Chapter 21
Other Missions

B esides combat assault, resupply and Night Hunter Killer missions, we flew other missions, but not as frequently. Being lift ships or slicks, as we were referred to, we could be asked to haul anything and everything from one point to another. Some days we might find ourselves in support of a Vietnamese unit that was attached to the division, and then you could expect chickens, ducks, women, children and only God knew what else in your aircraft. Several times I was asked to fly psyops missions.

Generally for a psyops mission, a very large loudspeaker would be placed in the door of the aircraft—barely, it was so big. It would be connected to the aircraft’s electrical power supply, and a microphone or tape player was added with a US soldier and a Vietnamese soldier. We would then fly out to a predetermined location, and the tape player would start, or the Vietnamese guy would start talking. I would fly at twenty-five hundred feet. Thank God we were wearing flight helmets as the noise was tremendous. Wouldn’t have been so bad if we were playing music, but we never did.

“Good morning, Mr. Cory. Ready for some flying today?” asked the captain in charge of the division psyops program.

“Yes, sir. Beats sitting around waiting all day,” I responded.

“Good. Well, here’s what we have today. Need you to fly out to this intersection south of An Loc and orbit while Captain Ngnan operates the player and talks. Sergeant Davidson will be dropping leaflets as well,” he explained as he pointed out the location on his map.

The leaflets were small pieces of paper with Vietnamese writing and pictures. They were basically a free pass to “Chieu Hoi,” the Vietnamese term for surrendering. The Chieu Hoi Program allowed an enemy soldier to surrender and start working for us as a scout. Some of these scouts worked out; others came in long enough to get a hot meal and a rest period and then melted back into the jungle, returning to their units.

We loaded the aircraft and took off on a forty-minute flight to the road intersection. The division had been operating in the area for some time and was using the existing road network more often now, relying on helicopters to do all the heavy lifting in less accessible areas. This area wasn’t as heavily vegetated as other areas around An Loc but was covered in bamboo. As I entered an orbit, Captain Ngnan turned on the loudspeaker and began talking in the singsong language of Vietnam. It was going to be a long couple of hours.

“Hey, Mr. Cory, I can see some guys down there in the bamboo,” indicated Specialist Linam, my crew chief, who was sitting next to the loudspeaker.

“Where and how many?” I asked.

“Over on the north side of the road in the bamboo. Must be fifty guys, and they’re digging, it looks like,” he indicated.

I refocused my eyes and sure enough, there these guys were.

“Hey, Sergeant Davidson, do you see those guys down there?” I asked the psyops soldier.

“Yes, sir. That’s an NVA unit we’re attempting to Chieu Hoi,” he replied.

“The hell with this. Instead of talking them out, let’s hit them with some artillery to convince them,” I said.

“Sir, we can’t do that. We have to talk them out.” Sergeant Davison sounded stressed.

Now this was the third time I was clearly seeing the enemy, the first being back on the river flying Night Hunter Killer, and I couldn’t shoot at those guys from some bullshit reason. Dave had been recently killed, in part by these guys and in part by the engineer battalion commander. It reminded me of a popular cartoon at the time of two vultures sitting on a tree limb; one says to the other, “Patience my ass, I want to kill something.” I wanted to kill something.

“Sergeant Davidson, I don’t think they can really hear what he’s saying flying up here. I’m going to take us down a bit so they can better hear him. Also, a lower altitude will let you concentrate your leaflet drop better,” I informed him.

“Damn, that would be great, Mr. Cory. None of the other pilots will go below twenty-five hundred feet. The best altitude is fifteen hundred.”

“Fifteen hundred, you say. Yeah, I can do that. These guys want to surrender.” And I lowered the power and switched my communications so only my copilot could hear what I was saying.

“Pete, tune in Quan Loi Artillery. Plot this location and give them a ‘be prepared’ fire mission.” He looked at me with a question but said nothing.

“Hey, Sergeant Davidson, we’re at fifteen hundred. How’s this?” I asked.

“This is great, sir. Although Captain Ngnan is a bit nervous at being this low,” he replied. Sergeant Davidson and Captain Ngnan were having a vigorous conversation in the back with Captain Ngnan pointing out the aircraft, shouting at Sergeant Davidson and looking at me. I didn’t speak Vietnamese, so I had no idea what his problem was. I just flew my aircraft, but I had my suspicions.

“Mr. Cory,” Sergeant Davidson said, “Captain Ngnan is worried that they may start shooting at us as we’re lower than he likes. He wants you to fly higher.”

“Tell Captain Ngnan that these guys want to Chieu Hoi and he just needs to talk a bit more convincing. I’m sure he can talk them out onto the road,” I replied. Sergeant Davidson went back to a conversation with Captain Ngnan, who was really looking upset.

“Taking fire!” screamed Specialist Francis, my door gunner. I banked hard out of the orbit but held altitude. Sure enough, about four or five green tracers were coming up at us, but none were accurate enough to hit us. Before I could say anything, Francis, who was now looking straight down as I made the hard right turn out of the orbit, opened up with his M60 machine gun into the group of guys on the ground. More fire came up towards us. I pulled in some more power and took a wider orbit.

“Quan Loi Arty, Chicken-man One-Niner, fire mission,” my copilot called into the radio.

“Chicken-man One-Niner, Quan Loi Arty, send it, over.”

About two minutes later, Captain Ngnan was having a shit fit as the first rounds impacted on the road intersection. As the second flight of six rounds was adjusted and landed in the middle of the group, Sergeant Davidson was in panic mode. “Mr. Cory, you can’t be hitting them with arty. They’re supposed to surrender.”

“Sergeant Davidson, my first responsibility is to the safety of my crew while accomplishing the mission. They started shooting at us, which told me they had no intention of surrendering. You told me you wanted an altitude of fifteen hundred feet, and that’s what I was flying when they fired first. I was just protecting my aircraft and doing what you asked. You may want to tell Captain Ngnan that I bet they’re more receptive to his speech now. I’ll take us back up to twenty-five hundred and continue to orbit if you like.”

Captain Ngnan was in no mood to continue his speech and indicated that he wanted to go back to Quan Loi. When we reached Quan Loi, the psyops captain, US, was waiting for us. Captain Ngnan started jabbering and pointing at me. They were taking the equipment out of the aircraft when the captain came over and climbed on the skids.

“You know Captain Ngnan isn’t real happy with you, don’t you?” he asked.

“Hey, sir, he doesn’t write my efficiency report. Did what was asked and protected my aircraft and crew, yours too,” I replied.

“Well, I guess we’ll have to write this one up as a mission failure,” he said with a smile on his face, and he patted me on the shoulder as he departed my aircraft. He was an infantry officer in a shitty job.

The next psyops mission was almost a payback. We flew to Tay Ninh on the northwestern side of the division operations area. We had worked in this area several months before but hadn’t been back in some time. Landing, we were met by the psyops team on the helipad. No loudspeaker this time, just boxes of leaflets—lots of boxes. As they loaded, the team leader, a sergeant first class, broke out a map. I could see he was an infantry grunt as well. He wore a First Cavalry Division patch on both shoulders, which told me this wasn’t his first tour in Vietnam.

“Sir, we need to fly to this location, and we’re going to drop leaflets,” he said as he pointed at his map.

“Okay.” I got out my map and started plotting the location. “Holy shit. This puts us right on the Cambodian border, if not over!”

“Yes, sir. And could we fly at, say, eight or nine thousand feet?”

“What? At that altitude, those leaflets will be scattered all over Vietnam and Cambodia as well. We never fly that high.”

“Sir, we’re just going to kick the boxes out of the aircraft and hopefully they’ll open on the way down,” he replied, not looking me in the eye.

“Okay, what’s going on? Something smells about this mission. What are you not telling me?” I asked.

Reluctantly, he explained. “Sir, intelligence says that this location is the headquarters of the Communist Forces in South Vietnam. Their main headquarters. We’re going to drop these and then get out of there. Intelligence believes there may be 23 mm antiaircraft guns, possibly 37 mm antiaircraft guns as well.”

“Holy shit! A 37 mm has a range of about twenty-five thousand feet, and the 23 mm is up around ten thousand,” I replied, but I was bullshitting. I only knew that these two weapons could reach way up and tag an aircraft.

“Okay, it’s cloudy today, so we can pop in and out of clouds while we do the drop. Will that be sufficient?” I asked.

“Yes, sir. Oh, if you hear a beeping noise on the FM radio, followed by two more beeps about twelve to fifteen seconds apart, make a hard turn before a fourth beep sounds, please,” he pleaded.

“And why is that?”

“The 37 mm are radar tracking, and the beeps are the radar sweeping the target. On the fourth beep it has a lock,” he said.

“You’ve got to be shitting me now.”

“Wish I was, sir. We’re ready,” he replied.

We headed out and I was climbing for all the altitude I could get. We finally got to ten thousand feet, which was a new experience for me and one that I did not relish. At ten thousand feet, the air is thin and the flight controls of the aircraft are very sloppy, requiring large movements of the cyclic to get the aircraft to respond, unlike at ground level, where you just think of movement to get the aircraft to respond. My copilot was glued to the instruments as his side of the aircraft had the primary instruments for weather flying, which we were doing, popping into one cloud after another. When we reached the intended point, the sergeant began kicking the boxes out of the aircraft and gave me a “Let’s get the hell out of here” signal, which I did, losing altitude and changing course several times as we got down to the treetops and entered contour-level flight safely below the altitude that a 23 mm or a 37 mm would fire at a helicopter. To this day, I am convinced that the best use of those Chieu Hoi leaflets was as toilet paper, which I’m sure the NVA appreciated.

Days later, our mission had us fly to the helipad next to the division chemical company. In our mission brief, we were told to have our gas masks with us. I had to look to find mine as I had never used it since arriving in-country six months ago. At the helipad, several large white canisters about the size of fifty-five-gallon drums were lying on the ground. They appeared to be plastic. As I shut down, a lieutenant approached.

“Are you Chicken-man?” he asked.

“Yes, sir, at your service. What you got for us?”

“We have an NVA hospital complex at this location.” He pointed at his map. “At thirteen hundred, an air assault is going in to seize it, landing here.” Again he pointed at the map. “The division commander wants to take this complex with minimal casualties on either side. He’s hoping that if we can get enough CS gas on the complex, they’ll come out with minimal fighting. Our job is to start dropping these canisters as soon as the troops are on the ground and before they move into the complex.”

“Okay, what kind of air defense are we looking at?”

“They don’t expect any,” the lieutenant stated.

“How long you been in-country, sir? Because there’s always some air-defense guns with this type of complex. Someone didn’t give you the whole picture.”

“I’ve been in-country long enough,” he responded, some indignation in his tone.

“Well, sir, I’ve been flying long enough to know that whoever gave you this enemy situation didn’t know their ass from a hole in the ground.”

The aircraft was loaded by chemical-qualified soldiers from Division. These canisters had a timer attached, so when they were dropped from the helicopter, they would explode at a certain altitude, generally a few hundred feet above the ground, and spread CS gas over a wide area.

“Hey, Lieutenant, please do not arm those things until I tell you it’s okay. I do not want them going off in the aircraft,” I stated.

“Mister, I am in charge here and I will arm them when I like,” he replied.

“No, Lieutenant, you are not in charge here. I am! You are a passenger in my aircraft. I am the aircraft commander, and that makes me in charge. Now, if you can’t accept that fact, then your ass can sit here while I take your NCO, who obviously understands this better than you, and we will get the job done without you.”

The lieutenant started to say something, but his NCO, who was a sergeant first class, escorted him off to the side and had a conversation. They came back to the aircraft and climbed in without saying anything. The sergeant did give me a wink, however. Once everything was loaded, we headed to the intended drop point. I was monitoring the flight of helicopters from our sister company that was putting in the troops. We had gas masks; they did not. As I observed their intended flight path and LZ, I realized there was a problem.

“Hey, sir. We can’t drop where you indicated. If I do, I’m going to be gassing those flight crews,” I informed him.

“No! We have to drop at this point. The division commander directed it.” He was panicking.

“Beg your pardon, Lieutenant, but the division commander didn’t direct the drop point, only the target. We’re going to drop but allow the wind to carry the gas over the target and not gas the flight,” I told him.

“No! I want this drop—”

“Hey, Lieutenant, I really don’t give a rat’s ass what you want. I know what the division commander wants, and I will give it to him, but how I do it is my business. Now get ready to drop on my command, and shut up.” I was starting to be pissed. No second lieutenant was going to tell me how to carry out my mission.

We approached the drop point I had selected and pushed the canisters out. Each exploded at the desired altitude and covered the area. Once the last one was out, we took the lieutenant back. He never said a word to me or the crew but jumped out and kept on walking. I must have bruised his ego. The sergeant waved goodbye with a big smile.