Low Level Hell
Page 20
“Goddamnl” I screamed. “Rod again!” Down he went. With smoke trailing.
Bob Davis came up on the radio as he watched Willis's third OH-6 pile into the LZ. “Why don't you just leave the son of a bitch down there? We haven't got any more aircraft for him to crash!”
I tried to take over guiding the tankers into the camp, but I couldn't get my FM radio to work. So, with Willis down and my FM not transmitting or receiving, I fed instructions to the C and C ship over UHF, who, in turn, relayed them to the tankers below.
In seconds, the armor began blowing the hell out of everything. They literally blasted their way into the base camp to link up with the beleaguered ARPs in the shell hole. As they moved forward, the M-48s depressed their main guns and stuck their muzzles point blank into the bunkers' firing ports, then pulled the triggers. The resulting canister round explosions blew the tops off the bunkers, sent debris showering everywhere, and completely vaporized everything within.
As the holocaust continued, I could see Four Six's flank and point elements finally get out of their pinned-down positions and low-crawl their way back into the crater with the rest of the ARPs.
After about forty minutes of furious battle, the base camp suddenly fell silent. Charlie was apparently at the end of his rope. The tanks stopped firing while the mechanized infantrymen ran forward to secure the area and see about the trapped ARPs.
Still circling overhead, I watched Harris's men begin to stand up, move around, and shake the battle debris from their bodies. Though looking totally drained by the day's experience, they could still smile and clap each other on the back, thankful that their siege was finally over. After some quick looks around at the rubble of the VC bunkers that had held them hostage most of the day, the aeroriflemen began to filter back out of the base camp and toward the LZ.
The plan was to extract the ARPs back to Phu Loi and leave the armor and mech infantry guys at the base camp to mop up. We called the slicks back in to pick up Harris's men, in addition to asking the C and C ship—again—to retrieve Willis and Stormer from their last crash into the landing zone. This time the engine had been completely shot out of his aircraft. Miraculously, neither man had been seriously hurt in any of their shootdowns that day. But Stormer was heard to say later, “Now, no shit, you guys, I ain't doing this no more today.”
I stayed over the base camp until everybody was loaded and well on the way back to Phu Loi. After one last look at the devastation below, I headed back to base myself.
By the time I set down the OH-6 on the pad back at Phu Loi, the sun was slipping over the western end of the field. Perkins quickly bailed out of the backseat but I just slumped in my seat and sat in the aircraft for a minute, letting my body try to relax. I had been flying since about eleven o'clock that morning. It was then 7:30 in the evening, and, after almost nine hours in the air, I had never been so bushed in my life.
The moment of calm ended abruptly, however, when Willis came running up to the ship and threw his arm around my shoulders, “Come on, ol' aeroscout buddie, haul your weary ass out of that seat and let's go find Four Six!”
By that time, all the scout and gun pilots were on the pad and we started walking together toward Harris's hootch. The ARPs joined us and everybody was hugging each other, laughing and joking around. We were like a long-lost family coming together for a fifty-year reunion.
The ARPs had suffered minor casualties considering the circumstances. Three of their people had been badly hit. The severely wounded Sp4c. August F. Hamilton did not make it, and we all mourned his loss.
The troop's scout platoon had lost four Loaches that were damaged beyond repair. Two crew chiefs were hurt: Stormer was banged up after being shot down three times, and Jim Downing had broken his hand at Phu Loi while he and Jim Bruton worked to get scout aircraft armed, fueled, and ready to fly.
A close look at the OH-6 I had flown back to base at the end of the day showed twenty-six bullet holes all over the ship. One of those rounds had gone through my FM radio apparatus. It was no wonder it wouldn't work when I needed it to guide the armor into the VC base camp.
Some decorations were subsequently awarded to the scouts for that day's activity. Jim Downing received the Silver Star medal for the heroic act of exposing himself to heavy enemy ground fire, while dropping the box of blood kits into the crater where the ARPs needed it. I also received a Silver Star for my participation in the aerial operation.
Rod Willis and Ken Stormer each received the Distinguished Flying Cross for being shot down three times in one day, and returning to the fight every time. Of course, I was of the strong opinion that it was Willis's misfortune of being shot down repeatedly in the landing zone that helped save the day. The VC in the bunkers must have been so astounded, watching him get shot down three times in the same place, that it diverted their attention from the other things we were doing to relieve the beleaguered ARPs!
After that action, it took several days for the troop to get back to normal. We had wounds to lick. The ARPs needed replacements. I needed four new ships in the scout platoon. Everybody was a little skinned up and nervous.
By the end of July, however, our preoccupation with the crater incident was broken, at least for Willis, me, and gun pilots Sinor and Koranda. The Old Man called me in and said that he wanted two hunter-killer teams to go to Di An and be briefed for a “special combat mission.”
We couldn't figure out what they wanted with two combat-ready scout-gunship teams in this rear base area. But over we went on the morning of 30 July to get our briefing from a representative of the division G-3. He told us that he wanted our two teams to work for a couple of hours right around the immediate Di An base area.
We said, almost in unison, “But, sir, there isn't anything around here for us to work.”
The G-3 nodded his head as if he understood. “Well, I want you to work it anyway … carefully, very closely. Look for mines, foot traffic, anything that might be out of line.” He pointed to the map. “We want you to set up a screen in this immediate area just outside the base perimeter. Don't get closer than about five hundred meters to the perimeter, and don't get more than about a thousand out from it. Understood?”
As we rogered, he drew a tight little circle on the map around the Di An base area and dismissed us with a comment. “We've got VIPs coming to town, so keep a sharp eye out.”
When it was time to start patrolling, Sinor and I took the first shift. It wasn't long before we saw a Huey off in the distance on an approach pattern into the Di An base. I listened on the radio as the Huey pilot contacted the Di An tower for landing. He was obviously expected at the base, and I wondered if these were the VIPs we were covering.
Since the ground below me was practically sterile as far as any indication of enemy activity, I watched the ship as it settled down into the middle of the base. It landed near a formation of soldiers, and a group of people got out. One soldier in the group had on army “greens.” I hadn't seen anybody wearing a green dress uniform in the entire seven months I had been in Vietnam. I wondered who he was and where he had come from.
A brief ceremony was held, involving the formation of soldiers, then the group got back on board the Huey and it took off.
About the time the VIP bird departed, the G-3 came up on our frequency. “OK, Darkhorse, you are cleared to depart station. Your mission is completed and we appreciate your support.”
Sinor acknowledged and asked, “Say, Ops, who was that VIP anyway? What was that all about?”
There was a slight pause. “That, gentlemen, was your commander in chief, President Nixon. Thanks again, Darkhorse, you can tell your grandkids that you flew cover for the president!”
When we got back to Phu Loi, Willis and I walked into the hootch. Bob Davis was lying on his bunk reading a magazine. Knowing that One Seven and I had been out on a special mission for Major Moore, Davis perked up and asked, “Where you guys been?”
Willis said, “Nowhere … no big deal.”
“Naw,” Rod answered. “Very, very quiet… no big deal at all.”
Davis could tell by then that we were yanking him around a little. “OK, cut the shit, you guys. What did you do and who were you flying for?”
“The president of the United States,” I answered as nonchalantly.
Davis, by then, had had enough. “All right, you horses' asses, quit bullshitting me and give it to me straight!”
“We're not shitting you, One Three,” I said. “Oh, by the way, Dick said to tell you hello when I got back to Phu Loi.”
“You didn't meet him. You really didn't get to meet the president … come on, that's ridiculous!”
“Sure we met him,” I answered. “We met him personally … got to shake his hand … even got our picture taken with him!”
That did him in. Davis spent the rest of that day kicking his butt for not getting to go on that mission … until he found out that Willis and I never got closer than a half kilometer from that VIP Huey, and couldn't have recognized anybody on the ground if we had tried. Not even the president of the United States.
CHAPTER 10
COBRA DOWN
One Three (Bob Davis) was one of the most reliable scouts in the platoon. If he said he saw something on the ground, it was down there. He had good, quick eyes and could read sign like a book. But one day when we were working out of Lai Khe over the western Trapezoid, Davis ran across a bunker in an old enemy base camp that defied his best efforts to identify it.
When flying VRs out of the Trap, we generally took two scout teams to Lai Khe and used that as a base. On this day, Davis was out working an area northwest of FSB Lorraine when he radioed me at Lai Khe.
“Hey, One Six,” he said, “I'm on my way back in, but don't you get off ‘til I get there. I need to talk to you. I've got something out here and I can't figure it out. I'll talk to you when I set down.”
A few minutes later Davis got in, and while his crew chief was refueling his ship, Davis trotted over to my bird. He told me he had found a bunker at X-Ray Tango 670420. “This thing is really big, probably twenty-five feet across and maybe forty feet long, a hell of a lot bigger than any VC bunkers we ever see.
“Besides,” he went on, “this thing's got a corrugated tin roof on it—no camouflage, no logs and dirt on top like every other bunker we see.”
“Has it got gunports?” I cut in.
“Not exactly. There're open spaces under the roof that look like observation slits, but no gunports. When I back the bird off to a side and try to look in under the tin, I can see something down in there, but I'll go to hell if I know what it is!”
“OK,” I told him, “I'll take a look. I'll be out there in six to seven minutes and give you a call.”
When I got to the bunker, I saw what One Three meant. This thing was a hell of a lot bigger than anything we'd ever seen before, except for maybe a company or battalion bunker-type classroom. The enemy was known to have built some large bunkers where they were conducting training classes for their troops. They outfitted them with all sorts of American equipment and weapons that they had either stolen or picked up in the field, so their soldiers would have firsthand knowledge of our gear.
The enemy didn't fight from bunkers like that, however; they used them just for training. And these classroom bunkers were never located in small base camps, only in the larger, major base camps that were more secure.
After a little discussion over the radio, Davis and I agreed that a classroom bunker was what we had. We were excited about finding it because it meant that we had probably located a big and important enemy base camp. But before calling for an air strike, the decision was made to bring in the ARPs to do some reconning. We needed to determine if the base camp was occupied or if there were any fresh traffic signs around, and what was going on with the big bunker.
By that time, One Three had come back up to join me for another look, and to mark the big bunker with smokes to guide the ARPs.
As Bob Harris's aeroriflemen got on the ground and began to approach the strange-looking bunker, their Kit Carson scouts got very excited. They found that every approach to the bunker was heavily booby-trapped and mined. There was rio question now that the bunker was very important; otherwise Charlie wouldn't have gone to all this trouble to protect it.
Davis and I listened in on FM while the Kit Carsons slowly moved in and began dismantling the booby traps. It took some time before the area was cleared and Harris's men could get close to the tin-roofed pit.
Finally, Bob Harris's voice boomed into our phones. “One Six, this is Four Six. You're not going to believe what we've got down here in this friggin' bunker!”
“Four Six, One Six. Whatcha got?”
“We got a tank, buddy!” he shouted.
“Say again, Four Six, what do you have?”
“We've got a tank—a tango alpha november kilo—down here, One Six!”
“You gotta be kidding me,” I ventured one more time.
“Believe it or not, you guys, there's a complete tank underneath this tin roof. Looks like Charlie dug the pit, drove the tank into it, and then built the roof over it. I'm not fooling you!”
I had never seen an enemy tank in Vietnam. “What kind of a tank is it?” I asked Harris.
“I can't tell,” he came back. “This thing is too heavily booby-trapped. I'm not going any farther until we can get some engineers in here.”
So our best guess had been completely out in left field. The bunker wasn't an enemy classroom; it was a shed for a tank!
Later, some Civilian Irregular Defense Group (CIDG) troops and elements of our 16th Infantry were pulled into the area. They occupied the base camp and provided security while a couple of officers from the 11th Armored Cav were flown in to make an ID on the tank. It turned out to be an old American M-41 Walker Bulldog light tank. It was complete with its 76mm main gun, but its .30 coaxial and .50-caliber antiaircraft guns had been removed, probably to be used elsewhere. There were also some fifty-one rounds of main gun ammunition, two hundred rounds of .50 caliber, and seven hundred fifty rounds of .30-caliber ammunition still in the tank. This baby was really loaded for bear.
The tank had apparently been well maintained and appeared to be in excellent condition. The only questions left were where it had come from, and how it had ever ended up parked in an enemy jungle base camp.
These questions were ultimately answered when it was learned that the tank had originally been given to the ARVN forces by the United States early in the war. The enemy captured it from an ARVN cavalry outfit when their outpost at Ben Cat was overrun by the VC in May of 1966. The VC drove the tank away at that time and it hadn't been seen since. Not until three years later, when Bob Davis spotted its unusual parking garage.
On 11 August a long-range reconnaissance patrol (LRRP) team went out of brigade HQ in Dau Tieng and was inserted up on the eastern edge of the Michelin rubber plantation. LRRP teams usually consisted of six to eight specially trained personnel. Their mission normally was to be inserted into the jungle, set up an observation post, and report enemy activities. They maintained concealed positions and absolute silence while in the field, except when executing an occasional ambush along an enemy trail. If they did execute an ambush, the LRRP unit had to be extracted immediately. As a general rule, the LRRPs tried to avoid heavy enemy contact because six to eight lightly equipped soldiers had no chance to prevail in a decisive encounter.
In this case, however, the LRRP team was hit and took casualties the moment they stepped off their Huey. That, in itself, was quite unusual because of the intensive planning that went into the missions and the precautions taken by the Huey in putting the LRRPs down into an LZ. The transporting Huey would always make several false insertions, landing and then taking off from several spots all around the area, so that enemy observers would not be able to pinpoint the real insertion location.
/> As soon as the LRRPs ran into trouble, they hit the radio for immediate backup and extraction. Their mission had been compromised, they had people hit, and they had to get out of Dodge before getting wiped out entirely. Their call for help immediately scrambled the ARPs out of Phu Loi, along with the Scramble 1 scout team, Joe Vad (Nine), and his crew chief, Al Farrar.
When Harris and his riflemen were inserted about a kilometer away from the LRRPs, they also were hit by the enemy, pinned down in the LZ with two men killed. Scout Joe Vad moved in over the contact area, trying to locate enemy positions. His low, slow flying, however, immediately alerted Charlie to his presence, and Vad's bird began to take heavy ground fire.
There were NVA soldiers in dark green uniforms moving in all directions around the aeroriflemen and the LRRP unit. Farrar's M-60 blasted away at the host of targets while Vad twisted and turned the Loach to avoid taking vulnerable hits.
But to no avail. Ground fire ripped into the ship, causing an engine failure. There was nothing Vad could do. The bird plowed down into the far edge of the LZ where the ARPs had been put down just minutes before.
Amazingly, Joe Vad was not badly hurt when his Loach went in. Farrar was not so lucky. His knee and leg were twisted in the wreckage and he was in pain. Joe managed to help Al out of the aircraft, however, and they began to make their way toward the ARPs.
Back at Phu Loi, I was on alert as Scramble 2, with Jim Parker as my crew chief and Dean Sinor as my gun pilot. Receiving the call that Scramble 1 was down, we lifted off and started a fast run to the con- * tact area to assume air control of the situation.
Behind us, the entire troop—including every other available scout bird, gunship, and slick—was scrambled to move up to the strip at Dau Tieng to provide immediate support from that nearby base.
While Sinor and I were inbound to the contact area, I got VHF traffic and learned that the supporting scouts from Phu Loi were closing on Dau Tieng and wanted further instructions. I radioed back, saying, “Wait ten minutes and then send me One Seven [Willis]; ten minutes after that, give me One Three [Davis].”