Lieutenant Dave Stegall was flying his Loach as part of a Pink Team sneaking and peeking on enemy activity about ten miles north of Tay Ninh. Spec4 Larry Kempers was crew chief and observer, Sergeant John Binegar was torque with the machine gun. They were skimming the treetops and peering down into the jungle when they encountered automatic weapons fire. Plexiglas shattered. Bullets ticked! through metal. Muzzles flickered and smoked from the trees. All three men suffered wounds, none of which were life threatening, all of which were scary nonetheless because of the blood spattering each other and the interior of the little whirlybird.
“Taking fire! Taking fire!” Stegall screamed at his high bird.
Kempers dropped red smoke; he had the canister in his hand, ring already pulled. Binegar, nursing an arm wound, opened fire with his M60, the muzzle stuck out the open door, shooting at the enemy in the trees directly below.
Bullets thudding into the tiny scout chopper severed the helicopter’s push-pull levers fore and aft. The bird lurched in and out of the treeline as Stegall fought to keep it in the air. They were dead men if they went down here into the guns of their ambushers.
Stegall increased lateral thrust to overcome the ague that threatened to shake the bird right out of the sky. This caused the Loach to fly sideways. It skipped awkwardly above the trees, swooping and falling and rising and sputtering, but managing to flee from its attackers.
“I don’t know how long I can keep it in the air!” Stegall cried over the radio.
He ordered Kempers and Binegar to get rid of weight. Lighten the bird in order to gain lift. They started tossing equipment out the door—a case of smoke grenades, a fire extinguisher, chicken plate, their lunches . . . They jettisoned everything loose inside the aircraft except their weapons. Those they were going to need when they went down. That they were going to crash was a foregone conclusion. Stegall strove to get as far away from the ambush site as he could before they went in.
He gained a hundred feet of altitude, then lost most of it. The ship shook so hard he could hardly hold on to the controls. It was like it was a dog and they were fleas it was trying to get rid of. Behind, the high bird Snake rolled in hot over the red smoke, making the enemy pay for his little indiscretion of opening fire on a helicopter. It afforded little consolation to the wounded men inside the even more seriously wounded Loach fluttering painfully through the air. They were not going to make it back. Not in this ship.
“Tighten your belts,” Stegall warned his crew. “I’m going to take her down. We’re going to hit hard.”
His alarm went into the air: “Mayday!, Mayday!” And at Tay Ninh, the scramble horn sounded three blasts.
He desperately searched for an opening in the thick forest cover. Ahead and to the right he spotted a break in the treeline and headed for it. He came upon a small clearing clotted with six-foot-tall elephant grass, bamboo, and dead tree stumps spiked around like gray tombstones. He would never have selected it for a landing under any other circumstances, but he had little choice now.
“Going in!” he exclaimed. “We’re going down!”
He crash-landed the Loach in grass and brackish underlying water. After the initial impact, it listed to one side against a stump but remained on its skids. The crew, shaken but without additional injuries, bailed out and huddled in the trees at the edge of the clearing.
It became now a matter of which side reached them first.
“You can’t imagine how happy we were to see crossed sabers and Headhunters,” Lieutenant Stegall roared in the O Club after his wounds were patched up. “It was certainly a better sight than seeing sandals and black pajamas.”
He jumped onto a chair with both boots and hoisted his beer.
“A toast!” he cheered.
Pilots crowded around, laughing and grabassing. “Hear! Hear! A toast!”
“A toast to the best and bravest bunch of guys in Vietnam. Who put their own asses on the line to snatch Larry, John, and me right out from under ol’ Charlie’s nose. Down the hatch, guys.”
Kempers and Binegar over at their NCO Club were undoubtedly undergoing a similar “debriefing.” They would be dropping by later to collect their free beers. Loach flyers normally stuck to themselves, but an experience like this constituted a special occasion.
When we lost somebody out there, when we brought back full body bags, the O Club that night was a little quieter than normal and Mighty Morris strummed his guitar and sang “Red River Valley.” But when we had a downed bird and got the crew out and back safely, the O Club was full of drinking down and away the bad that could have happened.
Laugh, laugh, laugh. Rough banter. Machoing away fear and anxiety. Everyone getting a little loud and a little wild in affirmation of still being alive. A celebration of survival. Whooping it up tonight because tomorrow we would all be back out there. And for whom did the TOC alarm toll? It tolled for thee.
“Hey, Dave. Did you ruin a pair of skivvies? Anything brown floating around inside the cockpit?”
“Hey, Dave. Did your life flash before your eyes?”
What everybody really wanted to know was, Tell us about it, Dave. What was it like to get shot and go down? Tell us about it so we’ll know when it happens to us. Tell us, but don’t get too heavy. Keep it light and joke and bullshit about it. Let us all whistle through the graveyard, because that way it ain’t nearly so scary.
He told his story and things grew quieter and more serious. Silence crept in like fog through cracks to dampen spirits. The bullshitting and grabassing ceased. I leaned against the rocket crate bar with Farmer Farmer, who had almost gone down twice, and sipped my beer and listened. Each of us nursed his own fears and apprehensions as he fought back unspoken nightmares which threatened the possibility that tomorrow it could be me out there.
We listened and we felt the worms crawling in our guts. Afterward, it was again laugh, laugh, laugh. Getting rid of all that awful silence. Mighty Morris took up his guitar and started to sing. It was one of those macabre songs with an unlimited number of verses that continued to accumulate night after night.
“Eighteen kids in a free-fire zone,
Books in hand going home;
Last in line goes home alone.
Napalm sticks to kids.
“Vietcong woman on the run,
Struck by napalm from the sun.
When they’re pregnant, you get two for one.
Napalm sticks to kids.
“Charlie in his boat sitting in the stern.
Thinks his goddamned boat won’t burn.
Those fucking gooks will never learn.
Napalm sticks to kids.”
Whoops and laughter of encouragement once again filled the club. Beer cans sailed around like mortar rounds. I finished my beer, slapped Stegall on the shoulder and walked outside into the Vietnam night. The 175s were also silent, for a change, no H&I tonight. Dark cloud banks formed on the horizon. I smelled rain and I smelled pollution from the river. I smelled fish and human shit and kerosene smoke from Tay Ninh the city five miles away.
I wondered if Charlie kept a Vulture Board like we did on which to record his kills.