If we were all a little crazy, the most insane of all were the pilots and crews who flew Loaches, the Hughes 500 OH6A LOHs. These guys were a strange bunch of ducks, a dangerous breed of loners who stayed off to themselves even when they were drinking at the club. They lost so many friends shot down that they simply stopped making friends. They had the option of transferring out of scouts once they accumulated five hundred hours of flight time or got shot down five times, whichever came first.
I often flew the Blue lift for Purple Teams, making large circles as the high-high bird, above the Snake below me and the Loach below him flying at treetop level. The low bird often acted as bait to draw fire in order to give the shark-jawed Cobra a workout. They were surprisingly hard to hit from the trees, but they got shot at so much that the gooks had to get lucky once in a while. If it was an RPG rocket, there was often nothing left but shards of metal and shreds of torn flesh. Hardly enough to even bury. Sorry about that. This hand and this piece of scalp is your son. What’s left of him. Bury him in good faith.
Loaches flew with a three-man crew and all four doors removed. The “torque,” or door gunner, sat directly behind the pilot, which enabled him to see whatever the pilot saw and to fire his M60 machine gun out either side. The observer, armed with an M16 rifle in one hand and a red smoke grenade in the other, sat in the left front seat. If a low bird took fire, all the observer had to do was drop smoke to mark the enemy’s position. He already had the pin on the grenade pulled.
The Loach could sting when it had to. In addition to the machine gun and M16, the occupants were armed with frag and Willie Pete grenades and an entire box of M60 ammunition. Radio traffic between the low bird and the high bird Cobra, whose X-Ray pilot took down “spot” report information, continued at a running pace while the Loach sniffed around for enemy signs.
“Apache Red, looks like there’s been recent movement down here. I’m going to let on down for a better look.”
“Apache One-Three, keep an eye off to your left there.”
“I’m watching it, Red. You help me with it. . . .Been some heavy traffic down here. Bicycles and troops. I’d say within the last day or so. . . .”
“You want me to pass it on to TOC?”
“You might tell TOC we have some Indians down here somewhere.
“You want me to recon by fire, One-Three?”
“Might as well. Let me pull out of here.
You could always tell when the low bird took fire, even before he came up screaming on the radio and dropped smoke. Sometimes you saw muzzle flashes, particularly if it was heavy fire. But what was really telltale was the way the Loach’s tail flickered up like he had been goosed when the pilot shoved in throttle and pulled pitch to get the hell out of there. If he were hit bad, say the loss of oil pressure or pedal control, he faced the prospect of either going down where he was, in which case Charlie was waiting to shoot him up, or he could attempt to nurse his crippled bird to the nearest clearing where the lift could get in to snatch the crew to safety.
Mosby took fire one afternoon. His gunner was hit in the arm. AK fire knocked out his hydraulics. The tiny helicopter wobbled and hawed across the air just above the trees as Mosby fought to keep it in the air. Swede in the Cobra dived with his minigun chewing forest. That left it to me to direct Mosby.
“One-Six, you read?”
“Affirmative, Mini-Man,” Mosby said, his voice thin and strident. “We got a man hurt. I don’t know if I can keep us in the air.”
No time to waste with small talk. At Mosby’s low altitude, all he could see were the tops of trees.
“Turn left right now,” I barked. “Okay, okay, you got it. Just keep going straight ahead. You’ll drop over a clearing in about five hundred meters. Set it down as soon as you can, but leave room for me to come in behind you. Got it?”
“If I can keep us up, Mini-Man . . .”
The Loach wobbled all over the air, engine sputtering out a thin mist that trailed behind, spreading out.
“You got two hundred meters to go, One-Six. Keep going. Be ready. I’m coming down behind you. . . .”
I dropped altitude. Shaky was on his M60, clapping my ears with its sound. The Loach broke out over the clearing choked with elephant grass. He did a good job bringing down his dying little ship. He dropped into the grass and the grass stopped him almost immediately. The Loach remained upright.
By the time I squatted behind it, the Loach’s blades had stopped spinning. Mosby and his observer were helping the wounded gunner get out of the damaged chopper. Blood was spattered all over the interior. They grabbed their weapons and ran toward my Huey, looking back over their shoulders. Like someone was firing at them. Of course, I heard nothing. I saw no tracers. The crew tumbled into the cargo bay and Shaky signaled, “Go! Go!”
I pulled out so abruptly that Taylor, my copilot, called out, “5,800 rpm,” which meant I was on the verge of losing tail rotor effect by exceeding maximum rpm. We were about to crash and burn. I tipped the nose to level out our rpm, but I kept going. Bad guys were all around us. My rotor blades tore into the tops of the trees as the Huey came out of the clearing. We sounded like a big weed eater.
Then we were into open sky. I glanced back into the bay. The wounded guy was sitting up holding his arm, which meant it was probably only a flesh wound. Shaky stood out on the skid, leaning against his monkey line and looking back and down. Mosby grinned and gave me thumbs up. He was lucky to get out of that one, and so grateful he bought me beers all night.
Ryberg a few days later wasn’t so lucky. He was flying a Purple Team low bird with Sergeant Brown as observer and Spec4 Norman as torque. They were looking around the Michelin plantation. NVA had attacked FSB Grant a month earlier. Two divisions of North Vietnamese were supposed to still be in the area working their way toward Saigon. The low bird reported cart and bicycle tracks leading in the direction of a nearby village that Blue infantry had searched a number of times already without finding anything. The tracks were deep. Something heavy had been hauled.
“I’m gonna follow them,” Ryberg called to his high bird, piloted by Captain Jamison and his X-Ray Lieutenant Bleeker.
The Loach shuttled along above the trail sniffing like a coonhound on a track. Bleeker from above and the lift ship even higher suddenly saw red smoke go off. The Loach’s tail lifted, but that was all. A ball of flame engulfed the little helicopter. It had been hit by an RPG. Pieces of it along with mangled bodies were blasted all over the surrounding real estate. The main cockpit plummeted in a smoking ball into a cloud of broken branches, leaves, dust and smoke.
“This is Two-Five, this is Two-Five!” Ryberg screamed to TOC. “Oh, my God! Our low bird has been shot down. Scramble the Blues . . . !”
Flickers of winking lights erupted from the dark underbrush at the edges of the trail. Ryberg uttered his last transmission to his X-Ray: “Get on the minigun, Paul. Work over those assholes in the treeline when I come down
The Snake rolled in hot, taking fire. Something happened. Something freakish. The Cobra lost its main rotor blade in the dive. The blade spun loose somehow. It hacked through the chopper between the pilot and his X-Ray. Bleeker, strapped above the red-and-white shark’s jaws, tumbled out of the sky until he collided with the jungle. Ryberg rode the rest of the chopper straight down.
The 1/9 lost five brave men that day in the span of a few seconds. I scrambled to insert Blues and help recover the remains. The O Club was a silent place that night, with little talking and even less laughter. Even the mongooses, Sam and Pepe, seemed to be affected by the atmosphere. They curled up in a box in the corner and slept instead of begging for goodies.
Author at the controls of his Huey Helicopter
(PHOTO: AUTHOR)
Author shortly after arriving in Vietnam
(PHOTO: AUTHOR)
Author, shortly after becoming platoon leader,
displays his “Cav mustache” (PHOTO: AUTHOR)
Author’s Bird following a night VC mortar attack.
(PHOTO: AUTHOR)
Commendation awards. Mini-Man is the shortest man in
the front rank facing to the right. (PHOTO: AUTHOR)
A partial view of Tay Ninh base camp,
showing chopper pilot headquarters (PHOTO: AUTHOR)
Nui Ba Den, the Black Virgin Mountain, the most prominent feature in
the area of operations (PHOTO: AUTHOR)
Viet Cong prisoner (sandbag over head) being transported to base camp
(PHOTO: AUTHOR)
UH-1 Huey “slick”
(PHOTO: U.S. ARMY)
Trooper being inserted onto an LZ
(PHOTO: U.S. ARMY)
UH-1 door gunner provides covering fire for a squad of troopers
under fire on the ground. (PHOTO: U.S. ARMY)
A “Red” hunter killer team, consisting of a “White” observation
helicopter (center) and two “Red” Cobra gunships (PHOTO: U.S. ARMY)
Pathfinder guides in a flight of 1st Air Cav choppers.
(PHOTO: U.S. ARMY)
Skytroopers prepare to offload a Huey “slick.’
(PHOTO: ARMY NEWS FEATURES)
H&I started soon after nightfall. Reverberations from the big guns shook dust from the rocket-box walls of the club. Flares lit up the sky and flickered morose shadows through the building’s window screens. I kept thinking about what Captain Nice said at Fort Wolters when the two Iranian students creamed in and killed themselves.
“Get used to it,” he advised.
Get used to it. I seldom drank much, but all of us drank more than normal. Mighty Morris broke out his guitar after a few drinks. His voice sounded thin and sad. There was none of his sarcastic takeoff tonight on popular songs. He sang “Red River Valley” straight. I got up from the table and walked to the screen and watched flares brightening the sky and winced at the lightning flashes of the big guns. In spite of the thunder of artillery outside, the club inside seemed as hushed and expectant as a funeral parlor.
“From this valley they say you are leaving;
I shall miss your bright eyes and sweet smile. . . .”
