Low Level Hell

by Hugh Mills

  Before I even heard the grid, I knew that the contact point could not be far away from where I was working up in the Trapezoid. I knew that because Foster left me down when he gave me the one eighty heading. If the action had been quite a distance away, he would have brought me back up to altitude and put me on his wing for the trip.

  I stayed on the deck, heading south along a small, nearly dried up tributary. After awhile, it led into the upper Thi Tinh valley and to the main body of the Thi Tinh River. Actually, the Thi Tinh is little more than a stream.

  I couldn't see a hell of a lot, down as low as I was. But Foster was guiding me from altitude and was also briefing me on the tactical situation: “One Seven, follow the Thi Tinh south. Where the tributary turns back to the northwest, there's an LZ. We put Alpha of 2/16 Infantry in there … they moved up northeast into the woods. The lead element walked into a VC base area and has been cut off from the trail element. They've got four to six people down and they're split off from the main group. Can't make contact to locate missing parties or provide information on what's out in front of them.”

  Sidewinder had given us the call sign and FM frequency for the infantry unit on the ground in landing zone Toast, so I came up on fox mike 46.45 and keyed the ground unit commander. “Gangplank Six, this is Darkhorse One Seven. We are a hunter-killer team arriving from the north. Should be at your location in about thirty seconds. What have you got?”

  With sporadic bursts of small-arms fire audible in the background, the ground unit commander sharply reported back on FM. “Roger, Darkhorse, this is Gangplank Six. We've got a platoon in the woods northeast of my position. As soon as they cleared the LZ we picked up heavy fire from light weapons. I've got one platoon pinned down … they're attempting to maneuver now against the bunkers. Got five or six people in the lead element who are cut off. We need to locate enemy position and find out what's happened to our people.”

  “Roger that,” I responded. “I should be there about now. Can you give me a smoke to mark your lead element?”

  “Smoke's coming.”

  Closing rapidly from the north, the LZ area popped out right ahead. Watching me like a hawk and monitoring all the radio transmissions, Foster asked me how I felt about starting a search pattern. “Ready!” I answered.

  Foster immediately keyed Gangplank. “OK, I'm going to bring the scout in. Stop firing. I say again, stop firing so you don't hit him when he makes his pass to get an idea of how you're situated.”

  Then, to me, Foster instructed, “OK, One Seven, come in far enough south from the contact point that Charlie can't identify. Make your first pass fast from the southwest to the northeast. I'll guide you onto the LZ.”

  Looking over my right shoulder at my crew chief, I keyed the intercom. “Farrar, are you ready?”

  I could see his boyish grin. “Ready, sir. Let's get ‘em!”

  In an instantaneous response to my control movements, the little OH-6 pulled into a hard right turn and came around directly over the trees. Foster gave me a fast, “Right ten degrees, back left five degrees.”

  I broke in over the jungle onto the southern end of the LZ just as I spotted the ground unit's yellow smoke billowing up—just into the tree line at the far end of the landing zone.

  To let the ground commander know that both the gun and scout were aware of the lead element's location, Foster transmitted, “Gangplank, the gun's got your smoke, and identified.”

  I came roaring in low at a fast eighty to ninety knots, right over the heads of our troops in the landing zone area. I could see them deployed on each side of the LZ, guarding against the prospect of the VC making any movements against their flanks.

  Then, as I approached the far end of the LZ, the company commander's position flashed underneath me. He was about fifty meters back from the tree line in the middle of the landing zone, with his RTO beside him, and he was motioning me in a northeasterly direction toward the location of his lead element.

  I circled the tree line but didn't see anything. I came around again, circling at the yellow smoke. But I still didn't see anything or take any fire.

  The area I was circling was approximately an acre in size with triple-canopy jungle. Trees were 100 to 150 feet in height, and at the speed I was going I couldn't see down into the jungle. I couldn't locate any sign of the friendly lead element or the enemy bunker area. I slowed down and tightened the circles I was making. I got slower and slower … still no ground fire. Still couldn't see anything.

  The OH-6 began to talk back to me. As I got close to a hover, I had to begin to use the left rudder authority to hold the aircraft in trim. And I knew I was a perfect target for enemy ground fire.

  But screw that. I kept the OH-6 lying over on her right side while I circled so I could see straight down into the trees. While I strained for a glimpse of the platoon's lead element, I kept keying the intercom to ask Farrar if he had seen anything. Al had his head poked as far out the door as he could get it. I could hear the air rushing by the aircraft when he answered, “No, sir, I don't have anything… nothing yet.”

  As I circled around for a third time, I cued the infantry ground commander. “Do you have any radio contact with your people out front?”

  “No, Darkhorse, we haven't been able to talk to them, and every time we try to move forward we get fired on by AKs and SGM light machine guns. We haven't been fired on in the last few minutes, but every time we move they take a crack at us. We think that our people are fifteen to twenty meters ahead of us. They are our point team.”

  On the third pass, I spotted the lead element of the infantry company, half in and half out of the woods. Just at the tree line, one of the lead soldiers was lying on his back, waving to me and pointing to his front.

  I needed to know who this soldier was. “Gangplank, I've got your lead element. A man is waving at me and pointing toward his front. Can you identify him?”

  “Roger, Darkhorse. That's Three Six, Gangplank Three Six. He's the leader of our northernmost element, and it's the people from his outfit who are cut off.”

  “OK, Gangplank,” I came back. “Now that I've got your lead element, let me go to work.” I immediately pulled the ship into a tighter orbit—almost to a hover—then moved over top of the lead soldiers to a position where I could look down into the trees just beyond our friendlies. I still didn't see any sign of their point men.

  Then, suddenly, Farrar yelled into my phones. “Hold on … hold on, sir, I see a leg … you see the leg?”

  By the time Al shouted, I had gone past his point of reference. I hauled a sharp one eighty and came to a hover just as Farrar yelled again, “Here, sir, right under us. Mark, mark right under us. Do you see the guy's leg?”

  Sure enough! As I strained to see through the trees to the ground, I saw the leg of a soldier lying dead still on the jungle floor. I recognized the jungle fatigues—U.S. type—with an American jungle boot on the right foot. But that was all I could see—the point man's right leg and foot.

  I keyed the mike. “OK, Gangplank, I've got your people located. They're out in front of you about forty meters and I'm going to—Damn! I'm taking fire … taking fire!”

  I instantly pushed the OH-6's nose full forward on the cyclic and pulled an armpit full of collective. This jerked us up and away from the AK-47 that had opened up from directly below. It was definitely an AK-47.1 had flown scouts long enough to recognize its loud, sharp, ripping staccato. Everybody remembered that weapon. It was a sound you never forgot.

  Neither Farrar nor I saw where the rounds had come from. I could tell only that they were close beneath us, probably not more than twenty to thirty meters on either side.

  I guessed, also, that our enemy below was probably NVA rather than VC. It was fairly well known that the Viet Cong, when discovered from the air, were less controlled and quicker to shoot at their target. Regular North Vietnamese Army troops were more disciplined. They would let a target come right up on them before revealing themselves by firing.


  Cobra pilot Foster probably didn't need my “taking fire” radio outburst to know that I had undoubtedly run into a bunch of trouble. When he saw my nose drop down and my tail flip up, he knew I was trying to get my ass out of there in a hurry.

  The maneuver had rolled me out straight ahead, putting some speed and distance between me and the AK-47. As I pushed the OH-6 for all she had, I keyed my mike to talk to Foster. “Three Two, One Seven is taking AK fire down here. I'm coming back around to the right.”

  I knew there wasn't anything the gun could do. He couldn't shoot because the friendlies were right underneath me. Speeding up to about sixty knots, I made a right turn and headed back over the landing zone again. In the few seconds that it took me, my mind was whirling. I kept asking myself, what in the hell am I going to do? I can't shoot, the gun can't shoot. I'm not sure where the cutoff friendlies are. The enemy can shoot at me, but we can't shoot back because we don't have a defined target. What can I do?

  While I was trying to figure this out, I switched to FM and reported to Gangplank. “I took heavy fire from an AK-47 right underneath me, maybe from a trench line. The jungle is too thick for me to see who was firing. I did see one of your point men … at least one leg, that was all I could see. Couldn't tell if he was dead or alive.”

  Gangplank rogered as I tried to decide what tack to take. We had to think of something. The more I thought about it, the more I believed that the only way I could do any good was to define what was on the ground.

  “Gangplank,” I radioed, “I'm going to hover back into that last contact area on a heading of zero four zero, then widen up my orbit to see if I can draw their fire. When I do, you have Three Six begin crawling forward on zero four zero to see if he can link up and get his people the hell out of there.”

  Then I keyed the intercom to fill in Farrar. “Stand by, Al. The only thing I can figure out to locate the bad guys is for us to go in there low and slow and let them shoot at us, then hope that the infantry on the ground can see where the enemy fire is coming from and try to suppress it long enough to move forward and get their people out. How do you feel about that?”

  There wasn't a sign of unwillingness or hesitation in his voice. “Whatever you say, sir. Let's do it now!”

  I went in right on top of the trees at thirty to forty knots. I knew I was going to get shot at again, so I squirmed down inside my seat armor plate and waited for the rounds to come.

  Realizing that OH-6 crew chiefs had no back or side armor on their jump seats, I snatched another fast look over my shoulder to see how Farrar was situated. He wasn't even on his jump seat! He had propped his left buttock against the leading edge of the little seat, anchored his right foot on the edge of the door, and swung his entire upper body outside the airplane. He had his M-60 pointed straight ahead with his finger on the trigger so he could shoot back the minute we were fired on.

  “Shit,” I muttered to myself. Here I was all hunkered down in the protected pilot's seat, and there was Farrar hanging outside the aircraft!

  It doesn't make any difference if you are expecting it or not; the instant you take fire, it is a razor-sharp shock to your whole body.

  R-R-R-R-R-R-I-P-P! The sudden AlObursts came back up again from the jungle floor.

  “Taking fire … taking fire!” I shouted into the radio again. My voice had gone up a few octaves. “Mark. Mark! Right underneath us. AKs … AKs … again!”

  I broke a hard right, then a hard left to zig me out of the line of fire. All the Cobra could say was, “Roger … roger … we mark.” Foster was still in the unenviable position of only being able to locate on his map where all this was happening, rather than rolling in with all ordnance blazing.

  Coming in from different directions, I repeated the decoy action several times during the next thirty minutes, each time marking the location we thought the fire was coming from.

  As busy as I had been flying, trying to dodge fire, and searching the jungle floor below, I hadn't looked much at my flight instruments until Foster finally asked, “How are you doing on fuel?”

  A quick glance at the gauge and I answered, “Wow! I've got to come up, Three Two. I've gotta go get some gas. How are you doin'?”

  Foster came back. “I'm OK, I've got plenty for now. You think we better get another hunter-killer unit up here?”

  I thought about that for a second. “OK, Three Two, roger that. But you better have the scout go on over to Lai Khe and shut down. No sense putting another scout down here and having him go through the same thing I've done. But we should probably keep the guns up full time over the contact area in case something develops.”

  Foster agreed and I switched back to FM. “Gangplank, this is Dark-horse One Seven. I've gotta get out of here for some fuel. Two more guns are on their way up here now. If you need ordnance on the target, contact Darkhorse Three Two on this push. We're not putting down a new scout to stomp around in this mine field. As soon as I can gas up, I'll be back. Hang in there, Gangplank.”

  “OK, roger that.” Gangplank had a calm but urgent tone in his voice. “We appreciate what you're doing, Darkhorse. We've made some progress, but Charlie is in a bunker line and our people who are down are on the far side of their trench line, so we've got gooks between us and our point men, and they've got us cross-fired. So get back to us, One Seven, as soon as you can, OK?”

  Rogering that, I pulled the ship around to head southwest down the LZ, so I could build up some speed for an altitude climb. When I reached 100 to 105 knots, I leaned hard aft on the cyclic and pulled a cyclic climb up through about eight hundred feet, then leveled off at a thousand feet and made a direct course for Lai Khe.

  Now that we were up and out of the contact area, I took another look at Farrar. “How ya' doin' back there?”

  He was back on his jump seat. “I'm fine. You OK, sir?”

  “I'd be a hell of a lot better, Al, if you'd light me a cigarette.”

  “I don't know if I can,” he laughed, “my hands are shaking so goddamned bad!”

  I grinned back at him. “I'm sure glad to hear you say that, because my hands have been shaking ever since that first pass.” Then we both started laughing, which broke the tension of the last hour.

  I switched my radio to Lai Khe artillery and told them that a single OH-6 was en route tö their fueling pad to take on a little gas and ammo. No artillery was coming out of Lai Khe at the time so they cleared me direct.

  The refueling pad was nothing more than a pinta-primed assault pad with JP-4 lines running up and down the sides and nozzles about every forty feet. There were no support people there to help you. The crew of the aircraft needing fuel was expected to do that.

  I hovered into the pad area and set down near a nozzle that was on the right side of the airplane. The fuel intake port on the OH-6 was just under and slightly behind the crew chief's position.

  We were refueling hot (not shutting down the airplane's engine), so Farrar stepped down out of the ship, lowered the visor on his helmet (a refueling safety precaution), picked up a nozzle, and started pumping JP-4. I stayed in the aircraft at the controls (I have a good, strong four-hour bladder) and kept the OH-6 at flight idle RPMs.

  When Farrar finished fueling, he jumped back in the ship. I picked up to a hover and moved about a hundred yards down the strip to the rearm point.

  We hadn't expended any rounds up till now, but Farrar wanted to throw in a handful of extra belts just in case. As he was laying in the fresh ammo, he plugged himself into the intercom. “Hang tight here for a minute, Lieutenant, and let me look over the ship.”

  Unplugging himself, Farrar began walking around the helicopter, looking at the blades, nose, underside, skids, and tail rotor. He came back to the cabin, shaking his head and with a grin on his face. “Lieutenant, you know the battery vent back there?”

  “Yes, so?” There was a single vent on the bottom of the aircraft; while the engine was running, you could see battery fumes puff out of it every once i
n awhile.

  “Well, sir, we've got three of them now—the one the factory installed as original equipment, plus two modifications that were just put in during the last flight.”

  Two rounds of AK-47 fire had hit the bottom of the airplane, passed up through the self-sealing section of the fuel cell, and come out the top of the ship, putting holes in the transmission cowling in the doghouse area.

  Thinking that some vital engine parts may have been hit, Farrar asked me to inspect my instruments. I carefully checked out the gauges that monitored engine functions. The turbine gas temperature (TGT) was OK, and everything else checked out within normal limits. “Everything seems OK,” I reported to Farrar. “How big are the holes?”

  “Pretty big, sir, about .30-caliber size. Wait a minute and let me check some more.” He crawled back and opened the engine cowling doors. “Nothing seems to have fallen out. Looks OK to me. How do you feel about it, sir?”

  “If you hadn't told me, Al, I'd never have known we had three battery vents. Let's fly.”

  For more than ten grueling hours, we continued that method of engaging, drawing fire, disengaging, refueling, and coming back in again. At no time during that period did we ever see the enemy who was shooting at us. Nor were we able to see more than one leg and foot of the people down on the point.

  To top that off, the progress of the lead element in moving forward to retrieve their people was practically nil. In spite of our repeated passes, Charlie was still able to keep our infantry pinned to the jungle floor in a vicious cross fire.

  To add to our frustrations, it was now about 8 P.M. and beginning to get dark. Farrar and I had been flying since eight that morning, and we still weren't sure how much we had been able to help Alpha Company.