Chapter 40
Things Heat Up

S urprise may have been achieved on day one of the Cambodia campaign, but the NVA recovered quickly and May 2 was the day it started.

“Mayday, mayday, Dragon Breath Two-Three is bailing out and going down, vicinity.” He gave his coordinates.

“Chicken-man One-Seven, Bulldog Six, over.” Bulldog Six was a ground company commander, and Chicken-man One-Seven was flown by Captain Beauchamp, who was working for Bulldog Six flying resupply.

“Bulldog Six, Chicken-man One-Seven.”

“Chicken-man, the forward air controller is going down. Do you have him?” At about this moment, the crew chief, Specialist West, spoke up.

“Hey, Captain, I have a parachute at four o’clock and about a mile away. Also a black cloud of smoke not far from the chute.” Turning the aircraft to the right, the captain spotted the chute as well.

“Bulldog Six, I have him in sight and going for him.”

“Okay, crew, be on your toes. There’s an antiaircraft gun around here, and we need to get that pilot before the gooks do.” Captain Beauchamp continued to fly to the chute, which was just entering the trees. “We’re going in low and fast until we can pinpoint his location.” He dropped to treetop level, heading for the location of the chute, which he could no longer see.

Flying at ninety knots and treetop level, West called out, “Got him! He’s in the trees. Three o’clock.”

Rene lowered his collective rapidly while raising the nose, resulting in no loss of altitude but rapid deceleration of the aircraft while executing a tight turn to the right. As he came around, he could see the chute tangled in the treetops. He approached slowly, very much aware that there was an antiaircraft gun somewhere around here. Small-arms fire was beginning to place green tracers in the aircraft’s vicinity with no hits, yet. Rene also didn’t want to create a lot of wind and have the chute reinflate into the rotors. Crew chief and door gunner had guns up and were scanning the jungle. The door gunner was picking his targets and engaging.

As Captain Beauchamp slid the aircraft over the pilot, West informed him, “Sir, the pilot appears to be out cold. He’s just hanging in the tree there.”

“Okay, we have to get him quick,” Captain Beauchamp said, surveying the ground for a place to land. There wasn’t one, as the vegetation wasn’t dense but the trees were thirty feet high and close enough together that they didn’t offer a clearing big enough to land in.

West had already climbed into the cabin area and was preparing a two-hundred-foot rappelling rope that was maintained in the aircraft.

“Sir, I can get him.” And with that, he dropped the rope and was preparing to go down.

“Okay but…” And West was gone. He’d forgotten to put on gloves, and his hands were paying for that mistake.

“How am I going to get him out?” he said, more to himself than anyone in particular.

“Jamison, you keep an eye on him and keep him covered,” Captain Beauchamp said to the door gunner.

Dropping the seventy or so feet, West sprinted to the pilot, who was still unconscious and hanging in the tree only a few feet off the ground. Small tufts of grass and dirt were being kicked up around West as small-arms fire was directed in his direction.

Damn parachute release won’t release. Son of a bitch. “Damn it, come on!” West screamed, hoping the pilot would wake and give some assistance. He did not. Got to get a knife . Pausing at a low crouch, West waited a moment before he sprinted back to the aircraft, which was still at a hover, engaging the NVA position. As he ran, West made a cutting motion, hoping the gunner or copilot would recognize the signal and drop a knife. They did.

Picking the knife up, West didn’t hesitate to sprint back to the hanging pilot, cut him free and throw him over his shoulder. Just then, an RPG round slammed into the tree the pilot had been hanging in. With the pilot over his shoulder in a fireman carry position, West ran for the aircraft and the dangling rope. Grabbing the rope, he wrapped it around the pilot and himself and motioned for the aircraft to take off. West didn’t have time to tie a knot but only had the rope wrapped around himself and the pilot. Because of his rope-burned hands, West couldn’t climb the rope but prayed he could hold on long enough to get safely back to the ground.

As the aircraft climbed out and built up some speed, the small-arms fire continued. Captain Beauchamp couldn’t fly with any speed as the drag on West and the pilot would be too great and pull them off the rope. West was dangling about seventy feet below the aircraft, which was flying over the jungle at two to three hundred feet. Helicopter crews did not have parachutes. As West cleared the trees, Captain Beauchamp nosed the aircraft over and began picking up speed, all the while praying West didn’t fall. Everyone was well aware that if they had an engine failure or any other emergency, West and the pilot wouldn’t survive.

Arriving over a clearing, Captain Beauchamp lowered the aircraft to place West and the pilot on the ground and then the aircraft. This was an unsecured clearing only about fifteen hundred meters from where they’d picked up the pilot. Detaching the rope, West and Jamison quickly loaded the pilot into the aircraft and departed for LZ Center, where the unconscious pilot was quickly transferred to a medivac aircraft that had been requested. West resumed his duties as a crew chief. 12

Huge cache sites were being located across the area because the NVA were using trucks to move supplies in Cambodia from a port in Cambodia where ships would deliver the supplies. In South Vietnam, cache sites were seldom found, and they were never very large, because there, bicycles were used to distribute small quantities of supplies to the NVA as soon as they entered the country. The use of trucks led to large three- and four-acre supply depots, and the NVA were determined to protect these huge cache sites. The division didn’t change its tactics of rapidly moving company-sized units that were lightly equipped. As each cache site was discovered, grunts inventoried the contents and either removed the materiel or blew it in place. In order to remove it, helicopters were called upon. Between combat assaults, resupply of our own grunts, and now the Vietnamese Army units that were attached to the division, as well as backhauling the captured materiel, we were flying more than ever. And now the press wanted stories.

Up until this point, the press was never seen, at least by us, unless they wanted a ride someplace. The only “press” I recalled seeing in the Chicken Coop was an actor who was visiting us for the day. He was the guy that played Tarzan in a television series at the time. Hell, he wouldn’t even fight our rooster! With the assault into Cambodia, the press now found everything about us interesting.

“Wake up, Mr. Cory, you have a zero six hundred launch to Camp Gorvad,” the ops clerk informed me. “The rest of your crew is up and moving.”

“Okay, I’m awake.” I started rolling out from under my mosquito net. “What’s the mission for today?”

“You’ll love this one. You’re flying some public affairs officer and the press around.”

“What did I ever do to piss off you guys in Ops?” I asked. He just laughed as he walked out of the hooch.

Flying over, we were directed to land at the VIP pad at Camp Gorvad. Why the hell isn’t Eleventh Aviation Group VIP flight platoon handling this? Bill, where the hell are you? I wondered. Could it be that we had so many VIPs, they’d run out of aircraft? Sad that the division was of no interest when we were operating in Vietnam, but something like this suddenly had everyone interested. As we were waiting, a clerk came out and said it would be a couple of minutes, so we rolled the throttle back and waited.

“Here they come, Mr. Cory. Holy shit, I know this guy! I mean, I’ve watched him on TV,” Lovelace said.

“Yeah, who is it?” my copilot asked as they were approaching from the rear.

“It’s Harry Reasoner,” Lovelace responded. Mr. Reasoner introduced himself to each of us as he climbed into the aircraft. The guy was so down to earth right from the start. Not at all what I’d expected. The major from the public affairs office gave us a rundown of what Harry wanted to see as well as do, and I said okay to all of it. Pretty standard stuff, as he wanted to go to a couple of firebases, one US and one Vietnamese, as well as tag along on a combat assault. I had to make some calls to find where one was going down. For us, it was an easy day, which we would pay for the next morning.

Again we were hauling reporters, but not Harry. This time it was a news crew of three guys with cameras, recorders and an announcer. I had never seen these guys before, nor did they give us a clue who they worked for. Their egos were getting in the way. They wanted to go in on a combat assault, and we found one for them. The flight was a six-two combination. I suggested that they fly in on the initial assault, get on the ground and film the second lift come in and depart on the third lift. I would take them in, drop them off, bring troops in on the second and third lift and haul them out after the third lift. From there it would be back to Camp Gorvad, where they would catch a fixed-wing aircraft back to Saigon and they could file their story. They thought it was a great idea, and I finalized it with the flight leader for the mission.

Initially everything went as planned. Artillery went in; gunships rolled hot; slicks touched down; slicks came out to pick up second lift. We arrived back at the PZ, and grunts on the second turn around jumped in the aircraft and we proceeded to the LZ. As the aircraft were on final approaching the LZ, gunfire started hitting aircraft, intense small-arms fire. The ground commander waved the second liftoff and directed us to a new LZ that was about two klicks from the original intended LZ. Ground contact intensified, and for the next two days, that company was in heavy contact. The press crew couldn’t be lifted out. Within the first thirty minutes of the fighting, they had used all their film. They had no water or food with them. They remained with the grunts for those two days until everyone could be extracted. After two days of flying the press pool around, I was back to flying normal slick missions, thankfully.

As the days wore on, aircraft continued to take hits and so did crew members. The initial assault on May 1, 1970, might have been a surprise to the NVA, but they bounced back quickly, and on May 7, they had a surprise for us. Four of our aircraft, led by one of our experienced captains as flight leader, were directed to join a flight of three from our sister company, Bravo. As their company commander was in the flight, he assumed command of the flight as flight leader.

“Flight, this is Green One. I will be leading this flight. Chickenman Two-Four, are your aircraft all up on frequency?” he asked of our flight leader. Green One was the same flight leader who had taken Lou and me through an artillery strike a couple of months before. I was not a happy camper about following him around again.

“Roger, Green One, all Chicken-men are monitoring,” Chicken-man Two-Four responded.

“Roger, Flight. We have a fourteen-sortie lift and will do it in two turns. Enemy situation is that Night Hunter took eleven hits last night crossing this LZ. Enemy strength is unknown at this time. We’re inserting a rifle company initially and may have to reinforce later. We have three aircraft from my unit, and they’ll be Chalks Two and Three, with Chicken-man being Four through Seven. Lobo is providing two aircraft and Blue Max will provide four. The LZ is outside of artillery range, which is why we’re heavy with Cobras. Formation will be staggered right,” he briefed us as the grunts climbed aboard. They didn’t look happy.

Chief Warrant Officer Second Class Bill Hess was an experienced AC, but today he was playing copilot to a brand-new AC, First Lieutenant Jaquoff. Major Sundstrum had asked Bill to fly right seat with him since it was his first time out as an AC. Bill was in his fifteenth month flying in-country.

“Is someone nuts or what? We’re going into an LZ that the Night Hunter took fire from, and without artillery coverage?” Bill said. He knew it wasn’t smart to operate outside of artillery range and with only six Cobra gunships.

The new AC, a lieutenant with all of four months in-country, told Bill, “The major knows what he’s doing. Don’t worry about it.” In the opinion of most of the warrant officers, this lieutenant was a twin to Lieutenant Dick Weed. Get rid of one and another pops up. As the flight lifted off with the troops on board, a staggered right formation was taken up with Cobras on the flanks.

En route to the LZ, Blue Max called Green One. “Green One, Blue Max Two-Zero.”

“Blue Max Two-Zero, Green One, go ahead.”

“Green One, we’ve just been pulled from this mission to cover a unit in heavy contact. Sorry, but we’re leaving your formation. Lobo’s staying with you. Good luck.”

Chicken-man Two-Four came up immediately. “Green One, Chicken-man Two-Four.”

“Go ahead, Chicken-man Two-Four.”

“Green One, what are your intentions now that we have only two gunships with us?”

“Chicken-man Two-Four, this doesn’t change the mission. We will continue,” Green One responded.

“Green One, that doesn’t make any sense. This LZ was hot less than eight hours ago, and we have no artillery support and only two gunships. Does the ground commander know we’re down to just two Cobras?” Chicken-man Two-Four asked. 13

“Chicken-man Two-Four, this mission is a go. At one minute out, we will engage. Green One out.” The irritation in Green One’s voice was obvious.

Shortly thereafter, the LZ came into view. It was larger than three football fields, with a small clump of brush in the middle. Seven aircraft in staggered right formation could easily fit. That was the good news. At H minus one, Lobo rolled hot, expending his rockets, and the door gunners opened fire, as did two .51-caliber machine guns and three .30-caliber machine guns from the tree line and one .51-caliber machine gun from the clump of brush in the middle of the LZ. Before the aircraft could land, all were taking hits. Battalion policy had always been that when aircraft were taking intense fire before even getting to the ground, the insertion would be aborted. Green One couldn’t rise in rank to make general by observing this policy, though. He did not abort.

“Chalk Three is hit. I’m going in!” The AC was shot in the ankle and crash-landed, spreading the skids of the aircraft. No one told him or his copilot a helicopter could fly with the skids crushed. The aircraft was flyable. Chalk Five, a Chicken-man aircraft, moved up to pick up the crew. Green One had already left the LZ with his remaining aircraft, leaving only Chicken-man aircraft to cover Chalk Five, attempting to rescue Green One’s crews. As the downed crew was loading Chalk Five, the remaining Chicken-man aircraft initiated their departure.

“Chicken-man Two-Six, Chicken-man Two-Four. Where are you?”

“Chicken-man Two-Four, I’m still in the LZ. The grunts need a medevac for a guy with a sucking chest wound. I can get him.”

“Roger, but don’t linger in there,” Chicken-man Two-Four instructed him. Within a minute, Chicken-man Two-Six was on the radio.

“Chicken-man Two-Four, we’re hit! My AC just took it through both legs. We’re coming out.” At that instant, Lieutenant Jaquoff leaned forward, in intense pain from a round in his calf and one in his groin. As he did, the front door post exploded from the impact of a .51-caliber round going through it. If he hadn’t leaned forward, the round would have hit him in the head. The result of the first lift was that all seven aircraft had been hit, with six in un-flyable condition once they reached Song Be. Another lift had been scrambled together for the follow-on insertions. Chickenman Two-Four returned twice more to the LZ, taking in ammo and extracting wounded soldiers. Chickenman Two-Four had 107 bullet holes and was still able to limp back to safety.

Our sister companies were having it equally tough. On or about May 18, while refueling at Quan Loi, a Charlie Company aircraft came in and shut down. The pilot exited the aircraft and I could tell he was upset about something. Walking over to him, I saw that the entire crew was upset. I knew the pilot from having flown with Charlie Company on previous missions.

“Hey, Tom, you okay?” I asked as I approached.

“No, I’m not. We just lost a bird up past Bu Dop. It was flying a sniffer mission. Warrant Officer 1 Riley and Captain Larson were killed as well as the crew chief, Specialist Abler, and the gunner, Private Mehlhaff.”

“What happened? Was it shot down? Did the sniffer team make out?”

“No one knows. At this point we just know it went down. Lobo was covering him and said there was no call of taking fire or engine failure. The aircraft just crashed.” Tom stated.

Placing my hand on his shoulder, I said, “Sorry for your loss. I know this hurts. You take care,” and I walked back to my aircraft to inform my crew.

Things did not improve for Charlie Company.

Four days later, tragedy struck them again. That night at our club, Mike George was at the bar, looking as if he was attempting to clean out all the liquor. Mike was on an extension in-country.

“So Mike, how was your day?” I asked as I planted my butt on a seat next to him.

“It was crap, if you really want to know. Pure crap.” I could quickly tell Mike was not in a good mood.

“Hey, what happened? Can I do anything?” I asked.

“Can you bring six guys back from the dead?”

“Oh, shit, did we lose a bird today?”

“No, we didn’t, but Charlie Company did—and a medevac.” Mike took another shot of Jack Daniels, and he normally didn’t drink hard liquor.

“What happened?” I inquired. “Hell, they just lost a bird last week on a sniffer mission.”

“I was up by Loc Ninh and a call came out to join an emergency lift of ARVNs into an LZ. Charlie Company was flight lead, with Captain Dan Foley and Captain Ellis Greene as flight lead—nothing planned but just thrown together due to the situation. The first and second lift went off smoothly. However, the ARVN grunts from the first two lifts only secured one side of the landing zone. As the third lift approached, we came under fire. As the aircraft touched down, an RPG round impacted on Captain Foley’s chair, killing him instantly, I suspect, and seriously wounding Captain Greene. A medevac aircraft couldn’t get in to extract Captain Greene for over an hour. Finally, when they were safely aboard the medevac aircraft, they left to get Greene to a hospital. En route, the aircraft experienced an engine failure over thick jungle and crashed, killing all on board.” Mike took another shot of Jack. We sat in silence, thinking too much.

Each night we would fly our aircraft back to Song Be to refuel before continuing on to Lai Khe. And then the weather started to turn against us. Few of our aircraft were equipped to fly on instruments in overcast and rainy conditions. Back in Lai Khe, the mess hall would remain open until the last crew came in as well as have food placed in the EM Club and the Officers’ Club for the maintenance crews that worked through the night. Besides late chow for everyone, we were running out of beer because of the PX at Lai Khe being closed. Major Sundstrum called me over to his hooch.

“Sir, you wanted to see me?” I asked.

“Yeah, Dan, I have a special mission for you for tomorrow.” He handed me a stack of ration cards. “Take an aircraft tomorrow and fly to Saigon and get a load of beer. These are the ration cards of everyone in the unit, so you should be able to get a hundred cases. Try and get some soda as well. Take Grandpa with you—he could use a break. Any questions?” he asked.

“No, sir.”

The next day, Grandpa and I headed south to the Saigon airport, Tan Son Nhat, instead of north with everyone else. I didn’t think this broke Lovelace’s or Peter’s hearts. The PX was across the street from the helipad, which was convenient for helicopter crews. Going in, I approached an Air Force master sergeant who appeared to be working there. He was clean-shaven and smelled of cheap aftershave, and he wore a pressed uniform.

“Excuse me, Master Sergeant. Do you work here?” I asked. He looked me over, noticing my filthy flight suit, unshaven facial hair and body odor.

“Yes, sir. I’m the PX manager.”

“Just the man I need to talk with. I need one hundred cases of beer and ten cases of soda. Here are our unit’s ration cards.” I handed him the cards. He took them but didn’t even look at them.

“Sir, there’s no way in hell I’m selling you one hundred cases of beer. They’ll only wind up on the black market. No, sir. I don’t care if you have a hundred ration cards. You get one case. That’s it.” He handed the stack of cards to me.

“Oh, really? We’ll see about that.”

Grandpa and I left. At this time we were operating in some intense flying, with aircraft taking hits every day. We were flying long hours each day. I was in no mood to deal with some Air Force NCO in clean clothes who probably had a hot shower and hot meal and smelled like a perfume princess. I played my trump card and called my dad. A jeep picked me up, and twenty minutes later, Grandpa and I were standing in front of a two-star general, explaining my story. He told me to go back to my aircraft and have a nice day as he picked up a phone.

When I got back to the aircraft, the beer was not only there but was being loaded onto the aircraft by PX workers under the supervision of the Air Force master sergeant, who was under the supervision of Specialist Lovelace, who was showing the master sergeant how he wanted the aircraft loaded.

“Any problems, Specialist?” I asked Lovelace.

“No, sir. All is good.”

The Air Force master sergeant had more intelligence than I thought, because he kept his mouth shut. The general must have told him something else, because he didn’t even charge us for the beer.

When we were fully loaded, I called for clearance from the heliport control and received it. The heliport was an open area about the length of two football fields. As I was pulling in the power, we weren’t lifting off the ground before the engine would start to lose engine rpm! We were overloaded, but I wasn’t giving up the beer. At full power, we were able to get the aircraft light on the skids and begin sliding forward, slowly at first but building up airspeed to attain translational lift. Like an airplane at a certain speed, air passing over the wing, or in this case, the rotor blades, creates lift and the aircraft flies. The aircraft lifted up only to settle back down on the ground but still moving forward and building speed.

“Chicken-man One-Niner, Tan Son Nhat Heliport.”

“Tan Son Nhat Heliport, Chicken-man One-Niner, over.”

“Chicken-man One-Niner, are you okay?” the tower controller asked.

“Tan Son Nhat Heliport, we’re good. Practicing a heavy takeoff with a new pilot,” I replied.

I didn’t lie. We were heavy, and he was a new pilot. We climbed a bit higher this time, only to bounce down again, but with more speed and moving forward. Translational lift usually kicked in at about ten knots airspeed. After the third bounce, Tower was telling me to abort as there was a five-foot-high berm rapidly approaching the aircraft, or we were approaching it.

“Chicken-man One-Niner, Tan Son Nhat Heliport. Abort, abort!” We had good speed and translational lift kicked in. We were airborne, clearing the berm by at least two feet.

“Tan Son Nhat Heliport, Chicken-man One-Niner. No need, we’re good. Just a bit of training. Chicken-man leaving your area. Good day, sir.” And I quickly changed the frequency so I didn’t have to answer any questions. As we continued the hundred miles to home, we were burning off fuel, which gave us more power to play with, and we were at a comfortable hover when we arrived at Lai Khe. We had cold beer that night and were in the air the next morning before the sun came up. The next day…..

“Chicken-man One-Niner, Chicken-man Two-Three, over.”

“Yeah, Two-Three, go ahead.”

“Hey, One-Niner, I heard you were leaving, going to Battalion. Over.”

“Two-Three, that’s bull. I’m not going anywhere.” Now how the hell did that rumor get started? I was an old-timer, having extended, but I had no intention of going up to be on Battalion staff. That wasn’t what I’d extended for. We continued on with our resupply mission, but the conversation didn’t stop. Another aircraft called me.

“Chicken-man One-Niner, Chicken-man One-Four, over.”

“One-Four, go ahead,” I answered.

“One-Niner, hate to see you leaving us. Be sure and come back and visit once in a while. Over.”

“One-Four, I’m not going anywhere. Who told you I was? Over.”

“One-Niner, I heard it in Flight Ops before I left. I got off late today because of a maintenance issue and they were talking about it.”

I said nothing. Crap, this could be more than just a rumor. Even later in the day, while sitting in a refuel point, my platoon leader hopped up on my skid.

“Hey, Dan, going to miss you, buddy. When you get to Battalion, be sure and send the good missions to us and not those other guys.” With that, he patted my shoulder and was off back to his aircraft. I sank lower in my seat. This had come from my platoon leader, and therefore I knew I was sunk. The rest of the day’s flying was almost depressing. I couldn’t believe the CO couldn’t save me from this.

That night, we got back in and I dropped my gear and headed for the club. I figured I had flown my last mission and would be flying a desk in the coming days, so I might as well have a drink, or two. Almost everyone that was back from flying was in the club eating dinner and having a drink, as we always did. The CO came in and took center stage.

“Let me have your attention. I got some good news and some not so good, which I will give you first.” I knew what was coming.

“Mr. Cory, come up here.” I hopped off the barstool my ass had been planted to for the past two beers and with a low-hanging head walked up to him. He towered over me.

“You all know that Mr. Cory, Dan, has been with us for the past—what, sixteen months?”

I mumbled, “Yes, sir.”

“In that time, he has flown with everyone in this room and done all that has been asked of him and a lot more. Well, it’s time for him to move on. Dan, you will be missed.” And with that, he shook my hand and motioned for me to take my seat.

A couple of guys patted me on the back as I dragged my sorry ass back to my stool, where another fresh beer was waiting for me. I was at a low point in my life.

“Now for some good news. We’re starting to see the replacement pool pick up as we have a new pilot in today. He’s a bit unique as he has about seventeen hundred hours of combat flight time already and has been in-country for some time. Join me in welcoming First Lieutenant Cory.” As I hunkered over my beer, I was thinking, This poor bastard has the same last name as me. Wonder where he’s from. I turned to see him, and everyone was looking at me with shit-eating grins and started clapping.

“Come up here, Lieutenant Cory,” the CO said and pointed at me. I got off my ass, not sure what was going on. All I could say was, “Sir?”

“Attention to Orders,” bellowed Captain Wehr, and everyone stood at attention. “By order of the President of the United States, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Cory is promoted to First Lieutenant, Infantry, United States Army. Signed…”

Without my knowledge, someone had put me in for a commission and it had been approved. That was an expensive night as I had to buy the beer for everyone. Later, I was informed by some of the warrant officers that I had to move out of the warrant officer hooch and into the RLO hooch, but I managed to negotiate into staying, with a promise that I wouldn’t pull rank on anyone.