Low Level Hell

by Hugh Mills

  Chambers rushed over to the still-burning Loach. He aimed his little five-pound cockpit fire extinguisher at the searing flames fed by the ship's leaking JP-4, but it was like pissing on a roaring forest fire. Then Chambers looked into the ship. On the floor of the burning crew chief's compartment was Potter's body, now fairly well consumed by fire. Knowing that it wasn't going to make any difference, he emptied his pitiful little extinguisher into the ship anyway. Then, in disgust, he slammed it into the ground. There was no way anybody could help Sergeant Potter.

  Chambers turned back to Woods. “So what do we do now?”

  Three Five was struggling to keep Jones's limp body upright. “We gotta get him back to the ship. Come on, help me carry him.”

  Supporting One Eight under each burned shoulder, Woods and Chambers half-carried and half-dragged the pain-stricken pilot back through the jungle toward their still-running gunship.

  As they approached the Cobra, Chambers asked, “What are we going to do when we get him to the bird? How are we going to get him out of here?” The Cobra had only two intandem cockpit spaces, and no place to put a third man inside the aircraft.

  “He isn't going to last if we don't get him to a hospital right away,” Woods puffed. “We can't wait for a Dustoff. We'll just have to get him in the ship some way and take him ourselves.”

  Chambers had an idea. “The ammo bay door—we can drop the ammunition compartment door and lay him on that.”

  Struggling with the then totally unconscious Bill Jones, Woods and Chambers finally reached the helicopter. As they were trying to get Jones in the Cobra, a CH-47 Chinook helicopter arrived at the scene, having heard the transmissions about the downed aircraft. The “hook” hovered over the airmen and lowered its cable with a jungle penetrator for hoisting personnel. With Tom holding Jones, they were both winched upward into the belly of the Chinook. Woods climbed back into the Cobra and roared into the sky, following the rescue ship to Dau Tieng. He advised operations that they were safe and approaching Delta Tango, but that the crew chief had not been recovered and was believed to be KIA.

  Willis and I overheard this message just as we reined in over the site of Jones's crashed Loach. Given the situation, our first mission responsibility was to get down out of altitude and put an aerial cap on the area surrounding the crash.

  I keyed the intercom to Parker, “OK, Jimbo, we're going lima lima. Watch your ass. We just lost a scout down here so we're going to have bad guys. You're clear to fire … anything that moves, take ‘em out!”

  “Gun is hot, sir. I'm ready!”

  I saw him tense up and lean farther out into the slipstream as he set his M-60.

  With Willis tight on my tail, I went into a descending right-hand turn that would put me down about a hundred yards from the smoke of Jones's downed bird. Then I made a fast ninety-knot pass over the wreck to check it out before taking up a scouting orbit around the site.

  A feeling of surprise and shock shot through me as I swept over the still-smoldering OH-6. I just couldn't believe that Jones's Loach had burned on impact. That was the surprise. The shock came when I saw what the fire had done to the ship. The interior of the bird was pretty much burned out. The tail boom had separated and was lying on the ground. The blades were off and also on the ground. The cabin section around the engine and fuel cell was completely burned away, and the front of the bubble was broken and largely melted down onto the ground.

  Then my eye picked up the worst of all: Potter's arm and helmeted head hanging out of what used to be the back cabin of the airplane. “Shit,” I whispered, and my face involuntarily grimaced. “My God … no!”

  Not attracting any ground fire on the first fast pass, I told Willis to stay on my tail for another run over the crash, this time lower and slower.

  We came around again and headed back into the clearing at about forty knots and maybe ten feet off the ground. Just as we neared Jones's smoldering ship, some of the ordnance on board began exploding. There were sharp cracks from some of the M-60 rounds. Then a big burst from one of the Willie Pete grenades went up right in front of my bubble.

  Damn, I scolded myself, what a dumb shit I am not to remember that there was live ammo on board! With no alternative, I flew right through the billowing white phosphorous smoke while yelling over the radio to Willis. “Veer off, One Seven! Take it out wide! We've got ordnance going off in the wreck!”

  Rod's reaction was instantaneous. He peeled his OH-6 off my tail and whipped around the wreck. He obviously didn't want his next shootdown to be the result of getting hit by our own bullets.

  Then I hit UHF again for a report to my gun, Dean Sinor. “Three One, this is One Six. One Eight's bird is still burning, and there's some ordnance going off out of the back cabin. We confirm Charlie Echo KIA. The Loach is pretty much burned up. We've got no sign of enemy contact. The area is cold at this time.”

  Sinor's “Roger, One Six” was practically smothered by the unexpected voice of the troop CO, Major Moore. He was apparently nearby in his C and C ship.

  “One Six,” he bellowed, “this is Six. What's it like down there? Can you pin the bastards down?”

  “Six, this is One Six. We've got the aircraft capped. The pilot is out. Charlie Echo is KIA. No current activity … no sign of enemy activity at this time. The area is cold.”

  “OK, One Six, find a place to put the ARPs down. They'll be coming up on the contact area right away.”

  Acknowledging the Old Man's request, I went over to take a look at the LZ where Woods had put down to recover Jones. It looked fine. There was no sign of the enemy, so I had Parker pop a smoke in the clearing to mark the LZ. Then I began orbits around the landing zone to see if the smoke attracted attention from any enemy who might be nearby.

  Still nothing. I began to think that whoever clobbered Jones must have departed in a hurry. The area seemed completely free of any sign of enemy troops.

  My radio came up again, just as I saw the slicks carrying the ARPs come in over the trees and begin their run into the LZ.

  “OK, One Six.” It was Major Moore again. “This is Six. I'm going on the ground to supervise recovery operations.”

  Well, I'll be damned, I said to myself, I thought I saw five Hueys instead of just four drop down into that LZ. The Old Man must have ordered his C and C ship to slip in with the four ARP birds when they went into the landing zone. What in the hell is the major doing? All this to “supervise” the recovery of one friendly KIA?

  The ARPs had hardly deployed out of their Hueys when Major Moore's voice came over the radio. In a very matter-of-fact way he said, “One Six, this is Six. I've got movement, and they're all around us.”

  Déjà vu! I thought. They're surrounded again, and the Old Man—again—is down there in the middle of it! I hadn't seen anybody or anything hostile around that area, and I had been orbiting over it for the last ten to fifteen minutes.

  Well, we looked and looked. We fired all kinds of miniguns and rockets. The ARPs shot off their weapons like crazy. But nothing. We never did find anything that could have caused Major Moore to think he was being attacked. And thank God for that. We sure didn't need a repeat of the recent ARP disaster at the Lai Khe tunnels.

  By noon that day the ARPs had done all they could do on the ground. With Sergeant Potter's body finally recovered from the wreck, I put my bird down in the clearing for a couple of minutes so the ARPs could transfer some of Jones's gear to my ship to take back to the base. There was Jones's fire-blackened chicken plate, his charred helmet, and codebook. The way that stuff was burned I couldn't imagine what Jones must have looked like.

  The ARPs had also pulled the fire-damaged minigun off the bird and dragged it back to the LZ. They put it aboard one of the Hueys to take back to Phu Loi to keep it from possibly falling into enemy hands.

  But the burned, twisted hulk of One Eight's ship was left in the jungle. There was no way that mess of scorched and melted junk could ever be put back together to fly again.
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br />   As I lifted back out of the jungle to head home, I took a long last look at Jones's wrecked aircraft. Was Jones hit by hostile ground fire, or could something else, such as impacting a tree, have brought him down? As I tried to think of an explanation, the radio broke my spell. It was Bob Harris, and he solved the mystery of Jones's crash.

  “Hey, One Six,” he called, “this is Four Six. When we removed the Charlie Echo's body, we found that he had been shot in the head with an AK-47 round. He was probably KIA before the bird ever hit the ground.”

  That settled that. Jones had received enemy ground fire and was shot out of the air, eliminating the prospect that he might have hit a tree or gone into a “Hughes tailspin” (an OH-6 design characteristic that might force the bird to become uncontrollable and spin into the ground under certain conditions when a right, decelerating turn was made at low speed).

  Four Six continued. “And we found out why One Eight's Loach burned. When it went into the ground, it hit a tree stump that impacted the right rear belly of the ship. It impaled the fuel cell, split it open, and allowed burning JP-4 to flow forward over the bulkhead and down One Eight's shoulders and neck.”

  “My God,” I cringed, “so that's how it happened!” That explained, also, the areas of Jones's body that were burned so horribly—his head, neck, and upper body.

  The ARPs had hardly gotten back to base from the crash when the troop scramble siren wailed again.

  I had arrived back at Phu Loi just ahead of the rifle platoon, grabbed some lunch, and settled in at the ops bunker to monitor the radios. When I was not out flying myself, I often checked in at the ops bunker to listen to the scouts work. This afternoon we had a couple of afternoon VR teams out reconning in the vicinity of the western Trapezoid. It was still Thursday, 11 September, although the tragedy of the morning made it feel as though the day was already a month long.

  I had just taken my first sip of coffee when the voice of one of our crew chiefs broke out over the air. Crew chiefs normally did not transmit outside the ship, but apparently Red Hayes, in his excitement, had keyed his transmitter instead of just the intercom as he talked to his pilot, Pony One Six.

  “Sir! I've got dinks underneath me. They're all over!” Then there were the sharp reports of Hayes's M-60.

  Over the rattle of Hayes's machine gun, Pony One Six's voice came through: “OK, I'm coming around to the right in a three sixty.”

  Not again, I thought. Pony One Six had just made what I considered a bad tactical mistake for a scout pilot in combat. To pull an immediate right three sixty before his OH-6 was out of the line of sight of the enemy ground troops would bring the Pony Loach right back over the same track in which the enemy contact had been initially made. I silently hoped that it wouldn't cost him.

  Then Hayes talked to his pilot again. “Lieutenant,” he said, “I've got a red smoke ready to drop, but you're too far off to the side of the contact point. Come around … come around again.”

  Even though the Darkhorse scout pilots had told him many times to never—never EVER—come back into an enemy contact point the same way, in a predictable flight pattern, Pony One Six immediately hauled another hard right 360-degree turn. Again, right over the watching enemy's head.

  As I bent forward intently listening—but unable to do a damned thing to help—I heard Hayes scream back at his pilot, “No, Lieutenant, break left… break left. LEFT, sir!”

  Pony One Six apparently then jerked a hard left to get the ship over the contact point and allow Hayes to throw the smoke. But the smoke still wasn't where Hayes wanted it, and Pony pulled another hard left turn—making the third time he had brought the ship in from northwest to southeast right in the enemy's clear line of sight. That's all Charlie needed. The enemy immediately sent up a barrage of AK-47 fire that pounded into the little OH-6.

  To his horror, Hayes suddenly saw Pony stiffen in his cockpit seat, slam his head back into the bulkhead that separated the pilot from his crew chief, then slump forward in his seat, dropping his hands from the plane's controls. The next thing Hayes remembered was awakening in the wrecked ship on the ground, with excruciating pain in his leg … and the almost deafening quiet of the jungle.

  Without even hearing Pony One Six's gunship call back to ops control for a full troop scramble, the siren screamed and we all ran for our ships again. Helping another downed scout was our highest response priority.

  Scout Bob Calloway (One Zero) happened to be working another VR near the spot where Pony One Six and Hayes had gone down. One Zero was vectored in to put an immediate cap over the crash scene until the rest of the troop could mount up and fly to the site. What Calloway saw when he arrived over the crash was Red Hayes sitting on the ground near the wrecked plane attempting to ease an obvious leg wound and cradling the limp body of his pilot across his lap.

  When the Loach crashed, it had hit the trees, fallen to the ground, and nosed over, leaving the helicopter upside down. When Hayes regained consciousness, he realized that his knee and ankle were seriously hurt, but he succeeded in cutting Pony's seat belt and shoulder harness so he could get the pilot out of the ship in case of fire.

  As Calloway circled over the wreck, he realized that Hayes did not have a survival radio and could not talk from the ground. But it was obvious that the crew chief and pilot were hurt. Minutes later, the ARPs were put down on a nearby road and moved over to the wreck site. They secured the area, determined that Pony One Six was KIA, and executed the evacuation of the downed crew.

  Pony One Six's ship had taken an AK-47 armor-piercing round up through the cockpit floor. The projectile entered the pilot's left thigh, tore through the femoral artery, and traversed up through the stomach, lungs, and finally into his heart, where the bullet fragmented. The Pony platoon leader was dead the instant Hayes saw him stiffen in his seat.

  Just three weeks earlier, Pony One Six had been shot down after becoming fixated over a contact area and presenting his airplane as a target the enemy could not miss. Red Hayes was Pony's crew chief that day also, and he had tried desperately to warn the pilot that he needed to speed up and get out of the enemy's line of sight. But, for some reason, Pony wouldn't take Hayes's advice—on either occasion.

  All of us in Darkhorse felt the loss of the Pony platoon leader. It made it worse to realize that his death might have been avoided if he had just given more credence to the scouting lessons that combat experience had taught the Darkhorse scout pilots.

  If there was a bright note for that ugly day, it came that evening when we all got back to base. We learned that Bill Jones, though in dangerous condition with second and third degree burns over his upper body, was still alive and had been transferred from Dau Tieng to the evac hospital in Long Binh.

  A day or so later I decided that I couldn't wait any longer to go down to see Bill Jones. Willis, Davis, and I piled into my bird and headed down to Long Binh. When we arrived at the hospital we asked directions to the intensive care unit, shushing Willis as he remarked rather loudly on the notable physical assets of several of the nurses.

  Finally finding the ICU, I walked up to the nurses' station. “I'm Lieutenant Mills from the Quarter Cav, and we're here to check on one of my pilots. He was brought in here two days ago with burns. His name is William Jones.”

  “Yes,” she said, “Warrant Officer Jones is down in the last bed on the right.”

  With Davis behind me—Willis was lagging back at thé nurses' station—I walked down to where the nurse had directed me. I looked at the person in the bed and immediately said out loud, “No, that's not Bill Jones.”

  The guy didn't look anything like Jones. His head was twice again as big, and so was his body. Besides, the man in the bed was black.

  I went back to the nurses' station. “Ma'am, you made a mistake. The man in the bed down there is not Warrant Officer Jones.”

  “Well, Lieutenant,” she answered, “that is Warrant Officer Bill Jones from Delta Troop of the Quarter Cav, and he was brought in here two
days ago with burns.”

  “But, ma'am,” I argued, “Bill Jones is a skinny little guy, and besides that, he's white”

  It was obvious that I had tried her patience. “You don't seem to understand, Lieutenant, what second and third degree burns can do to a person. You go on back down there; you'll find out that's Mr. Jones.”

  Back at his bedside, I studied the person for a moment. The blazing jet fuel that spilled over his upper body had burned away most of the right side of his neck, as well as the right shoulder. The burned areas were charred and had swollen up to monstrous proportions. The distortion was so bad it made the man look twice the size.

  I leaned down close and said, “Bill, can you hear me?”

  In a very labored whisper he responded, “Yes, who is it?”

  “It's Mills, Jonesy. How are you doing?”

  “I feel like shit,” he answered.

  Trying to keep it light I retorted, “Well, Bill, you really look like shit. What happened?”

  He couldn't even smile. He was obviously in incredible pain. But he did move his head ever so slightly, and then slowly whispered, “I saw movement… and when I came around, I saw people. I don't know what hit me.”

  “OK, Jonesy,” I said quietly, “we'll talk about it later. Look, ol' friend, there isn't much that any of us can do for you right now, but the guys are thinking about you and wanted to see how you were doing.”

  His eyes opened a little bit. “Who's that with you … is that Fox Bravo?”

  “Yes, it's Davis, and he's as full of BS as ever.”

  “Who else is with you?” he whispered.

  “Rod's with us, too.”

  “Bet he's chasing nurses, right?”

  “Well, yes,” I stammered. “He's back at the nurses' station talking to some girl from Texas.

  “We're going to take off now, Bill, and let you get some sack time. We'll catch you later and see how you're doin', OK?”

  “OK, you guys,” he said, as though he was already drifting off. “I'll just see you … later.”