8

TRACERS

LAOS ■ MARCH 1971

According to one calculation from the Vietnam Helicopter Pilot’s Association, of the 11,827 helicopters deployed to Vietnam, 5,086 or nearly 43% of them were destroyed. Of the 58,272 names on the Vietnam Memorial Wall, 4,914 are helicopter pilots and crewmen.

They start out so small and soft-looking, tracers do. Tiny little glowing green lights, they drift slowly up from the ground, almost lazy as they rise. then suddenly, they speed up as they get close to you. they speed up and get bigger and bigger. You try not to look at them—you must concentrate on your flying—but you cannot help it, you look. And, as you look, you know that there are four or five bullets between each of the tracers coming for you. When the NVA fired mortars at you while you were dropping off a load on a firebase, it never seemed personal. The mortar crew was just doing their job, dropping the rounds down the tube and both you and they knew that there was very little chance that they would actually hit you. Tracers are different. The gunners are trying to kill YOU personally.

The numbers of aircraft involved in Operation Lam Son 719, the incursion into Laos in February and March, 1971, reminded all of us involved of what it must have been like in England during WWII. Literally hundreds of helicopters flying in every direction, C-130s streaming into the runway at Khe Sanh, attack jets passing over on their way to bomb NVA positions along the Ho Chi minh trail. There were more aircraft visible at any given moment than any of us had ever seen at one time.

While many of the helicopters involved in Lam Son 719 were based 15 miles to the east of Laos at Khe Sanh, after the first day of the incursion, we Chinook pilots commuted from Phu Bai, about an hour away, every morning because there just wasn’t room for five Chinook companies there. We would takeoff before sunrise and be at the PZs in time to pick up our pre-assigned missions. Some missions were single ship, others required flights of aircraft bringing in external loads of ammo or water or fuel or food quickly, one after another.

On the evening before the first South Vietnamese troops crossed the border into Laos, every inch of turf at Khe Sanh was covered with helicopters, mostly UH-1H Hueys, AH-1G Cobra gunships, and OH-6A LOACHs (popular name for the Light Observation Helicopter). Because our Chinooks just took up too much room, the plan was for us remain overnight (RON) at Firebase Vandergrift in the valley east of Khe Sanh, about ten miles away.

I had been an AC for several months now. Since I was the only trained flight instructor in the company at the time, the Ops O wanted to move me into the IP position soon. He wanted me to have more total flight time before I stepped up, so I usually had the longest missions. Not necessarily the most dangerous ones, but usually the longest ones. Because my missions ran long that day, I was late getting up to Vandergrift, in fact mine was the last aircraft to arrive before it got dark.

To reduce the possibility of mid-air collisions, we were instructed to follow the only road from Vietnam to Laos, QL9, west from the low lands into the mountains. Once past the Rockpile, an almost vertical rock formation and scene of major combat for the marines a few years earlier, we would turn south for a straight shot into the PSP ramp at Vandergrift. As I made the turn at the Rockpile, I saw a flash from the hillside next to us and as I turned my head toward it, I saw a streak of smoke.

“That looked like a rocket,” I remarked to my copilot. then I saw more flashes and as I looked away from the hillside and toward Vandergrift, I could see the result of the 122 MM Soviet Katyusha rockets as they impacted around the base, red flashes turning quickly into black smoke above their impact point. I quickly added power and put the Chinook into a climb as I turned away from Vandergrift. As I orbited at 6,000 feet to the east of Vandergrift, I could also see helicopters that had shut down for the night already turning up as quickly as they could, blades turning to a blur as the rotors reached speed. In less than two minutes from the first rocket impact, the first of the helicopters was lifting off to get clear of the incoming fire. Fortunately, the rockets were as inaccurate as the mortars because the NVA could not use the proper launchers, so all the helos got off without being hit. Over the squadron FM radio frequency came the call for all of us to return to Phu Bai. All those helicopters in the relatively small area of Vandergrift were just too tempting a target. We would leave Liftmaster Pad early the next morning to join the fight.

The next morning after taking off before sunrise, eight Chinooks from Playtex flew into Khe Sanh per the revised plan. We all shut down for a mass mission brief by 101st Division Intel for the at least one hundred other aircrews that would support the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) troops as they crossed the border into Laos. There were so many aircraft involved in the mission that only the aircraft commanders went to the briefing. Copilots would stay with the aircraft and have them “cocked,” ready for immediate start, in the event of a scramble takeoff like the one at Vandergrift the night before.

We knew our individual missions, but the general commanding the operation wanted us to know the situation on the ground. For once, we would have an overview of what the situation was. Intel briefed us that the NVA had this division here, this regiment here, and that division there. these were not VC guerillas; these were regular NVA troops, probably over 20,000 strong. they were equipped as Soviet divisions of the 1950’s had been, complete with tanks and artillery. They had light machine guns, heavy machine guns, anti-aircraft machine guns, anti-aircraft artillery in 37mm and 61mm. We could expect fierce contact. As the Intel officer spoke and pointed to the enemy positions on the large area map, I never saw so many pilots go so quiet before or since.

When the briefing was over I returned to my Chinook. My crew of four gathered around, curious about what had been said. Rather than tell them immediately, I just said, “Eat your lunch right now.”

“But, sir,” my flight engineer replied, “we’ve only got one bag lunch and no C-rats and it’s going to be a long day.”

“Trust me,” I said, “Eat it right now.” My reasoning was that we would quite probably be shot down. If we survived, it might be a very long time before we could get back to friendly lines and get more food. Better to eat it now than lose it in the crash. As we ate, I spread out my map on the cabin deck and told them what Intel had told me. They were very quiet as I talked. The door gunner quickly finished his lunch and started re-checking the M-60D machine guns on each door.

At launch time, all eight Chinooks were ready to go. One after the other we lifted off, moved over to the PZ, picked up our loads and flew into Laos in trail formation, one Chinook following the other at about two minute intervals. Nothing happened that day, nothing at all. It could have been a mission at Fort Rucker back in Alabama. the NVA just watched. They wanted to see what we were going to do. The second day they watched too.

On the third day, the shit hit the fan. In the following six weeks of the operation, 107 helicopters were destroyed and another 600 were damaged. Some units had nearly all new pilots and aircraft at the end, but our resources were so deep in 1971 that even with those losses, there were still 600 helicopters engaged when Lam Son 719 ended.

Now, three weeks after that first briefing, we were taking an ARVN artillery battery 21 miles into Laos, our furthest out firebase yet. By now Khe Sanh had so many helicopters, around 300–400 at any given moment, that we Chinooks had been told to land at another base closer to the border, Fire Support Base (FSB) Airborne, to keep real estate on Khe Sanh free.

I was not supposed to be flying because the next day I was scheduled to go on two week’s leave back to the states. After my flight with the Air America pilot, I walked from the airbase out into town to the North West Orient Airline office and booked my flight from Da Nang to Saigon and then on to Nashville, Tennessee, for 5 march 1971. the war showed no signs of ending and we did not know if any big operations were coming up, so there was no objection to my going from anyone in my chain of command. Even with the chaos of Lam Son 719, no one objected to my going. The war was going to continue and I would be pulling more than my share when I got back anyway.

On the evening of 3 March, the Ops O said to me, “Since you’re going to be off for three weeks how about you fly tomorrow and give someone else a rest?” I readily agreed and now was headed into Laos again on 4 March.

As had become the routine, we had taken off before daylight from Phu Bai to get to Khe Sanh in time to get the mission briefing. We did not have to refuel at Khe Sanh because we had taken on enough extra the night before to cover the flight time from Phu Bai, so we flew directly to FSB Airborne and shut down. The operations officer from the 159th Assault Support Helicopter Battalion (ASHB), our next higher headquarters, was already there waiting for us.

The first mission of the day was simple: insert an artillery battery into the new firebase so that it could provide fire to cover the ARVNs operating further out as they tried to cut the Ho Chi minh trail. The brief was also simple—pick up the guns and ammo, fly to LZ and set them down where the ground guides direct. If you get shot down, try to land at this spot or this spot or this spot. If you see one of your brother aircraft go down, do not attempt to rescue them. The mission must be completed as planned. No one will come to get you until the mission is over, but it shouldn’t be too long. After that first mission, we would all be given individual tasks that did not require all eight aircraft at once.

We would take all eight 105 howitzers in the ARVN artillery unit in one lift. Each load would be mounted on a double sling, with the lower load the ammunition and the upper the 105 howitzers. When we came over the load, the gun and its ammunition would be sitting side by side. We would hookup the sling, climb straight up until the upper load, the howitzer, was off the ground and then slide over until the gun was directly over the ammo. We would then lift higher until the second, lower load was off the ground. When we arrived at the LZ, we would sit the lower load, the ammo, down first and then slide to the side to set the gun down next to the ammo. The idea was that the crew would be able to bring the gun into action almost immediately. Sometimes the gun crew would get onboard the helicopter before we picked up the load and ride to the LZ with us. When they rode with us, we would put the ammo down, the gun down, and then land and let them out to commence firing. This time they did not need to ride because they were already there, having been flown in by Hueys earlier to prepare the gun positions before the howitzers arrived.

I was to be Chalk 2 (Chalk is an Army term indicating your position in a formation flight. Chalk 2 is the next aircraft behind the lead) in the flight of eight Chinooks. We lifted off one by one at about two minute intervals. I could see lead picking up his load as I headed inbound, but just as I was about to start my approach, a flight of Hueys crossed in front of me and I had to turn away. The Chinook that was originally supposed to be Chalk 3 became Chalk 2 and moved in to take my load to keep the process moving smoothly. I became Chalk 3 and, in turn, picked up the gun and ammo that was supposed to be his load. Lead flew in a wide circle to the east of the border as he climbed to an initial 4,000 feet. We all fell in behind him in a very loose trail formation, climbing to match his altitude. When lead saw the last aircraft pick up its load, he turned toward Laos with the seven of us following.

Laos did not look any different from Vietnam. Both were jungle, with mountains on each side of QL9. Around Khe Sanh, both sides of the border were equally scared by bomb and artillery craters. Even so, it seemed as if the air inside the Chinook changed when we crossed the invisible line between the two countries. The gunners became visibly tenser, as they looked out over the barrels of their m60D machine guns. In every aircraft, the pilot not at the controls moved his hands closer to the cyclic and collective so that, should the other pilot be killed, he could take over instantly. Everyone onboard looked around more intently even though the odds of seeing the NVA were very small. The NVA were good at using camouflage and the forest hid them completely. They knew all too well that what can be seen can be killed, like a Chinook flying at 90 knots with a double sling load beneath it.

But they would have to work to kill us while we were en route to the new firebase. As we headed toward Laos, we were steadily climbing to get above small arms range. We kept going until we were past light machine gun range too, but a helicopter cannot fly high enough to avoid anti-air-craft fire from m-1939 37mm and/or the S-60 60mm guns. Our only counter to these weapons was to tune our NDB (Non-Directional Beacon, a homing radio that allows the pilot to fly to a navigation beacon or a commercial Am radio station) to the lowest band and lowest frequency. If the NVA used the Soviet radar that came with these weapons, you would hear a “buzzzz, buzz” sound over the Automatic Direction Finder (ADF) radio. While this did not mean they were tracing you, it did mean that they were painting you on their scope. Upon hearing the sounds, we were to change altitude and airspeed immediately. We were told that the radars were very good in azimuth, but poor in determining range.

That was the theory anyway …

The NVA tried not to use the radar, though. They didn’t use it because we had jets in the air constantly over the battle area that could detect and lock onto the radar signal. As soon as they did, a homing beam-rider missile would be on its way to take the radar out. The NVA could counter that by moving the radar away from the gun, but that made it easier for our aircraft to see their position. So, instead of using radar, they aimed the guns by sight. Both the m-1939 and the S-60 fired a five-round clip and had a practical rate of fire of around 60 rounds per minute, any one round more than enough to take out a Chinook flying at 90 knots. Or any other helicopter, for that matter …

Picture a WWII movie: the B-17s and B-24s are on a thousand-plane raid on some German target. As they approach the coast of France, they see the flak boxes start to appear in front of them, puffs of black smoke marking each shell burst. The Germans are not aiming at individual aircraft, instead they are shooting within a defined space that the bombers must fly through. The shells are set to explode at a given altitude and send their shrapnel out to shred the bomber’s aluminum skin and take it out of the sky. The aircrews see the flak, but fly on anyway because the mission must be done. If they are hit, they have multiple engines, and if they are too badly damaged, they have parachutes.

Now picture Laos in 1971. Your helicopter is so slow: it is for all intents and purposes stopped in the sky, at least to the NVA gunner. There is no need for a flak box, they have all the time they need to aim at individual aircraft. Besides, their logistics system is no match for the one the German’s had. Every round of ammunition must be carried down the Ho Chi minh trail, under attack from our aircraft the entire time so they must not waste them. The NVA do not have the capability the German’s had to determine the altitude their targets are flying, so they guess when they set the shells, if they don’t have proximity fuses. When the gunners fire, the helicopter crews see the flak, just as their fathers and uncles did over France and Germany, but their helicopters are a frail collection of single-point failures, anyone of which can bring it down out of control or tear it apart in flight. The helicopter crews don’t have parachutes …

We continued to climb until we reached 6,000 feet, about 4,000 feet above the valley floor where QL9 ran. An AK-47’s 7.62mm round could not hit us at this altitude, nor could a 12.7mm machine gun round. Well, 4,000 feet is past the tracer burnout range of a 12.7 but the bullet keeps coming for a while after that. Of course if they weren’t shooting from the valley floor, but from the hills on each side, we would be well within range. If they had a 14.7mm heavy machine gun, we would be within range wherever they were shooting from, likewise from the 37mm and 60mm.

Lam Son 719 was a surreal time for helicopter aircrews. Back at Fort Wolters and Fort Rucker when we were learning to fly, we occasionally would see a massed flight of helicopters, but here the crewmen were constantly calling, “Flight of 12 Hueys at 3 o’clock crossing right to left,” “Flight of four Cobras 8 o’clock and passing on the left,” “Flight of six Hueys at 11 o’clock,” “Chinook with an external Huey at 2 o’clock.” there were more helicopters in the air than any of us had ever seen at one time, with more on the ground waiting for their next mission and still more in the fuel pits or waiting for fuel. Today was no exception, with helicopters streaming to and from Laos, to and from the lowlands, headed out to mountaintops to drop off observers, bring food or ammo—helicopters everywhere.

March 4, 1971, was not a calm day on the radios. On the guard (emergency) channel someone’s aircraft was being shot down and the pilot was screaming “mayday, mayday, mayday.” Also on guard, a flight of B-52’s was calling “Arc light, arc light, arc light,” followed by the lat/long where they were dropping their 500 pounders. Everyone had to know where the bombs were going to come down because the shock wave alone would take your helicopter out of the sky if you were too close. On regular radio channel, someone was talking to a flight of helicopters, giving directions and not getting a reply because they were on Playtex’s frequency, not their own. On the fox mike, the Pathfinders on the firebase with the ARVN artillery unit were calling out instructions to helicopters as they brought the loads in. At least my crew was quiet on the intercom.

Just after we crossed the border, we could see the tracers coming up at the two aircraft in front of us, green and soft in the morning sky. They were coming from the valley floor, but we had no Cobras or Huey gunships with us to provide fire suppression, so all we could do was fly on at 90 knots with our howitzers and ammo swinging below us. My crew could see that the tracers were coming at us too, but in the cockpit we couldn’t see anything except the glowing, growing green dots coming up at the leading helicopters, a string of green beads coming up from the darker green forest. We said not a word—nothing to say.

The ADF started “buzz, buzz, buzzzz.”

The aircraft shuddered, a huge hole appeared in my windshield right in front of me, and I was hit by something in the face, on my neck, on my right upper arm and I slammed back into the seat.

Then the ICS added to the noise of the radios.

“SIR, SIR, Are you alright SIR, SIR,” my right door gunner screamed over the ICS. He had been looking up through the cockpit when the 12.7mm round came through. He saw the hole appear and saw me jerk backwards in my seat. He was sure that it hit me squarely in the face.

I knew that something had hit me, but there was no pain, not yet anyway. I did an involuntary “full and free” check, like we did with the flight controls before starting the engines to make sure all my parts were still working—arms, hands, feet—all there, all still working. The aircraft was still under control too, cyclic, thrust, and rudders all functioning normally, but then there was hot red fluid hitting the top of my helmet and running down my back. Red fluid is hydraulic fluid. Without hydraulics, the flight boost systems, the flight controls lock and you sit helpless until the aircraft impacts the ground or comes apart in flight.

After I wiped the broken Plexiglas off my helmet visor, I realized that if I had not had the visor down, the sharp fragments of glass and steel would have blinded me. Both my pilot and I were staring hard at the master caution panel, the big square panel of small lights on the dash, one light for every critical system, with caution lights that tell you a system is failing or is out of limits—but none were lit. Chinooks have two flight boost systems. Though the pressure gauges that sat side by side are within normal limits, the red fluid was hitting me on the head and back. Then the master caution light, the big one on the top of the dash, came on along with the smaller capsule light marked “Hyd #1,” and the number 1 flight boost gauge dropped to zero, and the red fluid kept coming out on top of my helmet. Is boost #2 also hit and bleeding the last of its fluid too? How long until the flight controls lock?

As I saw the gauge go to zero pressure, and squeezing with my right index finger on the trigger switch, I yelled into the ICS, “I’m going to pickle, I’m going to pickle” (slang for jettison the load), but I was squeezing the ICS switch so hard I was transmitting over the radio, adding to all the other voices on the radios. I was trying to tell my flight engineer to get away from the cargo hook so it would not swing up and hit him in the face when the load fell away, but he could not hear me. He saw the tracers coming through the hellhole and at the same time, saw a flak burst just below our aircraft, very near the load of ammo. When the aircraft rocked as I flinched from the bullet through the windshield, he knew we were being hit. He immediately jumped up from the stretcher he had been laying on to work the load and ran to the rear of the aircraft to check the aft transmission area for damage. As he jumped up, he inadvertently unplugged his helmet long cord and could no longer hear the ICS. But then it would not have mattered even if he had been plugged in, because I was transmitting, not talking over the ICS and he never listened to the radios.

When the flight engineer did not reply immediately, I pushed the pickle button anyway. We could not get down quickly with the load under us. The hook opened and the howitzer and ammunition fell away from 4,000 feet above the ground. As the hook opened, I could feel the helicopter shudder and begin to climb rapidly as 8,000 pounds of weight on the aircraft was removed. To get on the ground as soon as possible, I pushed the thrust all the way down to enter autorotation and shoved the nose over so far that the trees below filled the windshield. If the controls locked, it wouldn’t matter if we were in a dive, it would just shorten the time we had to think about it before we died.

In our dive, the speed built quickly to the point where the aircraft was shaking and vibrating so hard I couldn’t read the airspeed indicator or any of the other instruments any more. Velocity Never exceed (VNE), was 170 knots on a Chinook and I was quite probably exceeding it, but we had to get her on the ground before the controls quit working. Now all that mattered was to save my crew, if I could.

Then time stopped.

The old cliché that your life passes before your eyes did not happen. It just seemed like everything just stopped. My mind was clear, no regrets, no “if only.” It just held the question, stated quite clearly and calmly, “Is this what it’s like right before you die?” I never got the answer because

Time started up again.

The trees began to get very big in the windshield, so I started a pullout, trying to hold the “G” force down as much as possible. When I looked at the airspeed indicator, it was passing through 160 knots on the way back to a more normal approach speed, but it would still be a very fast approach and an approach to the ground instead of a hover.

On the ground, on the ground, get it on the ground! I had to get it on the ground before all the hydraulic fluid was gone and the controls froze.

Without conscious thought, all the training at Fort Wolters came back to me. All those times the instructor had cut the throttle on the OH-23, leaving me frantically looking for a spot to autorotate to, had paid off, as the Army knew it would. Even though there was a sea of jungle below us, as I entered the dive, I had automatically set the Chinook up for a landing in a clear area not too far from an ARVN base. The LZ looked raw, as if it had been prepared recently, but it was too far from the ARVN’s perimeter to be their primary helo pad. As I flared the Chinook to lose speed for touchdown, I saw that the LZ I had picked held the crashed remains of a Huey in the northern third of the cleared area. This LZ had been hot once, but we were committed to the landing. The Huey was totaled but it was upright so maybe the crew got out. I hoped they did.

I picked a touch-down point as far away from the broken Huey as I could so that we could avoid blowing up loose parts that might go into our rotor blades. Seconds later, I slammed the Chinook onto the ground, aft wheels first, hard but upright with the flight controls still working.

Within seconds of the wheels touching down, the flight engineer had the ramp down and all three crewmen were running from the aircraft, each carrying an M-60D machine gun. Normally, the Chinook had two door guns, but today, the flight engineer, for some reason he didn’t really understand, sent the crew chief and gunner back to the armory to pick up two more M-60s and a case of ammunition. As I shut the aircraft down, I could see one of the crewmen establishing a fighting position out in front of us, placing his M-60 where he could cover the most ground. The NVA had certainly seen us going down and could well be headed toward us right now, provided, of course, that they weren’t here already. My copilot jumped out of his seat and as he left the aircraft, grabbed the remaining M-60s lying on the cabin deck and joined the perimeter defense while I finished shutting the aircraft down.

Shutting down my Chinook on March 4, 1971 was very simple—I just pulled the condition levers to “Stop” and turned the fuel and battery switches to off, not bothering to start the APU, completely ignoring the shutdown checklist. We made it to the ground without the controls locking, why push it now? I unstrapped and climbed out of the cockpit quickly while the rotor blades spun down to a stop. Before I left the cockpit, I stopped for a few seconds to stare straight ahead. The bullet hole in the windshield was directly in front of where my face had been. If I had been leaning forward, or the gunner had fired a second sooner or later, it would have hit me in the forehead. I couldn’t see a hole where the bullet had continued into the forward pylon, but it must have done so to take out one of the flight boosts. I ran out the open ramp and quickly surveyed the area to see where my crewmen were.

We were maybe a quarter to a half mile from the ARVN base but it was unlikely they would come over to provide security. They were quite probably too worried about their own security to consider us. My four crewmen had gone to more or less the corners of the LZ, loaded their weapons and were ready to fire. I quickly grabbed two ammo cans of 200 rounds each from the case and carried them to the closest fighting position. The door gunner had just taken the single belt he had in his weapon when he ran out of the Chinook. He also had his M-16 over his shoulder and a .38 on his belt. I got another two cans to the other gunner and two more to my copilot. A quick weapons count showed we had four M-60D machine guns, three M-16s, four .38 pistols, one .45 m1911A1 automatic pistol, and one M-3 grease gun with a silencer, my personal weapon. We had somewhere over 5,000 rounds of ammo.

I bought the grease gun off one of our company dopers. As I was walking through the company area one day, I saw puffs of dirt coming up in front of me and froze in place. Someone was shooting but I was not hearing the shots. Looking at the puffs, I saw they were following a rat running hard for cover under one of the hootches. Looking for the source of the puffs, I saw a soldier with the grease gun holding the trigger down as he tracked the rat. When he emptied the magazine, I walked over to him and said, “How would you like to sell me that weapon?” He replied, “Sure, man, $20.” I gave him the $20 and the grease gun was mine. I did not ask him where he got it. my thought was that I would only use a weapon if I had been shot down and was doing escape and evasion (E&E) to get back to friendly lines. If I had to shoot someone, I would only do it if they were close and would prefer no one else hear me doing it. Besides, the M-3 uses the .45 round and I was already carrying an M-1911A1 pistol, also .45 and 100 rounds of .45 ammo in two boxes in the pockets of my survival vest.

Standing outside the aircraft, it occurred to me that I had not made an emergency radio call. I had not made a “mayday” call because of the oldest order of precedence when flying: Aviate, fly the aircraft; Navigate, take it to where you are going; and, last, if you have time, Communicate. I controlled the aircraft and found a landing zone big enough to handle it, taking care of the first two in the correct order. There was really no need to make any radio calls since we had been briefed on what to do when we went down. Besides, many aircraft had seen me go down and we knew that no one would come for us until the mission was complete anyway.

Since the NVA had not immediately attacked, I called the flight engineer over. He was not hurt from either the explosion below our aircraft or the cargo hook swinging up when I pickled the load. He and I went to the Chinook to see how badly it had been damaged. Leaving his machine gun in place on our defense perimeter, he came over to me. The wounds to my face and arm were obviously not serious. Though I was still bleeding ten minutes after the hit, I was still functioning. The hydraulic fluid was still burning through my soaked shirt and the holes in my face, neck and arm, so I took off the shirt and t-shirt and threw them back inside the cabin. Leaving my bullet bouncer on the ground I put my survival vest back on. The blood had stopped coming from my upper right arm, leaving just a caked area of blood and hydraulic fluid. My face was still bleeding but not to the point where it interfered with what I wanted to do. I was still numb from the impact of the shrapnel, so there was no pain—in fact, instead of feeling pain I just felt angry, very angry. The flight engineer wanted to put bandages from the aircraft’s first aid kit over the wounds but I told him no, just check out the aircraft to see if we can takeoff and get the hell out of there.

The flight engineer clambered onto the top of Playtex 820 and opened up the forward panels to see how much damage had been done. As he was doing that, I walked around the aircraft to see what other damage we had. I counted four bullet holes and more damage to the belly, probably from an S-60 round. One of the bullet holes was through the spar of one of the forward rotor blades.

The flight engineer called me to the top of the aircraft so that I could look into the forward pylon. The Chinook has an upper dual flight boost hydraulic actuator, the system that actually moves the rotor head and controls the aircraft. The “dual boost” part means that the two sides are independent of each other; lose one and the controls still function perfectly, but by necessity, the dual boost is one unit with the actuators side-by-side. The upper dual boost actuator is a major single-point failure, so the Army had Boeing put a piece of armor plate in front of it to protect it. Sticking in the number one boost side of the actuator was a 12.7mm armor piecing machine gun round. It had gone between the armor and the actuator and hit the number one side squarely on. Fortunately for us we had been above tracer burnout range, so the bullet had little energy left when it hit the air-craft. Had we been lower, instead of poking a hole in the actuator, the bullet might have taken it completely off, leaving us to fall out of control until the Chinook came apart or hit the ground. But it didn’t take the actuator off. The flight engineer pulled the bullet out and handed me part of the jacket. He kept the core for himself: after all, it was his aircraft.

Between the shot out actuator and the holes in the blades, I decided that 820 was not flyable, at least until maintenance looked at it and changed the damaged parts out for new ones. Besides the shot out number one flight boost, the hole in the blade spar could well result in blade failure, another fatal single-point failure. We would either be picked up by helicopter, as per the brief, or, if that didn’t happen soon, we would make our way to the ARNV base and wait for rescue. If all else failed, we would escape and evade (E&E) our way back to Vietnam on foot. I took my survival radio out of my vest and turned it on. The survival radio could handle “guard” and any other UHF frequency you dialed up, so I turned it to guard to listen in on what was happening beyond our LZ. Looking at the sky while I worked on the radio, I saw a Huey headed in our direction, apparently on approach to our location.

“Huey coming for downed Chinook, LZ is cold” I called over the survival radio.

“Roger, get your crew together for pickup,” the Huey pilot replied.

As the Huey got closer I recognized the emblem painted on its nose, it was the 101st Aviation group commander’s aircraft. The colonel commanded all 600 of the 101st’s aircraft. He must have been up flying over the battlefield, watching the fight, and must have seen us go down. When he was satisfied that the mission was going to be completed with the remaining aircraft, he came back to get us. I called my crew back together. the excess ammo we put back inside 820 so that it could either be rescued when the aircraft was recovered or destroyed along with the Chinook, if that should be the command decision. We stacked the machine guns, the KY 28, survival ammo can, and our flight gear close to where the Huey had set up to land, while we waited.

Before he came into the LZ, the colonel did a wide circle over the zone, looking for NVA. Satisfied that the LZ was indeed cold, he landed with the Huey blowing up dust in a reassuring cloud. We waited outside the rotor disk until the Huey crew chief waved us over. I sent my crew in first. I would be the last one onboard. As my crew climbed into the aircraft, I looked up at the Huey’s cockpit. I could see the colonel looking back at me—me, shirtless, with a survival vest on, with blood all down my arm and face and red hydraulic fluid all over me and the grease gun with the silencer slung over my shoulder. His visor was down so I couldn’t see his face, but he shook his head and gave me what looked like a rueful smile.

After a final look at 820, I climbed in the back of the Huey and parked myself on the right side, next to the door gunner. I was getting madder by the second. Mad that the NVA shot my Chinook, mad that I was hit, just mad. I wanted to shoot something, someone, shoot the man who shot me. I hoped that the 105 howitzer and the 4,000 pounds of ammo we dropped at least hit the NVA who shot me. I leaned out the door of the Huey, grease gun locked and loaded, but there was nothing except green jungle and the scars from bombing and artillery fire and the red line dirt marking highway QL9 heading back to Khe Sanh from Laos. After a while, I sat back in the red webbing of the troop seat and watched the world go by as the Huey took us back to Khe Sanh. We had been on the ground for about 15 minutes. It had been 20 minutes since we were hit.

The numbness from my wounds began to wear off as the adrenaline came down. By the time we got to Khe Sanh, 20 minutes later, I was extremely tired and hurting in several places. My anger was gone too, replaced by thoughts of how I was going to explain the wounds to my wife in a few days when I returned to Fort Campbell for two weeks of leave in the middle of the war.

After we landed at the medevac pad just off the main runway at Khe Sanh, an ambulance was there to pick me up, but the Huey crew chief motioned for me to wait while they shut down. I waited just outside the rotor disk until the colonel unstrapped and, climbing out the right door, walked up to me. He looked at the blood and hydraulic fluid covering me, placed his hand on my shoulder and said, “You did good, son. Now go get that looked at.” As he walked away he looked back at me again, shirtless, blood stained with the grease gun hanging from my shoulder, shook his head and gave a small laugh.

I walked into the hospital tent at a slow time for them. Very few wounded were there, so they had plenty of time to deal with me. Because I was walking and talking without any problem they had me fill out my own toe tag, the marker the military uses to identify the wounded and the dead. After cleaning me up, I sat on a table for an hour or two while they picked pieces of glass and metal out of me. The doctor told me that the ones he couldn’t remove would work their way out in time. There were no big holes, just a lot of little ones and bruises on my arm, neck, and face. The doctor told me that he was putting big bandages on me because Khe Sanh was a very dusty place. When I got back to my base I could remove them, take a shower, put on some cream he gave me and replace the bandages with band-aids. Since my shirt was gone, someone gave me a T-shirt to put on for the trip back to my company.

My crew was waiting for me outside when the doctor finished about an hour later. We all smiled at each other, glad to be alive, as we waited for one of our company aircraft to pick us up and take us back to Phu Bai. The colonel had called Playtex Ops on the radio to tell them we were OK and where to pick us up. An hour later, one of our Chinooks landed and we boarded for the trip back. Four hours after we were hit, we were back at Liftmaster Pad, being greeted by a crowd of our relieved friends waiting on the ramp.

The Ops O met me as I climbed down from the crew door on the Chinook. The blood and hydraulic fluid were gone but the bandages covered most of my arm and shoulder, with more on my face and neck. He turned pale and said, “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t know this would happen.”

I said, “I know. I’ll be alright, but I just want to be alone right now, OK?”

He nodded as I walked slowly toward my hootch. Once inside, I pulled all the bandages off and after running the wringer washing machine full of hot water, I put it on drain cycle so that it would pump the water to the shower. After stepping into the bathtub, I stood under the water and enjoyed the nice long, hot shower. I dried off and put on band-aides where the bandages had been. After putting on a clean flight suit I walked over to the Club. The Ops O was sitting at the bar as I came in.

“Hi, guys,” I said as the Ops O looked around. He went from being glum to being mad in a second. “You son-of-a-bitch,” he yelled, but the anger became happiness as it occurred to him that while I was wounded, I was not hurt as bad as it looked when I stepped off the aircraft.

The next day I went on leave, traveling to Fort Campbell, Kentucky via Saigon, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. Three days later I was explaining the bruises and holes in my face, neck, and arm to my wife. Two weeks after that, I was back at Khe Shahn helping to pull the last of the ARVNs out of Laos as Lam Son 719 came to an inglorious end.

My final memory of that battle is of an NVA mortar round hitting a 5,000 gallon gasoline tanker truck parked less than 100 yards in front of me as I was landing just outside Khe Sanh on that last day. As the fireball rose in front of me, I jerked the Chinook back into a full-power climb. It missed us entirely.

Luck and superstition again …