this time he’d forgive me, maybe even see a little humor in the incident. We reminisced and laughed about the fish in the aquarium again, we told old stories, and when dessert came, I braced myself. “Hoot, I’ve got to tell you something I’ve been keeping secret for thirty-three years.”
He raised an eyebrow, smiled. “You already told me.”
“What? When?”
“The night before you left Thailand you’d had a bit to drink. You pulled me aside and said, ‘Hoot, I’ve got to tell you something that’s a big load on me.’ Then you told me about shooting the rocket while we were dogfighting.”
“Have you told anybody?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Hoot looked left, then right, and without cracking a smile said, “Because you got to my six o’clock. Somehow.”
PRAIRIE FIRE WAS a highly secret reconnaissance and “deep strike” Army unit based at Nakhon Phanom. Several of our OV-10 pilots flew cover (protection) for them. Hoot was their head pilot. He and a few other pilots used the Nail call sign and were on the books as Nail pilots, but the Prairie Fire mission was different and highly classified. A Prairie Fire mission worked something like this: A small group of soldiers were dropped into Laos at night by helicopter to collect intelligence and harass North Vietnamese and Laotian forces. The FAC’s job would be to fly cover—to protect them from the air as they were dropped in or taken out, or if they got into trouble. In some cases the FAC initiated an air strike a few miles from the drop point as a diversionary tactic. The Prairie Fire FAC’s OV-10 would be equipped with high-explosive rockets as well as target-marking smoke rockets, and besides directing air strikes, a Prairie Fire pilot could be called upon to strike enemy forces with rockets and with the four machine guns mounted in sponsons on the OV-10. This would happen as low as treetop level or lower. Our forty-five-hundred-foot minimum altitude rule was waived for Prairie Fire pilots.
One night Hoot invited me to a party at the Prairie Fire operations shack, located in a secluded corner of the base. The Prairie Fire Army guys had a reputation for being wild people. I’d heard that on occasion they sometimes ate the legs off live rats, one of their more sedate pastimes.
The party was relatively tame; several guys ate some roses with their champagne and broke champagne bottles against a wall. I came home early because I had to fly the next day. Hoot knocked on my door several hours later. I let him in. He was a bit unsteady. He pulled a mini hand grenade from one of the many pockets on his flight suit. Then he reached into another pocket and pulled out another one.
“I’m going to put these in my survival vest.” His speech was slurred.
I looked at one of the grenade pins, the kind with a ring in the end. “You’re going to blow your ass off before you ever see a survival vest,” I said.
“Oh,” he said. “Here’s another one.”
When he finished pulling grenades from his flight suit, there were thirteen around the room on various surfaces. He offered me several and I turned him down. He later taped up two for his survival vest so they wouldn’t go off accidentally. He told me he had so much tape on them that if he met up with the enemy in Laos, he would have to hold up his hand and ask for a time-out to get the tape off.
The Speaker on the Wall
IN EARLY SPRING 1971 I was flying a routine combat training mission with First Lieutenant Greg Rawlings, Nail 23, fresh from the States. He received a call.
“Nail Two Three, this is Jingo, flight of two F-Fours seeking to enter your sector at Checkpoint Delta and precede northwest for Daisy Bread.”
“Roger, Jingo, Nail Two Three, in training, permission granted.”
The two F-4s, each with two pilots, would be far below us, streaking into our sector at less than five hundred feet above the ground. Their speed would put them past heavy antiaircraft artillery before gunners knew they were coming. Or at least that was the idea. Their job was to drop those treelike audiorecording sensors near the trail.
I knew our sector was clear, so we could go about our business and avoid putting in any strikes near Jingo’s drop area for the next short while.
Within minutes I heard through my earphones an emergency beeper, a sound something like a frantic siren. The beeper was designed to be set off with a button on a handheld radio by a pilot on the ground or descending in his parachute. We kept a radio in our survival vests along with flares, a holstered .38 pistol, matches, a compass, and so forth—and in Hoot’s case, hand grenades.
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Sometimes North Vietnamese troops or Pathet Lao troops on the trail would set off such a radio to draw rescue teams into traps, so we were wary of a beeper heard in isolation—that is, with no other indication that an airman was down. But in this case, within seconds of hearing the beeper, I heard Jingo lead calling to his wingman. “Jingo Two, how do you read? Jingo Two, Jingo Two, what is your location?” There was no response, a silence that, along with the beeper, meant that the dreaded had surely happened.
“I have the aircraft,” I said to Greg. I turned in the general direction of Jingo Flight’s audio sensor drop.
I called King, the people in charge of search and rescue. “King, this is Nail Two Three. Launch the SAR. We have two pilots down in Sector Nine.”
I called Jingo Lead, asked for his exact location.
“I’m about two kilos south of Charlie Box.”
“Jingo Lead, do you copy the emergency beeper?”
“Roger.”
We both suspected—knew—what had happened.
He continued, “They’re probably somewhere along a line running twelve or fifteen kilometers south out of Charlie Box, but I’m not sure.”
It would take the search and rescue people—two A-1E Skyraiders and a Jolly Green Giant helicopter—about forty-five minutes to arrive on scene. There would be a crew in the helicopter to drop into the jungle if necessary after the A-1Es had “sanitized” the area around a pilot.
I figured Jingo Lead was probably near bingo fuel (the number of pounds needed to get home safely) and would not be able to stay around. I pictured the two pilots on the ground in the jungle, hiding as they knew to do.
In less than ten minutes I heard Jingo Lead on the radio talking to Jingo 2-Alpha, the front-seater. Two-Bravo would be the backseater. I heard Jingo 2-Alpha say he thought he’d broken his back. My mind was a swirl of images—the pilot on the ground, wounded—and I felt an emotion that verged on panic. But above the incipient panic, looking down, resting above, was a composure ensured by training, and the need to do what had to be done. Also looking down on me from above was the possibility of shame, riding there, waiting for me to make a mistake, to do anything other than what was expected, expected by my country, my squadron, my friends, my training, my home, my imagination. A kind of unparalleled, ultra peer pressure.
Until search and rescue arrived in about forty-five minutes, I, the FAC, would be in charge of search and rescue. My goal would be to locate the two pilots visually and provide any protection to either or both by shooting machine guns and rockets at any North Vietnamese or Laotian troops trying to capture or kill them. This meant that if need be, I’d have to drop to treetop level or below. By coincidence, for the first time ever, because of a scheduling miscue, I’d been assigned a Prairie Fire aircraft, which was loaded with a pod of seven high-explosive rockets (HEs) along with a pod of smoke rockets.
“We might need those HEs,” I said to Greg.
Greg said nothing.
As we arrived near the area of the crash, I saw Jingo Lead’s aircraft. He had climbed to an altitude not very high above us.
“Jingo Lead,” I said, “this is Nail Two Three. How’s your fuel?”
“I’m bingo.”
“Roger. I’ll take over. The SAR has been launched.”
The F-4 raised his wing and headed home.
“Jingo Two-Alpha, Jingo Two-Bravo, this is Nail Two Three. How do you read.”
A voice whispered, just loud enough for me to hear clearly, “This is Jingo Two-Alpha. I’m on the ground. I think my back is broken. There are enemy troops nearby.”
It was as if I were in a very bad dream.
“Copy. Pull in your parachute, and remain stationary. If you’re under good cover, do not move to any other location.”
“Roger.”
My next job was to find him or Jingo 2-Bravo below. I needed to initiate a series of procedures that the SAR team would continue as soon as they arrived. But a very low cloud cover was over the general area where they’d bailed out—a big, flat white cloud way down there just above the ground. I knew that rows of mountains ran east-west under those clouds. And I knew we were in an area known for heavy antiaircraft artillery. The downed pilots would be very difficult to find, since no one had seen them go in.
“Two-Alpha, can you give me your location?”
“Negative,” he whispered. “I’m not sure.”
“We’re going to get you out. Search and rescue is on the way and I’m coming down to find you. Do you know if Bravo is okay?”
“He bailed out. Yes, I think he’s okay.”
I called to the backseater, “Jingo Two-Bravo, how do you read? Over.”
No response.
“Alpha, can you hear my aircraft above you?”
He whispered, “That’s affirmative.”
I banked the aircraft and looked far below. The large, flat cloud was covering all the ground below me. I didn’t know the altitude of the cloud base—nor of the tallest mountain below, perhaps in the clouds.
“Greg, get your map out and tell me the highest elevation in the area below us.”
Using distant landmarks, I calibrated my position and then started a spiraling dive toward the flat cloud top. It was easy to see over the student from my high backseat. Our normal minimum altitude, forty-five hundred feet above the ground, was no longer a factor. I was about to descend to treetop level if necessary. Any precautions at all, any acting on fear of being shot at or shot down, was extinguished by those forces above me, watching. Two human beings were counting on me to save their lives. I was their only hope right now. There was only one thing to do: to go down and try to find them, and when I found them, to try to understand the situation and quickly decide what to do next.
Suddenly, all through me ran a sense of fearlessness. The instinct to protect myself had lifted. Looking back, I see that, operating on some kind of strange, almost mad instinct, I would have died trying to save those guys. I do not see my actions as courageous. Rather, they were the only actions available. Doing anything else would have been more difficult than doing what I was doing.
“Thirty-four hundred feet is what I come up with,” said Greg. “That’s the top of the highest mountain in the grid below us.”
I was approaching the flat cloud top. I looked at my map. I had to see for myself. The elevation of the highest point of land in each map grid was printed on the map in the top right corner of that grid. Yes, the tallest mountain in the grid we were above appeared to be thirty-four hundred feet.
I continued my spiraling dive, making it more shallow.
“We’ll either break out below the clouds or we’ll start climbing back up at thirty-six hundred feet,” I said. The two hundred feet was insurance.
We entered the cloud above four thousand feet, and I kept my eyes glued to my instruments. We were descending slowly in a wide circle. Thirty-eight hundred feet, thirty-seven hundred. I slowly began to level the aircraft.
We were suddenly below the clouds. There under my wings was the jungle.
“Jingo Two-Alpha. Nail Two Three. How do you read?”
No response.
“Jingo Two-Alpha. How do you read? Over.”
A mountain stood between us and him. Either that, or troops were so close to him he could not talk. I looked all around, jinking my aircraft madly. I saw nothing but jungle. I climbed back into the clouds. If he was in another valley, he’d never hear my radio at low altitude.
“Nail Two Three, this is Sandy One Two. We’re a flight of two plus one. We’re proceeding to your area. We’re about fifteen minutes out.”
“Copy Nail Two Three.”
Sandy would be one of the two A-1Es with the Jolly Green Giant helicopter. The A-1Es were used on rescue missions because they were so tough and so difficult to shoot down, as mentioned earlier, in large part because of the relatively simple design of their operational systems. And because they were relatively slow and could turn sharply, there was less time betwe
en strikes than with jets. The helicopter was very large and heavily armored.
“Jingo Two-Alpha. Nail Two Three. How do you read? Jingo, Jingo. How do you read?”
Nothing.
We climbed back up through the clouds and got Jingo 2-Alpha on the radio about the time the Sandys arrived. He was whispering again. “I think my back is broken. I have enemy troops all around.”
Oh, God, I said to myself. Then I called, “Jingo, this is Nail. We just descended. Did you hear us close to you?”
“Negative.”
The Sandys were there. I briefed them on the situation and turned the rescue mission over to them. The rescue helicopter was waiting several miles away. The plan was that the A-1Es would “neutralize” any resistance to a pickup of the pilot—after he was found—and then the helicopter would pick him up. If necessary, a paramedic would be lowered from the helicopter into the jungle to help the pilot. It’s more complicated, but that’s the overview.
Sandy called to Jingo, who answered, again whispering. He said he had a bunch of troops around him. I pictured him covered in brush, trying to hide, and I visualized gray-clad North Vietnamese troops—my mind would only handle images of personified evil. This is what the mind allows in a situation like this, and if the mind moves to positions of compromise, negotiation, or consensus, then death is invited, with open arms, into the house.
I had fuel, guns, and rockets and told Sandy Lead that I would hang around if I could be of assistance.
“Nail, we need to fly under the clouds and up some of those valleys down there to try to locate him. Join in as number three. Follow us in extended trail.”
Suddenly, AAA flak was going off all around us—a lot of it—apparently being shot into the air blindly from below the clouds. The two pilots had parachuted into a highly defended area.
Our flight of three started our descent, Sandy Lead first, his wingman, and then our OV-10 following, with a few hundred yards between each aircraft. We flew west of the cloud bank below us, then down to just above treetop level. We headed up a valley, mountains on either side. I remember feeling almost as if I were underwater, in a new world, not the world I’d been viewing for months from a mile high. I looked for antiaircraft fire but saw none. Jingo had been instructed to tell us if we flew anywhere near him. I followed as the A-1Es started to climb back up above the clouds. As we were climbing, Jingo 2-Alpha’s voice came through my earphones. He was screaming. “I’m hit, I’m hit.” I could hear gunshots in the background. I pictured a caged rabbit, screaming. More gunshots. “I’m hit.” Silence. Grim knowledge seeped through me. I felt as if, without electricity, I’d been electrocuted. I felt hollow, placed in nontime. There was no color.
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