Low Level Hell

by Hugh Mills

  Four days later, the fragility of a combatant's life in the Vietnam War was brought home again to the men of Darkhorse.

  I was in the ops bunker monitoring radios because we still had a hunter-killer team out working a VR. Gun pilot Chuck Koranda (Three Nine) was teamed with aeroscout Joe Vad (Darkhorse Nine), and both were heading home from their reconnaissance area up in the Catcher's Mitt, just north of the Testicles. It was late in the day and they were anxious to get back to base while they still had good light. The Cobra was running a shade over a hundred knots at his usual altitude of fifteen hundred feet; Vad was trailing along about three to four hundred feet below his gun.

  As the flight came up on an open field about two and a half miles south of Lai Khe, Vad's crew chief, Jim Downing, suddenly hit the intercom. “Hold it, sir,” he yelled. “I've got movement down there in that field. I can't tell if he's friendly or a bad guy. We need to get down lower.”

  Vad took a fast look below and, apparently seeing something also, got on UHF to Koranda.

  “Hey, Three Nine, this is Niner. My Charlie Echo has spotted movement down there in that open field. Why don't you do a left one eighty while I go down and check the guy out to see if he's a friendly.”

  Koranda came right back. “OK, Niner, roger. I've got you covered … you're cleared down.”

  Joe Vad was a good scout pilot. He had been in the troop longer than I had, even though I was coming up on my year in country. Joe's scouting experience dictated the way he came in on the contact. He rolled out of altitude and quickly spiraled down to the deck, then he intentionally went low level a good distance away from the field where the individual had been spotted. Once down and out of view, he kicked up his speed, staying right on top of the trees as he steered toward the contact. That way his aircraft sound would be muffled and not give away his presence as he closed on the field. His plan was to push his bird up to about ninety to a hundred knots, pop up over the nipa palms, and drop back down again on top of the spot where the suspect was last seen. It was a quick and dirty tactic designed to surprise and gain a tactical advantage at the same time.

  Vad's approach was perfect. With his finger tight on the minigun trigger, and Downing hanging out of the back cabin door with his 60 at the ready, Darkhorse Nine suddenly dropped down into the clearing.

  Sure enough, there he was—just off Vad's right wing, frozen almost in mid-step as he walked across the clearing. The man's bulging eyes and terror-stricken face were plainly visible as the OH-6 swept by at nearly a hundred knots.

  Downing shouted into the intercom, “VC … VC! He's a bad guy. Got a weapons pouch on his chest and some kind of weapon. Come around, sir … come around!”

  Vad immediately hit his transmit button to Koranda. “I've got one VC in the open, Three Nine. I'm rolling in.”

  Nine turned hard right to come back around and set up an engagement solution for his minigun. By that time, the enemy soldier was running like a madman across the field, obviously trying to make it to the tree line before the Loach could come around on his tail and bring its guns to bear. After a fast one eighty, Vad dropped down to about two feet off the ground and twisted on more speed to catch Charlie before he made the trees.

  Closing fast, and ready to squeeze back the minigun trigger, Vad was within a millisecond of firing when suddenly the enemy soldier stopped dead in his tracks about a hundred yards in front of Vad's nose. The man whirled, swung his weapon up to his hip, and ripped off a totally blind burst of .30-caliber carbine toward Vad's onrushing bird!

  One of those wildly fired enemy rounds crashed through the bubble of the aircraft and struck Joe Vad squarely in the forehead. The pilot lurched, instantly dead in his cockpit seat. Flying at at least eighty-five knots and now suddenly uncontrolled, the Loach rolled right, crazily back left again, then violently flipped over onto its back and into the ground. The aircraft exploded in a horrible, fiery blast, instantly killing crew chief Jim Downing.

  Gun pilot Koranda was thunderstruck. Watching his scout like a mother hen from fifteen hundred feet above the clearing, he had seen Vad make a normal, calculated gun run on the enemy soldier in the field. Then, a split-second later, he saw his scout lurch wildly, pitch into the ground, and explode in a ball of flame. The VC who had fired the fateful shot? Gone. He had vanished into the jungle.

  Three Nine did the only thing he could do. He immediately radioed troop ops and scrambled to the scene what few ARPs the troop had left after recent casualties. When the ARPs arrived, Vad's twisted Loach was still burning. There was nothing they could do except secure the crash site until the fire subsided enough to remove the bodies.

  To describe our feelings at the time is impossible. It was an incredible blow to us all. We had lost Sgt. James L. Downing, the courageous soldier who was my crew chief the day we made the blood drop to the ARPs pinned in the bomb crater. And we had lost WO Henry J. Vad, one of our oldest and most experienced scout pilots, a raucous, rowdy man who helped, in his own zany way, take some of the pressure off the rest of the platoon.

  The next day, 7 November 1969, the 1st Aviation Battalion chaplain came to the unit to hold a memorial ceremony. Stationed on the table in the front of the room were the somber symbols of our Outcasts lost to enemy action: The steel infantryman's helmet with a fresh, new camouflage cover, an immaculately cleaned and oiled M-16 rifle, and a pair of fully laced, spit-shined boots.

  As the chaplain spoke his few brief words, everyone had his own private thoughts of Downing and Vad. I thought of their courage and of their fear. I thought that one surely can't have courage without fear. Like all of us, these two men knew that every day they got in their aircraft, the odds were against them. Yet they flew with the confidence that they'd make it through, and they did the best they could do for their country.

  CHAPTER 18

  I THINK WE WON

  I had been hearing that there would be a Christmas drop. In other words, if your tour in Vietnam ended near the first of January, as mine did on 1 January 1970, the army would make an effort to get you out of country in time to be home for Christmas.

  The prospect was sounding better to me every day, but I really couldn't let myself think about it. A scout pilot whose concentration was distracted by anything—let alone the prospect of going home for Christmas—was looking to get himself and his crew chief killed.

  In any case, I was getting very short in country. My picture in the 0 club was moving up to the number one position over the bar, and 1 would be transitioning out of scouts soon and passing on the platoon leadership to my successor.

  Charlie, however, was unimpressed. The enemy remained extremely active and was showing himself in the field in even greater numbers. Still, the infamous NVA Dong Nai Regiment remained elusive. These North Vietnamese main force regulars were hitting our 1st Division units with disgusting regularity. Then, almost phantomlike, they would steal away into their sanctuaries, defying our best efforts to find them.

  On 10 November, I was flying with a young new crew chief by the name of Bolin (Parker was still out with his neck wound and had, in fact, been sent back to Okinawa for recuperation). We were out on VR in the western Trap, not far from where I was shot down last time near FSB Kien.

  I was down low working my patterns when we picked up movement of a single enemy soldier. We jumped him out in the open near a bunker complex. Bolin engaged with his 60 and dropped the man almost where he stood.

  That brief encounter suddenly brought about fifteen more enemy soldiers into the fight—more than I could handle with my firepower. So I had Bolin drop a red grenade, and asked my Cobra to hit the smoke.

  My gun that day was Bill Church (Three Six). He rolled in immediately and made several passes to hose down the area with rockets and minigun. Then I went back in for a BDA. But the area was still hot—I took so much enemy fire that I had to get back out fast before getting shot to pieces. I realized that we didn't have enough horsepower to neutralize the contact, so I went up on the FAC pu
sh and told Sidewinder that we needed him to bring in fast movers, and whatever else he had available.

  After two heavy air strikes, we inserted the ARPs and found a base camp with five enemy KIA. With the extraction of the ARPs, elements of the 2/2 Mech Inf—call signs Label Eight One and Label Eight Nine—were called in to stay in the area and sweep the base camp.

  Since we hadn't known about this enemy base, I flew back out the next day to see if I could pick up anything else around that area. Sure enough, about thirty meters from where Label Eight One was working, we jumped one more enemy soldier. Bolin again quickly dispatched a stream of 60 fire that cut the man down.

  Not finding anything more on the ground to warrant their presence, the 2/2 element was extracted on 11 November. We had apparently lost contact with the main enemy force that had occupied the base camp.

  Just a week later (17 November), Rod Willis (One Seven), with Sp4 Joe Cook in the back cabin, was working a reconnaissance in the western Trapezoid. I was back at Phu Loi standing by on designated Scramble 1 alert. As usual, I was in the ops bunker monitoring the radios and drinking coffee.

  One Seven was working down very low on top of the trees. He was just to the southeast of the Michelin rubber plantation and about four kilometers north and east of FSB Kien. The area was covered by very thick vegetation. The triple-canopy jungle was so dense, in fact, that Willis and his crew chief could catch only fleeting glimpses of the ground as they flew over. At one point, however, the foliage beneath them opened up and they thought they saw evidence of an enemy base camp below.

  Rod immediately hauled the OH-6 around to go back for a closer look. As One Seven attempted to hover over the area in question, a fierce explosion suddenly erupted beneath Willis's Loach. The force of the blast violently rocked the scout ship and sent hot fragments flying, with some pieces of shrapnel catching Joe Cook in the left hand.

  (Coincidentally, Cook was the second crew chief to be hit in the left hand in the last two weeks. It had also happened to Ken Stormer. This was mainly the result of how Loach door gunners positioned themselves in the ship; when at the ready with their M-60s, their left hands were forward out on the gun and more exposed.)

  Willis didn't know what had exploded, but he could see that the explosion had obviously detonated in the top of a tree. The tree had nearly disintegrated, in addition to nearly blowing his aircraft out of the sky.

  Though wincing with pain, Cook immediately began to throw M-60 fire into the enemy base camp area. A barrage of enemy weapons burst forth in response.

  One Seven increased his speed and his radius of attack, and simultaneously broadcast a request to his Cobra that the ARPs be inserted to find out just what they had stumbled upon.

  Major Moore was in the ops bunker at Phu Loi when the request came to scramble the ARPs. He quickly consulted his maps and surmised that the enemy outfit probably would try to make it back up into the Michelin and, ultimately, on into their sanctuary in the Razorbacks. With that thought, Six told One Seven to scout out an LZ to the north of his contact; then, if the enemy tried to make a run for it out the back door, the ARPs would be in position to block their escape.

  Within thirty minutes, the ARPs were on the scene, led by the new Four Six, 1st Lt. Stuart J. Harrell, replacing Lieutenant Casey, who was badly wounded in the Huey-mine incident. As ordered, Willis had picked an LZ north of where he had been rocked by the tree explosion.

  Once the ARPs were down, One Seven established FM contact with the platoon's RTO and set about the task of steering Harrell's infantrymen through the dense jungle toward the enemy base area. Leading their ground movement was the point man, Pfc. William J. Brown. To work point, a man needed a lot of experience and almost a sixth sense to detect impending danger. Unfortunately, Private First Class Brown had very little of either. He had recently arrived in country and had just been transferred into the ARP platoon as a casualty replacement.

  Willis shepherded the ARPs closer and closer to the enemy bunker complex. As he did, point man Brown became more and more cautious. Quietly, warily, Brown approached the first bunker.

  When he was just a few feet away, Brown prudently moved off to the side and took up a position of cover to study the potential firing lanes of the enemy emplacement. As he crouched for a brief moment to observe his front, a single SKS carbine shot suddenly cracked out of the heavy undergrowth to Brown's flank. The ARP point man crumpled forward onto his face, dead before he hit the ground. The carefully aimed round was fired from another bunker to his left—one he hadn't seen.

  The whole jungle area immediately erupted into a thunderous hail of gunfire, as the entire enemy camp opened up with its full complement of machine guns, rifles, frag grenades in layers, and RPG rounds, which seemed to be going off in the trees and everywhere else around the surprised ARP platoon.

  In that initial enemy fusillade, six more ARPs went down, including the platoon's new Four Six. Both senior squad leaders, S. Sgt. Mark K. Mathewson and S. Sgt. James A. Jordon, were hit, Mathewson with a frag wound to the right leg and Jordon with a ripping gunshot wound to his left hand. Pfc. Sammy G. Lindsay crumpled to the ground with an enemy bullet piercing his left thigh. A CHICOM grenade went off right in front of Four Six, Stu Harrell, and the fragments shredded his left arm from shoulder to fingers. A Soviet RPG-7 round exploded right at the feet of Sgt. Allen H. Caldwell; he was dead before he hit the ground. Pfc. Robert L. Foster caught shell fragments in the thoracic area and was slammed down onto the blood-spattered jungle floor. The murderous barrage had, in just seconds, put one fourth of the ARP platoon out of action.

  Flying right over the ARPs, Willis was enraged. But there was little he could do to help the aeroriflemen.

  Aeroscout Bob Davis (One Three) had been sitting with his gun at Dau Tieng waiting to relieve One Seven on station. Davis and his Cobra immediately lifted off and arrived at the contact point in less than five minutes.

  With One Three on the scene and briefed to provide cover over the beleaguered ARPs, One Seven beat it back to Phu Loi. Joe Cook, his left hand bleeding badly from Charlie's grenade fragments, needed attention beyond the makeshift bandage he had bound around his fist.

  I was leaning over the radios back at the ops bunker listening when the troop commander walked in. Davis's gun, Bruce Foster, was yelling at One Three to get out of the way so he could shoot. Concerned that the ARPs were in over their heads, Six asked me to get cranked and fly up there.

  I raced for my aircraft. Jim Parker met me there. Just back from his recuperation, he was scheduled as my Scramble 1 crew chief. Willis was also set to fly out with me. He had gotten Joe Cook to the medics, picked up another crew chief, and was ready to get back over the contact area.

  As soon as we arrived at the scene, I dropped down low over the ARPs to get a firsthand report from S tu Harrell. I needed visual contact to assess what the enemy force was doing. Zeroing in on the area where Harrell was down with his RTO, I hit FM. “Four Six, this is One Six. What's your sitrep?”

  I could see him take the mike from his RTO. “We're in bad shape, One Six. I've been hit either by a very well initiated L-shaped ambush or by a hell of a heavy and well dug in force.”

  “What about your people?” I questioned.

  Harrell's bloody left arm lay limp at his side and, though his voice was sharp and clear, I could hear that he was in pain. “We're completely covered. We're taking very, very heavy fire … machine guns, rockets, grenades. I have at least two KIA, another five or six wou—”

  His last words were smothered as the jungle below me opened up again with devastating fire—directed this time not only at Four Six's position but also up at me as I flew just twenty to thirty feet off the ground.

  Damn! I thought. We must have stepped on a lot of bad people down there. It must be at least a company plus—or, more likely, a battalion-minus-sized base area. But, whatever, it's full of bad guys. They're mad, and they sure as hell want to fight.

  I pulled an armful of
collective and moved away until the firing calmed down. But I knew I had to get back in there and find out from Four Six where his men were.

  I hollered back at Harrell. “Get me a position report on your people. I can't shoot until I know where all of your people are.”

  I swooped back in again—this time faster—to see if I could get a better picture of Harrell's situation. It was hot down there—like touching a light switch and having the lights come on. When I dropped down, the enemy fire came up. Instantly.

  But this time, I got a better lay of the land. There was an old tank bust trail that ran from the southeast to the northwest, which roughly bisected what I could see of the enemy base area. Harrell's ARPs had been inserted in an LZ to the west of the trail. They had started advancing directly east toward the base camp when point man Brown was hit, and all hell broke loose.

  The enemy base camp most likely had.been alerted to impending trouble when the initial explosion had rocked Willis's ship. Probably reacting to the fact that they had been discovered, Charlie decided to get out of his base area and escape north before the aeroscout brought more firepower down on them. When the ARPs were inserted and headed into the base area from the west, they cut the old tank bust, just as troop commander Moore had foreseen. The tactic had blocked the trail and posed an obstacle to the enemy, who wanted to use it to escape north, back to their established sanctuary in the Razorbacks. The enemy soldiers were obviously getting set to ram the ARP's right flank from the south, bust through their ranks, then head on home up the trail.

  With this scenario in mind, I dropped down again on a fast run-by. Looking closer this time, the only people I could see moving around the trail were Four Six and his RTO. I spotted several more of our people who were down and not moving. It didn't look good.